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Research into the mountain names of historical Hungary has been a neglected area of Hungarian Onomastics to date. However, mountains as important objects of the natural environment have significantly influenced the development of both settlement structure and settlement names for centuries. The results of the author’s research into the names for mountains and those for settlements in the area of four former, northeast counties (Bereg, Máramaros, Ugocsa and Ung) suggest that several minor settlements were named by way of borrowing mountain names – especially in Máramaros County. These peripheral populated places were usually established on mountainsides, thus easily adopted the names of the mountains themselves. Different types of mountain names were involved in the process. Most settlement names were formed from mountain names that were derived from suffixless geographical common nouns through a semantic split. Two-constituent mountain names, however, rarely served as bases for settlement names. Only few Hungarian names can be found among the mountain names of the observed region, as in the Middle Ages the highlands in question were inhabited by Ruthenians and Romanians, while Hungarians mostly settled flat areas. As a result, settlement names formed from mountain names of Hungarian origin were also rare in the four counties mentioned above.

Multiplicity and division of names are two interesting, but little researched phenomena of place naming practices. The authors in their research into the settlement names of Ung County have identified several names in the western part of the county, whose historical data display both phenomena. The explanation for this lies in the possession and settlement history of the county. The Nagymihályi family, widespread in Ung County, possessed extensive land holdings (Tiba, Ricse, Jeszenő), the division and population of which led to the establishment of settlements, which, at least for a while, bore the original names of the lands as well as their newly acquired names. Multiplicity of names originating in land division, however, soon disappeared. In other parts of Ung County, multiplicity and division of names occurred sporadically. These instances were occasioned by different factors than the ones discussed above.