The role of bodies of water in settlement names referring to the natural environment

In this essay I examine the relationship of settlement names with bodies of water and places associated with water. I point out the role of water and hydronyms in the formation of the settlement name type and the form in which they are present in early Old Hungarian settlement names. The vast majority of the settlement names have only a single constituent: metonymy, name-giving without a formant occurs in 85% of the names (e.g. Ér < ér ‘brook’, Tapolca < hydronym Tapolca, etc.), while 6% of the names were created from a common noun related to water or from a hydronym with a suffix morpheme (e.g. Árki < árok ‘trench’ + -i suffix etc.). The two-constituent names also account for a small proportion of the names of the settlements at only 9% (e.g. Szamosfalva ‘village/next to the River Szamos’, Túrpásztó ‘settlement called Pásztó/located next to the Túr River’ etc.). I also discuss the relationship between settlement names and hydronyms recorded in an identical form. I collect those points of reference and criteria which, with due care, can be used to identify the direction of metonymy successfully (eg. etymological and name typological arguments, the size of the body of water etc.). I also highlight that the hydronym > settlement name direction mostly accepted in publications on Hungarian historical onomastics cannot be generalized, instead, each case has to be examined separately in terms of the name formation process.