TOPONYMY OF NAGAON DISTRICT

Toponymy or study of place names is an important and interesting field of immense historical significance. With the progress of human civilization, place names became an important component of day to day life to describe or refer to a habitation area. A place name specifies the geographical location of a physical space, gives it an identity, and thus distinguishes itself from other places. Herein lies the significance of place names. The geographical element is ‘natural’ whereas settlement and the process of naming requires human enterprise. The name by which an area or part of the earth’s surface is distinguished from others is commonly known as ‘place name’. Toponymy refers to the scientific study of place names, their origin, meaning, use and typology. Toponymy could be defined as the scientific study of place names of a region or language or an etymological study of them and a toponymist is one who studies toponymy. Topo is derived from the Greek word topos which means ‘place’ followed by nymy which implies ‘name’. A toponymist is one who studies toponymy. As per the Oxford English Dictionary, the word toponymy was incorporated into English vocabulary in 1876. This word has subsequently been used in lieu of ‘place names’ in academic discourse by researches and scholars. It could be reasonably argued that the story-tellers and poets of the past were the first toponymists as they described or narrated the naming processes of particular places in their narratives. A place name provides particular direction to a geographical area. Place names have immense importance and one could say that they form a part and parcel of human civilization. When humankind abandoned a wandering life and settled in a particular area, they started agriculture and engaged in other modes for their living. To identify their area of settlement, people began using a particular name to designate their localities taking into account some of its characteristics. So, the place name can give us not only the history of the place but also provide other related information regarding the place such as political, economic, social and cultural condition. In this context, D. Javare Gowda opines that, “place names are said to be the footnotes of history and fossils of archaeology. They are pregnant with anthropological and ethnological information.” Place names contain various elements of a civilization. A place name can provide sufficient information about the progress of the society. Hence, the study of history is incomplete without its association with the study of place names. When one opens a map of any part of the world, one has to go through place names which help to attain a basic idea about the place. Naftali Kadmon maintains that: On the theoretical side, place names can tell us a great deal about the physical geography, the culture and the history of a place and about the people connected with it. No wonder; after all it is people who give these names. Places are named not only for their physical properties but also after local events, important personalities, ethnic, literary or religious source and even humorous happenings. The occurrence of a particular name in different countries, together with local variations in the name, can inform us about the dissemination of a specific cultural or historical factor, such as military expansion or colonization. Toponymy divides place names into two broad categories: habitation names and feature names. A habitation name denotes a locality that is peopled or inhabited, such as homestead, village or town and usually dates from the inception of that area. Feature names refer to natural or physical features of the landscape and are subdivided into hydronyms (water features), oronyms (relief features) and places of natural vegetation growth (meadow, glades, groves). Toponymy itself is a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds. The term, onomastics is also a Greek origin word. In Greek Onoma means ‘name’ and Stics means ‘description’. Onomastics thus implies description or scientific interpretation of names. Onomastics is a vast subject and it has many branches such as eponymy i.e. study of personal names and surnames; study of place names is called toponymy; names of streets, roads, ramparts, embankments forts and the like are called hodonymy; study of names of water bodies, and others is called hydronymy; study of names of ethnic groups is called ethnonymy; names of hills mountains are called oronymy; names of things are called chrematonymy; and names of space in the universe are called choronymy.