Current Toponymic Problems (on the Materials of the two Scientific Events in 2021 in Simferopol and Moscow)

Abstract

Employees of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and members of the Toponymical Commission of the Moscow City Branch of the Russian Geographical Society took part and acted as co-organizers of two important scientific events in 2021 dedicated to the study of toponymic problems – the scientific and practical conference “Historical toponyms are our common heritage” on July 28 in Simferopol, and the Moscow Onomastic Seminar on October 7 in Moscow. These events highlighted the range of the most pressing issues related to both the functioning of geographic names and the tasks that scientists, politicians and officials face in this respect, those being the preservation of historical place names of Crimea; place names in multinational regions; the consequences of toponymic repressions; the use of well-known toponymic bases when naming other objects; the importance of microtoponymy for landscape research; the dependence of a toponym spelling on the status of a geographical object; the choice between parallel names of one settlement; the difference in connotations of the same toponyms; toponymic expeditions as a tool for solving etymological problems. On the one hand, the problems discussed determine the vector of modern place-name study development, on the other hand, they affect the adoption of successful state decisions.