Foreword

In January 2010 I contacted European onomasticians with the call to join a research programme aiming to map the European situation regarding a special settlement name type-patrociny settlement names. The call was welcomed, 15 researchers from 10 countries indicated they would like to participate in the project. The final outcome is that 11 studies are being published in the volume entitled "Patrociny Settlement Names in Europe" which you have in your hands.

The aim therefore was to present the situation of patrociny settlement names in Europe, introducing their region-specific features. When requesting the authors to write about this particular name type, I considered the fact that patrociny settlement names are characteristic of only certain parts of Europe (primarily Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the Carpathian basin). In order to view the European attributes of patrociny settlement names in a unified framework (e.g. the circumstances of their formation, factors playing a role in their alterations, etc.) I collected the aspects which should guide the authors in their studies. Accordingly, the majority of studies reveal information regarding the following: the impact of religious organisation on the origin and distribution of the name type; how and from what time colloquial variants replace the Latin names; what kinds of chronological characteristics the name type has in certain language territories; onomato-geographical differences; the process and direction of the distribution of the name type. In addition, from certain studies we may get an impression about the linguistic or structural qualities of patrociny settlement names and their change processes.

During the editorial work I have not interfered with the use of terms in certain studies since I consider the unification of terminology created and used in given language areas arbitrary and unjustified. Since the authors managed to precisely explain the terms they used, I believe the non-homogenous nature of the terminology does not hinder the comparison of phenomena.

This collection of studies about patrociny settlement names does not aim at bringing to a close the relevant onomastic research; on the contrary, it wishes to widen it, providing a pattern for further research. A similar international research programme which would also compare a toponymic phenomenon's features in different languages but within more specific circumstances would also be quite informative: related languages (e.g. Hungarian and Finnish), or languages not related to but in physical contact with each other (e.g. Finnish and Swedish) would be presented equally. In other words, research like this may bring to the surface features originating from a genetic relationship just as much as from interference phenomena growing out of languages living together.

In the fervent hope of further collaboration as efficient as this one, and as a representative of the editorial board of "Onomastica Uralica", we would be glad to receive further studies from European onomasticians.

Debrecen, May 2011
The Editor