TOPONOMASTIČKA GRAĐA SREDNJOVJEKOVNE BOSNE
THE TOPONOMASTIC SOURCES OF MEDIEVAL BOSNIA

Summary/Abstract: Despite the fact that study of toponomastic material on the territory covered by the medieval Bosnian state has continually been carried out for longer than a century, the research has not yet offered a detailed and serious description in the form of a special monograph. The conducted research whose results are presented on preceding pages indicates a complexity of this thematic frame. Medieval toponyms represent an important source for the research of past, however they do not represent a conserved type of information that has maintained its primary form until modern times. With the use of toponomastic material it is possible to view the various segments of medieval Bosnian history. The transformation of medieval settlement has left its traces on toponomastics, and therefore the village as the most frequent and basic form of settlement, with a completely agrarian character was marked with the toponym “vas”. The need for storage of goods was the reason why merchants spent more time on the places where a bazaar day was held once a week thus creating market places which were named after the days of the week when the sales were made. In the next phase, the need to preserve the goods and more frequent trading caused the stay of greater number of people on the squares which resulted with the development of the settlement of a higher level. The part of the settlement where permanent trading and crafting was performed was called varoš (town), a term which would later on be applied to the whole settlement and which has become a toponym. The long connection of one kindred to a certain geographic region inevitably brought to the instituting of personal or family names and rarely nicknames as toponym tags for a narrow or wide land area i.e. for the name of the whole settled place. The names of medieval settlements in many cases derived from vocations or activities which the population of the area performed. In toponomastic material the elements of all three churches the Bosnian, Catholic and Orthodox are present, but also the elements which with certain modifications represent pre-Christian Slav heritage. The folk tales often attempt to construct an image about the name of the settlement as the name given by a famous person in fatal times and put the name of the settlement in the same plain with some supernatural phenomena.

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