> Bahlow's place-name etymologies are untrustworthy: he had a
> Sumpf fetish and identified any number of supposed
> Sumpfwörter that aren't generally accepted. (And I'm not
> sure that I've seen a single correct etymology of an English
> place-name in that book, or in his Deutschlands
> Geographische Namenwelt.)
>
> Brian
Which etymologies are (only) *his* and which are not! :-)
Authors from his list ("namenkundliche Literatur"):
Heintze, Cascorbi, Gottschald, Linnartz, Brechenmacher,
(he himself esp. for Silezia, Mecklenburg and LG regions,
as well as Slavic etymologies), Finsterwalder (Tirol), Göbel
(Low German), Götze (Baden), Kapff (Suebia), Nied (SW German
& Franconian), Preuss (Lippe region of Westfalia), Schwarz
(SudetenG), Strackerjan (Jeverland, East Friesland),
Tobler-Meyer (East-Swiss), Zoder (Ostfalen)...
as well as local sources, mostly dr papers, such as:
Altenburg, Barth, Bremen, Breslau/Wroclaw, Esslingen,
Freiburg, Glatz, Görlitz, Greifswald, Hamburg, Köln,
Liegnitz, Lübeck, Magdeburg, Nürnberg, Ravensburg, Rostock,
Schwaebisch-Hall, Stade, Stralsund, Liegnitz / Swiss sources,
East-German sources and many other ones.
Some of the works are quite old (1st 1/2 of the 20th c.)
Some assumptions/interpretations obsolete or inaccurate.
But on the other hand note that many names have one, two
or even three valid etymologies, depending on the region
where they've originated. Bre(h)m(e) & Bremen illustrate
this as well. The former is definitely South German and
seems to have nothing in common with the place name Bremen
in Northern Germany.
(a recent edition:
Hans Bahlow: Deutsches Namenslexikon, Suhrkamp 1985,
ISBN 3-518-36565-7)
George
--
cf. Jürgen Udolph
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Udolph
http://www.radioeins.de/_/team/seite_jsp/key=cast_951.html
http://www.ortsnamen.net/