Helynévtörténeti adalékok Bihar vármegye korai településtörténetéhez
Authors: Rácz Anita 
Published: February 2023

Insights from Historical Toponomastics into the Early Settlement History of Bihar County The historical Bihar County was one of the largest administrative units of the Kingdom of Hungary that played a key role in the life of the eastern region from the beginning. The conclusions of historians regarding the settlement date of its territory are only theoretical suppositions based on the projection of subsequent natural circumstances and ethnic features to an earlier time and they lack real historical or archeological evidence. With the help of settlement name data, linguists may draw more certain conclusions regarding the chronological features of the settlement of the county. Based on the toponyms preserved in sources, we may examine the productive period of particular settlement name types. Although the documentation of names is contingent, this affects all names and thus all name types the same way. Therefore, even if the absolute chronology (date of creation) of particular names is not revealed, the relative chronology of different name types (i.e., relative to one another) may be well indicated also by the first name occurrences of the settlements in the case of a larger quantity of names. The chronological curve of a name type may undoubtedly indicate the changes in the frequency of name specimen belonging to the type only with a temporal delay (and what is more, we cannot even explore the parameters of the delay), however, we have no other tool with which we could examine and model the internal chrono¬logical movements of the name system. The first part of the paper introduces how this method works using the type of settlement names with an ethnonym origin. Geographically and in the daily life of people living in Bihar County, the Sebes-Körös river had an outstanding role. The second part of the paper analyzes the settlement name corpus of the river valley from the Old Hungarian Era. In consideration of the etymological, spatial and chronological attributes of the de¬nominations and using the toolbox of toponym reconstruction, it reveals the varied features of the name patterns of the areas along the Sebes-Körös. The basis of the study is provided by four areas distinguished based on the natural and topog¬raphical features along the river: the lower and upper sections of the Sebes-Körös and the right, i.e., northern, and left, i.e., southern regions of the two sections. The paper introduces the chronological distribution of settlement names in the region. The region-specific differences identified in the toponymic system of particular regions are referred to as name patterns. Of the numerous attributes defining the differing name patterns of the four regions along the Sebes-Körös, the paper introduces the differences in the structural features of the settlement names as linguistic attributes primarily defining the names. The results of the onomatosystematical studies regarding the toponymic system of the Sebes-Körös region provide the following three important conclusions regarding settlement history: 1. Hungarians settling in the area could encounter people speaking another language (Slavic) only in traces. Other foreign people did not settle here in larger numbers in later times either. 2. The characteristics of the name system indicate that in the lower section (despite its marshy, swampy features) settlements of Hungarians could be created earlier. 3. The growth rate and onomatosystematical features of the name corpus indicate that there could also be a second, stronger village foundation wave in the settlement process of the area to the south of the river.