Place Names in Gojjam: Sociolinguistic Study
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Date
2025-01-16
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The study attempts to deal with place names in the Gojjam-Amhara National Regional State. Evans᾽ Causal Theory of Names and Fillmore᾽s Prototype Theory are employed to analyze place names for the sake of contributing sociolinguistic knowledge. Informants and the research area are selected through purposive sampling to incorporate the various name systems, meanings, and structures of place names. To obtain authentic data, the researcher uses in-depth interviews to probe an in-depth understanding of naming systems or practices and meanings. Moreover, focus group discussion is employed when the responses of the interviewees contradict each other. Accordingly, the major portions of place name systems are descriptive, personal name-based, religious, and circumstantial. The other name systems encapsulate commemoration,
aspiration, political situation, livelihood, institution, gender, spatio-temporal features as well as borrowed language-based place names. It is noted that place names have referential and connotative meanings in the use of the names in the community. Structurally, Place names are made from simple words up to clauses. Simple nominals, inflection of words, nominal compounds, and phrases are the major structures of place names. Almost all place name structures are bound to the grammar of Amharic; however, it is noticed that few names have deviant structures. Largely, place names are tags of sociocultural circumstances that happened in the communities’ lifetimes or natural features of places.