Humans interact with landscape by classifying and labeling a select multitude of the landscape’s limitless individual areas and features. Studying place names reveals much about language, perception, values, beliefs, environment, economy, and history. Like place-naming among other Athabaskan speakers, Navajo toponymic practice overwhelmingly produces descriptive names for landscape features, reserving commemorative and activity place-naming largely for human-modified places. Athabaskan languages employ an unusual number of topological and directional affixes and verb forms, which can condense and convey much information within brief descriptive place names. Lexeme frequencies hint at what Navajos see or saw as significant in their natural landscape. Place-naming facilitated possessing/controlling landscapes. The Navajo attached the itineraries and activities of mythological protagonists to the land via a web of place names; the associated stories and their descriptive names served as mnemonic guides for far-traveling Navajos.
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Cogos, Sarah, Lars Östlund & Samuel Roturier
2019. Forest Fire and Indigenous Sami Land Use: Place Names, Fire Dynamics, and Ecosystem Change in Northern Scandinavia. Human Ecology 47:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Demska, Orysia & Pavlo Levchuk
2020. The Urbanonimia of Ukraine in the Context of Decommunization. Cognitive Studies | Études cognitives :20
Egorova, Ekaterina, Thora Tenbrink & Ross S. Purves
2015. Where Snow is a Landmark: Route Direction Elements in Alpine Contexts. In Spatial Information Theory [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 9368], ► pp. 175 ff.
Jett, Stephen C.
2014. Place names as the traditional Navajo's title-deeds, border-alert system, remote sensing, global positioning system, memory bank, and monitor screen. Journal of Cultural Geography 31:1 ► pp. 106 ff.
Nash, Joshua & Tin Chuk
2012. In deep water: diving site names on Norfolk Island. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 10:4 ► pp. 301 ff.
Villette, Julia & Ross S. Purves
2020. From Microtoponyms to Landscape Using Semantics, Location, and Topography: The Case of Wald, Holz, Riet, and Moos in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The Professional Geographer 72:1 ► pp. 109 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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