Szabó T. Attila helynévkutatásainak jelentősége
The Importance of Szabó Attila's Toponymical Researches

Summary/Abstract: From Attila Szabó T.’s varied scientifi c activities it bulks large his place-name researches regarding the Transylvanian region. In my lecture I focus on his life-work at this territory. First he meets historical toponyms during his visits to the Archive of The Transylvanian Museum, and he realizes their signifi cance and applicability. Attila Szabó T. creates a new, more elaborated methodology of toponymical researches, compared to the attempts at the same fi eld before. The novelty of the 20th century Hungarian toponymy (the school of Budapest) consists in the diacronical approach to the place-names, and the neogrammarian methods of their interpretation. Attila Szabó T. and the so-called school of Kolozsvár add to the already existing general direction new perspectives: they link the historical research of placename to the local, contemporary collection of the existing toponyms. The fi eld-work had to be very precise: Szabó T. insists on microtoponymical researches, which concentrate on all of the inner and outer place-names of a settlement. In his well-known monographies, the author presents the toponyms in their evolution, as historical continuities. These works present only one imperfection: they don’t follow any descriptive grammatical, systemic categorization, the microtoponymic elements are being assorted as names of natural features of land, or simply are published in an alphabetical order, while the different variants of the names are put in chronological succession, and thus the principle of the continuity in time comes across. Attila Szabó T. had an over-all purpose when doing his toponymical researches in Transylvania, he would have liked to compile a great onomastical dictionary, the so-called Transylvanian Reference Book of Toponyms’ History, but this work, unfortunately, remained a torso. We can meet (again) the toponyms collected in a large number on the galleys of the Erdélyi magyar szótörténeti tár (a historical dictionary of Transylvania), another grandiose venture of our great linguist, Attila Szabó T.

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