ROMAN TOPONYMS IN HUNGARIAN TRAVEL GUIDE BOOKS

Abstract

Inevitable elements of our travel guide books presenting foreign destinations are toponyms concerning foreign denotata. This study looks at a specific group of toponyms, those of the Eternal City, in Hungarian travel books. The specific feature of these geographic names is that both the Latin and the Italian can be considered original forms, and further, some of them have conventional Hungarian names as well; therefore, the question arises, which forms do the authors of Hungarian travel books use. Are the toponyms in their original or Hungarianized form? Looking through the travel guides, we can conclude that instead of, or sometimes next to the original forms they also use Hungarian ones; nevertheless, these names tend not to be uniform, since they have varied forms in each book.