Balkan motifs in Russian urbanonymy: “Romanian” and “Bulgarian” street names

Abstract

The paper discusses some names of the Russian urban space, mainly street names, referring to the ethnonyms Romanian and for comparison Bulgarian, as well as to the names of the capitals of these countries and certain geographical objects, e.g., улица Румынская ‘Romanian street’ (the city of Astrakhan), Болгарский городок ‘Bulgarian town’ (a district in the city of Novokujbyshevsk), Софийский переулок ‘Sophia lane’ (the city of Shimanovsk), shopping center “Bucharest” (Moscow). The appearance of such names in the Russian onomasticon reflects the historical relations between Russia and the mentioned Balkan peoples, their common political history in the 20th century and, in a broader sense, the ways of manifestation of multiculturalism, not related to the global westernization of modern culture.