Description
The toponymy is the set of names of spots of a certain territory and, at the same time, the branch of the onomastics that studies the toponyms. These proper nouns are useful for naming precise and unique spots that have, for the men and women who have lived there, a particular character which distinguishes them from the rest. The majority of toponyms have an understandable, or "transparent" meaning, because they describe clearly the geographical elements they refer to, but also there are names of place that, in the current language, do not make sense or do not describe the place they name.nThis last group of toponyms has greatly intrigued the experts as well as people to such an extent that explanations of its origin have been searched -sometimes in vain. The toponymy, therefore, is in the middle of a true crossroads of scientific disciplines: the linguists look for traces of the formation and the evolution of the same language there, the geographers use the toponyms for identifying the places and including the organization of the space, the historians take them to point out the changes produced in the landscape and in society over time and the experts of popular culture extract the perception of the toponyms of a territory from its own inhabitants.