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320761

‘Cut deeper than a knife’: A Folk-Onomastic Study of Negative Attitudes in Egyptian Toponymic Proverbs

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

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Tags

اللغات الأجنبية

Abstract

This paper examines Egyptian toponyms in colloquial proverbs and the attitudes of Egyptians toward these names. It belongs to socio-onomastics, specifically folk-onomastics (Ainiala 2008) and folk linguistics (Vaattovaara 2009: 26-33). It investigates Egyptian's perceptions and beliefs regarding the names of their villages, cities, and towns. The corpus is based on 121 proverbs selected from Shacla:n's (2003), Taymu:r's (2014), Maqa:r's (2009), and Egyptian newspapers. This study proposes a two-fold approach to analyzing name data. It begins with a semantic analysis of the proverbs' toponyms, including their origins, structure, and language. The second phase investigates the attitudes underlying the diverse perceptions and beliefs that Egyptians may hold regarding these toponyms. This paper postulates that eighty percent of toponymic proverbs, in the corpus of this study, contain offensive remarks, verbal slurs, stereotyping, and racial content that may promote violence against innocent people. Egyptian toponymic proverbs are rhymed, repetitive linguistic formulas that lack wisdom and depend on figures of speech and proverbial exaggerations. Many of them can be attributed to historical, linguistic, social, and economic reasons. In fact, they are the result of rough daily interactions, and they are used by Egyptians as jokes and as a means of releasing tension. 

DOI

10.21608/jwadi.2023.320761

Keywords

Egyptian proverbs, folk-onomastics, negative attitudes, Semantics, Toponymy

Authors

First Name

Ibrahim Mohamed Hamed

Last Name

Dowaidar

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Lecturer in Linguistics and Translation Studies Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Arts, Menoufia University, Egypt

Email

ibrahim.dowaidar@art.menofia.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

40

Article Issue

40

Related Issue

43873

Issue Date

2023-10-01

Receive Date

2023-10-10

Publish Date

2023-10-01

Page Start

81

Page End

120

Print ISSN

2536-9555

Online ISSN

2682-4582

Link

https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/article_320761.html

Detail API

https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=320761

Order

320,761

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

1,243

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة وادي النيل للدراسات والبحوث الإنسانية والاجتماعية والتربويه

Publication Link

https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

‘Cut deeper than a knife’: A Folk-Onomastic Study of Negative Attitudes in Egyptian Toponymic Proverbs

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024