Typical toponymics of the Zadar islands

Abstract

On the basis of the toponomastic materials collected in 13 Zadar islands, both of the outer and inner chains, the author attempts to isolate the most frequents sematemes: of 5000 recorder forms, only those are considered as are attested for 3 or more islands. This appears to be a sufficient number of attestations for generalizations of a part of toponomastic characteristics of the group. The method has isolated 165 units for analysis. Only basic semantemes are considered, without determinants. Analysing the corpus acquired in this manner, the author shows that the sea, although fatally influencing the life of the islanders, has not the place in toponymic confirmation as might be expected - at least as regards their number - and that the name giver was most frequently motivated by the inherent and easily observable characteristics of the referent, and less frequently by some other possible reason (e. g. performing of an activity). It is evident that the land part of the island has important advantage in that situation. A strong connection exists between linguistic and socio-economic determination of the population and the distribution of the toponymic forms. This connection is shown in various ways. Large number and great frequency of toponymies relating to agriculture point unambiguously to the dominant interest of the island population for this kind of activity, while poor representation of Croatian lexemes under the sea and the coastal line shows that, to them, the sea had for long centuries been a large and threatening unknown. On the other hand, the toponomastic materials along the shore and under the sea show that it was precisely the shore and the sea that represented the most important locus in the life of the Romance population, both before and after the arrival to the islands of the Croats. Summarizing the distribution achieved by means of the approach outlined above the following rule can be suggested for the Zadar islands: the majority of toponymic forms is of Croatian origin, the toponymies occur on land and relate to agriculture. The minority of the toponymic forms is of foreign origin (most frequently Romance), they are very frequent, are attested along the shore or under the sea, and are connected with fishing and seamanship.