The active nominating processes, caused by the necessity of renaming oikonyms and town objects, have started in the linguistic landscape of cities and villages of Ukraine. This article is dedicated to 32 names of Ukrainian cities before and after the decommunization process. Among the astionyms of the Soviet era, which were to be renamed, seven contained the component Krasny or Chervony, two of them contained the component Komsomol (Chervonopartyzansk, Krasny Lyman, Krasnoarmiysk, Komsomolsk), other names were based on pseudonyms or the names of party leaders and communist ideologues. In general, they were not distinguished by the variety of names neither in terms of the lexical base nor in the aspect of word-formation formants. As a result of the analysis of renamed oikonyms, two main directions of motivational processes were revealed: the first of them was the return of former (old) names to cities (20 units, 62,5%), and the second was the creation of new names (12 units, 37,5%). Returning the historical names, inhabitants, as a rule, took as the basis the names of former towns, villages, small villages, and sometimes microtoponyms and ergonyms, which denoted objects that had existed before, and around which the cities were formed (Kamyanske, Bakhmut, Snovsk, Kadiivka, Golubivka, Gorishni Plavni, Kypuche). New names were chosen for two reasons. The first reason was that the historical name of the city was inconceivable, alien and irrelevant for contemporary inhabitants, and the second reason was that there was no historical name. The new names were chosen primarily according to orientation-spatial and physical-geographical principles of the nomination. They were based on hydronyms, ergonyms and oikonyms, which were somehow tangent to renamed settlements (Kalmiuske, Podilsk, Dovzhansk, Pokrovsk, Zavodske). Only one name represents the memorable principle of the nomination (Kropyvnytsky) and one name represents an aesthetic criterion (Myrnograd). For further research, it is promising and relevant to study renamed comonyms (village names), as well as other classes of onyms, primarily urbanonyms and ergonyms.
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Oct 29, 2018
O Chernyakhivska 
Open Access
