Changes of Toponyms Reflecting Ecclesiastical Possession in Medieval Hungary [Egyházi birtoklást tükröző helynevek változásai a középkori Magyarországon]

Based on a corpus of medieval Hungarian toponyms referring to the possession of a clergyman, and the possession of a religious order, this paper focuses on the patterns of possible structural and semantic changes of name forms reflecting early ecclesiastical possession. Simple changes involve processes such as the addition, change or loss of a topoformant; the addition, change or loss of a suffix; the addition, change or loss of a geographical common noun; the change of a specific name constituent; the addition, change or loss of a distinctive addition; the change from a suffixed to a compound name form and vice versa; the appearance and disappearance of alternative name forms; the addition, change or loss of semantic content in the name form; foreignization and domestication; and the complete change of a toponym. Furthermore, these processes are sometimes combined together in a single attested change, or appear in the source documents one after the other in a sequence of consecutive simple changes, constituting instances of complex changes. The author uses the principles of Cognitive Linguistics to explore how toponyms in this case were utilized to direct speakers’ attention to a culturally significant Church-related aspect of the places bearing the names