CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Färs härad
Institute for Language and Folklore, Avdelningen för arkiv och forskning i Göteborg.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9816-2010
2024 (Swedish)In: Namn och bygd, ISSN 0077-2704, Vol. 112, p. 23-46Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The Scanian district name Färs härad has hitherto not been satisfyingly interpreted. This article attempts to interpret its name as dehydronymic, an approach that has yet to be tried. The interpretation builds upon a reconstruction of a hydronymic pair consisting of old names for Lake Vombsjön and the stream Kävlingeån with its tributary Björkaån, the modern names of which are late formations. Many of the district’s settlements are concentrated around Björkaån and Lake Vombsjön. An old name, the Old Danish *Fær m. (Proto-Scandinavian *Farjaʀ) is reconstructed for Lake Vombsjön. The name is derived from a reconstructed Old Danish name *Far f. (Proto-  Scandinavian *Farō) for Kävlingeån with its tributary Björkaån. The stream name is conceived of as a secondary name formation to the appellative far f. ‘journey’ (Proto- Scandinavian *farō), extant in Old Swedish, motivated by the stream’s likely function as a waterway in prehistoric and early medieval times, which is discussed at some length. It is suggested that the district name Färs härad, Old Danish Færshærath, contains a genitive of the lake name Old Danish *Fær m. This places Färs härad in an established group of dehydronymic district names extant in Denmark and Sweden.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala, 2024. Vol. 112, p. 23-46
Keywords [en]
place-names, district names, hydronyms, river names, lake names, dehy- dronymic derivation, dehydronymic name formation, Scania, Skåne
National Category
Comparative Language Studies and Linguistics
Research subject
Place Names
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sprakochfolkminnen:diva-2989OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sprakochfolkminnen-2989DiVA, id: diva2:2022145
Available from: 2025-12-16 Created: 2025-12-16 Last updated: 2025-12-19Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(1764 kB)26 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 1764 kBChecksum SHA-512
7acf7d04fd30e55229d23a6dae0d50fe0605edcf1c455576ee682294b174ad896428ec9295f4aeae045ea88a323086c58ad47c27ecffb3d9b1c188d2632efa4d
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

https://kgaa.bokorder.se/en-US/article/5353/namn-och-bygd-2024

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Strandberg, Mathias
By organisation
Avdelningen för arkiv och forskning i Göteborg
In the same journal
Namn och bygd
Comparative Language Studies and Linguistics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 59 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf