Chinantec Nomenclature and the Social Function of the Microtoponymy in Santiago Comaltepec, Oaxaca

Abstract

The Chinantec community of Santiago Comaltepec, Ixtlán, Oaxaca, in Mexico, has a high density of “microtoponyms” that refer to small parts within the population, which divide a surface of 35 hectares into at least 56 small parts, to such a degree that often the name of a place corresponds to an area inhabited by one or two families. In this study, we document such microtoponyms through oral histories recorded in a collection of linguistic documentation, and we analyze their linguistic structure as well as the ontological correspondence between the physiographic terms and the actual environment. In this way, we demonstrate that i) the Chinantec microtoponyms of Santiago Comaltepec include more than twenty terms with unknown etymology; ii) most microtoponyms are formed around a term for relief or monument, rather than flora and fauna or other types of environmental information; iii) microtoponyms form a closed lexical subclass that is distinguished from momentary descriptions of places in terms of location relative to a monument; and iv) microtoponyms have the function of identifying individuals and are used at different moments of social life in Santiago Comaltepec. Subsequently, we describe the nomenclature of minor place names that differ from microtoponyms in i) including additional terms of relief that refer to large landforms, ii) frequently including terms for flora and fauna, and iii) including terms that describe climatic conditions. The result highlights the importance of linguistic and social perspectives to study toponyms in general.