Petar Šimunović (19 February 1933 – 5 August 2014) was a

Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...

n linguist, onomastician, dialectologist, lexicographer, and academic member of

HAZU The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (; , HAZU) is the national academy of Croatia. HAZU was founded under the patronage of the Croatian bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer under the name Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (, JAZU) since its ...

. He was considered as the most prominent Croatian onomastician (since the second half of the 20th century), and contributed also in the field of

dialectology Dialectology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''dialektos'', "talk, dialect"; and , ''-logy, -logia'') is the scientific study of dialects: subsets of languages. Though in the 19th century a branch of historical linguistics, dialectology is often now c ...

(particularly about

Chakavian Chakavian or Čakavian (, , , proper name: or own name: ''čokovski, čakavski, čekavski'') is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmatia, Istria, Croatian L ...

dialect).

Biography

He was born on 19 February 1933 in the village Dračevica on the island of

Brač Brač is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, with an area of , making it the largest island in Dalmatia, and the third largest in the Adriatic. It is separated from the mainland by the Brač Channel, which is wide.Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1958 with thesis ''Sumartinska onomastika'', and doctoral thesis ''Toponimija otoka Brača'' in 1970. Since 1964 he started to work at the

Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics The Institute for the Croatian Language (, IHJ), formerly known as the Institute for the Croatian Language and Linguistics until 2023, is a state-run linguistics institute in Croatia whose purpose is to "preserve and foster" the Croatian language. ...

of JAZU (later

), in the department of onomastics. He was elected scientific advisor in 1979 and retired in 2003. As the recipient of the

Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation () is a foundation that promotes international academic cooperation between scientists and scholars from Germany and abroad. Established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, it is funded by t ...

scholarship he worked at the Slavic Department of the

University of Cologne The University of Cologne () is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 45,187 students. The Universit ...

between 1972 and 1974 under Reinhold Olesch mentorship, and lectured between 1994 and 1998. In his honor, the University of Cologne organized in 1998 international scientific conference on Slavic onomastics, and was a member of various international Slavic organizations. He was a regular member of HAZU since 1991, and member of Presidency between 2011 and 2014. He lectured onomastics at the postgraduate study of Croatian studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and at the postgraduate study of linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zadar. Besides doing research in the field of onomastics, also did field research in dialectology, particularly Chakavian, for the '' Slavic Linguistic Atlas'' (OLA) and ''Croatian Dialect Atlas'' (HDA). During his scientific career he received several awards, including award of the Municipality of Brač (1983), State award "Božidar Adžija" (1984), Order of Danica Hrvatska "Ruđer Bošković" (1998), State Lifetime Achievement award (2000), State award in the field of humanistic sciences (2009). Šimunović passed away on 5 August 2014 in

Split Split(s) or The Split may refer to: Places * Split, Croatia, the largest coastal city in Croatia * Split Island, Canada, an island in the Hudson Bay * Split Island, Falkland Islands * Split Island, Fiji, better known as Hạfliua Arts, enter ...

. In 2020, was published monography ''U početku bijaše ime'', including works from international scientific conference "Tragovima onomastičkih istraživanja Petra Šimunovića" held in July 2019.

Selected works

Šimunović as an author and co-author published over 500 scientific, scientific popular and professional articles, and 30 books. He was also main editor of academic journal ''Folia onomastica Croatica'' and member of editorial board of journal ''Rasprave''. Collaborated in the writing of ''Grundsystem und Terminologie der slavischen Onomastik'' (1983), ''Słowiańska onomastyka – encyklopedia'' (2002). *''Toponimija otoka Brača'' (1972) *''Brač - vodič po otoku'' (1972–1997) *''Leksik prezimena Socijalističke Republike Hrvatske'' (1976) *''Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon I-III'' (1979–1983) *''Naša prezimena – porijeklo, značenje, rasprostranjenost'' (1985) *''Prezimena i naselja u Istri I-III'' (1985–1986) *''Istočnojadranska toponimija'' (1986) *''Hrvatska prezimena – porijeklo, značenje, rasprostranjenost'' (1995) *''Bračka toponimija'' (2004) *''Toponimija hrvatskoga jadranskog prostora'' (2005) *''Rječnik bračkih čakavskih govora'' (2006) *''Hrvatski prezimenik I-III'' (2008) *''Hrvatska u prezimenima'' (2008) *''Uvod u hrvatsko imenoslovlje'' (2009) *''Rječnik bračkih čakavskih govora'' (2009) *''Čakavska čitanka'' (2011)

References

;Further reading: * * * * * * *

External links

Profile
at the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Šimunović, Petar 1933 births 2014 deaths Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb alumni 20th-century Croatian linguists 21st-century linguists Linguists from Croatia Croatian lexicographers Onomasticians Croatian academics Academic staff of the University of Zagreb Members of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts