A caminho das “TERRAS DOS GERAES”, da Jahiva à vareda do Trassadal: edição e estudo onomástico do Livro de Tombo da Casa da Ponte

Abstract

The aim of this work, which relates different areas of study, is to analyze the naming process of the space identified as Sertão do Rio Pardo, a region that involves the states of Bahia and Minas Gerais, described in the Livro de Tombo da Casa da Ponte, a 19th century manuscript used as an object of research and data source. The facsimile edition and semi-diplomatic edition of the manuscript followed the theoretical assumptions of Textual Philology and the conservative transcription has sought to preserve the characteristics of the language in which the text was written, while unfolded the abbreviations present to make reading more accessible. In order to place the document in history, the study analyzed the context and the subjects involved in its production and circulation. With this purpose, it outlined the historical course of the document, since the institution of the Morgado Guedes de Brito, which marked the beginning of the immense patrimony inherited by the nobility of Casa da Ponte in Brazil, until the end of the entailment system, with the registration and sale of related places. The elaborate glossary, which contains 121 simple, compound and complex lexical units that has required the rescue of their remote uses and meanings, made them possible to be understood in their socio-historical and discursive context. This lexical survey has given support to the onomastic study, which related and classified the toponymic signs that constitute the corpus of the research. It has also interpreted the linguistic responses motivated by the stimuli received by their nominators, and identified the morphological structure and etymology of the analyzed signs in addition to the semantic motivation. Based on Dick's taxonomic theory (1990) for the Brazilian toponymic reality, it is confirmed the predominance of taxes that reflect the physical nature in the naming process of the analyzed space, especially geomorphotoponyms, phytotoponyms and hydrotoponyms. The results show the non-random choice of nominators in the naming process and confirm the toponyms as elements capable of revealing the significant relationship between man and the environmental context in which he is inserted.