The Karst, its people and geographic Karst names in early Slovenian texts

Abstract

Before the 19th century, the presence of Slovenian geographical names in Slovenian texts was rare. Namely, until
then, very little was written in Slovene, which holds especially true of administration area. The paper discusses the
earliest appearances of Slovenian notions »Kras« and »Kraševci«, adjective »kraški« and geographical names from the
wider Karst area in Slovenian texts during the early Modern Period. After the notions »Kras«, »Kraševci« and »kraški
« first appeared in the second half of the 16th century (between 1555 and 1584), a long time had to pass before they
appeared again. Whereas Trieste is fairly well represented in Slovenian documents, followed by only Dolina pri Trstu
in the 17th century, by far the greatest number of Karst names (toponyms, hydronyms and oronyms) are found in the
descriptions of the jurisdictional boundaries of the Švarcenek seigniory from the early 18th century.