Abstract. The article addresses the issue of post-war formation of regional identity inherent to inhabitants of Kaliningrad region. This significant in crosscultural perspective subject is explored drawing on the process of aligning new Russian toponyms and names of natural objects with their preceding original German counterparts during the renaming process of the 1940-1950s. The author aims at examining one of the least studied means of toponymic alignment, namely allusion. The latter presupposes choosing as a new name such a lexeme that resembles the original toponym only on some formal aspects. Contrastive analysis coupled with quantitative methods draws on multiple comparative data stemming from Germanic-Baltic and Russian toponymic word stocks. The author argues that the choice of allusion is not influenced by semantics, sound form or ideology of original toponym, though its etymology as well as the type of natural object and its location do play a vital role in opting for the new name. These findings allow the author to interpret allusion both as a specific example of folk etymology in the sphere of toponymy and as a tool of asystemic governing policy of those officials that initiated the renaming process aimed at russification of new Soviet territories.
Keywords: toponym, renaming, allusion, folk etymology, East Prussia.
Author:
Olga V. Peteshova - Ph.D. in Philology, Associate Professor, Institute of Pedagogics, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
References
1. Kostyashov Yu. V. Sekretnaya istoriya Kaliningradskoi oblasti, Kaliningrad, Terra Baltika, 2009, 352 p.
2. Langenfel'd M. Protsess pereimenovanii v Kaliningradskoi oblasti, Kaliningradskie arkhivy: materialy i issledovaniya : sb. nauch. st. , otv. red. V. N. Maslov, Kaliningrad, Izd-vo BFU im. I. Kanta, 2011, vol. 9, pp. 158‑171.
3. Maslov V. N. Sovetskaya akademicheskaya nauka i formirovanie istoricheskoi pamyati pri pereimenovanii naselennykh punktov Kaliningradskoi oblasti, Istoricheskaya ekspertiza, 2016, no. 3, pp. 100‑107.
4. Nikitchenkova A. Yu. Narodnaya etimologiya v sovremennom kul'turnom kontekste, Rodnaya slovesnost' v sovremennom kul'turnom i obrazovatel'nom prostranstve: sb. nauch. tr., red. E. G. Milyugina, Tver', Tver. gos. un-t, 2016, vol. 6 (12), pp. 68‑72.
For citation
Peteshova O.V. Allusion as Adjustment Method of Toponyms in Renaming regional geographic Areas, Gumanitarno-pedagogicheskie issledovaniya [Humanitarian and pedagogical Research], 2018, vol. 2, no 3, pp. 67‑70.