@article{2020,title={A Study of Toponyms: Village Names in Kastamonu-Center District},abstractNode={One of the main branches of onomastics is the study of place names (toponymy). Toponyms are among the important linguistics elements that play a role in tracing the changes that palce, location and geographical shapes have undergone in the rapidly changing world. The field of linguistics which study place names is called “toponymy”. Toponyms are among the basic elements that constitute the starting point for field researchers in revealing the socio-cultural and economic characteristics of a country. Village names are one of the most studied topics among the place names. Village names serve as an essential bridge in the politicization of the place, in the transfer of culture and in the connection between the place and the future. Therefore, the names of the settlements are one of the most important elements that should be protected in the process of making the geography a homeland. Villages, the first stage of the administrative organization in Turkey, are the smallest administrative units. The names of villages, which are the continuous settlements throughout history, are important in terms of shedding light on the recent settlement history in Turkey. In order to turn these lands into their homeland, the Turks who came to Anatolia at first gave Turkish names to the places they had conquered in accordance with the Turkish phonetics. Kastamonu province has been a densely settled area since ancient times. Therefore, it is possible to find traces of many civilizations in Kastamonu. Kastamonu, which is the subject of the study in this context, is an old Turkish region that is very important for the history of Turkish culture and civilization. Kastamonu, which has never been occupied, is one of the safest regions of Anatolia since the Turkish settlement began in Anatolia. The Turkish presence in Kastamonu region has continued uninterruptedly and the Turkish national culture and traditions have survived from the Anatolian Seljuk period to the present day. As a result, Kastamonu region is one of the important regions which should be investigated in terms of Turkology studies as well as Turkish culture and settlement history. Because of this importance, Kastamonu region was chosen as the focus of this study. There are 177 villages registered in the central district of Kastamonu. In this study, these village names were classified as in a lexical semantic manner. As a result of this classification, the influence of Turkish national culture and traditions was clearly seen. Among the human elements, the ratio of village names composed of the names of people, nicknames, titles and adjectives and the names of Turkish tribes, clans, communities and families were found higher than the other elements. In addition to human elements, the names based of geography and showing the geography, location, direction and status of the village are frequently used in the region. Depending on the influence of the geography on human life, the geographical elements of water and topography particularly show themselves in the village names as well. In the study, when the village names were examined in terms of structure and origin, it was found that compound structures in the village names were most common. Out of 177 village names, 101 village names (57%) have compound structure, 36 names (20,3%) have simple structure and 40 names (22,6%) have derived structure. Among the village names with compound structure, the ones formed with adjective clause were used more.},author={Erol TOPAL-B. Ünal İBRET},year={2020},journal={Turkish Studies - Language and Literature}}