Ideological Oikonym Variants in the History of Ethnic Communities

Abstract

 Throughout the existence of humankind, toponyms, including oikonyms, have occupied a special place in society. Changes of territorial, political and ideological nature affect both naming and renaming. It is pointed out that in the Russian language, along with renaming other terms are used to describe the process of name changing, such as secondary nomination and renomination. A characteristic feature of oikonyms is national-cultural markedness, which can manifest itself in a linguistic culture as a result of the introduction of ideological oikonym variants, reflecting certain political events in the country associated with the erasure or perpetuation of the names of certain political leaders. The paper analyses the ideological oikonym variants that existed in Russia as well in the former Soviet republics and East Germany in the 20th century. The author identifies three stages of the introduction of oikonym variants in Russia: 1) elimination of the vocabulary of “tsarist autocracy”; 2) perpetuation of the names of Soviet political leaders; 3) desovietization of oikonyms. In the post-Soviet states and on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic, oikonym variants of the second and third stages were introduced in a similar way to those in Russia. The author comes to the conclusion that, as a rule, ideological oikonym variants reflect contrasting political regimes. Societal changes affect the life of an individual and society as a whole. As a consequence, new lexical units appear and get established in a language as witnesses of time. Oikonyms play an important part in preserving the historical and cultural memory of ethnic communities, since they contain not only purely linguistic, but also extensive country-specific information. Political changes are reflected in the toponymy policy, which is closely linked with other policies, such as ideological, linguistic, national, etc.