Toponymic Study Of Wu Dialect In Yixing City

Dialectal toponyms are faithful recorders of a region’s language,geography,history and culture,recording the alternation of language,the change of mountains and rivers,the rise and fall of history,and the survival of culture.Therefore,it is of great value to study toponyms from the perspective of dialects.Yixing City,which is surrounded by mountains and water,is rich in geomorphological features,and its dialectal toponyms have rich historical and cultural connotations and distinctive dialectal characteristics of the Wu dialect,making it a favorable sample for dialectal toponyms’ case studies.In this paper,we describe the structure type,nomenclature,characteristic characters,and name alteration of Wu dialect in Yixing City to show its unique features and explore the characteristics of Yixing dialect.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the main part of this paper consists of four chapters.Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overall overview of the toponymic landscape of the Wu dialect in Yixing City,laying the corpus basis for the research in Chapters 3 and 4;Chapter 3 selects some of the toponymic characters for discussion,which is a local microscopic usage study;Chapter 4 studies the changes of Wu dialect toponyms in Yixing City,adopting a chronological approach.In terms of structure,we discuss 1830 names in the Yixing County Gazetteer of Jiangsu Province,which is the basic research material of this paper,and categorize them in terms of syllabic structure,hierarchical structure,and structural integrity,so as to build an overall framework of the linguistic characteristics of toponyms in the Wu dialect of Yixing City.In terms of word formation,it can be divided into an exploration of the issue of the originality of toponyms and the naming rationale.We divide the toponyms in the Wu dialect of Yixing City into two categories: native and non-native toponyms.Meanwhile,based on various types of co-temporal and ephemeral materials such as Yixing County Gazetteer of Jiangsu Province,the second national toponymic census of 2014,various types of cultural and historical materials and historical documents of Yixing City,and fieldwork materials,we divide the naming rationale toponyms of Wu dialect in Yixing City into two categories: natural and humanistic,and then divide each of the two naming rationales into 11 subcategories to show the geographic,historical,economic,and cultural and other elements of different aspects of toponyms.It is worth noting that different general names have similar or even identical meanings in the same area,and the same general name has different meanings in different areas.Therefore,we classify the general names of Wu Dialect in Yixing City according to four categories: mountain,water,settlement,and building,and summarize the naming rationale of different categories of general names.Thirdly we explore the causes of four cases of Yixing dialect toponyms,namely“氿”“岕”“渚”and“洴浰”,by searching literature over time,cross-referencing data from the China-National Geographical Names Information Database and fieldwork.The origins of these toponym characters are not only related to geographical features and human environment,but also have a great relationship with language.For example,“氿”is a dialectal self-created character that has nothing to do with ancient sounds and meanings;“岕”is a common character that retains ancient sounds but not the original character;“渚”is a land or river island that stretches into the water,and can be used as a common name with its close sound under certain circumstances.Under certain circumstances,it can be mixed with its near-sounding common name“嘴”;“洴浰”indicates the intersection of three waters where the water is flowing very fast,and from a distance,it looks like washing and slapping on the water.These characteristic toponymic characters are the treasures of Yixing’s dialectal research,and can provide solid evidence for many linguistic phenomena,so it is worthwhile to dig deeper and more carefully.Finally we provide a general overview of the alteration of township and administrative village names in Yixing due to the evolution of the establishment and the adjustment of administrative divisions,and show a review of toponyms’ origin in the Yixing County toponymic Map attached to the Yixing County Gazetteer of Jiangsu Province up to the time of its publication1.The reasons for the name alteration were analyzed.According to our summary and comparison,the phenomenon of renaming by linguistic factors is more frequent than that of renaming by non-linguistic factors,and most of them are similar or same in tones,which indicate that dialect plays an important role in promoting the renaming of Yixing toponyms.On this basis,historical and cultural factors should be taken into account in the toponymic alteration in the future,and we should pay more attention to the dialectal information in toponyms.The above research seeks to understand and analyze Yixing toponyms from the perspective of dialects,both as a whole and as an individual case.The study of toponyms,in turn,contributes to people’s understanding of Yixing dialect,which,under the living fossil of toponym,has a new and everlasting charm.