Namebook of the Großes Walsertal

The aim of the namebook Großes Walsertal is collecting all the fieldnames, finding historical data, explaining the names and presenting them on a map. The materia1 can be divided into living names still being used by the people and names which can only be found in the historical material. The Großes Walsertal extends to an area of 192 km 2 . Six communities are situated in this V-va1ley between 872 m and 1146 metres above sea level. The names are ordered within those six communities in alphabetical order. A lexikon will give etymological, dialectological and phonological information on the words being used in the names. The Großes Walsertal is likely to be presented as an area where the Walser people first settled, but the structure of the names show a completely different picture: there are German names but a whole lot of Roman names as weIl. Seen in the light of settlement the Roman names are the older ones. The German respectively Alemannic fieldnames are surprisingly unremarkable for the region: They are not typically " walserlike" .The names do not differ in lexis. The words used to form names can be traced all over Switzerland, Vorarlberg and partly the Bavarian dialect area. The mixture of Roman and German names is more likely to be a phenomenon which unifies this region with the nearby Liechtenstein, Switzerland and even western Tyrol. Fieldnames are formed with words of the everyday language, eg Bühel, Garten or Gaden. Such words are still in use having a meaning and thus cannot be very characteristic as a name. There are many hills and you cannot call each one `Bühel`. But once the literal meaning is gone, a word can easily turn into a name that identifies. The majority of the fieldnames are compounds like Pfistergut, Hälschlucht, Hennensedel and Tobeljoch. Besides these you can also find names that have a transferred meaning like Russland or Schwabenland. Such metaphors give us a clue of the imagination of the local population. Fieldnames reflect the cultural roots of a population and the natural origin of a landscape. Not only physical characteristics of the landscape are being expressed but also the special purpose and function of a piece of land is given through its name. In the Großes Walsertal there is a whole bundle of words that describe a steep slope. They offer a wide range of specific attributes that exactly help to define the individual geographic situation and function of the spot. There is a tendency in the present that makes the world of the fieldnames restructuring itself. The population has found new applications for many alpine regions. Due to the phenomenon of mountaineering and tourism names of mountains seem more important than in former times. Opposed to this, the agriculture is on a decline. It is no longer necessary to name every small place. The perception of the landscape has become wider. Micronames are given up because they are not needed anymore.