XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 1

Секция IX 406 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки of an Endangered Nubian Language 1 . The present study is a critical reappraisal of our investigation with a look at the worldwide implications for endangered toponymy. The list of site names was taken from the Topographical Bibliography of Porter, Moss and Burney (1952). Since the date of that publication, considerable progress has been made by historians and archaeologists aiming to understand the potential contribution of toponyms to history. Geographical names are as relevant as potsherds. They should be accurately recorded in all of the principal languages spoken locally and especially in the local Nubian language. Three Procedures for Fieldwork Based on the experience of this investigation, the following three procedures are recommended for fieldwork anywhere. 1. Toponymic interviews should be conducted in the local languages. 2. A sound recording should be made for each toponym in the context of each local language and made available online. 3. Variant names should be recorded for each toponym with attention to its social context. If possible, variant names should be identified with reference to different social situations and different groups of speakers. For example, elderly women who have not been to school may prove to be more closely in touch with the historic pronunciation of toponyms than speakers well educated in a local prestige language. Well educated speakers may distort local names to conform with the prestige language. The name Abu Simbel looks suspiciously like such a distortion. The toponym ‘Abu Simbel’ has occasionally been glossed as ‘Father of the spike of millet’, as though it were originally of Arabic origin. Such a gloss would not have amused Ramesses II who built his colossal temples there in the 13 th century B. C. (Sabbar 2018, p. 40). The name ‘Abu Simbel’is nowwell established throughout the world and unlikely to be changed apart from minor variations in spelling. Official spelling of place names is the prerogative of the nation in which the place occurs. Familiar official spellings may become ‘correct’ even when they distort an original pronunciation from another language. The place ‘Abu Simbel’is also known by the following variant names ‘Absímbil’, ‘Absámbal’ and ‘Farréygn Uffi’. Absímbil was the version used by Sabbar and his neighbours in his home village of Ishkéed. In 2010 he sent me the following Nobiin Nubian examples without tone marking by email: 1 Sabbar, A. The Toponymy of an Endangered Nubian Language. Oxford: Nubian Lan- guages and Culture, 2018.