Transylvania has a long history of interethnic contacts – both peaceful and conflicting. As a result, a multitude of either “shared” or divergent place names were recorded in all regions of the respective province throughout centuries. The focus of this article is on central-southern Transylvanian village names, most of them recorded in the Sibiu County (judeţul Sibiu), an area inhabited by Romanians, Transylvanian Saxons and Hungarians. Cases of parallel evolution, bilingualism, diglossia, folk etymology and imposition of official names (in Medieval Latin, German, Hungarian and Romanian) will be highlighted and discussed in detail below.

Andrea Maxiniuc

Author

Dr. Andrea Maxiniuc is a lecturer at the Germanic Department of the Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava. Her work focuses mainly on text linguistics and on cultural studies.