• 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.