AUREA MEDIOCRITAS: HEROES AND FAKE HEROES/ANTIHEROES IN ROMANIAN HODONYMY

Abstract

Specialised literature has shown that, regardless of geographical space and historical era, authorities have sought to honour heroes and grant them “immortality” by giving their names to various roadways: streets, boulevards, squares. From a socio- and psycholinguistic viewpoint, there is the issue of associating positive or negative values with the given figures depending on the political regime. Those who are seen as heroes at one point in time can be considered war criminals at a different moment in history. Similarly, the heroes of a certain nation can be the sworn enemies of a neighbouring people. Therefore, a theory of values needs to be advanced, a balance in judgement that should be above the circumstantial interests of those in power. This study analyses Romanian hodonymy from the aforementioned perspective. Since the officialization of street nomenclature, Romanian hodonyms have been subjected to several processes of street-name changes, determined by the unification of the country, the world wars, the various stages of the institution of the communist regime, and the establishment of democracy after 1989. Names of streets and squares are eloquent markers of all the onomastic changes that have occurred in Romanian space over different historical periods.

Keywords

• hodonymy
• landscape changes
• heroes/antiheroes/fake heroes
• street names