Toponymy

Are there any rules how long toponyms (place names) usually persist? Apparently, some geographical names, like Rome, Egypt, or the Danube, Teveri, Po rivers, stay around for millenia without anyone really noticing. Others come up when a particular people takes over an area, like England, France, Normandy. Still others are introduced on purpose, like Constantinople, Wolgograd, Ulaanbaatar and many more. There may even be names that seem to be ancient although their current use is rather new, like in the case of the Teutoburg forest.

Rivers tend to keep their name so long they can be used in research: The old border between celtic and germanic tribes can be seen in the river names. In the celtic languages, rivers are female, in Germanic they are male. So hence Donau is F but Rhine and Elbe are M.

yes, because names of countries an provinces are often closely connected to the political situation, whereas geography is mostly not. (or so I think anyway)

Originally posted by yan   Die Elbe is female, btw.

I'm a bit sceptical about names of hills and landscapes. Where I live, there are quite a number of examples where the names apparently appeared rather recently. And a lot of mountains have german names, even though the names of surrounding settlements, creeks and rivers are mostly of slav origin. 

Edited by yan. - 19-Oct-2006 at 03:52

Namzes sometimes also change by translation. So the new name may sound very different, but be in fact a translation of the old name into the language of the new people.