Топоними Црноречја
The toponyms of the Crna reka region

Summary/Abstract: Crna Reka ‘Black River’ is an alternative name for Crni (‘Black’) Timok as well as for the region of Eastern Serbia, called also Crnorečje, encompassing the river’s drainage area from its source near Krivi Vir to its confluence with the Beli (‘White’) Timok near Zaječar. In the past, the Crna Reka region used to be an administrative unit, a župa during the Middle Ages, a nahija under Ottoman rule and finally in 19th century a district (okrug) of the liberated Serbia. Today its territory is divided into three communities (opštine): Boljevac, Bor and Zaječar. The materials presented here were collected during a field research carried out beetween 2008 and 2011, by which the entire Black Timok basin was covered, as well as some adjacent settlements belonging to neighbouring regions, in total 36 populated places that yielded nearly 10.000 toponymic items. The region has a mixed population consisting of the Serbs and the Vlachs. The latter are bilingual, i.e. speakers of both Serbian and their own vernacular, which is a variety of Daco-Romanian. The Serbian names are written in Cyrillic letters and the Vlach ones in a variant of Latin script which is used for rendering the Ungurean subdialect of the Romanians in the Serbian Banat. Both Serbian and Vlach microtoponyms are listed together in the Cyrillic alphabetical order, separately for each settlement. Recent names designating roads, streets, industrial objects, monuments, etc. are included too. In the end an overview of the historical toponymy of the region is given as recorded in the 15th–16th century Ottoman cadastres of the Sanjak of Vidin and in 18th century Austrian sources, which is predominantly Slavic.

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