Slovenian exonyms in North America

Drago Perko; Drago Kladnik

doi:10.3986/AGS.4777

Authors

Drago Perko Anton Melik Geographical Institute Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Novi trg 2, SI – 1000 Ljubljana
Drago Kladnik Anton Melik Geographical Institute Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Novi trg 2, SI – 1000 Ljubljana

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3986/AGS.4777

Keywords:

geographical name, endonym, exonym, Slovenian, Slovenianization, North America, United States, Canada

Abstract

The number of Slovenian exonyms around the world decreases with distance from Slovenia. This applies less so to North America, where their density is twice as high as in South and Central America.
Based on a comparative analysis of geographical names from all important world atlases in Slovenian, we prepared two spreadsheets of Slovenian exonyms. The extensive spreadsheet has 5,038 names and the concise spreadsheet has 3,819 names. Each exonym has thirty-five thematic fields.
In North America, marine hydronyms (21.1%) are the most numerous semantic type of exonyms, and completely translated names (77.9%) are the most numerous Slovenianized type of exonyms. Among the original languages of exonyms, English completely prevails (97.1%).
The most commonly used Slovenian exonyms from North America in Slovenian texts are Dolina smrti ‘Death Valley’, Veliki kanjon ‘Grand Canyon’, Niagarski slapovi ‘Niagara Falls’, Skalno gorovje ‘Rocky Mountains’, and Aleuti ‘Aleutian Islands’.

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