A General Overview of Landscape Naming Features in Turkic Toponymy: Based on Oronyms in Yakut, Bashkort, Turkish, and Kazakh Languages

Abstract

Historical events took place on our planet in different epochs, which influenced the appearance of geographical names related to the Turkic languages. In modern civilization, toponyms are being updated with new names. Toponyms are an indispensable element of the development of society and humanity as a whole. Of course, it is necessary to study toponyms in order to understand how they arise, develop, change, what contributes to this process and what they mean. The landscape dictionary contains the words: land, river, mountain, plateau, lake, hill, ridge, rock, forest, grove, and sand. Oronyms belong to a group of toponyms that include names of landforms. This group covers the names of mountains, peaks, plains, depressions, caves, ravines, and other geomorphological features. Turkic toponyms are an important data source for linguistic analysis and reflect the peculiarities of the development of the language, material and spiritual culture of Turkic peoples who inhabited certain areas. The relevance of studying the toponymic system is that it allows determine the evolution of linguistic phenomena and identify the features of the material and spiritual culture of the people, typical for a certain period of its development.  Toponymy contains invaluable information on the history of language, dialectology, historical geography and ethnography.

The article proves that the toponyms in Turkish, Kazakh, Bashkir and Yakut, which belong to the Turkic languages, testify to common historical, ethnic and geographical ties. Toponyms in these languages are not only geographical names, but also a mirror of the historical memory and spiritual heritage of each people. The common word elements and semantic similarities of the Turkic people indicate their ancient kinship.