There are two basic ways to conduct toponymic research — one concentrating on the etymology, meaning, and origin of toponyms, and one focusing on the toponyms of a region and examining patterns of these names. Usually, this distinction is not explicitly recognized. This paper considers the differences between the two approaches and proposes guidelines for their use.

The vocabulary of Fiji English is one of its most distinguishing features. English has a profound influence upon the lives of all Fiji Islanders — it is the principal language of government, the judiciary, education and commerce. This paper examines some of the sources and features of the Fiji English lexis, the most common of which include: borrowings, reborrowings, calques, new coinages, semantic shifts, archaisms, and hybrid compounds. It also outlines some of the lexical affinities with and divergences from other varieties of English.

A functional and systematic typology of toponyms is an essential instrument for the toponymist wishing to investigate the naming practices and patterns of a region. To this end, the Australian National Placenames Survey developed a toponym typology for Australia (Tent & Blair 2011). This was characterized as a ‘typology of motivations for naming’. Although various researchers have used this typology with seeming success, further application of the typology to the Survey’s database of toponyms has revealed the need for a re-evaluation of the naming process. This occasioned a modification of some toponym categories generating a revised typology which can be considered a ‘typology of expressions of the naming intention’.

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There are place names all around the world formed by a combination of two elements, a specific and a generic, both of which refer to the same geographic feature type. A typical pattern is for an indigenous generic functioning as a specific to precede a matching introduced generic. For example: Ohio River < Iroquoian Ohio ‘Great River’ + River; and Lake Rotorua < Māori roto ‘lake’ + rua ‘two/second’ (‘Second Lake’) + Lake. Such toponyms, though not overall numerous, nevertheless occur often enough to warrant being recognized as a distinct class of place names. The literature provides no adequate or consistent term for this pattern: the various attempts clash with each other, and all fail to address the concept effectively. This article aims to address this situation.