Die Motivation von Quellen- und Brunnennamen im Sprachraum des Spanischen

Abstract

The aim of this study is to classify the names with which traditional local speakers designate places where springs and wells, sites of enormous economic importance especially in arid regions, can be found. The linguistic analysis of the material, extracted from an extensive corpus of toponymic material collected in a large part of the Spanish speaking area, unveils numerous data of interest for the lexicology and the dialectology of Spanish. Besides, its classification according to different motivational types reveals aspects of the referents considered especially relevant by the speaker. In this way, the names studied reflect the way in which the traditional rural population has been related to the geographic environment in which its daily life developed, and sheds light on the phenomenon of the creation of names.