The toponymy of Quilombola communities in the Midwest: relations between language, culture and history in the forms of appointment

Abstract

This article aims to discuss historical, social and ideological issues related to the nominations of quilombola communities, located in the Midwest region, duly certified by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) until 2016. The study is based on the toponymic analysis of denominations of the 131 quilombola communities that make up the corpus of this study, which in turn brought together 131 toponyms, distributed as follows: Mato Grosso (78); Goiás (32); Mato Grosso do Sul (21). It seeks to examine to what extent the toponyms that name these communities reflect linguistic, historical, cultural aspects related to the African peoples in Brazil. For this purpose, the theoretical framework Dick (1990; 1992; 1998; 2008) for the analysis of toponyms; the contributions of Castro (2001; 2003); Petter (2004) and Petter and Cunha (2015) for the analysis of the question of the presence of African languages ​​in the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon. In linguistic terms, of the toponyms analyzed, 2.96% are African-based; 6.10% are of indigenous origin and 90.94% are from Portuguese and /or other European languages. Among the African languages ​​represented in the study of toponyms studied, the languages ​​of Kwa (Exu), Kikongo Kimbundu (Monjolo; Kalunga) stand out. With regard to the nature of names, toponyms of an anthropocultural nature predominate, with emphasis on sociotoponyms (Família Bispo; Família Jarcem) and hagiotoponyms (Santo Antônio; São João Batista). Those of a physical nature predominate the geomorphopoponyms followed by the phytotoponyms. The predominance of the names of saints from the Romanogic hagiology have their counterparts in African cults point to the history of Afro-Brazilians and their ideas. In summary, the study demonstrates the importance of place names as ideological markers, because through toponymy, cultural aspects can be recovered, in this case, evidence of the modus vivendi of the African people in Brazilian territory and the question of the valorization of African languages ​​in the lexicon and by extension, in toponymy.