Abstract
Recent scholarship in critical toponymy studies has refashioned the understanding of street names from innocent labels to nominal loci of historical memory and vectors of collective identity that are embroiled with power relations. Urban nomenclatures consist of more than mere linguistic signposts deployed onto space to facilitate navigation. Street names are also powerful signposts that indicate the political regime and its socio-cultural values. Drawing on these theoretical insights, this paper is focused on Sibiu (Romania) and explore the city’s shifting namescape in a longitudinal perspective spanning one century and a half of modern history (1875–2020). The analysis is based on a complete dataset of street names and street name changes registered across five political regimes (Habsburg Empire, Kingdom of Romania, Romanian People’s Republic, Socialist Republic of Romania, and post-socialist Romania). A series of multiple logistic regression models were carried out to determine the factors that influence toponymic change. The statistical results point out several significant predictors of street renaming: (1) the streets’ toponymic characteristics (politicized or neutral name); (2) artery rank (public squares and large avenues or ordinary streets and alleys); and (3) topographic features (a street’s size and centrality). Such a quantitative approach coupled with a longitudinal perspective contributes to the scholarly literature on place-naming practices in three major ways: firstly, by advancing an innovative methodological framework and analytical model for the study of street name changes; secondly, by delineating with statistical precision the factors that model toponymic change; and thirdly, by embedding these renaming practices observed especially after significant power shifts in the broader historical context of the changes brought in the city’s street nomenclature.
Highlights
In the last decades, cultural geographers and scholars from other disciplinary branches of the social sciences have pumped fresh theoretical blood into the study of place-names
Sequencing toponymic change: Street renaming in Sibiu, Romania
The presentation of the findings is organized along three lines: first, the paper provides an overview of the typological make-up of Sibiu’s street nomenclature during the five succeeding political regimes covered in this analysis
Summary
Cultural geographers and scholars from other disciplinary branches of the social sciences have pumped fresh theoretical blood into the study of place-names. With the cultural turn across the social sciences and the humanities, researchers started to move away from onomastics and making etymological inroads into the origins of place-names–which dominated the traditional paradigm of place-name studies rooted in linguistics–and turned. Sequencing toponymic change: Street renaming in Sibiu, Romania. Stelian Rusu) has received a salary from the funder (Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu)
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