ABSTRACT
This study focuses on Gresik, an ancient port city on the northern coastal area of the island of Java, which used to be well-known as a trading city and served as the maritime axis of Nusantara (15th to 19th century AD). This research is conducted as an interdisciplinary study to explore the toponymy from the standpoint of linguistics, in collaboration with epigraphy (archaeology), philology (literature), maritime history, and geography. Based on literature and theoretical studies, the research tries to answer this question: “What is the relation between the names of places and the maritime culture of an ancient port city in the northern coastal area of Java?” The objects of the study are the names of places in the ancient port city of Gresik, including the archaeology and the maritime socio-cultural landscapes between Demak and Surabaya, which are collected from geographical maps, old inscriptions, and old manuscripts. The analysis focuses on history, lexicon, morphology, and semantic structures of names of places within synchronic and diachronic perspectives, which is concluded with an assessment of the track record on toponymy. By interpreting the maritime culture of the past that built the marine network system uniting the archipelago, Indonesia’s national identity will be reinforced and strengthened as the future global maritime axis.
