Influence of Extralinguistic Factors on the Formation of Oikonymy in Kaliningrad Region

Abstract

This article studies the impact of such factors as the size and the location of a settlement and the time of its renaming as well on the choice of new oikonyms made by the Soviet authorities when the settlements of the Kaliningrad region were renamed after the inclusion of the eastern Prussian territories into the USSR. 2497 acts of renaming were selected and studied. The author examines the connection of each factor with the preferred methods of coordination of the original and new geographical names, with the share of natural-geographical and memorial oikonyms in the corresponding samples, and for the «time» factor the share of migrant toponyms and ideological names is also considered. As a result of the «time» factor study it was revealed that the sequence of the most common methods of coordination fully coincide at different stages of renaming while the share of ideological names decreases over the time. In addition, it was discovered that the share of coordination tends to increase in the groups selected according to the «size» factor together with the increase of the population of the settlements. Finally, while «place» factor was considered it turned out that onomastically uncoordinated areas are located in the southeast of the region, while onomastically coordinated ones form a line stretching from the north to the south of the region slightly shifting to the west. The obtained results prove the fact that extra linguistic factors influence the process and the results of massive renaming in the field of oikonymy.