Searching for the Origins: Three Italian Toponyms between Pre-Indo-European and Indo-European

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct, for the first time, the etymology of three Italian place names from the current regions of Piedmont and Liguria (North-Western Italy). The toponyms analyzed in this study, Vinchio (Piedmont), Laigueglia (Liguria), and Lingueglietta (Liguria), allow the assessment of epistemological issues connected with the dynamics pre IndoEuropean / proto-Indo-European in the reconstruction of European hydronymy and toponymy.
Vinchio and Lingueglietta, in particular, offer the opportunity to evaluate possible common etymologies both by hypothesizing pre-Indo-European origins and by analyzing their original naming process according to an eminently Indo-European approach. Some Indo-Europeanplace names whose etymology is debated and difficult to ascertain and establish can find in a possible pre-Indo-European substratum. However, the impossibility of explaining a toponymic etymology according to Indo-European historical phonetics does not necessarily mean that the origins of a place name can be found in an undefined ‘pre-Indo-European’ time. The present work reconstructs, for the first time, the Indo-European (prehistoric) etymologies of Laigueglia, Vinchio, and Lingueglietta, highlighting links among the place names and paretymologies that have survived over centuries, in an effort to shed light on the remote origins of these possibly
prehistoric place names. The aim of this paper is to fill the research gap affecting the etymological reconstruction of the three toponyms and their onomastic relations, since there is no previous scientific literature on them. The article is the first comprehensive study on the etymology of the three place names in the context of Indo-European toponymy. This toponymic research in the field of historical toponomastics is eminently qualitative and intensive, reconstructing proto-forms and roots of the place names on a case-by-case basis. The aim of
studies like this is to provide, over time, a large amount of documented and reliable etymologies of toponyms to allow a quantitative and extensive research with the ultimate goal of reconstructing patterns in the naming processes of place names and to allow the assessment of settlement dynamics and population movements in prehistoric times.