• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.884-898
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• 2012

Place names represent a lot of information about the region and the life of the local residents. In particular, old geographical names have more spatial informations than recent place names. This paper tried to analyze the distribution and characteristic of 'Dumo' which is one of the ancient place names and was studied by Nam youngwoo in 1996 for the first time. After considering the etymology and phonological structure of 'Dumo', the name 'Dumo' included the geographic conditions related to a mountain and river in itself. The total number of place names in the line of 'Dumo' which were collected by the author were 417 and they were distributed evenly on the Korean Peninsula. 85% of them were used for the human place names and 73% of the human place names were served as settlement names standing for a village or an administrative district. Thus the author analyzed the location and diffusion of 220 of settlement names in depth. As a result, villages named in the line of 'Dumo' preferred southern or eastern exposure and located in front of a mountain and around a river. After a village name 'Dumo' was set up, it produces other similar names in the line of 'Dumo' near the village so most place names of 'Dumo' were found with several names of 'Dumo' not alone.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.479-490
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• 1997

This study attempted to grasp the etimological meaning of the ancient place name Dumo, and to identify when the ancient place names in Dumo system started to be used by Korean people. The results of analysis of generic toponym and specific toponym of the ancient place names in Dumo system are as follow: Firstly, Chumong, the name of the founder of the Koguryo Dynasty, and his two sons Biryu,the founder of the kingdom Biryu-Paekche, and Oncho, the founder of the kingdom Paekche, are presumed to originate from place name, not from person's name. Particularly, the name of Chumong is considered to be a person's name which comes from Dumo system. Oncho, who claimed to be a son of Chumong, a person of north-Puyo, transterred the capital of his kingdom to the present site of Dumo in Chunggung-dong, Hanam city in present, which is thought to be an early capital of Paekche or a part of it. Secondly, the word of Dumo means a warm space which is surrounded by mountains, protected from wind, endowed with river which provided with water. This kind of spatial cognition gradually evolved as the prototypical locational artifice which was diffused to Manchuria and Japan, and is believed to be introduced to the Korean Peninsula.