An ethnolinguistic approach to contact onomastics: the case of the Falkland Islands’ gaucho place names

Abstract One of the peculiarities of Falkland Islands toponymy is its multilingual character: French, English, and Spanish names coexist throughout the archipelago serving as a reminder of its busy history. American Spanish gaucho place names were coined after the British settlement in 1833. These toponyms mostly identify inland locations, reflecting the new practical need for orientation, delimitation, and land management for the livestock business of the new colony. However, such place names have not yet received exclusive attention. Until now they have been only mentioned in gazetteers with reference to their Spanish origin. The present work resorts to both traditional toponymic approaches and fieldwork to identify toponyms, understand how they work, and analyze how Islanders perceive them. This is done under the assumption that studying Islanders’ attitudes contributes to revealing historical facts as well as relationships between the Islands and the mainland.