Summary
An academic from Dračevice who studied Croatian names and Čakavian dialects. His books on Brač toponymy and local speech connect scholarly research with the island’s place names, families and everyday language.
He studied the names of Brač’s settlements, bays and plots of land as traces of linguistic and social history.
Dračevice and the scholarly path
Petar Šimunović was born in Dračevice. His studies and doctoral work brought him to Zagreb, and his professional career was connected with the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics. Research into his homeland grew into broader work on the names of people, settlements and land, as well as collaboration on Croatian and international linguistic atlases.
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What the names of Brač tell us
He completed a doctorate with a study of Brač toponymy. The works ‘Toponimija otoka Brača’ (‘The Toponymy of the Island of Brač’) and ‘Bračka toponimija’ (‘Brač Toponymy’) explore how nature, economic activities, ownership and settlement left their mark on names. This approach helps us read the landscape even when the former use of a particular place is no longer visible.
Sources: [1]
The island’s dialects and living heritage
‘Rječnik bračkih čakavskih govora’ (‘Dictionary of the Čakavian Dialects of Brač’) is one of his major works. It preserves words and speech differences among the island’s communities; in his broader work, the connection between onomastics and dialectology is especially important. His homeland was both a personal anchor and the subject of systematic field research.
