The persistence and change of place names on the Vergi Peninsula

Marit Alas

doi:10.54013/kk827a3

Keywords: socio-onomastics, place-name usage, place-name inventory, continuity and loss of place names

This article examines the preservation and change of place names on the Vergi Peninsula in Lahemaa, northern Estonia, from the late seventeenth century to the early twenty-first century. The study applies a socio-onomastic perspective, treating place names as part of local communicative practice and as indicators of changing relationships between people, places, and landscape use. The analysis draws on three types of sources: historical maps dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, twentieth-century materials from the Place Names Archive of the Institute of the Estonian Language, and fieldwork carried out by the author in 2013 and 2015.

The comparison of these sources shows that different types of place names have followed different trajectories of change. Village names constitute the most stable layer: all present-day village names can be traced to early written sources or maps, with variation mainly confined to spelling. Farm names also show considerable continuity, especially from the nineteenth century onwards, but they reveal a more complex relationship between official names and local usage. Official farm names, older vernacular names, and names derived from current or former owners may coexist for a long time.

Names of cultivated land show the clearest link between name change and shifts in land use. Nineteenth-century manor maps document a detailed system of field, meadow, and pasture names, reflecting an earlier pattern of land use, in which village lands were divided into numerous small, scattered plots. Nineteenth-century land consolidation reduced the need to distinguish between individual plots at the village level, and the subsequent decline of agriculture, grazing, and haymaking further diminished the use of these names. Names of artefacts and natural features also illustrate the selective nature of the sources: some artefact names appear in records only long after the object came into use, while many names for smaller natural features are documented inconsistently.

The study demonstrates that the survival of place names depends primarily on the continued need to use them in communication. Name change usually does not result from deliberate renaming, but from a shift in the need to use a name. A name may persist in collective memory, survive as a parallel name, or leave traces in other place names as a name element. Often, however, it fades together with the former use of the place. New names tend to emerge when a place acquires meaning through a new use or for a new group of users.

Marit Alas (b. 1983), MA, Institute of the Estonian Language, Junior Researcher (Roosikrantsi 6, 10119 Tallinn), marit.alas@eki.ee

The persistence and change of place names on the Vergi Peninsula

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