A General Overview of the Toponyms of Komijan County, Iran

Abstract

Toponyms, as one of the most crucial intangible cultural heritage, contain a piece of remarkable information related to the language, history, and geography of any region. In this research, the microtoponyms of Komijan County, located in Markazi province of Iran, have been investigated through collecting and analyzing 2678 microtoponyms from 57 residential areas (2 cities and 55 villages) of this county. Given the fact that the Turkish language in Komijan County is in danger, many microtoponyms of this region are also in danger of gradually disappearing, which explains the necessity of conducting the present research. Based on the results, there is a significant relationship between the frequency of microtoponyms and the geographical location of each village, i.e., mountainous villages often have more microtoponyms. The observed difference between the local and official pronunciation of the studied oykonyms can sometimes display the distortion of the native name at the stage of the official naming. The topoformants used in the structure of the oykonyms indicate a significant diversity, which at least provides the possibility of classifying them into 4 different groups, including oykonyms without topoformant, oykonyms with Abad or Ava topoformants, oykonyms with hydrotopoformants, and oykonyms with other kinds of topoformants. From a lexical and structural point of view, most of the microtoponyms belong to Azerbaijani Turkish language. In terms of nature, oronyms are the most frequent with more than 1300 cases, followed by hydronyms and dromonyms. Semantically, descriptive names, anthropotoponyms, phytotoponyms, and zootoponyms have the highest frequency, respectively. It should be noted that the linguistic affiliation of more than 100 toponyms is currently uncertain which requires independent studies. Because it may raise the possibility of the existence of an unknown language layer in the region and adjacent areas.