Names are the national poetic design of the country. They talk about the nature of the people, their history, their inclinations and features of life. ( Konstantin Paustovsky )
Throughout our lives, from the moment of birth to the very end, various geographical names accompany us. We live on the Eurasian continent, in Russia, in a certain region or region, in a city, town, village and village, and each of these objects has its own name.
Thus, a toponym is the name of continents and oceans, countries and geographical areas, cities and streets in them, rivers and lakes, natural sites and gardens. The origin and semantic content, historical roots and change over the centuries of pronunciation and spelling of the names of geographical objects is studied by a special science - toponymy.
What is toponymy
The word "toponymy" comes from two Greek words: topos is the place and onyma is the name. This scientific discipline is the branch of onomastics - a section of linguistics that studies proper names. Toponymy is an integrated science, functioning at the intersection of linguistics, geography and history.
Geographical names do not arise in an “empty” place: noting certain features of the relief and nature, people who lived nearby called them, emphasizing the characteristic features. Over time, the peoples living in a particular region changed, but the names were preserved and used by those who replaced. The basic unit for the study of toponymy is a toponym. The names of cities and rivers, villages and villages, lakes and forests, fields and streams - all these are toponyms of Russia, very diverse both in time of appearance and in their cultural and linguistic roots.
What is a toponym
In literal translation from Greek, the toponym is the “name of the place”, that is, the name of a geographical object: continent, mainland, mountain and ocean, sea and country, city and street, natural objects. Their main purpose is to fix the "binding" of a particular place on the Earth's surface. In addition, toponyms for historical science is not an easy name for any geographical object, and a historical mark on a map that has its own history of origin, linguistic origin and semantic meaning.
What are the characteristics of toponyms?
A single classification of place names that would suit both linguists and geographers and historians does not exist today. Toponyms are classified according to a variety of signs, but most often according to the following:
- by type of designated geographical objects (hydronyms, oronyms, dromonyms, and others);
- linguistic (Russian, Manchu, Czech, Tatar and other names);
- historical (Chinese, Slavic and others);
- by structure:
- simple;
- derivatives;
- complex;
- compound; - by area.
Classification by area
Of greatest interest is the classification of toponyms by their territorial attribute, when geographical objects, depending on their size, are referred to as macrotoponyms or microtoponyms.
Microtoponyms are the individual names of small geographical objects, as well as characteristic features of the relief and landscape. They are formed on the basis of the language or dialect of a people or nationality living nearby. Microtoponyms are very mobile and changeable, but, as a rule, are limited geographically by the zone of distribution of a particular dialect, dialect or language.
Macrotoponym is, first of all, the names of large natural or created as a result of human activities natural and public administrative units. The main characteristics of this group are standardization and sustainability, as well as the breadth of use.
Types of geographical names
The following types of place names are distinguished in modern place names:
| Types of place names | Geographical names of objects | Examples |
| Astionyms | cities | Astana, Paris, Stary Oskol |
| Oikonyms | settlements and settlements | Kumylzhenskaya village, Finev Lug village, Shpakovskoe village |
| Urbonyms | various inner-city objects: theaters and museums, gardens and squares, parks and embankments and others | The Gorsad in Tver, the Luzhniki Stadium, the Razdolie residential complex |
| Godonyms | the streets | Volkhonka, street of the Guard of the Revolution |
| Agoronyms | areas | Palace and Trinity in St. Petersburg, Manezhnaya in Moscow |
| Geonyms | avenues and driveways | Heroes Avenue, 1st passage of the First Horse Lahti |
| Dromonyms | different types of highways and roads, usually passing outside settlements | Northern Railway, BAM |
| Burials | any territories, regions, districts | Moldavian, Strigino |
| Pelagonyms | the seas | White, Dead, Baltic |
| Limonyms | lakes | Baikal, Karasyar, Onega, Trostenskoe |
| Potamonyms | rivers | Volga, Nile, Ganges, Kama |
| Helonyms | swamps | Vasyugan, Sinyavinsky, Sestroretsk |
| Oronyms | hills, ranges, hills | Pyrenees and Alps, Borovitsky Hill, Studennaya Gora and Dyatlovy Gory |
| anthropotoponyms | descended from a surname or personal name | Strait of Magellan, the city of Yaroslavl, many villages and villages with the name Ivanovka |
How toponyms bow
Toponyms with Slavic roots ending in -ev (o), -in (o), -ov (o), -yn (o) were previously considered traditionally declined. However, in recent decades, they are increasingly being used in non-deviant form, as previously used by professional military and geographic scientists.
The declension of toponyms such as Tsaritsyno, Kemerovo, Sheremetyevo, Murino, Kratovo, Domodedovo, Komarovo, Medvedkovo and the like, was mandatory at the time of Anna Akhmatova, but today both declined and non-declined forms are considered equally true and used. The exception is the names of settlements, if they are used as annexes with a generic name (village, village, farm, village, city and others), then it would be correct not to persuade, for example, to the Strigino district, from the Matyushino district, to the city of Pushkino . If there is no such generic name, then you can use both the declined and the non-declined options: from Matyushino and towards Matyushin, to Knyazevo and from Knyazev.
Unbending Place Names
In modern Russian, there are several cases in which toponyms ending in -o can be used only in unchanged form:
- Geographical names associated with the names of prominent historical figures are called memorial. If such a name ends in -o, then it does not incline, for example, in the villages of Repino and Tuchkovo, in the city of Chapaevo.
- In the event that the toponym is a composite word of two or more parts, is written with a hyphen and both parts end with -o, then only the second part changes during declension: in Odintsovo-Vakhrameev, in Orekhovo-Zuev, in Ado-Tymovo . If such names are faced with the words city, village, then the names of such settlements do not decline - the village of Ado-Tymov, Odintsovo-Vakhrameevo.
- The dictionary of place names recommends that when using complex foreign geographic names not to incline their first part, for example, in Buenos Aires, in Almaty. An exception to this case is the first part of the toponym “on the river”: in Frankfurt an der Oder, from Stratford-upon-Avon.
- In the case when the gender of the geographical name and the generic name do not coincide, for example, in the village of Aduevo, from the village of Chernyaevo, at the Sinevo station. Generic names (village, station, village) are feminine, but their geographical names retain their average form.