Extralinguistic factors of city renaming in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic

Abstract

The article is devoted to extralinguistic factors that contribute to the renaming of cities in one of the North Caucasian regions of Russia. The study of toponymy, in particular, the oikonyms of a certain territory, is of great importance for the study of the history, ethnogra­phy, and culture of the people living in this territory. The purpose of this work is to identify the original names of settlements and study new names of cities, which will contribute to a more fruitful study of socio-historical processes and lexical-semantic transformations in the language of the inhabitants of these settlements. This is especially true for studying the histo­ry of such new-written languages ​​as the Adyghe (Circassian) languages, in the absence of written monuments (Adygs — endonym, Circassians — exonym). The results of the study have led to the conclusion that cities in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic are the least protected from renaming for ideological and political reasons, rather than rural settlements.

Keywords

• oikonyms
• astionims
• adyghe languages
• kabardino-circassian language
• toponymy
• history of the language