On Sociology of Urbanonymy. Review of the book: Vlahova-Angelova, M. (2013). Ulitsite na Sofiia: kartografirane na gradskata identichnost [Streets of Sofia: Mapping the City Identity]. Sophia: IBL

Abstract

The study of city place names (urbanonyms) is generally carried out with respect to their onomasiological features, which corresponds to the applied character of such research, as it seeks to help create new urban place names which would be in harmony with the existing urbanonymic context. Another group of works on urbanonymy deals with the problem of renaming city facilities, which is often linked to deideologization of current names or to restoring the original complex of names. However, the most of researchers base their reflections exclusively on theoretical ideas, completely ignoring the users of the names in question. The book under review presents classifications of naming patterns as well as a historical survey of the major transformations of Sofia’s urbanonymy, but the main value of the book lies in the author’s attempt to remedy the above defect by a thorough sociological analysis of the inhabitants’ preferences regarding urban place names. Three correctly conducted experiments reveal the naming preferences of the main 6 groups of dwellers isolated depending on their age and time of residence in Sofia. The reviewer concludes that the highly detailed description of the experiments makes the book a useful guide for further research of inhabitants’ naming preferences.

Keywords

• Bulgarian language
• urban place names
• urbanonymy of Sofia
• sociolinguistics
• socioonomastics
• naming pattern
• classification of urbanonyms