Place-name adaptation as a process : An investigation of Wendish place-names and place-name variants in Knýtlinga saga

The aim of the thesis is to theoretically and empirically describe and explain the phenomenon of place-name adaptation which does not necessarily end with the borrowing or replication of place-names but can continue further. 48 Wendish place-names in Knýtlinga saga, including their attestations and variants in a selection of the saga’s text carriers and corresponding text witnesses, constitute the primary material for the investigation. The thesis seeks to combine place-name research, contact linguistics and philology with the theory of name adaptation in contact onomastics as its overall framework. The most important contribution of the thesis is the proposed demarcation between place-name replication and adaptation. In discussing the factors that can influence adaptation and its results, the focus is on the decisive role of the language user in contact-induced change. It is argued that the choice of adaptation strategy is primarily dependent upon the needs, competence and attitudes of the name user. The resulting form of adaptation is in most cases governed by the linguistic system of the target language, which is reflected in the model employed in the thesis to describe the results of the adaptation process. Two studies, one etymological and one philological, have been undertaken. Phonological, morphological, lexical, onomastic and semantic adaptations with and without epexegetic additions can be discerned in the toponymic material, which comprises 29 names of Slavic origin. Phonological adaptation dominates, which confirms the observations on place-name adaptation in previous research. Further adaptation of the replicated names in the post-medieval copies of Knýtlinga saga is admittedly insignificant; nevertheless scribes here make greatest use of lexical and onomastic adaptation in copying. The lack of transparency, which has been pointed out as the trigger for these types of adaptation, seems to create only the possibility of adaptation, but it is the name user who determines whether adaptation will occur and which strategy should then be employed