Hagiotoponímia em Minas Gerais

Abstract

Toponymic research is crucial to the comprehension of historical and cultural aspects of acommunity, since it allows the identification of linguistics facts, ideologies and beliefs thatare present in the denominative act, and may persist as permanent names as records of thecommunitys past beliefs. Considering all these facts, the aim of this work was to at develop adescriptive study - linguistic and cultural of the hagiotoponymic lexicon in the State ofMinas Gerais State, focusing on saints names, masculine and feminine, and on invocations tothe Holly Mother, that describe geographical accidents in the state of Minas Gerais. We adoptDurantis concept of culture (2000) and the onomastic theoretical and methodologicalapproach - Dauzat (1926) and Dick (1990a, 1990b, 2004 and 2006) and we also rely onLabovs work (1974) to analyze the process of variation and change in the toponyms studied.This work is part of the ATEMIG Project The Toponymic Atlas of the Minas Gerais Statebeingdeveloped since 2005 at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of MinasGerais (UFMG). At the first stage, the ATEMIG listed and classified all geographical andhumans accidents in the State of Minas Gerais, and documented it in geographical maps inaccordance with IBGE, in scales that vary between 1: 50.000 to 1: 250.000, totalizing, untilnow, 85.391 toponyms. From all these data that constitute our contemporary corpus, 5,649hagiotoponyms were analyzed within a qualitative and a quantitative approach, in order toinvestigate the regional preference for the systematic use of such names in each of the regionsof Minas Gerais. Furthermore, we analyze historical data in maps from the XVIII and XIXcenturies, and we build a second corpus has 649 toponyms. Comparative analysis betweenboth corpora showed how the hagiotoponymic process of designation has developeddiachronically in Minas Gerais. In this work we have also developed a hagiotoponymicglossary including entries that show the of the kind of geographical accidents, the number ofoccurrences and the geographic location of each toponym. The most productive toponyms canalso be viewed on toponymic charts. This research has showed us that beyond the linguisticstudy, the toponymic research provides an analysis of the local culture and the relationshipbetween men and the environment they live in, since it is possible to rescue historical andideological information from the data, concerning the sociocultural organization of regions ofthe State of Minas Gerais.