A place name is the one that humans granted in order to distinguish a place or region from another place or region. Though being formless, it helps us look at the trace of humans no less than the legacy that our ancestors left. In other words, since a...
A place name is the one that humans granted in order to distinguish a place or region from another place or region. Though being formless, it helps us look at the trace of humans no less than the legacy that our ancestors left. In other words, since a place and its name have the inseparable relationship like that of human to human name, it can be said that in the place names have been reflected the living pattern, morals, customs, thoughts, emotions, beliefs and legends.
As if the legacy buried under ground still remains without change, a place name is also the existence that hardly likes to change comparing with the general vocabulary. Therefore, we can say a place name is the archeological relics. Accordingly, it can be said that even if the language in certain region is replaced with another language, the existing place names only are well preserved without any shake in the long history.
The present writer considers that the motivational classification of the place names of Goheung-gun(County) region thereby enhances the usefulness of toponymic study in Goheung-gun dialect and helps us find the right way to name places, and also get the important clues to find the etymological origin of old words.
In order to accomplish this goal, we first sorted the place names surveyed ever in the alphabetical order, and then sorted them again according to the factors of formation through local topographies and historic documents, legend and literature, etc. For this, we surveyed the local topographies, and checked the data reflected in oral or written literatures with place names, and attempted to compare them with neighboring regions. We tried to effectively arrange the data of Goheung-gun place names numbering up to 5,112 by word processor and then transmitted them up again in spread sheet. We input the information together to make it easy to search them later. Based on these analyses, we could accept the general information of the previous studies and describe the special characteristics shown in the place names of Goheung-gun region.
As a result of examining the motivation of place names by dividing them into front factor and rear factor, we could find the conclusion as follows;
By sorting front factors according to motivation, we showed that the names with locational motivation exceeds the other types in number, and those with motivatin of shape, legacy and relics occupied the considerable portion of them. It showed that considerable number of place names are related with legendary animals and mountain animals so that the factors generate place names around the area of mountains. Meanwhile, those related with fish generate the names around the area of sea.
Names after the objects were mainly used as the rear factor of place names, and the most frequent rear factor was "-gol"(valley) and the next frequent one was "-jae"(mountain pass). We could only see few names including "-sil" compared to "-gol", probably because Goheung area is located near the seashore. In addition to this, we could see that the majority of rear factors of "gae, god, naru, sum, yeo" comes from the marine vicinity of Goheung-gun area.
Through this study, the writer tried to arrange the place names shown in the literatures by time and also collect all the place names of Goheung area without missing. Thereby he arranged , analyzed and examined them according to their features of place names and their geographical distribution.
Finally, this study sets myself and other researchers to the task that place names should be explained in terms of cultural history and be studied systematically by applying the result of this study to the interpretation of the origin of the words not yet interpreted.