The Language Character And Culture Origin Of Ningxia Place Name

Place name is a proper noun to describe the geographic position, and it's the production of long-term development of human society. As a kind of special language symbol, it generates not transcendently and purely, but generates under a certain socio-cultural background which vividly reappearances the local culture. It's a kind of cultural landscape which contains historical and cultural information. The place names are language vocabularies which are compounded by voice, semantic and font, the same as other words in modern Chinese. So it is a necessary and meaningful research on the relationship between place names and culture to study from the language point of view.There are all kinds of place names with the general features or unique features in Ningxia. In this paper, I will take place names in Ningxia for the example to analyze the cultural background and pragmatic causes from language and culture angle which caused place names generated. By the linguistic analysis we know culture contains in those languages, and also we obtain strong impact on place names by different historical periods and different cultural backgrounds. The issue is divided into five parts. The first part is the linguistic analysis of place names in Ningxia from phonic, word formation type and color meaning. The second part is a detailed description of the origin of the place names. Ningxia place names mainly come from the five major aspects: position, geographic location, natural features, domestic objects, resident name and history. The third part is the emphases of the paper that is the reflection of the culture contains of Ningxia place names. Through the classification study about Ningxia place names, we found that Ningxia place names primarily reflect the several kinds of cultural as following: The national psychology cultural, economic situation, the ancient military activities, immigration status, the religious beliefs of Hui and political beliefs in different times. Through the analysis of the special names in fourth part, we know the characteristic culture which reflected in the names better and it will make the local characteristics of place names in Ningxia more prominently. And the last part is the summary of the issue.In this paper, the systematic analysis of the Place names in Ningxia on the basis of language and culture is made. And it will be conducted in multi-level aspects. The purpose is to explore the language features and cultural factors attached to the names, which are expected to be made more understandable to the readers as well as other researchers.