Suän, Zetti, Wüer - Namen im Umkreis der Oberwalliser Flurbewässerung

Abstract

An archaic dialect, ancient wooden houses, the special rye bread or the artificial irrigation channels (suones) - they all belong to the typical "sights" of the Valais that are widely known but little investigated. In our paper we record the names of waterways in the German-speaking Valais, above all we derive proper names and appellatives etymologically and look into their geografic and diachronic distribution from first documentary evidence back in the 13th century up to present-day oral recordings, from the language boundary near Siders to the Rhone glacier. Not claiming completeness and not wanting to collect all suones an onomastic explanatio of the most important names and appellatives is given which denote artificial waterways. Tools and work processes are listed and a typology and morphology of the names of the waterways is set up.