3. NAMES ARE OF NO HELP
Onomastics is of no great help in settling linguistic and ethnogenetic issues. Let's have a look at some important place names in Albanian territories, like Dajti, Shkodra, Durresi, Vlora, Burreli, Drini, Shkumbini, Tirana, etc. Are they Albanian? We can't say that, for there are no Albanian words that would explain them (as we explain, for example, Kruja with "krue" - fountain). Are they non-Albanian? Difficult to admit this either. We simply do not know. In one of his most important contributions to Albanian ethnogenesis, prof. Cabej proved that most of these names had been continuously passed over, -- at least from early antiquity -- from generation to generation, by Albanian speaking populations (he did it by comparing their current form, with the form that is found in antique sources, and by searching if their phonetic evolution, e.g. from Durracchion to Durres, had followed the known phonetic patterns of Albanian historical evolution). But he didn't prove that they derived from Albanian (or proto-Albanian words). We also know a lot of Illyrian place names, transmitted to us by ancient historians and geographers. Some of these names have been tentatively explained through comparison with Albanian words, like Dardania (dardhe "pear") and Dalmatia (dele, delme "sheep"). This might well be true, but seems pathetic in front of the fact that we can't explain through Albanian words the place names we currently use, let alone the Illyrian ones. So what?
Let's take another example, which I hope will be of some help in understanding my point. Place names in Italian peninsula are generally well studied, and most of them successfully ethymologized. Among the Italian city names, only few of them are of certain Latin origin: Bologna, Firenze, Pescara, Udine, Torino. Even Roma is Etruscan in origin (the name), and also Etruscan are Mantova, Perugia and Parma. Greek names are abundant in the south: Napoli, Palermo, Ancona, Siracusa, Agrigento, Bari, Ancona, Cagliari, while Celtic names dominate in the north: Milano, Cremona, Modena, Verona, Lucca. Brindisi and Taranto in the south, and Trieste in the nort-east, are believed to be Illyrian.
What does this mean? Does it mean that the Latin tribes were only a minority in the peninsula and later had their demographic explosion thanks to the imposition of their military power? Not necessarily, but it seems highly probable that the Latin civilization, at its outburst, found these cities already in place.
Well, this was only an analogy. According to this analogy, the Albanian onomastic puzzle should be resolved by assuming that the Illyrians (or whoever) found some of their place names already in use, when they descended to the Balkans. Therefore, Illyrian onomastics CANNOT be of great help in shedding light in the mysteries of Illyrian, even if we take it for granted that Albanian descends from Illyrian, because we do NOT know, first of all, that the onomastic material in our possession really belongs to the Illyrian linguistic heritage.
Let's move up in time, and reach the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages the Albanians were somewhere there, though their first mention is in the 11th century (or 12th, I'm not sure). Where were they living? Where are the places they have named after their common words (technically called appellatives)? The south is full -- literally full -- of Slavic place names, especially the areas of Vlora, Tepelena, Skrapar, Mallakaster, Gramsh, Cermenike, Moker, Korce, Erseke. Does this mean that there were Slavs there, as the resident population, while the Albanians were wandering shepherds, as has been more than once -- erroneously -- alleged? Certainly not.
Then? Then the fault is with the method. As a source, onomastics can't be reliable, it will inevitably lead to absurd conclusions. The eminent German historian, Stadtmueller, in a research published before WW2, used these onomastic sources, along with the method of exclusion, to reach the conclusion that the Albanian people was born as a people in the area of Mati (more or less), which was clean of foreign onomastic interference. The current Albanian territories were explained, therefore, as the result of a demographic explosion (Albanians in search of Lebensraum). His method was certainly ingenious, but his sources, place names, were certainly shaky. Jokli and Cabej didn't think much of this theory. This is, summarily, what makes me believe that onomastics will never provide decisive clues for understanding Albanians' proto-history.