Many studies have demonstrated how street names have been utilized by political elites as a tool for communicating national histories and hegemonic state ideologies with the end goal of affecting ...public memory in a way that legitimizes the political order. Recent scholarship in the realm of public memory has shown that it is a negotiated, dialectic process by which elites attempt to gain acceptance for the sociopolitical order of the day through various means like street naming and in which everyday people react to such coercion in complex ways. However, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that nationalist movements have qualitatively different ideological goals and geographic scales in mind when reorienting city texts compared with those of communist regimes, whose task is much more difficult. This paper uses the city of Košice, Slovakia to examine political street renaming and vernacular responses to nationalist and communist periods of odonymic change and their unique results.
•Nationalist goals differ from socialist ones in the street renaming process.•Communist regimes must contextualize local and national scale with international.•Socialist figures are mistaken for national ones, or not understood at all.•Political continuity after 1989 can account for leftover toponymic landscapes.
The review observes a new collection of studies devoted to the problems of Russian toponymy. Released under the authority of the Russian Geographical Society that keeps a constant focus on toponymy ...on the pages of its journal “Problems of Geography,” this original toponymic almanac gives full coverage of the activities of Toponymic Commission under the Moscow City Branch of the Russian Geographical Society. It includes articles on various aspects of studying toponymy, anthroponymy, literary onomastics: from theoretical inquiries to applied case analyses of individual place names, and methodological guidance for school lesson planning. The author of this review considers the articles presented in five large sections of the collection (“General Problems of Onomastics,” “Regional Toponymy,” “Urban Toponymy,” “Names of Peoples. Personal Names. Proper Names in Fiction,” “Bibliography on Toponymy (2009–2018)”), dwelling on the most important points, with priority being given to the toponymic sections of the book. The collection covers most of the pressing problems of modern onomastics: the study of different name classes, including those often overlooked in major research (anemonyms, exonyms), problems of typological delimitation, methodology of onomastic studies, and verification of research results. The reviewed volume clearly outreaches the toponymic domain, integrating place name studies to a wider context of the related onomastic fields. The book also draws the readers’ attention to the growing number of ambiguous and manifestly second-rate publications in onomastics, both at the national and the global scale. Pointing to some minor research and compilation deficiencies, the reviewer gives an overall positive evaluation of the materials and results of the searches presented in the book.
This article focuses on geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine – names of streets, squares, lanes, etc. that refer to the names of other geographical objects like cities, regions, countries, or ...continents. It shows the role of geographical urbanonyms as a powerful instrument used by political regimes to shape political identity by constructing and legitimizing borders between “us” and “them” at different spatial scales. The analysis revealed a significantly higher presence of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine compared to former state socialist countries in Central Europe. The widespread presence of street names related to the former USSR proves the absence of post-Soviet decolonization in semiotic space, going beyond the pure decommunization, in the majority of Ukrainian cities since 1991. Regional differences in the dynamics, distribution and structure of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine are explained by the historical, cultural and (geo)political divisions.
Урбанонимы играют важную роль в сохранении культурно-исторического наследия, поскольку они содержат отсылки к известным деятелям, событиям, явлениям. В туристических центрах, включая Суздаль, ...наибольшее внимание уделяется истории туристических мест, в то время как названия объектов, их происхождение и значение зачастую остаются без должного внимания. В настоящей статье представлен краткий обзор различных групп урбанонимов ономастического пространства Суздаля на основе мотивированности. Подробно рассматриваются названия объектов, относящихся к религии, их семантика, история и значение в культуре, описывается специфика экклезионимов Суздаля и возможности использования сокрытой в названиях информации.
Toponyms, not just geographical names, carry historical, geographical, and linguistic information and provide rich evidence of epochs. The names of places mirror the culture and lifestyle of people ...related to them and have unique features. Toponymical researches have a long history, however, there are some problems that complicate the interpretation of toponyms. Disputable issues related to the definition of toponyms sources require greater attention from linguistics, and historical and geographical sciences. The present study aims to explore Turkic hydronyms with the components "aq/ak" and "qara/kara" to identify their nomination specificity. The descriptive research design employs the methods of a complex linguistic and etymological analysis. The research data comprises of Turkic hydronyms, naming bodies of water located in the territory of the Eurasian space – Afghanistan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. The conducted study demonstrates that the nomination of the hydronyms with the components "aq/ak" and "qara/kara" is not related to the color specifics of the bodies of water. The hydronyms with the component "aq/ak" name the water resources that are mountain snowy waters and originate from glaciers, whereas the component "qara/kara" in Turkic hydronyms indicates the spring origin of waters.
Our research aims at the presentation of simple toponyms with anthroponomical radicals of the Upper Valley of Suceava which are formed by means of certain suffixes. We will highlight the fact that ...the suffixes represent, from a semantic point of view, the existence of formed communities of groups of persons or families having the same name or being only in relations of social dependence in relation to an individual, with a certain name. The existence of these necessary conditions for the formation of certain names is often confirmed by the historical documents which indicate the owners of some villages and by the local traditions which offer information concerning the presence of certain surnames which influenced the creation of the name of the respective locality.
The new book on the toponymy of Flintshire is notable in several respects, including the scope of the study that goes well beyond the geographical borders of this county. This review addresses the ...virtues and the shortcomings of the publication. Two academic monographs, several books for a wider audience, and a number of articles had already been devoted to Flintshire’s geographical names. A new study is considered against this background and includes an analysis of the book, its features, and the evaluation of the authors’ contribution to the study of the toponymy of North East Wales. The book covers 801 geographical names of 753 places in Flintshire (Welsh Sir y Fflint) before the administrative reform of 1994. Given that 62% of the toponyms under study (including those that disappeared from modern maps) are Welsh, the review focuses on the analysis of this set of data, with attention to chronological layers and the etymologies of some geographical names, as well as their translation into English. The author points out that the English layer of Flintshire’s toponymy deserves a more detailed coverage. The layout of the data in this work makes it possible to express some considerations regarding the general trends observed in the toponymic studies of Wales.
•Ancient maps help to recover vanished toponyms.•Toponymy tells the relationship between humans and landscape.•Transition from communal uses to private property affects landscape perception.•Land-use ...change have impacts on loss and change of toponymy.
As a form of territorial cultural heritage, toponyms can reveal priceless information about landscape changes and its social construction by local inhabitants’ knowledge. This research analyses ancient and contemporary toponyms in Sa Serra region, a vast Quercus woodland in central Sardinia, aiming at: i) recovering the background of the creation process of landscape perception ii) understand its subsequent vanishment due to changes in land use policies. Among the 190 analysed toponyms, a diachronic comparison among maps and old documents, in the light of historical events related to land property modifications in the feudal system, shows the vanishment of a great number of toponyms related to daily rural routines, replaced by owners’ names or simply reduced to mere indication of steady geographical elements. Such evidences reveal the dimming of the local perception in favour of institutional up-down view in the naming process of the land.
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