Place-naming Practices Research Articles

Visibilità e vitalità delle lingue. Un’analisi linguistica del greko di Calabria attraverso la lente del Linguistic Landscape

This paper analyzes the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, a small village in southern Calabria where Italo-Greek (Greko) is still spoken. Place-naming practices are considered communicative acts, and the linguistic signs inserted in the public space highlight the richness of the linguistic heritage of communities and contribute to the symbolic construction of collective identities. Through a mapping of the contact between the languages that characterize the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, the present study aims to fill a knowledge gap by stimulating a reflection on the degree of visibility and vitality of Greko.

Practicing and Managing Foreign Toponyms in China: Cultural Politics and Ideologies

This study examines the vogue of adopting foreign-origin place names in Chinese cities and the Chinese governments’ endeavors to regulate the toponymic landscape. The place naming practices, management, and public attitudes concerning foreign toponyms are analyzed to reveal the cultural politics and ideologies of place naming in China’s context. It is found that the foreign toponyms emplaced in urban space mostly have Western origins or roots, and their profusion is largely attributed to their associated symbolic capital, and the clientele’s taste and class identity. In the rectification process, Chinese governments at different levels constructed themselves as protectors of traditional Chinese culture and guards against xenophilia, thus enhancing their symbolic power and governing legitimacy. The general public has resisted top-down toponymic planning via acts of citizenship to reclaim the rights of naming and owning public space. Our findings suggest that nowadays, even in highly regulated societies like China, it would be hard to achieve the expected planning goals when governments simply resort to hegemonic power to implement the place (re)naming policies.

Multiple Avalons: Place naming practices and a mythical Arthurian island

The island of Avalon features in British Arthurian legendry. While its very existence — let alone any actual location it may have had — is contentious, it is now commonly associated with Glastonbury, in the English county of Somerset. Illustrating its enduring appeal, Avalon’s name has also been affixed to a number of international locations over the last 500 years. There have been various motivations for such place naming, including religious beliefs, personal associations, and various types of boosterism, all attempting to imbue New World locales with Old World mystique through nomenclative association. This article surveys the deployment of the concept of Avalon through anglophonic colonial and postcolonial place naming and examines the varying ways in which the name has been applied in different national and local contexts. Its survey reveals direct references to the legendary isle in place naming between the 17th and early 20th centuries and, generally, more weakly associative and/or arbitrary connections over the last century. The study contributes to the expansion of island studies by analysing how a mythical island has been projected onto various non-island locations, and contributes to the development of toponymic studies by examining multiple uses of a single place name.

Can one artist name an unnamed road after himself?

Process of rapid urbanisation in China during recent years have created the need for names to be given to new urban roads. However, due to the inattention of institutions charged with responsibilities for place-naming, some roads remain unnamed. Although these unnamed roads have been overlooked by China’s municipal authorities and by toponymic scholars, they have attracted the attention of Yulu Ge. In 2013, Ge named an unnamed road in Beijing after himself as a work of public art, aiming to urge the government to improve urban governance and to raise public awareness about the necessity of civic engagement. While there are many studies on the critical toponymy and geographies of public art, little attention has been paid to place-naming as a work of public art and the popular responses to it. This article considers how Ge conducted his public art and the attitudes of city residents who had knowledge of it. It is argued that Ge’s artistic practice has brought convenience to residents’ everyday lives and has led city authorities and urban communities to pay greater attention to unnamed roads. However, questions remain over the role of the artist as a disruptive presence in the city’s orderly structure. Therefore, this article argues that the disputes over the Geyu Road remind artists and scholars to consider how place-naming as an artistic practice can intervene in urban lives in a more appropriate way, and the extent to which authorities and urban society can accommodate creative and effective interventions such as Ge’s place-naming practices.

Sequencing toponymic change: A quantitative longitudinal analysis of street renaming in Sibiu, Romania.

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.

School Names in Selected Districts in Southern Province of Zambia: A Critical Toponymies Perspective

Studies have exposed place names as embodiments of the history, identity, culture, and language of their bestowers. Whilst this is true, some place naming practices reflect hegemonic tendencies that have not received adequate scholarly attention, especially in Zambia. This study examines school names in four districts in the Southern Province of Zambia and exposes the hegemonic slant inherent in place naming. The names examined in this study were collected from the Provincial Educational Offices. The names fall into two categories; government and private school names. These names were couched on Critical Toponymies Theory, a theory which politicises place naming and place names. The study found out that there is a toponymic hegemony in both categories of school names. The study argues that toponymic hegemony, as is shown in the study sample, is a manifestation of the dominance of the history, culture, world view, and identity or at least of the interests of the people who named the schools. It is concluded that place names, mundane as they may appear, are embroiled in the (re)production of unequal social power balance.

Language and Place-knowledge on Norfolk Island

ABSTRACTUsing the place-naming practices in the small settler society of Norfolk Island, the home of Anglo-Polynesian descendants of the Bounty mutineers, we advance a linguistic argument against Saussure's claims concerning the arbitrariness of signs. When extended to place names, Saussure's claims about language in general imply place names in themselves hold no significance for how people interact with places. In contrast, we use ethnographic examples to show that people of Norfolk Island interact with the significance of the names themselves. Arguments for an integrated approach to toponymy in which place names are considered alongside other relational (cultural, economic and historical) factors that influence their use and meaning are put forward. We propose ‘toponymic ethnography’ as a useful methodology for understanding the connectedness of toponyms to people, place, and social networks.

Renaming the past in post-Nazi Germany: insights into the politics of street naming in Mannheim and Potsdam

The critical turn in the study of toponymy has drawn attention to the politics of place-naming practices and to how place names are embedded into systems of meaning and partake in social and ideological discourses. A measure of historical revision, the commemorative renaming of streets in the context of regime change is a common strategy employed to signify the break with the past. This article juxtaposes patterns of renaming the past in two German cities from 1945 through 1950 as an aspect of the democratic reconstruction of post-Nazi Germany. The moderate pattern applied in Mannheim represented a restorative approach and signified continuity with the pre-1933 Weimar Republic. The radical pattern applied in communist-controlled Potsdam represented the future-oriented approach of socialist transformation. At one level, the investigation explores patterns of commemorative renaming of streets in two German provincial cities after the collapse of Nazi Germany. At another, the juxtaposition of two patterns of renaming the past in post-Nazi Germany offers insights into large-scale renaming of streets as a ritual of revolution that, involving different interests and priorities introduces major political shifts and the ideological reorientation of society they entail into urban namescapes.

Motivations for Naming: The Development of a Toponymic Typology for Australian Placenames

AbstractOne of the main obstacles to having a meaningful discussion on, or analysis of, placenaming practices of a region or an era is the absence of an effective, consistent and standardized typology for toponym specifics. Surprisingly few attempts have been made to construct such a typology. Of those which have been developed, almost all show inconsistencies in their structure and include categories which are too wide or too narrow, which overlap with each other, or deal only with indigenous placenames. In this paper, we review existing typologies and then propose a classification scheme for the Australian context based on the motivation for the naming of the feature in question.

Geographies of toponymic inscription: new directions in critical place-name studies

The study of place naming, or toponymy, has recently undergone a critical reformulation as scholars have moved beyond the traditional focus on etymology and taxonomy by examining the politics of place-naming practices. In this article, we provide a selective genealogy of the ‘critical turn’ in place-name studies and consider three complementary approaches to analyzing spatial inscription as a toponymic practice: political semiotics, governmentality studies, and normative theories of social justice and symbolic resistance. We conclude by proposing that future scholarship should explore the political economy of toponymic practices as a step toward expanding the conceptual horizon of critical place-name studies.

Naming Places on the ‘Southland’: European Place-Naming Practices from 1606 to 1803

The history of charting Australia's coastline is well documented from most perspectives, but not from a toponymic standpoint. Between 1606 and 1803, some nine hundred European placenames were bestowed along the Australian coast. We report here on an investigation and analysis of the place-naming practices of the Dutch, French, and English along the Australian coastline between 1606 and 1803, and show how these names reflect the social and political attitudes and motivations of the name-givers.

“They live in Lonesome Dove”: Media and contemporary Western Apache place-naming practices

This article treats a place-naming genre among residents of the White Mountain Apache reservation in which people use English-language mass media discourse to name newly constructed neighborhoods on the reservation, usually with humorous effect. It is argued that these names do not represent simple assimilation to mainstream discursive norms. Instead, they represent the deployment of media discourse according to locally defined speech genres and language ideology to comment on social changes brought about by the new housing developments. As a strategy for engaging with the dominant society, these names are acts of community self-definition that confound mainstream expectations for place names generally, and for Native American place names in particular. They celebrate participation in media discourse, but in terms that privilege reservation insiders. Use of these names constitutes the reservation as an interpretive community in which participation is defined not along nationalistic models of citizenship, but in terms of locally established idioms of sociality.I gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research provided by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Phillips Fund for Native American Research of the American Philosophical Society, and the Jacobs Research Fund of the Whatcom Museum. I thank Eva Lupe, Everett Lupe, Leo Cruz, Cline Griggs, Arlene Lupe, Annette Tenejieth, Gary Lupe, and John Welsh for helping me understand the meaning and use of the names. Particular thanks are due to Barbara Johnstone and two anonymous reviewers for Language in Society for suggesting revisions that substantially improved the argument of this article and its articulation with other work in linguistic anthropology. Earlier versions of this article were presented in a session organized by David Samuels at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, to the anthropology departments at Hamilton College and the University of Nevada, Reno; and to the University of Virginia Linguistic Anthropology Seminar. I am grateful for the critical contributions of Dell Hymes, Thomas J. Nevins, David Samuels, Margaret Field, Allexandra Jaffe, Ellen Contini-Morava, Eve Danziger, Phillip Greenfeld, Bonnie Urciuoli, and Charles Kaut. Any shortcomings, of course, are my own.

Lipan Apache Placenames of Augustina Zuazua: Some Structural and Discursive Features

AbstractThis paper presents twenty-two Lipan Apache placenames as used by Augustina Zuazua in a narrative to Harry Hoijer concerning Lipan history. Lipan Apache is now considered by most linguists to be largely an extinct language. However these placenames provide a glimpse into the place-naming practices of the Lipan as well as reveal how placenames were discursively used. I analyze the placenames based on the semantic and morphological components of the names. I also look at how the placenames were used in context within the narrative. Finally, I suggest that Zuazua used this narrative and the placenames to comment on the removal of the Lipan Apache from their traditional homeland. The names, then, act as lingering signs of a past homeland.

The Culture of Shaker Placenames: Sacred Geography and Communal Biography

AbstractFrom 1776 to 1898, the Shakers established over twenty villages across the eastern and midwestern United States. Shaker theology and communitarianism defined the basis for the spiritual names of these settlements and the pragmatic descriptors that identified sites and buildings within each village. Despite a fluid doctrinal system and a geographic reach that extended across a third of the continent, the church's values remained remarkably consistent throughout its two centuries of development: purity, unity, simplicity, equality, and industry. As a reflection of these values, Shaker placenaming practices helped shape the movement's history into a communal religious biography.

Place–Name Literature, United States 1967–1969

Broche, Gaston E. Villes americaines de noms fran9ais. Societe de geographie et d'etudes coloniales de Marseille. Bulletin 63:73-89. 1944-47. Duffy, Thomas F. A controlled research project: American place names. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. 78 p. maps. (Aspects of English). Bibliography: p. 14-17. Very limited and out of date. Describes a project for controlling the sources used by students in writing research papers, using a study of American place-names as an example. Contains a group of four general readings on place-naming practices and a group of four specific readings dealing with place-names in Massachusetts and Virginia. Florin, Lambert. Ghost town El Dorado. Seattle, Superior Pub. Co., 1968. 192 p. maps. (The Western ghost town series). Ninth in the author's Western ghost town series. Includes towns in 11 western states of the United States and in British Columbia. Frazer, Robert Walter. Forts of the West; military forts and presidios, and posts commonly called forts, west of the Mississippi River to 1898. Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1965. 246 p. Bibliography: p. 190-226. Arranged alphabetically within the boundaries of present states. Includes origin of the post name and changes in name and location. Jakle, John A. Salt-derived place names in the Ohio Valley. Names 16:1-5, March 1968. Includes a map of such place-names, as found on the Ohio Valley's Topographic quadrangles. McClung, Quantrille D. Bent, Boggs and Carson place names. Oolorado Genealogist 28:35-36, June 1967. A listing of place-names derived from these three surnames, throughout the United States. Murray, J. Franklin. Jesuit place names in the United States. Names 16:6-12, March 1968. Names of places for which European Jesuit missionaries are in some way responsible. New York, Washington, Philadelphia. New York Times Jan. 26, 1969, p. xx29. Short article on small English towns bearing same name as the major U.S. cities.