The toponymization of generic geographical terms: names of Brazilian municipalities

Abstract

The general objective of this study is to present an analysis of the names of municipalities formed from a common lexical item considered a generic geographic term related to a physical or human accident. The examined corpus was composed of 810 names extracted from the list of toponyms of municipalities made available by IBGE. The theoretical and methodological reflections that underlie the work are, especially, those of Dauzat (1947), Dick (1990a, 1990b) and Trapero (1995). As an example of the results obtained, we mention the following: this type of nomination is relatively evenly distributed throughout Brazil, being slightly more frequent in the North Region; the generic geographic terms that most result in toponyms are river, field and lagoon (among the physical accidents); porto, vila and jardim (among the human accidents). These generic terms compose toponyms such as: Rio de Janeiro, Campo Largo, Lagoa da Canoa, Porto Alegre, Vila Rica, Jardim do Mulato.