Geonymy in the toponymy of the Swāt valley

Abstract

Swāt valley is located in the northern part of the province of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa in Pakistan. The starting point of this article is the
recent publication by the same author of the volume named Toponymy of the Swāt valley. Linguistic archaeology, by the publisher Sang-e Meel and in the collections of the ACT project and of the ISMEO. This article deals with a special class of toponyms: the geonyms, the names of the generic geographic features. In particular, it studies seven geonyms particularly recurrent in the toponymy of Swāt: bānḍa, ḍera/dera, ḍerəy, ḍop, kandāw, tangay and ṭāngay. An analysis of their semantics and etymologies offers evidence of the early presence in the whole valley of Dardic populations, as also shown by cartography.