Trends in Onomastic Research in Brazil

Abstract

This article brings together recent onomastic investigations developed in Brazil between 2011 and 2018. In the field of toponomastics there is some degree of uniformity resulting from both the use of the same research paradigm and the development of projects dedicated to the production of toponymic atlases in several regions of the country. In the field of an-throponomastics, however, there is dispersion and fragmentation of anthroponymic studies due to non-affiliation with the field by some sociolinguistics and literature researchers The comparison between research papers in this review and a number of onomastic studies in Europe reveals that the socio-onomastic field is an emerging one in both Brazil and Europe. There are investigations that relate the studies of linguistic settings to toponymic studies and socio-anthroponomastic investigations based on data collection in written documents or data generation through field investigations. The existence of comparative anthroponomastic re-search and studies dealing with theory, methodology and literature review in the field of an-throponomastics can be observed. Studies about Brazilian indigenous onomastics and sec-ondary non-official personal names used by Brazilian city councilors has been found just in Brazil in the literature review presented in this paper.