Social Principles in Asian Countries’ Names

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Languages, , Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan

2 Translation Studies Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages, , Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan

Abstract

The present study investigates the Asian toponyms based on two linguistic criteria. The first criterion is the main factor for calling Asian countries; in other word, we try to determine the different social factors of the Asian toponyms. The second criterion is related to Persian equivalences of Asian toponyms. In this part, the word formation processes which are used for naming Asian countries in Persian will be investigated. For these sakes, 43 Asian country names extracted. The results of the first goal reveal that there are 9 factors for the Asian toponyms. Among them, the name of tribes and nations and Geographical Features are the most popular ones since the first one used in 14 and the second one in 13 Asian toponyms. Other factors are the name of Geographical direction, Kingdom dynasty, people characteristics, the name of a person, the name of holy places, the name of God or Goddess and the name of animals. The results of the second criterion also shows that there are 3 word formation processes for naming Asian toponyms including Borrowing, coinage and loan translation. The most popular one is borrowing which is used in 28 Persian equivalents of Asian toponyms. Coinage used for the formation of 9 Asian toponyms in Persian and 6 Asian toponyms is the result of Loan translation in Persian.

Keywords

Journal of Iranian Dialects & Linguistics
Volume 9, Issue 2
March 2025
Pages 197-213

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History

  • Receive Date: 01 February 2025
  • Revise Date: 14 March 2025
  • Accept Date: 01 April 2025

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