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Historiographia Linguistica: Online-First Articles

Mapping the world through lexicography

A preliminary study on toponyms in Brollo’s Dictionarium sinico-latinum

 | Sapienza Università di Roma
 | Sapienza Università di Roma
This article
analyses the original contribution of the Franciscan missionary Basilio Brollo (Ye Zunxiao 葉尊孝 or Ye Zongxian 葉宗賢, Gemona, 1648–Xi’an, 1704) to the description of Chinese toponyms and geographically relevant terms included in his Dictionarium sinico-latinum (1694, 1699), regarded as one of the most noteworthy earliest dictionaries compiled by foreign missionaries in China. The article first provides an overview of the list of toponyms included in the dictionary, describing their Chinese, romanised, and Latin renditions. Secondly, it compares selected terms with the corresponding toponymic occurrences in the Chinese sources Brollo used as references when compiling the manuscript. The article concludes with a discussion of the lexicographical and lexicological efforts involved in this process, as well as the intercultural dialogue involved in them, highlighting Brollo’s personal and original contribution to the description of 17th-century Chinese geographical elements, with special reference to the terms related to the Chinese geographical regions where he lived and worked.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Toponyms in Brollo’s 1694 Dictionarium sinico-latinum: an overview
  • 3.Hydronyms and their relevant information in Rinuccini 22: a preliminary analysis
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 14 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.00167.cec
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