Competing place names

Abstract

The ongoing Argentinian claim of sovereignty over the Falklands has impacted its toponymy by assigning the archipelago, and places within it, different names than those used on the Islands. Place naming phenomena like this one have not received much attention. To our knowledge, there is no prior research either on place naming in the Falklands within the framework of critical toponomatics or on ethnography regarding Islanders’ language attitudes. This is a preliminary attempt to do so, by looking into the Spanish place names used in Argentinian maps but not in local ones. In our analysis, we further resort to in situ interviews, participant observation, and social media data. Our analysis suggests that these Argentinian toponyms receive neither official nor societal approval by Islanders. We conclude that Argentinian Spanish names became a point of contention because of the political conflict, leading to a linguistic conflict scenario.