Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

This article aims to explain the changing process of toponymic meanings and territories on the name Eumseong(陰城) by a toponymic methodology, which is the only name that has the letter ‘Eum’(陰) amongst local governments in Korea. In particular, I try to suggest the linguistic fact that its original meaning is not related to being ‘shady and dark’, and also that our discriminative perception between Yin(陰) and Yang(陽) should be overturned. The first, Eumseong area is situated at a borderland and contact zone within the national scale. Accordingly, it has been an historically important traffic center as well as a strategic location on which it has been liaising between the Han-gang River, the Keum-gang River, and the Nakdong-gang River basins, experiencing the diverse changes of administrative system and district for thousands of years within the regional scale. The second, concerning the meanings of the toponym Eumseong, the negative sense of place as ‘a shade and somber place’ associated with the Chinese letter ‘Eum’(陰) has been entirely derived from misunderstanding its meaning by the semantic transcription (訓借 表記). I verify that the ancient toponyms, ‘Ing-hol’(仍忽, *neohol~*neuhol) and ‘Ing-geun-nae’ (仍斤內, *neut-nae~*neun-nae) had transformed into ‘Eumseong’(陰城) in the transliteration process of the phonetic transcription (音借 表記) in 757. In addition to that, I propose that another name of Eumseong, ‘Seolseong’(雪城) had been originated from [*neong-hol~*nunhol] which was another pronunciation of ‘Ing-hol’(仍忽) by the meaning’s phone transcription (訓音借 表記). The third, I analyse the process of toponymic territory extension on the name Eumseong in 1906 and 1914. As a result of the territory extension, its extended territoriality has been endeavoring to reconstruct the new and positive territorial identity through a medium of the ancient name ‘Neohol’ which means a ‘large and broad’ land.