Die Mark Schmelz in der Dübener Heide. Ein Exempel in Sachen Flurnamenforschung

Abstract

Minor names or microtoponyms are typically collected and analysed
in etymological dictionaries. However, this may not be the most productive
method in every case. More importantly, names should be analysed within the
context of the communication community whose members created and used
them. In rural settlements, these were primarily landowners. With the threefield
crop rotation system (Dreifelderwirtschaft), which dominated agriculture
in Central Europe from the Middle Ages until the 19th century, farmers had to
be in constant discourse about the areas under cultivation, and this was not
possible without using microtoponyms. For this reason, land users in each and
every village established a special system of nomination within their local subdistrict.
A detailed investigation of these names, taking account of this local
perspective and considering the geographical, linguistic, sociolinguistic, ecological
and historical context, identifies the specific reasons behind each individual
nomination, which is very helpful in determining the meaning of more
or less frequent name elements in general. Thus, only detailed studies of this
kind provide a sound basis for various analyses – etymological, cognitive and
others – of microtoponyms in general. This is demonstrated with the example
of one local subdistrict, namely, a deserted village in a hilly and forested part of
the countryside between Berlin and Leipzig. The minor names there have to be
extracted from artificial nominations for land parcels, created for the purposes
of land reallocation in the 19th century. The names were analysed and subsequently
set in relation to the context suggested by different archival sources.