# Why does plurale tantum exist in toponyms?



## Encolpius

Hello, a Hungarian hardly understands why some languages have words in plural only....of course you can find it logical in things like glasses, scissors....but what always shocked me are toponyms....the best example is *Athens *in English (Athény pl. in Czech;  Ἀθῆναι in ancient Greek..etc.)...I am not sure about other languages but there's large number of plurale tantum in Czech toponyms...so I could ask Czechs but I think the issue is more global...what is the origin of plurale tantum in your language in toponyms? Is that as common in other IE languages, too? Thanks.


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## Nino83

In Latin it is "Athenae" and in Italian is "Atene". 
Of this list, Italian retained only "Canne" (but it is pronounced "à la français", i.e "Cann") and Tebe. The other cities of this list are, now, singular (ending in "a"). 
Cannae, -arum (Canne) Cumae, -arum (Cuma) Pisae, -arum (Pisa) Syracusae, -arum (Siracusa) Thebae, -arum (Tebe) Venetiae, -arum (Venezia).


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## Encolpius

Venetiae -- now I understand why Czechs use plural (Benátky), too....but why did Romans use plural?


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## apmoy70

Hi Encolpius, 
In the case of Athens (but not only Athens really, «Πᾶτραι»-Patras, «Θῆβαι»-Thebes, «Μυκῆναι»-Mycenae, «Αἰγαί»-Aegae, follow the same pattern) the historical consensus is that before they were formed, and on the very place they were established, pre-existed a number of settlements/villages who coalesced into a single, sprawling entity, whence the plural.


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## Encolpius

apmoy70 said:


> ... before they were formed, and on the very place they were established, pre-existed a number of settlements/villages who coalesced into a single, sprawling entity, whence the plural.



Hello Apmoy, very interesting comment, I wanted to read something historical --- it all sounds logical....
It would be good to know if it exists in even ancient IE languages like Sanskrit 
Now I am starting to think about Hungarian why we did not have that concept -- or maybe we had --- but our cities were not as ancient as yours


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## CitizenEmpty

Encolpius said:


> Hello, a Hungarian hardly understands why some languages have words in plural only....



This also includes Koreans and Japanese.


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## Encolpius

Yes, I think most non-IE-language speakers


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## berndf

Encolpius said:


> Venetiae -- now I understand why Czechs use plural (Benátky), too....but why did Romans use plural?


I am not sure they did. _Venetia _was one of the few toponyms that still had an active locative declension (_=Venetiae_) in classical Latin.


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## sotos

Encolpius said:


> Now I am starting to think about Hungarian why we did not have that concept -- or maybe we had --- but our cities were not as ancient as yours


It' s a matter of civilisation, social organization etc. The Greeks had (and still have)  a very strong local identity (laws, traditions, dialects, feeling of belonging etc). This was reflected in the institutions of bigger agglomerations (e.g. cities). For example, in Athens each one of the 10 "tribes" participated in ceremonies, parliament, courts of justice etc as a distinguishable entity.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Some toponyms in English are plural, because originally they are plural nouns: "The Minches" (= the "Straits" between the outer Hebrides and mainland Scotland), "The Yetts of Muckart" (= the "gates..." - rather, "streets", cf. German _Gasse_), and when translated into languages that lack definite articles, as Balto-Slavonic tongues do, will remain plural.

Σ


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## Perseas

Another Greek toponym in plural that crossed my mind is *Ioannina*. It is neuter plural, and it isn't an ancient one like _Ἀθῆναι, Πᾶτραι, Θῆβαι_, which by the way in Modern Greek are in singular (_Αθήνα, Πάτρα, Θήβα_).


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## ahvalj

Encolpius said:


> Yes, I think most non-IE-language speakers


The most Indo-European language of all, Lithuanian, has the majority of its toponyms used in the plural (-_ai_ and -_ės_), e. g.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Map_of_dialects_of_Lithuanian_language.png (including _Širvintos _and _Kaišiadorys_) as well as countless towns and villages.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I am not sure they did. _Venetia _was one of the few toponyms that still had an active locative declension (_=Venetiae_) in classical Latin.



In Latin Venetia, ae is the region (what today is called Veneto) and it is only singular. 

The city of Venezia is only plural, like Pisa and Siracusa.


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## ahvalj

ahvalj said:


> The most Indo-European language of all, Lithuanian, has the majority of its toponyms used in the plural (-_ai_ and -_ės_), e. g.: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Map_of_dialects_of_Lithuanian_language.png (including _Širvintos _and _Kaišiadorys_) as well as countless towns and villages.


And, by the way, Latvian uses -_i_ (<-*_ai_) for villages as well. In Slavic countries, names of villages often are _pluralia tantum,_ e. g. -_ice_ in Poland and -_ичи/-ichi_ and -_ицы/-itsy_ in Russia. The German -_ingen_ continues the Dat. Pl.: _Sigmaringen_ "at Sigmars' family".


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## Ben Jamin

Encolpius said:


> Hello, a Hungarian hardly understands why some languages have words in plural only....of course you can find it logical in things like glasses, scissors....but what always shocked me are toponyms....the best example is *Athens *in English (Athény pl. in Czech;  Ἀθῆναι in ancient Greek..etc.)...I am not sure about other languages but there's large number of plurale tantum in Czech toponyms...so I could ask Czechs but I think the issue is more global...what is the origin of plurale tantum in your language in toponyms? Is that as common in other IE languages, too? Thanks.



I think that the reason may be that a settlement was perceived not as an *entity*, but the opposite: a *plurality *of houses and people. It must have been a common PIE phenomenon, as we can find such plural names in almost all countries in Europe. In many countries regions and provinces even more often have a plural form name, often derived from the name of the tribe that once inhabited the area. Names of settlements could also be derived from those tribal names. Som countries have also plural names like the Netherlands (Niderlanden). In Polish "Niemcy" (Germany) and "Węgry" (Hungary) are derived from the plural name of the inhabitants, while "Chiny" (China) is just a plural of the land. In Norway the regions known as "Åsane" (the hills) and "Rondane" are in plural, and Sweden has "Dalarna" (The Valleys).
The Spanish name for London: Londres, and English name of Brussels also seem to be plural.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> The city of Venezia is only plural, like Pisa and Siracusa.


I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. _Venezia _is Italian and not Latin.


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. _Venezia _is Italian and not Latin.


Probably this: http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetiae ?


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Probably this: http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetiae ?


Got it.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I am not sure I understand what you are trying to say. _Venezia _is Italian and not Latin.



Venetia, ae = Veneto (a region of Italy) 
Venetiae, arum = Venice, the city (Venezia, in Italian)


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## OBrasilo

Ben Jamin said:
			
		

> while "Chiny" (China) is just a plural of the land.


China is also plural in Latin: _Sinae_. Maybe in Polish it's a case of Latin influence? Also, Italy is also plural in Polish, _Włochy_, plural of *włoch, once a common Slavic name for Romance-speaking people (compare Slovenian _lah_ meaning Italian, and the Vlachs (Romanians)).


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## francisgranada

Encolpius said:


> Now I am starting to think about Hungarian why we did not have that concept -- or maybe we had --- but our cities were not as ancient as yours


I think it is not the reason. There are also "modern" toponyms in plural, e.g. Los Angeles (USA), Burgos (Spain), Torres (Sardinia), Cienfuegos (Cuba) ...


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## Dib

Encolpius said:


> It would be good to know if it exists in even ancient IE languages like Sanskrit



Indeed it does. Names of provinces/countries, i.e. places with a distinctive "people", were often in masculine plural, e.g. kaliṅgās, vaṅgās, etc. Both of these are lands in Eastern India/Bangladesh - (Southern) Orissa and (Eastern) Bengal respectively. The received wisdom is that, these names are primarily the names of the "peoples" - thus in singular, a single person from that place, and in plural the whole "nation/people/tribe", as well as their territory. This is quite similar to the Polish _Włochy_ (Italy), mentioned in post #20.


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## hadronic

Hebrew has also places which are (or sound like) plural : Rehovot ("streets"), Jerusalem / Yerushalayim (using the dual).
French has a lot of proper names that end in a plural ending, not only places (Versailles, Bordeaux, Rennes, ...) but also people (Jacques, Georges, Charles,....). It would seem though that those "-s" are not etymological, so not sure they really are "plural" forms.


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> but also people (Jacques, Georges, Charles,....). It would seem though that those "-s" are not etymological, so not sure they really are "plural" forms.


They *are *etymological _-s_ endings. They are not plural but nominative endings (_Iacobu*s*, Georgiu*s*, Carolu*s*_). French has retained the nominative _-s_ marker a bit longer than other Romance languages and some have survived to the present day though they are now lexical and not grammatical any more (_filiu*s*>fil*s*, fundu*s*>fond*s*_).


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## francisgranada

Encolpius said:


> ... a Hungarian hardly understands why some languages have words in plural only....of course you can find it logical in things like glasses, scissors....but what always shocked me are toponyms....


As to Hungarian, _one_ of the reasons may be the following: In Hungarian the _formally/grammatically marked_ plural is in general (or statistically) less common than in many (most of?) IE languages. I.e. the singular is not so "strongly" opposed to the plural, but it preserves - to a certain degree - it's _number independent_ status/function. That's why the following construnctions are possible:

Máriának kék szeme van - Mary has blue eyes
(_szeme_ [_her eye_] is here in singular, but it doesn't mean that only one eye of Mary is blue ...)

Három lány van az utcán - There are three girls in the street 
(both _lány_ [_girl_] and the verb _van_ [_is_] are grammatically in singular, but _három_ [_three_] a priori determines the plurality)

This is only my personal opinion, not an "official" theory for the lack of Hungarian toponyms in plural ... However, the names of some "complex" mountains are used in plural also in Hungarian: _Kárpátok, Alpok, Andok_, ...


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## ahvalj

francisgranada said:


> This is only my personal opinion, not an "official" theory ...


That's pretty close to the explanations I met in the literature concerning Uralic and Turkic languages. From the IE side, I think it is important that the opposition Singular/Dual/Plural in the more conservative IE languages (both extinct and modern) is of a different morphological nature than in most languages of the world: the more conservative IE languages don't have proper markers for the Dual and Plural separated from the case markers, so that a speaker perceives the declensional form as a whole and not as Number+Case, cp. Latin agglutinative Imperfect _cantā-ba-m, cantā-bā-s, cantā-ba-t_… vs. the inflexional nominal declension _rot-a, rot-ae, rot-ae, rot-am… rot-ae, rot-ārum, rot-īs, rot-ās_… where the expression of case and number is merged. This leads to the situation when the Plural and Dual case forms are not special categories used when a number has to be explicitly expressed, but just ordinary members of the paradigm, used at any occasion as often as Singular forms.


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## francisgranada

ahvalj said:


> ...  Latin agglutinative Imperfect _cantā-ba-m, cantā-bā-s, cantā-ba-t_… vs. the inflexional nominal declension _rot-a, rot-ae, rot-ae, rot-am… rot-ae, rot-ārum, rot-īs, rot-ās_… where the expression of case and number is merged...


This is interesting as it almost perfectly corresponds to the Hungarian past tense (énekelni=cantare):

Singular: énekel-t-em, énekel-t-ed, énekel-t-e
Plural: énekel-t-ü*k*, énekel-t-éte*k*, énekel-t-é*k* 

The main difference is, that in Hungarian also the "general" plural marker _*-k*_ can be recognized in the conjugation, which is present also in case of nouns, pronouns, etc. For example:  almá*k*=apples, Alpo*k*=Alps, ő*k*=they, neki*k*=to them, ... Further more, there is an evident etymological correlation between the conjugation of verbs and the possessive of nouns/pronouns. But this is an other question ...


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## Encolpius

francisgranada said:


> ... However, the names of some "complex" mountains are used in plural also in Hungarian: _Kárpátok, Alpok, Andok_, ...



Rather interesting examples.....Kárpátok is the most interesting one because they might be Hungarian, but I think they are just literal translations...you agree plurals do not exist in Hungarian toponyms....that would be surprising to me.... how about other non-IE languages?????


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## Sempervirens

Nino83 said:


> In Latin it is "Athenae" and in Italian is "Atene".
> Of this list, Italian retained only "Canne" (but it is pronounced "à la français", i.e* "Cann")* and Tebe. The other cities of this list are, now, singular (ending in "a").
> Cannae, -arum (Canne) Cumae, -arum (Cuma) Pisae, -arum (Pisa) Syracusae, -arum (Siracusa) Thebae, -arum (Tebe) Venetiae, -arum (Venezia).



Ciao, Nino! Tra quelli che pronunciano Canne senza la E finale togli pure senza indugi tutti noi Toscani del litorale tirrenico che, non solo ci diamo la pena di leggere fino in fondo alla parola ma addirittura se manca una vocale spesso ce la mettiamo di nostro. Dunque, uno del mio stampo direbbe " Ieri ho visto un bel _filme _sulla battaglia di Canne al _barretto_.

S.V


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

berndf said:


> They *are *etymological _-s_ endings. They are not plural but nominative endings (_Iacobu*s*, Georgiu*s*, Carolu*s*_). French has retained the nominative _-s_ marker a bit longer than other Romance languages and some have survived to the present day though they are now lexical and not grammatical any more (_filiu*s*>fil*s*, fundu*s*>fond*s*_).



_"Souston*s* (nom anglais: ville du sud)"_


http://dzt-isto.chez-alice.fr/nomlieux.htm


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## berndf

The final -s is unetymologial. The native Occitan name didn't have it.


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## bearded

Sempervirens said:


> Ciao, Nino! Tra quelli che pronunciano Canne senza la E finale togli pure senza indugi tutti noi Toscani del litorale tirrenico che, non solo ci diamo la pena di leggere fino in fondo alla parola ma addirittura se manca una vocale spesso ce la mettiamo di nostro. Dunque, uno del mio stampo direbbe " Ieri ho visto un bel _filme _sulla battaglia di Canne al _barretto_.
> 
> S.V


Normalmente non si pronuncia la e finale se si indica la città francese, mentre la si pronuncia se si indica il luogo dell'antica battaglia nell'Italia meridionale.  Non è così? O mi sfugge qualcosa?  Non credo comunque che i toscani dicano ''al festival di Cann*e*'' - per lo meno quelli che sanno un po' di Francese.


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## Sempervirens

bearded man said:


> Normalmente non si pronuncia la e finale se si indica la città francese, mentre la si pronuncia se si indica il luogo dell'antica battaglia nell'Italia meridionale.  Non è così? O mi sfugge qualcosa?  Non credo comunque che i toscani dicano ''al festival di Cann*e*'' - per lo meno quelli che sanno un po' di Francese.



Ciao, bearded man! Nino sta parlando della città di Canne, quella pugliese, resa celebre dalla battaglia persa dai Romani contro Annibale.
 Questo è un estratto del messaggio del nostro amico nino: "_Of this list, Italian retained only "Canne" (but it is pronounced "à la français", i.e* "Cann")* and Tebe. The other cities of this list are, now, singular (ending in "a")." 
_
S.V


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## bearded

Ciao, SV!  E secondo te è giusto che la città pugliese si pronunci Cann?  O si tratta di dialetto pugliese? ((comunque si direbbe 'à la français*e'*))


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## Sempervirens

bearded man said:


> Ciao, SV!  E secondo te è giusto che la città pugliese si pronunci Cann?  O si tratta di dialetto pugliese? ((comunque si direbbe 'à la français*e'*))



Ciao! Ti ripasso il mio intervento, e così puoi dedurre anche tu che non solo pronuncio la E finale ma mi autorizzo a parlare per tutti i Toscani.  Noi che tendiamo a mettercele le vocali in fondo a parole che terminano in consonanti, vuoi che poi non leggiamo quelle che ci sono? Suvvia!

_"Ciao, Nino! Tra quelli che pronunciano Canne senza la E finale togli pure senza indugi tutti noi Toscani del litorale tirrenico che, non solo ci diamo la pena di leggere fino in fondo alla parola ma addirittura se manca una vocale spesso ce la mettiamo di nostro. Dunque, uno del mio stampo direbbe " Ieri ho visto un bel filme sulla battaglia di Canne al barretto."_


S.V


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## bearded

Caro SV, 
Ho letto attentamente il tuo intervento, così come avevo letto prima quello di Nino. Ma a me interessano più le regole della lingua standard che non i regionalismi.  E mi pare di capire che Nino renda noto a tutti - scrivendo in Inglese - che nella nostra lingua la pronuncia corretta della località pugliese della battaglia debba essere 'cann' alla francese.  Ora questo a me sembra così strano, che ne ho voluto fare l'intestazione di un thread nel forum 'solo italiano', proprio per togliermi ogni dubbio in proposito.


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## Sempervirens

bearded man said:


> Caro SV,
> Ho letto attentamente il tuo intervento, così come avevo letto prima quello di Nino. Ma a me interessano più le regole della lingua standard che non i regionalismi.  E mi pare di capire che Nino renda noto a tutti - scrivendo in Inglese - che nella nostra lingua la pronuncia corretta della località pugliese della battaglia debba essere 'cann' alla francese.  Ora questo a me sembra così strano, che ne ho voluto fare l'intestazione di un thread nel forum 'solo italiano', proprio per togliermi ogni dubbio in proposito.



Sì, l'ho visto, e ho pure fatto la mia parte, seppur striminzita. Hai fatto bene ad aprire la discussione perché questa cosa mi giunge nuova anche a me.
Vediamo gli sviluppi. Può anche darsi che si venga a sapere qualche cosa che finora non ce ne eravamo accorti! Succede. 

Saluti


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## Nino83

bearded man said:


> E mi pare di capire che Nino renda noto a tutti - scrivendo in Inglese - che nella nostra lingua la pronuncia corretta della località pugliese della battaglia debba essere 'cann' alla francese.  Ora questo a me sembra così strano, che ne ho voluto fare l'intestazione di un thread nel forum 'solo italiano', proprio per togliermi ogni dubbio in proposito.



Scusate, mi riferivo alla città francese, non a quella pugliese (a me sconosciuta, tra le altre cose)


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## Sempervirens

Nino83 said:


> Scusate, mi riferivo alla città francese, non a quella pugliese (a me sconosciuta, tra le altre cose)



Nino, adesso è tutto chiaro.  Un 10 in Lettere, ma un 4 in Storia. 

S.V


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## Gavril

In Finland, there is only one city that has a plural form in all cases: _Virrat_  ("the currents"). However, there are many cities/towns whose names are  singular in the nominative, but plural in most or all other case forms: for example, the place name _Uurainen_ is singular in the nominative, but the forms _Uuraisilla_ ("in Uurainen") and _Uuraisille_ ("to Uurainen") are plural.


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## Nino83

Sempervirens said:


> Un 10 in Lettere, ma un 4 in Storia.


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