Toponyms of a nomadic society: complex signs for locating resources in an arid environment

Toponyms in the Ăhaggar are here presented as a case study of toponymy in a landscape and society that deviates from the Central European or Western research focus. In an area the size of New Zealand, the Imuhaɣ live as pastoral nomads, whose mobile way of life crucially requires macrotoponymic orientation. The toponymy of the northern Tuareg (Tamahaq) variety has been catalogued between 1904 and 1914 (Chatelard 1995) in the dictionary of proper names Dictionnaire abrégé touareg – français de noms propres (Foucauld 1940). The dictionary, which has been retrodigitized and is now freely accessible online, offers a synchronous cross-section that includes, among other types of names, approximately 2800 place names. The quantitative evaluation of the material immediately highlights the habitats most relevant for nomads (cf. Fischer 2008). Dominant are – besides mountain names – names for wells and waterholes (Yûf-ûnân ‘he is better than [all other] wells’) and oueds (I-n-ûdad ‘one of the mouflon’). About a quarter of the toponyms (23%) denote groups of places with one shared name. This occurs not only in cases of a group of similar geographical features (Tilelîn (pl.) several proximal / connected oueds; also sg. Télelet one of these oueds), but also across classes of geographical objects: Tehĕl-iyaḍân (sg.) ‘she fears no dogs’ denotes a mountain, a oued and a waterhole. This phenomenon – clearly differentiated by Foucauld from homophony – has not been discussed in previous research (Aghali-Zakara 1999; Drouin 2005; Bernus 1995). The poster will focus on the interpretation of these complex names as an environment- and culture-specific system of orientation and wayfinding which balances the tension between survival-relevant geographical knowledge and limited memory capacity.