It is really not without risk to roam the country as a place name researcher, which the Munich linguist Bernhard Stör can confirm at any time. When he last dealt with the place names in the old district of Vilsbiburg, he had to visit all the scattered settlements and isolated farmsteads to get information. It is a tedious job to track down the old dialectal forms of pronunciation, you not only need informants who are still familiar with the old dialect names, but also a sensitive ear to be able to document the phonetic subtleties and nuances in the place names exactly. But the biggest problem with this field research is often the inhabitants of the farms, some of whom are inherently suspicious when a stranger invades their territory. It’s been like that forever. Sometimes the front door stays locked or a giant farm dog blocks the way or the guest experiences a harsh rejection. In one case, Sturgeon was so shocked by the sight of a scolding farmer’s wife that he fell backwards down a flight of stairs. Those who devote themselves to place name research must necessarily be willing to make sacrifices.
The stories that Stör experienced during his year-long excursions would fill an impressive volume. Once he asked a peasant woman in one of the many places ending in -öd how she pronounced the place name. “Why would you like to know?” she asked him. He explained to her that he was researching the names. “Why frogstn then, when you know it soiba”, was her answer.
It is a great stroke of luck that research into place names in the old district of Vilsbiburg has now come to a successful conclusion after decades of work. If you started the project now, you would be far too late. Many informants who still spoke the old dialect have now died. Her way of speaking no longer exists. In addition, many houses and farms have been bought over the years by people who have moved from the city, who can no longer tell anything about the old traditions of the area.
They have made a valuable contribution to place name research in Bavaria: linguist Bernhard Stör (left) and Monsignor Johann Schober.
(Photo: Hans scratches)
In the case of Vilsbiburg there was a fortunate circumstance. The pastor Monsignor Johann Schober, who works in Adlkofen near Landshut, has been dealing with the old place names in the area for many decades. He documented them, researched their history in archives and libraries and organized the material. What was still missing was the scientifically documented phonetics of the place names. By chance, the linguist Stör became aware of Schober’s material, which inspired him so much that he invested several years in scientific and phonetic research into the more than 1000 place names of the district, which was dissolved 50 years ago.
Last Friday, the result of the painstaking work of Schober and Stör was presented to the public in the form of a large-format, almost 300-page book. The volume undoubtedly represents a basic work for place name research, even if it only has a regional connection at first sight. Still, one cannot appreciate it enough: Place names are ancient sources of history, their oldest forms tell of what happened a thousand and more years ago. They are unique monuments whose value is far too little appreciated.
Just researching the place name Giglberg, which occurs 24 times in Old Bavaria and mostly describes a vantage point (Old High German gucka), took forever, says Stör. A comparable study will no longer be possible in many other regions of Bavaria. For a lack of informants, but also for a lack of scientists who have the necessary fine dialect ear and can document in phonetic transcription in which of the countless variations an a or an o is spoken.
Who needs a book on place names in times of worry abound? Of course, the situation is no different than in the case of architectural monuments, which are lost in rows. With every loss, the country loses a piece of its identity. “History shapes the present,” says Schober, “and it influences the future.” The area studied here has been inhabited for 7000 years and is full of remarkable history. The place names reveal what people have achieved here and how the landscape has changed. And often the results are surprising. Many places in the Vilsbiburg region are named after women, which was rare in the Middle Ages, as Schober says. The place names reveal that home is something very dynamic. Like field names that have evolved over thousands of years, place names are a unique source of our ancestors’ world of experience and mental attitude. There are around 45,000 names of settlements in Bavaria, as well as at least two million names of mountains, fields and bodies of water.
The book was sponsored by the Association for Place and Field Name Research, the Bund Bavarian Language and the Cimbern Board of Trustees, which deals intensively with the Bavarian language islands in northern Italy, in which particularly old forms of Bavarian names have been preserved. “So that millennia don’t pass by without a trace”, was the title of a series on Bavarian television, a motto that also applies to the place name book of Stör and Schober. It meritoriously helps preserve parts of a dying legacy for the future.
Johann Schober, Bernhard Stör: Place names and dialect in the Altlandkreis Vilsbiburg, self-published, information: Telephone 08742-8079.