Exonyms as parts of the cultural heritage

Abstract

The article departs from the assumption that exonyms in the sense of place names not used by the local community and differing from the respective endonym are parts of the cultural heritage and deserve for this very reason to be protected, documented, and kept in use. Why they are parts of the cultural heritage is explained by four arguments: because they are elements of a language, and language is without any doubt part of the cultural heritage; because they reflect the pattern of a community’s network of external political, cultural and economic relations; because they relate a community with its history; because they are in the user community often reflected and repeated by street names, names of dishes, pieces of music or theatre plays etc., where they actually assume the status of endonyms and form the nucleus of a name system. Since appreciating place names as a part of the cultural heritage is a rather recent current in the context of international and national place-name standardization, resolutions of the United Nations as well as national regulations have so far not adequately reacted to it – a fact that is also highlighted.