névtani

Névtani, or onomastics in Hungarian usage, is the branch of linguistics that studies proper names. It examines how names are formed, transmitted, and used within a language community, as well as the meanings they convey and the social and historical forces that shape them. The field investigates the life cycle of names, including their creation, adoption, variation, and, in some cases, decline or standardization.

The main subfields are anthroponymy and toponymy. Anthroponymy covers personal names and surnames, exploring their etymology, morphology, and semantic shifts, as well as naming practices and conventions. Toponymy, or place-name study, analyzes the origin and evolution of geographic names, their distribution, and their links to landscape, history, and culture. Névtani may also address related categories such as hydroonyms (water names) and ethnonyms, and it often intersects with sociolinguistics, history, and cultural studies.

Methods used in névtani include historical-linguistic analysis, philology, and etymology, supported by archival sources such as church records, civil registries, literature, and oral tradition. Researchers may employ corpus studies and comparative analysis to track name forms, meanings, and diffusion across time and space. The results illuminate language change, cultural contact, identity, and social practices around naming.

Névtani findings are used by linguists, historians, genealogists, and cultural scholars to understand naming conventions, linguistic heritage, and the ways names reflect and influence personal and collective identity.