About Semigallia in Lithuanian: rendering place-names

Place-names as one of groups of proper names along with personal and symbolic names partially disclose national specificity. From one side, the objective of every nation is to take care of usage of own country's (and language's) proper names, their formation, regulation and popularisation; from the other side, the objective is to try to render proper names of other languages by means of one's mother tongue as correctly as possible. Differently from other foreign languages, Latvian proper names are written in Lithuanian on the base of their pronunciation. Some Latvian place-names are peculiar with traditional forms which more or less differ from the common form of Latvian place-names; while others are Lithuanianised with regard to general requirements. The article investigates rendering and usage in Lithuanian of place-names of one of Latvian regions - Semigallia. The sources for analysis are recent Lithuanian-Latvian and Latvian-Lithuanian dictionaries (issues of 1995 and 2003 respectively), various recent Lithuanian publications and booklets for tourists as well as cases of usage on the Internet. There are not many publications on Semigallia in Lithuanian press; however, there exist constant themes being written on for several times - that is why some particular placenames are spread wider, e.g. names of places worth visiting. The press articles, booklets for tourists as well as Internet data analysed allow us drawing a conclusion that theoretical requirements for rendering place-names are not always followed. Ageneral tendency is to be stated: the rarer or less known place-name is, the greater probability is to make a mistake in rendering it. In its turn, if particular names often occur in publications and become widely known, their rendering does not evoke much trouble. Of course, the following condition should' be noted: if correct forms are spreading. Sometimes incorrectly rendered placenames move from one source to another, e.g. the local name Tērvete (here, a certain influence can be traced due to a fixed dictionary's suggestion which does not correspond to a contemporary provision that a Latvian long vowel ē in Lithuanian is rendered through a vowel ė). Various mistakes of rendering Semigallian place-names into Lithuanian show that they like other Latvian place-names still cause difficulties for those writing in other languages