Épületnév, építménynév, létesítménynév

Names for establishments, though becoming more and more important in the place-name stocks of recent centuries, constitute a less frequently discussed subtype of toponyms in the literature. Their contemporary significance urges the author to find solutions to some related problems occurring in different branches of name studies as well as in applied onomastics. The first part of the paper presents Hungarian as well as international terms used with the sense of ‘names for establishments’, accounting also for the terms adopted to indicate the possible subtypes of these names. Hungarian onomasticians usually use one of the following terms: épületnév (‘names for houses’), építménynév (‘names for buildings’) or létesítménynév (‘names for establishments’). The author defines these expressions as terms referring to an increasingly broader set of entities, suggesting that the latter should be used as a blanket term for all relevant entities. The second part of the paper discusses possible connections between names for establishments and common nouns, but the relations between names for establishments and other types of proper names (especially names for institutions and names for objects) are also treated. The function of names for establishments among toponyms is explored as well. The author argues that names for establishments as a complex category can be further divided: defining the subtypes is a future task for onomasticians.