Geo-History of the Toponymy of Mohács Plain, SW Hungary

Abstract

The Mohács plain had strategic and symbolic importance both during the Ottoman occupation and the seventeenth century liberation wars due to the decisive battles fought on, and military routes crossing the plain, transforming it into a military and memorial landscape. By the twentieth century it became one of the most conflicted Cold War border-scapes, where the Hungarian ‘Maginot-line’ was constructed against the Yugoslav army in the late 1940-ies. The Homeland War of Croatia was fought just south of the plain in the 1990-ies and the anti-migration fence of Hungary was also installed here in 2015. The region, which was owned for centuries by the bishops of Pécs and the abbots of Szekszárd but also played an outstanding role in the Hungarian Reformation, is inhabited by Serbs, Croats, Germans and Gipsies besides the majority Hungarians. The geographical names of the plain is well documented from the early Middle Ages, they reflect the (different) various migration waves, the military operations, and (different) various state policies. It is an ideal research area, which as a case study, well represents the different origins and bottom up changes of Hungarian place names as well as top down policies influencing them.