Toponymy: the study of place names in political geography

Toponymy: the study of place names in political geography

Données clés

Professeur(s)	Frédéric Giraut
Cours	Introduction to geography: from local to global

Lectures

• Geography: from local to global
• South Africa: Geography in Power
• City and Urbanization
• Regionalization or the art of cutting
• The border: a fetish object of political geography, fluctuating forms and effects
• Centre - periphery relations in geography
• Toponymy: the study of place names in political geography

Toponymy (from the Greek tópos, τόπος, place and ónoma, ὄνομα, name) is the study of place names. It is not a central object in geography. How what may seem anecdotal can reveal fundamental issues in geography, political geography and culture.

Languages

English

Definition and classical uses in geography

Definition

Toponymy refers to place names; it is a discipline devoted to the study of proper names. It is part of onomastics, which is part of linguistics.

Toponymy also refers to an activity that is that of naming, that is, the activity of assigning a name to a place. It is both a study and a practice.

Experts should ensure that naming does not pose problems in terms of spatial orientation and location, which is also the primary function of toponymy, which is to locate a place in space.

There are proposals that may be linked to political issues. It is interested in the proposals and attributions of a number of place names.

Classical Uses in Geography

Among the classical uses, there is the attempt to reconstitute successive strata of settlement that are inscribed in the toponymic landscape that allows to reconstitute the spatial archaeologist.

Many studies are interested in toponymy to identify changes in natural environments, it serves as a retrospective marker to identify natural environments at a given period that can identify the environment and landscape.

It is also the study of new place names and related political issues.

Geopolitical and memory issues

There can be significant tensions around the naming exercise which can reveal positions around politics and geography. There are contexts where the issues are major, they are geopolitical and memorable issues.

At the international level

In the heart of Europe, but in a tense geopolitical context, in the former Yugoslavia, a large proportion of the Yugoslav provinces obtained their independence either in tragic conflicts or in the context of major tensions which did not lead to wars.

This is particularly the case in the former Yugoslav province of Macedonia, which is located in northern Greece and southern Bulgaria. It was a Yugoslav province which would refer to the historical Macedonian identity, but this historical Macedonia which does not only concern this former Yugoslav province of Macedonia. It concerns a large part of Greece and Bulgaria.

When the former Macedonian province claimed and obtained independence, it did so with a denotation that refers to Macedonia. Faced with this demand, there has been a very strong mobilization on the part of Greece to oppose this denomination as the Republic of Macedonia.

On the one hand, Greece has officially protested, particularly in the European media. The argument is that this is unacceptable insofar as it will introduce confusion and lead to a State's desire to give itself a name that refers to a space and a history that also concerns neighbouring States.

On the one hand, the challenge was to avoid, in the long term, an annexionist and imperialist temptation in the name of Macedonian history to demand a change of borders to encompass part of historical Macedonia.

What Greece feared was the demand from the Greek side referring to Macedonia for greater autonomy and support from the neighbouring country. There are real geopolitical issues that have to do with neighbours and regional autonomy.

Greece has gone far enough in its fight against this new name by using its membership of the European Union and NATO against Macedonia's accession to these two institutions.

The African continent experienced a very significant decolonization movement from the very late 1950s to the 1970s. The majority of decolonizations took place from the end of the 1950s and especially in the early 1960s with the independence of most African States.

There were names inherited from the colonial period, a number of colonies had been given names by the colonial powers. The New Independent States opted for a name change that broke with their colonial history.

The stakes were on the one hand to appropriate the national name and to distance oneself from the colonial heritage; but it is also the means to legitimize the new power vis-à-vis pre-colonial historical entities, it had gone to draw from the toponymic heritage, but can refer to an ancient history that may exist even before colonization.

The Gold Coast was the gold coast, it was a resource that the European powers came for. This name refers directly to this colonial project. Present-day Ghana sought a name that had a historical thickness. Within the territory of the Gold Coast existed an ancient pre-colonial kingdom that even fought British colonial power, it was the Ashanti kingdom that existed before colonization and opposed the British that was eventually completely destroyed by colonial power. The new authorities could have used this reference, however this name would refer only to an ethnic group on the Gold Coast.

The authorities went looking among the important pre-colonial entities and found Ghana. The problem is that the Ghana Empire was not centred on the current territory, but more on the current territory of Mali. A positive name has been drawn from the toponymic heritage, but it does not refer exactly to the space of the current Gold Coast.

Benin was a pre-colonial kingdom that did not compromise with the colonists and especially during the phase of drainage of people and wealth on the contrary, Dahomey got rid of its pre-colonial reference that recalled its compromise with the colonists to take the name of Benin.

Benin has served as a reference for many political entities in East Africa. Benin was, however, a kingdom that extended over present-day Benin, Nigeria and Togo. This explains why the University of Lomé is also called the University of Benin; on the other hand, in the Nigerian federation, there is a state called Benin.

These examples show how name change in the particular context of decolonization is linked to important political, historical and cultural issues. Concerning Southern Rhodesia and Upper Volta are references to African heritage, but of a different nature. Zimbabwe refers to a pre-colonial political entity, specifically a political capital. It is therefore a country that took the name of a political capital that had jurisdiction over a significant part of southern Africa.

Upper Volta is an original composition. Burkina Faso means "the country of honest men". This corresponds to the image that Burkina Faso wanted to give after a coup against a compromised regime. Burkina Faso wanted to be a country that fought against compromise and corruption. On the other hand, the word "Burkina Faso" is a combination of the two national languages of Burkina Faso, namely Mooré and Dioula. The name of the citizens of Burkina Faso is Burkinabe, this suffix comes from the third language of Burkina Faso which is Fulfulde the language of the Fulani. It is a creation that aims to celebrate the new motto of the country and to celebrate the African heritage that makes up this national entity.

At the intranational level

In South Africa, the issue of toponymy has been a political issue for some time. South Africa is made up of many communities that have extremely different histories and who each have had or have good reasons to appropriate a certain number of localities or to try to impose their own referents in the landscape via toponymy. The communities of European origin benefited from the colonial and apartheid period to impose their references, this did not prevent a conflict between the two communities of European origin with on the one hand the British and on the other hand the British. Each one had its own references and each tried to impose names that refer to its heritage. During the apartheid period, the Afrikaner vision had the upper hand, tolerated British denominations of origin, but tried to impose its own. Since the end of apartheid, there has been a willingness on the part of communities of African origin and central power to eliminate a number of references that refer to the apartheid period and on the other hand to rebalance cultural references in the toponymic heritage, the idea is to highlight the history of African communities.

Dans Kwazulu-Natal a town named New Castle exists, it is a mining town created by the British, but which lies on the borders of the former Zululand with a population overwhelmingly Zulu. However, the name refers to the colonial origin of the locality. By its name, it is part of a worldwide network of cities with the same name. A number of cities that bear the name New Castle in English and other languages have come together to create an international network on name sharing that has the same meaning. What is interesting is to see how this South African city finds itself in this network of globalized localities and which has nothing to do with its local anchorage which is zulu. It is an element that makes it possible to cultivate a worldwide network and to leave the national inking system. We have a place that refers to realities shared throughout the world. However the origin of the name of this city is only a reference to its eponym in the United Kingdom.

If we change scale, we can look at the names of regional and provincial entities. Under Great Apartheid, South Africa was divided regionally into two types of entities: white provinces in the racial apartheid system and Bantustans reserved for people of African origin.  The Bantustans were all given names linked to the populations they were supposed to represent and for which a nationality had been attributed according to their ethnic origins.

There is a regional toponymy at the provincial level under Great Apartheid that is extremely composite. The new breakdown leads to a set of denominations which for some are relatively neutral. All the memoirs remain, but the colonial references that call for a certain consensualism have been eliminated.

The long-term toponymic question in South Africa focuses on two essential themes: multilingualism and the symbolic and memorable marking of the territory. Language and memory issues overlap when they are mobilized jointly by a community. We postulate here that with toponymic choices, beyond the issues of pre-eminence and recognition of cultures and histories, what is at stake is also the question of the hierarchy and autonomy of places from the local to the international scale. Hierarchy of places which is not foreign either to intercommunity relations in their various toponymic aspects.

Une grille de lecture des contextes et des enjeux

On peut développer une grille de lecture afin de tenter de lire les enjeux toponymiques et géopolitiques.

Les contextes

On peut identifier un certain nombre de contextes géopolitiques :

• contexte de révolution: c’est lorsqu’il y a changement radical de contexte politique comme dans le cas de la chute de l’empire soviétique avec l’abandon de la dénomination Leningrad et le retour à la dénomination Saint-Pétersbourg. Cela renvoie à la chute ou au déclin d’un empire.
• contexte de la colonisation et de la conquête: c’est un contexte

propice de nouvelles attributions de noms à des entités géographiques

• contexte de création de nouveaux territoires : on appelle aussi ce contexte le nouveau régional qui fait référence à la création de nouvelles entités territoriales avec la création de nouvelles villes, de nouvelles municipalités sur la base de fusion de commune, la création districts pour favoriser la décentralisation.
• contexte de marchandisation des lieux : un certain nombre de lieux, mais aussi des espaces qui peuvent faire l’objet d’une promotion notamment via le sponsoring.

Les objectifs

Ces objectifs peuvent être de cinq types :

1. Épuration : se débarrasser de dénominations qui ne correspondent pas

au contexte contemporain dont on veut se débarrasser. C’est la suppression de noms comme Leningrad et le retour à Saint-Pétersbourg, on élimine certaines références ;

1. Restauration : restauration d’un ordre politique et identitaire, réhabilitation d’anciens référentiels ;
2. Fondation d’un nouveau référentiel d’une nouvelle mémoire ou d’une nouvelle idéologie : instauration d’un nouvel ordre politique identitaire et d’une nouvelle mémoire, c’est, par exemple, se débarrasser de la référence à l’ancien régime et fonder la nouvelle idéologie basée sur la référence du premier leader soviétique qui est Lénine ;
3. Construction d’un paysage qui inclut la toponymie : nommer les lieux du quotidien afin de créer un paysage correspondant à des références qui peuvent être politiques, culturelles ou marchandes ;
4. Promotion : faire en sorte qu’un lieu soit doté d’une dénomination qui lui permette de se positionner positionnement sur un marché et notamment sur le marché international. Le marketing territorial pousse généralement vers la promotion d’une ressource ou d’une fonctionnalité spécifique prête à être valorisées dans les dynamiques de la mondialisation.

On a des contextes et des objectifs qui peuvent être associés. Si on croise ces objectifs avec ces contextes, on a la grille des situations :

La diversité des situations toponymiques et leur hybridité fréquente renvoient cependant à des logiques d’ensemble, que les contributions à ce dossier thématique permettent d’explorer. D’emblée, des cas types peuvent être identifiés, qui se réfèrent à des situations historiques, des projets géopolitiques et des productions toponymiques. Révolution et éradication, restitution et restauration, révélation et construction pourraient ainsi être les trois modalités principales du processus toponymique.

• Révolution et éradication : les processus révolutionnaires s’accompagnent de la mise en place d’un nouvel ordre territorial, qui éradique le précédent. Pour appliquer le projet révolutionnaire, ce nouvel ordre érige un cadre radicalement nouveau. Cette logique de rupture, de contrôle et d’action produit une néotoponymie qui évite toute référence aux pouvoirs antérieurs, mais valorise l’appartenance à un ensemble national. La recomposition territoriale correspondante peut se réapproprier les modalités voire les buts du pouvoir central précédent (construction nationale en particulier), mais évite de reproduire des configurations spatiales de pouvoirs locaux et régionaux.

Le cas de la France révolutionnaire incarne le type idéal de ce processus toponymique. L’abolition des provinces d’Ancien Régime et la création des départements offrent un cadre d’action idéal au pouvoir central (Ozouf-Marignier, 1989). Le choix d’une toponymie départementale « neutre » emprunté à l’orographie et à l’hydrographie ou à la position dans l’ensemble national constitue une des modalités de la rupture. Chaque département ne prend son sens que dans le territoire national.

• Restitution et restauration : les évolutions politiques de longue durée, dans des pays d’ancienne colonisation de peuplement, font apparaître une nouvelle modalité du processus toponymique. Dans des régimes démocratiques confrontés au multiculturalisme et au plurilinguisme, les revendications identitaires, dont celles des peuples premiers et des minorités régionales, proposent des toponymies alternatives, des allonymies autochtones, qui peuvent être officialisées. La reconnaissance du multilinguisme participe de ce processus. Dans le contexte postcolonial, le groupe dominant restitue aux groupes dominés une partie de leurs droits, ce qui permet une restauration – le plus souvent partielle – de la toponymie précoloniale. Le principe de restitution n’est cependant pas nouveau puisque Dumont d’Urville s’employa dès la première moitié du XXème siècle à restituer un nom autochtone aux îles du Pacifique qui avaient reçu « des noms provisoires imposés par le premier qui visita ces îles ». Il s’agissait là au moins autant d’effacer les traces du passage d’un navigateur anglais que de respecter la culture locale des îles habitées (Blais, 2001).

Le Canada présente le cas le plus achevé, mais aussi le plus complexe, dans la mesure où l’instauration de régions autonomes inuit s’effectue dans un contexte national de multilinguisme et de multiculturalisme (Rayburn, 1994 ; Collignon, 1996). Les équilibres entre communautés y passent par une attention particulière aux questions linguistiques et de dénomination. La succession chronologique des peuplements et leur diversité interne a conduit à une complexe stratification : peuples premiers (Amérindiens et Inuit), colonisateurs (Français et Anglais), migrations internationales actuelles des pays du Sud, diasporas asiatiques, composent une marqueterie territoriale. Du quartier urbain aux régions autonomes, la toponymie marque ces territoires dans un environnement où dominent les références anglaises ou françaises et où toute redistribution menace l’équilibre politique entre communautés dominantes.

• Révélation et construction : l’affirmation des territoires du développement local, régional et métropolitain s’effectue dans le cadre des décentralisations et dévolutions sur fond de mondialisation (Antheaume, Giraut, 2005). De nouvelles entités territoriales apparaissent là où le niveau municipal est lacunaire, ou accompagnent l’intercommunalité, la régionalisation, y compris transnationale en Europe, et la mise en place de gouvernements métropolitains. Là encore, le champ urbain dans ses nouvelles extensions et ses nouvelles configurations est particulièrement concerné par le phénomène (Rivière d’Arc, 2001). Différents acteurs, armés de leurs représentations, s’investissent dans les choix territoriaux complexes qu’impliquent ces créations. D’éventuelles controverses émergent autour du gabarit, des limites, du centre et de la dénomination des nouvelles entités. L’enjeu toponymique se situe alors dans l’affirmation ou non d’un référent géographique et/ou identitaire dominant.