INTERFACES ENTRE A TOPONÍMIA BRASILEIRA E A PARAGUAIA EM ÁREA DE FRONTEIRA: PERSPECTIVA ETNODIALETOLÓGICA

Abstract

This research had as the investigation object the toponyms of the physical and human, urban and rural accidents of Ponta Porã/Mato Grosso do Sul/Brazil and Pedro Juan Caballero/Amambay/Paraguay with the purpose of describing the toponymic matrix of the investigated areas, considering the motivation, the language of origin and the formal structure of the toponyms. Besides, it proposed to carry out a comparative study between the toponyms belonging to the two geographic universes selected in order to verify how the social, economic and political history that distinguishes this border area is reflected in the local toponymy. Two hypotheses guided the research: a) there are marks of the Paraguayan War in the toponymy of Ponta Porã/BR and in Pedro Juan Caballero/PY, border between Brazil and Paraguay; b) there is a toponymic continuum that surpasses the geographical limits in the investigated area, permeated by different linguistic strata: Spanish, Guarani (official Paraguay languages) and Portuguese (official language of Brazil). The data analysis was guided by the theoretical and methodological principles of Toponymy, fundamentally the theoretical model proposed by Dick (1990a, 1990b, 1996a), and related disciplines. The analysis of urban toponyms, of both Ponta Porã and Pedro Juan Caballero, revealed the predominance of anthropotoponyms, reaffirming, in these localities, a characteristic of urban toponymy in general. The female an anthropotoponyms obtained low productivity, being 15% in Ponta Porã and 14% in Pedro Juan Caballero. However, in the Paraguayan city, women who have their names engraved in toponymy are described with merit, in official document, while in the Brazilian city they are only "illustrious unknown". On the other hand, the rural, physical and human toponymy evidenced, in the majority, descriptive names of the physical environment, emphasizing as more productive the phytotoponyms, the hydrotoponyms, the zootoponyms and the litotoponyms in both localities. In this scenario, emphasis was given to the occurrence of 22 hagiotoponyms (17.6%), among the rural physical accidents in Ponta Porã, and six toponyms in the districts of Pedro Juan Caballero (40%), demonstrating that Brazil and Paraguay were born under the ‘sign of faith’. On the origin language in the entire toponymic universe investigated, the research pointed out the predominance of Portuguese origin in Ponta Porã and Spanish in Pedro Juan Caballero, with relevance also for the Tupi in the Brazilian municipality and Guarani in the Paraguayan one. It was confirmed the hypothesis that there are in the toponymy of Ponta Porã and Pedro Juan Caballero toponymic elements that reflect War marks, with emphasis for the Paraguayan locality, with 15%, while in Brazil, only 2%. There are small toponymic continuum indices in the investigated universe, and a larger survey, along the entire Brazil-Paraguay border, may (or may not) refute this trend.