Bey ehir (Konya) Yer Adlar ve Onomastik Bilimine Katk lar

Place names are the most important elements of a culture. We can reveal the back ground of a region by place names.Survived place names are the indicators of their acceptance by the inhabitants. A place with no name is a space. Turks are veygood at naming places. Because place names can be differ within a very short distance such as 50-60 meters.Place names show how inhabitants perceive the environment. Because people prefer their favorite elements in naming places.Since place names are accepted by all members of the local population we can make general comments about the thoughts ofpeople.Beysehir is very rich in place names. In this paper 2769 place names were compiled from the region and grouped according totheir general properties.Beysehir has been inhabited since Neolithic ages and since Turkish is the only language of the area for 900 years, nearly all theplace names are in this language.This study consists of place names compiled in 2003 and 2004. While compiling them village headmen and mayors wereasked for support. Informants of the study were generally old inhabitants, farmers and shepherds. We also tried to interviewuneducated people because it was seen that educated informants had a tendency of changing the pronunciation of the words. Forexample; P nar is called for springs, but it is pronounced as “muhar, munar, b nar” in different regions. We observed thateducated people tried to pronounce it as p nar and cultural diversity can not be determined by standard pronunciation.After collecting the place names we classified them as the following:1- Place Names Related with Geographical Features 8112- Water Related Place Names 5333- Plants in Place Names 4154- Personal Names in Place Names 2635- Colors in Place Names 1856- Place Names with Undefined Words 1317- Place Names Indicating Historical Places 1148- Animals in Place Names 1009- Directions in Place Names 9110- Memorial Place Names 2811-Others 98Total: 2769 Place NamesThese place names are generally composed of one and two words. There are 802 place names with one word, 1773 placenames with two words, 168 place names with three words, 4 place names with four words and 1 place name with five words. Thelongest place name in the area is “Alaine icanavar nyidi iyer” or “theplacewherethewolfatethespottedcow ” in English. Theshortest one is “ al” or “bush”-“bushy” in English. Since Beysehir is very mountainous geographical structures used frequently in place names. Place names include mountain,hill, highland, valley and straight kinds of words.Lake Beysehir is the biggest natural fresh water lake i