Abstract
This paper researches the role that hodonyms (street names) play in forming cultural and collective identity and awareness. Street names are thereby treated as the elements that get transformed from everyday communication and interaction to symbols constructed by political elites to direct the collective history perception and memory. The paper explores the principles of forming a new onomastic space of the capital city of the Republic of Moldova, Chisinau. Current work identifies some peculiarities of street renaming, grouping them into several categories. The main principles of renaming policies are also revealed. The analyses of renaming practices help understand the national identities that Moldovans are going to build, and the ideology that local and national authorities will impose.
Highlights
The end of state socialism has produced complex processes of urban change in East and Central Europe, including the reshaping of urban identities and urban cultural landscapes in post-socialist cities
The main role in the toponymic dictionary of the city is played by street names – hodonyms 1
In the case of Chisinau, commemoratives are the most vulnerable to political change. This reconfiguring of urban toponymy is underpinned by simultaneous processes of de-commemoration and commemoration of different personalities and events in agreement with the new authorized narrative of national history and identity (Azaryahu, 1996)
Summary
The end of state socialism has produced complex processes of urban change in East and Central Europe, including the reshaping of urban identities and urban cultural landscapes in post-socialist cities. Naming places is a way of inscribing a particular worldview and set of political values onto the landscape. Toponyms are a critical means through which urban space is signified and saturated with political values (Verdery, 1999). Toponyms renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes. The main role in the toponymic dictionary of the city is played by street names – hodonyms 1. Our study researches the role that hodonyms play in forming cultural and collective identity and awareness in the city of Chisinau (Kishinev), capital of Moldova, ex-Soviet Republic, during the period 1989 till present. The present article is relevant at the regional level, highlighting aspects of Chisinau toponyms and, according to a global perspective, shedding some light on naming and renaming practices in post-communism urban space. 1 “Hodonym (from Greek language Ὁδός “onym” means “road, street”) is a type of urabanonym, which studies names of roads, avenues, and streets” (Podolskaya, 1988, p. 52)
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