O развитии системы названий населенных пунктов смоленского края в XVII –XVIII веках
On the development of a system of place names in the Smolensk region in the 17th and 18th centuries

Summary/Abstract: The study of the names of places and settlements, their analysis on the basis of earlier sources, and the comparison of those names with later documents allows for an explication of the process of development of toponyms in the region of Smolensk and a presentation of the patterns of that process. Descriptive constructions were typical of the early stages of the development of place names; including the name of the feature, information about its owner (first name, nickname, surname), and the name of water features in the vicinity of the settlement. Words such as река (river), ручей, ручеек (brook, little stream), исток (spring, source), озеро (lake), речка (little river), колодезь and колодец (spring) etc, were used in the character of word-clues in descriptive constructions given to particular features (villages, pastures, waste villages, waste places). Villages and open spaces often had two names in the 17th and 18th centuries. These may have been the official and common names, or the old and the new. In later times, along with the development and formation of a new system of toponymy, descriptive constructions began to disappear and were replaced by the well-known single-word names.

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