This article provides an understanding of the linguistic and historical origin of this diversity and lists a number of correspondences for communes and lesser localities in the four departments of the former region: Meuse, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Moselle, and Vosges.
Now, more than a millennium later, many of these toponyms have three different names—in Lorraine Franconian, French, and German—due to shifts in culture and language and changes in land possession.
The origin of toponyms, of which exonyms are a certain type, is sometimes controversial, especially in Lorraine where successive or simultaneous occupations by different peoples and changes in culture have often influenced toponymy more than elsewhere.
In some cases, however, a particular topographical, religious, or historical aspect may have played a more important role, which is difficult to determine in Gallo-Romance formations in particular.
Thus, for example, names like Neufchâteau, Neufchâtel, Neuville, and Neubourg du nord have opposite construction to Chateauneuf, Castelnau, Villeneuve, and Bourgneuf further south.
In Flanders and Artois, -inge, -in, -ain, its correspondents, are also the expression of a decline in the Flemish language or at least a desire to make toponyms more Gallicized.
Independent ducal Lorraine included a Bailiwick of Germany [fr; de] that crossed the current Moselle border to the north.
It is older, and shows a sensitivity common to all of eastern France where the 'determinant-determined' pair largely dominates while respecting habits and rules that ignore the heritage language.
It was only with the integration into France under Stanislaus and then under the Jacobin regime and Prussian imperialism that both language and toponyms took on a political, patriotic, symbolic and identity value.
Previously, the Duke of Lorraine recognized the official existence of German and French on his lands at the risk of having to have the most important acts and charters translated one way or the other.
The phenomenon is not specific to Moselle, a large part of Germany, especially in the south, had to willingly adopt standard German names for their official signs, but on the ground, the inhabitants continued to designate their village in the local form.
The difference is that Moselle suffered the arrival of 'prussification' as a denial of its specificity in view of the brutality of certain measures that followed the de facto annexation after the abandonment of the territories by the parliament meeting in Bordeaux in May 1871.
It must also be said that part of the annexed Moselle known as Bezirk Lothringen, has always been Romanesque, mainly Metzgau and Saulnois [fr; de] except formerly the Dieuze region.
French and Lorraine Franconian (and Alsatian in Alsace) serve to make an ideological and political break with everything that sounds 'Prussian' or 'standardized German', because the occupants forbade or fought them.
Lorraine Franconian and German emphasize the same linguistic relationship, placing a tonic accent at the initial of words, in general.
The following name-pair examples are found the dictionaries of Henri Lepage [fr][6] and Ernest de Bouteiller,[7] respectively, and noted as recognized in 1594: These were certainly not the only spellings before or after 1594.
The names of many communes in Moselle were Francized at the end of the Revolution, in particular those having the suffix -engen or -ingen, which was sometimes simplified into -ing or definitively replaced by the Romanesque form in -ing (e.g. -ingen was Romanized into -ingas and -inges since the Middle Ages, hence -ang).
[9] Some municipalities had a standard German name between 1793 and 1802, such as Folschviller (Folschweiler 1793), Ébersviller (Ebersweiler 1793), Berviller-en-Moselle (Berweiler 1793), Schmittviller (Schmittweiler 1793), Bisten-en-Lorraine (Bisten im Loch 1793), Château-Rouge (Rothdorf 1793), Mouterhouse (Mutterhausen 1801), Soucht (Sucht 1801), Rodalbe (Rodalben 1801), Merlebach[10] (Merlenbach 1801), Dalem (Dalheim 1801), Altrippe (Altrippen 1793).
[9] The dictionaries of Henri Lepage[6] on the Meurthe and Ernest de Bouteiller[7] on the Moselle, written before 1871, prove that many municipalities still had an alias in German during the 19th century.
For example, Hagondange, Haute-Vigneulles, and Lorquin cited 'in German' as Hagelingen, Oberfillen and Lœrchingen in these same dictionaries, most recently written in 1868.
Consider Condé-Northen in Moselle, which began as the ancient commune, Condé (specifically Condium or Condicum), attested as existing in 787.
[17] Yet another situation, though more rural and rare, is a large commune originally formed around multiple hamlets, farms, or other lesser localities that are nevertheless on the map.
The distributed commune's domain originally encompassed eleven large farms, called censes [fr]: Craon (then Créon), Cubolot, Fontaine aux Chênes, Halmoze, Heille (or Helde), L'hor, Le Jardinot (became Haute-Gueisse during the Revolution), Jean Limon, La Petite Maladrerie, Rond-Pré, and Viller (or Courtegain).
Of the original eleven properties making up the commune, only six still remain: Cubolot, Halmoze, Heille, Haute-Gueisse, Jean Limon, and Rond-Pré.