Summary

Gelvonai land place-names

Kazys Morkűnas

In 1957–1959 about 580 different place-names having different radicals and being of different composition types have been recorded in 43 settlements of the former Gelvonai Valsčius (rural district).

According to composition, the place-names can be grouped into the primary and secondary ones.

The primary names of the places originated from other words–nouns or (in rare cases) adjectives–without additional compositional formants.

The secondary place-names can be divided further into: (1) derivatives; (2) compounds; and (3) composites with the second component being a noun, as a rule, and the first component defining the object.

Non-repetitive names of a certain place, i.e., used only in a single village, have been recorded in most cases (about 86.3%), significantly less numbers were of names occurring in two villages (about 9.2%) and the least number of records were the names occurring in three or more villages (about 4.5%).

Beside the Lithuanian (Baltic) origin place-names, there was a rather small part of Slavonic names. There were also some place-names of undetermined origin.