Staropolskie nazwy miar powierzchni w polskiej toponimii

Abstrakt

OLD POLISH NAMES OF UNITS OF AREA IN POLISH TOPONYMY

The article is devoted to the analysis of contemporary Polish place names derived from historical units of land measurement, such as łan, morga, włóka, and socha. Its aim is to examine the origins of these toponyms, their formal and semantic structure, and their significance for reconstructing the historical socio-economic landscape and the spatial organization of rural areas. The analysed place names document former systems of land measurement and division, preserving in the linguistic layer traces of terminology associated with agriculture and settlement processes. The empirical basis of the study consists of appellative data drawn from the Old Polish Dictionary and toponymic material taken from the onomastic compendium Place Names of Poland. The study employs diachronic, etymological, and typological-structural methods of analysis. It discusses the mechanisms by which surveying and land-measurement terminology entered the system of place names, including the process of semantic derivation, and presents the regional variation of the analysed toponyms. The analysis demonstrates that the most productive toponymic bases are the lexemes łan, morga, włóka, and socha. These place names constitute enduring evidence of historical agrarian practices, systems of spatial organization, and patterns of land ownership. Despite the disappearance of the historical units of measurement from everyday use, the toponyms have retained their identifying function and continue to provide an important source of evidence for onomastic, historical, ethnolinguistic, and cultural research.