El Lligam essencial entre paisatge i toponímia: el cas dels noms de municipi al nord del País Valencià

The semantic content of place names often refers, more or less, to natural features of
landscapes (mountains, valleys, springs, rivers, crops, plants, animals) and sometimes
refers to a particular historical context (type of settlement, defensive buildings, laudatory
epithets, names of a saint, etc.). In this paper we focus on the study of the names describing
landscape features and we analyze the essential link between landscape and place
names. Our region of study are El Maestrat and Els Ports in northern Valencia and the
type of place names that we analyze are the ones designing a municipality, because these
kind of names have a solid historical foundation and, also, they are well known by placenames
scholars.