7.1 The Relationship between Historical Toponomastics and Historical Geography

Historical toponomastics, as explained in Chapter 3, focusses on reconstructing the original and remote etymology of place names in the context of well documented languages and language families, and in the presence of available historical documentation. Historical toponomastics aims to reconstruct the original and oldest possible etymology of a place name by going back in time till the remote developmental stages of place names. To do this, the historical toponymist often has to trace back the name of a place over millennia, possibly even to prehistoric times (see Chapter 4).

In many cases, historical toponomastics requires that the scholar not only look at historical sources that record aspects of the physical landscape and hydro-geo-morphological features of the places whose names are under examination, but also at sources that describe the anthropic presence and/or the human activities conducted, over time, in the same places. As we detailed in Chapter 3, examples of such historical resources include census data, land and title deeds, birth and death registry records, newspapers, diary entries and accounts written by people living in the places under scrutiny or by travellers who had visited those places, archaeological findings, paleo-anthropological evidence, and comprehensive analyses of the landscape (cf. Chapter 6).

This multidisciplinary approach enables the scholar to ascertain if the origin and meaning of a place name is concomitant with the natural and human landscapes surrounding the toponym and with historical events. To facilitate this endeavour, maps are frequently referenced. They are one of the central components in the study of toponymy and are closely connected with related disciplines, such as cartography, topography, and geography. Maps allow us to associate and identify toponyms as parts of a group. Furthermore, through the symbols and legends on a map, hydro-geo-morphological features, types of landscapes, buildings, historical events, and even people are represented cartographically. Maps can be deemed to have their own language written with abstract symbols (the connection between toponymy and cartography will be discussed in detail in Chapter 10). This is noted by Borchert, who equates maps to being a primary language in geography.

One of the disciplines that has come to be associated with toponymy and historical toponomastics over time is historical geography. Historical geography is a subfield of human geographyFootnote ¹ and deals with past geographies, and ‘the influence of the past in shaping the geographies of the present and the future’ (Reference Heffernan, Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts and WhatmoreHeffernan, 2009, p. 332). The first mention of historical geography was made by Carl Sauer in 1941, in his seminal work ‘Foreword to historical geography’. He called for geographers to end what he described as the ‘neglect of historical geography’ (Reference SauerSauer, 1941, p. 1). His work was based on the speech he gave at the Association of American Geographers a year before, and captured the zeitgeist of American geography at that time; American geographers, then, as Sauer noted, were disinterested in and even shunned the study of historical processes and sequences. Sauer called for human geography, an area that had received great scholarly attention in America, to include perspectives from historical geography. This is because every aspect of the human landscape (which, by implication, involves and constitutes human geography) is affected by the historical concept of change over time. Hence, Sauer believed that the study of historical processes should also be taken up by human geographers. Furthermore, an understanding of mankind and culture can only be possible when the geographer studies human activities and how people came to occupy their respective areas. These aspects imply a historical analysis indispensable to understanding how people became what they are in the present day. Sauer argues the following.

Another simple but ideal definition of historical geography was given by Reference Guelke, Baker and BillingeGuelke (1982).

Historical geography, therefore, combines an understanding of the physical landscape and, by extension, its physical geography, along with concepts belonging to the sphere of the human psyche and with an analysis of how humans organise knowledge and their activities, all of which change over time, with a specific focus on how these impact the human environment and, thus, the whole understanding of what is considered to be human geography.

Initially, historical geography focussed on regional (especially rural) settlements and landscapes (Reference Golan, Kitchin and ThriftGolan, 2009; Reference Heffernan, Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts and WhatmoreHeffernan, 2009), much like landscape archaeology. Subsequently, the 1950s and 1960s brought about a change in geography in general, and the discipline began to focus more on contemporary geographies, with an emphasis on urban areas (Reference Golan, Kitchin and ThriftGolan, 2009). This shift was observed in historical geography too. Historical geography thus turned its attention to the relatively recent past and to urban settlements, partly due to the availability of empirical research materials (Reference JonesJones, 2004). However, this modern-day disciplinary locus, as witnessed in historical geography, does not mean that the field cannot study older and more ‘ancient’ spaces, places, and time periods. Alan Baker, the former editor of the Journal of Historical Geography, noted that ‘the study of no problem, period or place in the past was to be prohibited’ in the application of approaches of historical geography (Reference BakerBaker, 1987, p. 1).

Hence, both historical toponomastics and historical geography deal, in their different settings, with the past. The two disciplines approach the place under study using available written records, for example, maps of the past, and other historical sources. In historical geography, the approach to the study of places from the past is usually informed by historical evidence obtained from archival sources, with the objective of investigating the settlements and land uses of a civilisation/society that occupies or previously occupied a specific area. As Sauer put it, ‘the first step in reconstruction of past stages of a culture area is mastery of its written documents’ (Reference SauerSauer, 1941, p. 13). Some of these sources, which Sauer listed as constituting the ‘archives’ in historical geography (Reference SauerSauer, 1941, p. 13), can be very useful to a historical toponymist. They include land grants, land titles, assessments, and records of the productions of goods (all of which provide insights on what the pioneer landscape looked like), diaries, reports made by visiting officials on the condition of a country (especially in colonial contexts), payments of taxes and tributes, data on mines, salt production, and the status of roads. These sources allow researchers to discover and assess details on the economic life of the settlements under examination. Human geography investigates how humans have shaped their physical environments, and Sauer urged the scholars to adopt a comparative approach that should involve both historical and modern sources, in order to understand the nature and direction of changes that have occurred in a place.

Naming the places where humans live reflects how people interact with, perceive, use, understand, and change their environment. This arguably makes the toponymist analyse a place name through the lens of human geography. The study of human settlements and of the anthropisation of a place based on historical and cartographical sources, as in the case of historical geography, can also provide valuable insights into the changes and developments in local toponymy, as mentioned in this introductory section. The examples in this chapter will show precisely how the application of historical geography criteria facilitates an understanding of not just historical toponomastics and the toponyms belonging to its context, but also of modern and contemporary place names, especially from urban areas.

7.2 The Case Study of Bistagno

Bistagno (Bistàgn, in the local Piedmontese dialect), a village located in Piedmont, northwest Italy, in the province of Alessandria (see Figure 7.1), is an example of how a toponym belonging to the context of the well documented Indo-European language family has been investigated using archival and historical sources by various scholars to explain its origins.

Figure 7.1 Location of Bistagno

(adapted from d-maps, 2021)

The village is located near the confluence of the two branches of the Bormida River, La Bormida di Spigno and La Bormida di Millesimo. Spigno Monferrato and Millesimo are two villages which give their names to the two segments of the watercourse. This position made it a very favourable place for human settlement already in remote times. The hydronym Bormida (derived from the root *borm-, meaning ‘warm’, or ‘hot’, or ‘hot water’, or ‘warm water’) probably has Pre-Indo-European origins, and a number of places situated along the Bormida River are very ancient (prehistoric) settlements (cf. Chapter 4).

According to historical records, the village of Bistagno, in its current location, was founded only in 1253, during the Italian Middle Ages. It is said that, in the Middle Ages, possibly around the ninth or tenth century, the Bistagno (known as Bestagno/Bestagnum in Late Latin) predating the current inhabited centre (but way later than the possibly original prehistoric settlement situated on the Bormida River) was originally ubicated on a hill facing another village, Melazzo (known as Melacio/Melacium in Late Latin). Because the two villages were always at war with each other, the bishop of Acqui Terme, the neighbouring town with political and religious authority over these villages, sent his soldiers to stop the conflict. In 1253, after the attempts to stop the war failed, the bishop decided to forcibly remove the people of Bistagno to a new place further along the valley, on the Bormida River. This is how the current Bistagno was born. The bishop did not move the inhabitants of Melazzo, because Melazzo was the place where Saint Guido d’Aquesana, the first bishop of Acqui Terme, was born. A contemporary hamlet of the current Bistagno, called Roncogennaro, is still located on a steep hill in the area and possibly represents a fragment of the original settlement of Bistagno, or a place where some of the people who refused to be relocated to the new Bistagno founded a new village. Contextually, evidence to substantiate the existence of an older Bistagno village can be found in the subdivision of the present Bistagno called Cartesio, precisely in the so-called Villa del Podestà’s area. This is where, currently, there is a country house that in the Fascist era belonged to Bistagno’s Podestà, a mayor of a municipality during the Fascist era (1922–43) in Italy. On the hill where this villa is located, a number of prehistoric archaeological and paleo-anthropological findings have been unearthed, indicating that the place was possibly inhabited already in the Upper Palaeolithic and certainly in the Neolithic. This locality may be a possible candidate for the site of the medieval Bistagno before the deportation of its inhabitants along the course of the Bormida River. Another corroborating fact is that the hill of the Villa del Podestà is located almost in front of the hill where Melazzo is situated and geographically is more compatible with the dynamics of the rivalry between the two villages than Roncogennaro, located on another, relatively more distant, hill. As mentioned, indeed, Roncogennaro was possibly the result of a later migration of people from the ‘deported’ village on the river, or it may simply have been a more ancient settlement than the ‘deported’ village. Independently from the medieval origins of the inhabited centre, the Villa del Podestà’s site allows us to theorise the possibility that a prehistoric settlement of Bistagno was located on the Bormida River. It was placed there most likely to use the water of the river itself, and another possibly connected settlement was located on the hill of the current villa, which is a protected and less accessible place than the riverbank. It is possible that the prehistoric communities on the river and on the hill were not differentiated, but that they were the same community (sharing the same prehistoric culture), living on the river because of the need of water and, at times, living and/or retreating to the hill for defensive purposes.

Evidence from historical geography, landscape archaeology, and paleo-anthropology shows the presence of prehistoric (Neolithic and, in some cases, also dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic) settlements on the nearby hills (Reference CollaColla, 1982). These settlements, dating back to the Stone Age, have been documented along the entire course of the Bormida River (Reference Perono CacciafocoPerono Cacciafoco, 2011) and in the area around Bistagno. Hence, an explanation of the place name Bistagno could have its basis in the fact that the village (or a related human settlement) plausibly already existed in the area during prehistoric times. A possible explanation, as suggested above, may be that the original Bistagno could have been located at a different place from the current village (but relatively close to it), corresponding to one of the prehistoric settlements on the watercourse, and that the village itself, because of anthropic dynamics, would have been ‘moved’ to its present location.

Possible interpretations and explanations of the place name are relatively numerous, and several other scholars have written about the origins and original meanings of Bistagno as a toponym (Reference Perono CacciafocoPerono Cacciafoco, 2016a; Reference Perono Cacciafoco2016b). According to Reference BosioBosio (1972), the name derives from the confluence of the two branches of the Bormida River. The scholar proposed an interpretation of the toponym which implies the segmentation of the Italian version of the name into *bi- and *-stagno (*bi- + *-stagno), giving it the gloss of ‘double pond’ (bi[s] means ‘double’, and stagno is the Italian word for ‘pond’). However, a closer look at the geographical morphology of the territory shows us that La Bormida di Spigno and La Bormida di Millesimo, the two branches of the Bormida River, join at about one kilometre from where Bistagno is presently ubicated. We can also see that the confluence of the two segments is not actually located in the administrative area of Bistagno’s municipality, but in the nearby territory of Sessame, precisely in a hamlet called Gringàvoli. Reference BosioBosio (1972) used written records and contemporary maps to account for the name of Bistagno, and, in a way, it seemed plausible to link it to the convergence of the two branches of the Bormida River and, hence, to hypothesise the name of ‘double pond’. Yet, this explanation is flawed, because it is based only on the Italian stage of the name of the village without taking into account the diachronic ‘stratigraphy’ of the name itself, through its possible Indo-European, Celtic, and Latin developmental stages. Moreover, this reconstruction does not consider the hydro-geo-morphological data, in particular the fact that the union of the two branches of the Bormida River does not actually occur in Bistagno’s area, but in the territory of the neighbouring village of Sessame.

According to Reference OlivieriOlivieri (1965), the name ‘bistagno was a common topographic term found in written records already in Antiquity’. He explained that Bistagno is a variant of the Italian word stagno (‘pond’), with the addition of a bis- prefix. This prefix is not intended to carry the meaning of ‘double’, as Reference BosioBosio (1972) proposed, or the Italian seme of ‘again’, as in, for example, bisnonno ‘great-grandfather’, but it functions as a pejorative or negative marker (Reference RohlfsRohlfs, 1969). Bis-, combined with the word stagno ‘pond’, could have the composite meaning of a ‘marshy land’, with a negative semantic value. Reference OlivieriOlivieri’s (1965) reconstruction of the toponym as ‘swampy place’ or ‘marshy land’ was achieved through an analysis of historical and physical-geographical data inherent in the area. His study of written records revealed that, in the past, the confluence of the two branches of the Bormida River did result in the development of marshy lands around Bistagno. This would, therefore, link the physical landscape consisting of swampy soils to the name, Bistagno, and would also explain the negative connotation associated with it, as swamps and mud-filled places would have represented very salient and dangerous areas to the ancient inhabitants of the territory.

Despite its plausibility, this explanation also has several flaws, both at the linguistic and historical-geographical level. Reference Perono CacciafocoPerono Cacciafoco (2016a; Reference Perono Cacciafoco2016b) noted that this account, like Bosio’s reconstruction, is based on Italian terms and their meanings. Therefore, it does not take into account historical records and the archaeological and paleo-anthropological evidence that point to Bistagno as a place being inhabited from prehistoric times. Moreover, this proposal does not consider the possible different stages of Bistagno’s naming process, from Indo-European, to Celtic, to Latin, and ultimately to Italian. Indeed, it does not even account for the Latin and pre-Latin developmental stages of the toponym. In other words, the remote naming process of the place name is something that Olivieri, as well as a number of other scholars, did not explore, while it must always be necessarily the central aim of a historical-toponomastic study. The end result is that there is currently no unanimous etymological reconstruction of the toponym Bistagno.

There seems to be some agreement on the fact that this place name may be linked to the notion of ‘water’, with a possible pejorative connotation, compatible with the above-mentioned concept of ‘swampy land’. The reconstruction of the place name Bistagno, therefore, could be connected with the Indo-European root *ang-/*-agn-, meaning ‘water’. Reference OlivieriOlivieri (1965, p. 93), in his dictionary of Piedmontese toponyms, pointed out the relatively high frequency of place names similar to Bistagno in northwest Italy. Based on his studies of the related settlements and of the connected landscape features, these names appear especially linked to places characterised by marshy soils. Some of the toponyms cited by Olivieri are Bestagnum, on the Orta Lake (Piedmont, northwest Italy, in the province of Novara), Bestagno, a hamlet of the Pontedassio municipality (Liguria, northwest Italy, in the province of Imperia), and Bestagnu, a hamlet of the Pigna municipality (Liguria, northwest Italy, in the province of Imperia). Another scholar, Reference PellegriniPellegrini (1990), cited the similarly named Bestagno, in the Sospel municipality (southeast France, Alpes-Maritimes, near the French–Italian border). To this list, we can add another ‘water name’, morphologically very similar to Bistagno. That is, the hydronym Bisagno (in the local Ligurian dialect, Besagno), a stream from Liguria, northwest Italy, that flows through the city of Genoa, the administrative centre of the region. These toponyms are also interesting because they all include -agn- as part of their names. This could indicate the possible existence of a toponymic system characterised by a shared root (or prefix, *bis- or *bes-) merged with the stem *agn-, producing a toponymic naming process connected with the notion of ‘marshy soil’. At face value, the (Proto-)Indo-European root *agn- is possibly shared by Bistagno and the other hydronyms and place names listed above.

All of these places are located in areas with evidence of being populated since the Upper Palaeolithic age. We can conclude, then, that *agn- may have been an important stem in the prehistoric toponymic naming process of a (relatively large) territory. That is, the place names that share the root *agn- could be part of a well-established prehistoric toponymic type that was developed at least during Indo-European times. This type is linked to the notion of ‘water’, in particular to the concept of the ‘flowing water’ of a watercourse. It is therefore possible to hypothesise that these place names christened the specific segments of the river where the original villages were situated (although why Bistagno was relocated along the Bormida River warrants further investigation) and then the toponyms became the names of the villages themselves. That is, the hydronimic denomination of a stretch of a river would have become the toponymic denomination of an inhabited centre located along that stretch of the watercourse. Therefore, it is possible that the original name of Bistagno was the prehistoric name of a specific segment of the Bormida River, along which the original (prehistoric) village was situated.

To corroborate the *agn- hypothesis for the above-mentioned place names, it is useful to highlight the fact that a reconstruction connected with the root *agn-/*ang- ‘water’, or ‘flowing water’ can also be applied to the hydronym Agno, a mountain stream flowing in northeast Italy, in the Vincenza province. This hydronym represents a linguistic continuation of the use of the root *agn- in Romance toponymy/hydronymy. The related Latin form amnis ‘river’ was not widely continued in Romance languages at the level of common lexicon, while the hydronym Agno clearly describes the notion of ‘water’ (the ‘flowing water’ of a stream) and we can consider it as part of the set of place names belonging to the toponymic type connected with the root *agn.

Assuming the plausibility and presence, in this toponymic context, of the root *ang-/*-agn- ‘water’, the ‘possible’ segmentations are as outlined below.

With solution 1, the challenge we face is how to explain the consonants ‘s’ and ‘t’. A possible solution brings us back to the issue we described in trying to come up with a plausible etymology of Squaneto and Spigno in Chapter 3. The ‘cutting’ of a root consonant (or of a consonantal cluster in the stem), like in the examples of *s-ak^wa- and *s-p-agn- (Chapter 3), and here of *bi-s- or *bi-s-t-, together with the interpretation of the *s- as a ‘(possible) euphonic/juxtaposed consonant’, do allow the postulation of plausible roots, such as *ak^w(a)- and *agn-/*ang-, respectively, which are consistent with the hydro-geo-morphology of the territories and with the ‘nature’ of the places. However, this is still an unproven and controversial etymology, highly experimental and in need of additional evidence and discussion. This does not mean that it is intrinsically ‘wrong’, and its postulation can help to shed light on the origins of the related place name(s). Solution 2 solves this problem somewhat better, also because *bis- ‘double’, or ‘bad’, as mentioned above, has consensus among scholars.

However, as a general and necessary rule, we should always try to provide a standard historical-phonetic reconstruction, like we did in Squaneto’s case (see especially footnotes 1 and 2 in Chapter 3), compare the two options (segmented vs. historical-phonetic), and ‘decide’ which one is more likely and acceptable, always in connection with the nature of the landscape of the places. In Spigno’s case (see the discussion in Chapter 3), a (simple) historical-phonetic reconstruction does not seem to provide convincing clues of its origin. In fact, it reinforces the widespread paretymology connecting the toponym with the Indo-European paretymological referents spina and spineus. As we said in Chapter 3, nonetheless, this reconstruction is another example of the challenges facing us when searching for the perfect etymological reconstruction. In particular, proposing the existence of ‘juxtaposed (root) consonants’ is still the subject of heated debate.

It is worth mentioning here that in prehistoric toponymy, more or less all the reconstructions (even if well documented and based on solid methods) belong to the context of what is hypothetical and, therefore, different methodologies (traditional and experimental) should never be seen as if they were in competition or developed against each other, but can sometimes, even when combined, allow the researchers to collect evidence of the development of very ancient naming processes, even if such kinds of postulations could never be confirmed or proven. After all, the duty of a historical linguist dealing with prehistoric etymologies is not to propose an absolutely true and irrefutable reconstruction (which is almost impossible for etymologies dating back to extremely remote times), but to provide all the possible and reasonable reconstructions for a lexeme in order to explore, assess, and document the full range of options and alternatives for a correct and comprehensive restitution of a form.

In order to explore a more standard approach to this toponymic reconstruction, it is worth mentioning another hypothesis here, on the etymological origins of Bistagno that Reference Perono CacciafocoPerono Cacciafoco (2016b, pp. 64–5) developed through the application of the comparative method and by reconstructing the historical phonetics and phonology of the place name according to a standard procedure. This complementary proposal is semantically unlinked to the ‘water place’ nature of the village, but could still be connected with the segment of the Bormida River where the village was located and, therefore, to the related inhabited centre.

The alternative hypothesis proposes that the toponym Bistagno could derive from an Indo-European (then Celtic) form *bĭst-ăgnŏ-s (noun) ‘little pheasant’ (or ‘little bird similar to a pheasant’), which would have generated, among others, the attested Old Irish word ¹besān ‘pheasant’. A related reconstructed adjective is *bĭst-ăgn-i̯ŏ-n ‘something linked to the pheasant(s)’, or ‘territory of the pheasant(s)’. In this case, the -ăgnŏ(-) component would not derive from or be connected with the Proto-Indo-European root *agn-, but would be a (later) Celtic diminutive suffix. This alternative (proto-)Celtic etymological restitution seems to be a possible and plausible etymological alternative. Nonetheless, the ‘water’ component in toponyms like Bistagno appears to be very strong still and, while a historical-geographical analysis also has to consider the paleo-zoology (in this case the paleo-ornithology) of a territory, it is very difficult to reconstruct the elements of the ancient fauna of a prehistoric area and to gather enough evidence to link the existence of a particular animal, in this case a bird, to ancient lexemes. This alternative reconstruction in itself does not exclude the fact that if ‘pheasants’ were indeed the original motivation for the toponym, Bistagno could have been the name given to the segment of the Bormida River where this specific species of birds was possibly common at the time of the related naming process. In that case, Bistagno would not have meant ‘water place’, but something like ‘village/place of the pheasant(s)’. This reconstruction is a tentative option, which can surely be object of a discussion. It could work, nevertheless, at the level of historical phonetics and historical morphology, and it would provide another possible explanation for the naming process of the toponym.

Naming a locality after the fauna that may have been predominant there, as may be the case with the ‘pheasant’ hypothesis for the toponym Bistagno, is not uncommon. Place names indicating common species, among others wolves and bears, are found in many areas of Europe and the Northern Hemisphere in general. For example, Reference PearcePearce (1954, p. 203) reported that the word ‘bear’ (including the Spanish oso ‘bear’, and ‘grizzly’, referencing the grizzly bear) appears in about 500 place names in California, USA, for example, Bearpaw, Bearskin, and Bear Pen Creek. Reference PearcePearce (1954, pp. 203–4) also found that the next most common animal that figures in Californian place names is the horse, with toponyms such as Horse Creek, Horse Lake, and White Horse. Reference Aybes and YaldenAybes and Yalden (1995, p. 204) stated that about 230 ‘Place-names in England confirm both the widespread nature and, if numbers are to be believed, abundance of Wolves in former times. Most names derive from the Old English wulf; or from the Old Norse ulfr; Old English names date from AD450 onwards, the Old Norse names from around AD900 onwards.’

Two similar examples from places near Bistagno are represented by the names of two villages in northwest Italy, southern Piedmont, that is, Orsara Bormida, currently located in the province of Alessandria, and Serole, currently situated in the province of Asti. The territories of both places were characterised, at least until the Low Middle Ages, by the presence of bears, which were considered a dangerous threat to the inhabited centres and to the local populations. Bears were, therefore, hunted both as a defensive measure and for their fur. Nowadays, these animals are not attested in the territories anymore. Nonetheless, both place names tell us of these members of the local fauna in ancient times and of their existence in these areas until some centuries ago.

Orsara Bormida is located on a hill overlooking the course of the Bormida River. This gives rise to the specific component of its name, Bormida. The first attestation of the toponym, in the Medieval Latin form Ursaria, dates back to the year 1135 (Reference OlivieriOlivieri, 1965, p. 246). The place name is a derivative of the Latin word ursus (masculine singular) ‘bear’, with the common (masculine singular) suffix -arius, indicating a ‘place’ in general, and specifically the notion of ‘belonging to a place’ (Reference RohlfsRohlfs, 1969, § 1072). It is necessary to note that the form of the place name is feminine both in Latin and in Italian, and is therefore connected with/derived from the Latin word (feminine singular) ursa (‘she-bear’), with the common suffix -arius, in its feminine, singular form -aria. Therefore, the possible translation of the denomination is ‘territory of the bears’ and the toponym is transparently connected with the presence of bears in the area up to the Middle Ages.

Serole, in turn, is located on a steep hill around 70 kilometres southeast of Asti. The first attestation of the place name, in the Medieval Latin form Ursariola, was in the year 991, from the Charta di fondazione e donazione dell’Abbazia di San Quintino in Spigno (the ‘Founding and Donation Charta of the Saint Quentin’s Abbey in Spigno Monferrato’) (Reference BosioBosio, 1972). Orsairola was attested in the year 1170 (Reference Gasca Queirazza, Marcato, Pellegrini, Petracco Sicardi, Rossebastiano and PapaGasca Queirazza et al., 1999, s.v. Serole). The denomination (which both in Latin and in Italian is feminine singular), in all its variants, is equivalent to Orsara < Ursaria, with the implementation of the Latin diminutive suffix -(i)olus (masculine singular) (Reference RohlfsRohlfs, 1969, § 1086), in this case in its feminine singular form -(i)ola. The standard Italian name shows apheresis and the reduction in /e/ of the diphthong /ai/, produced by prolepsis of /i/ (Reference Gasca Queirazza, Marcato, Pellegrini, Petracco Sicardi, Rossebastiano and PapaGasca Queirazza et al., 1999, s.v. Serole). Like the case of Orsara Bormida, the place name means, basically, ‘territory of the bears’, with a diminutive morphological and semantic component, which would result in a more exact translation as ‘little territory of the bears’.

Toponyms that indicate the presence in their territories of specific species of animals, like Orsara Bormida and Serole, are widespread in Italy. Many places, however, have seen these animals disappear over the centuries, although they still carry their names. Other Italian examples of place names indicating the presence of bears are, among others, another Orsara, currently located in the province of Biella, in northern Piedmont; Orsiera, in Roreto Chisone’s territory, currently in Turin province; Piedmont’s administrative centre Montarsello, belonging to the Granozzo con Monticello municipality, currently in the province of Novara, northern Piedmont; and Orsara di Puglia, currently located in the province of Foggia, Puglia, southeast Italy.

In the past, there were also toponyms connected with the presence of wolves in the Italian context. An instance is provided by the place name Lupara, belonging to a small municipality currently located in the province of Campobasso, Molise, southern Italy. The village is ubicated on a hill in the Biferno Valley. The first written attestation of the denomination comes from the Catalogus Baronum (1150–68) (Reference Gasca Queirazza, Marcato, Pellegrini, Petracco Sicardi, Rossebastiano and PapaGasca Queirazza et al., 1999, s.v. Lupara), in the Medieval Latin form (accusative feminine singular) Lupariam. Exactly like the case of Orsara < Ursaria and ursus/ursa, the name is a derivative of the Latin word lupus (masculine singular) ‘wolf’, with the common (masculine singular) suffix -arius, indicating a ‘place’ in general, and specifically the notion of ‘belonging to a place’ (Reference RohlfsRohlfs, 1969, § 1072). Moreover, like in the case of Orsara < Ursaria and ursus/ursa, the form of the toponym both in Latin and in Italian is feminine, and is therefore derived from the Latin word (feminine singular) lupa ‘she-wolf’, with the common suffix -arius in agreement (feminine singular), that is, -aria. The place name, therefore, would have originally meant ‘place of the wolves’, indicating the presence of those animals in the related territory. Giovanni Alessio proposed another explanation for the toponym, one that is also connected with the wolves (Reference Gasca Queirazza, Marcato, Pellegrini, Petracco Sicardi, Rossebastiano and PapaGasca Queirazza et al., 1999, s.v. Lupara). According to the scholar, Lupara could derive from the expression luparia (fossa) ‘trap (pit) to catch wolves’, which in any case would be always etymologically linked to the notion of the animal the toponym refers to.

Another instance involving the ancient presence of wolves in a territory is represented by the place name Cantalupa, belonging to a small town located in northern Italy, Piedmont, in the province of Turin (the administrative centre of the region), in the valley of the Noce stream. The toponym is transparent in its meaning and belongs to a series of morphologically and semantically equivalent denominations characterising the territories located between France and Italy. Other Italian attestations of this toponymic type are, for example, Cantalupo Ligure (northwest Italy, southern Piedmont, in the province of Alessandria, documented from 1201 as Cantalupus), Cantalupo nel Sannio (southern Italy, Molise, in the province of Isernia, first attested between 1150 and 1168 in the Catalogus Baronum), and Cantalupo, a hamlet of the city of Alessandria (northwest Italy, southern Piedmont). French examples include, among others, Chanteloup-les-Vignes (Yvelines Department, Île-de-France, north-central France), Chanteloup-en-Brie (Seine-et-Marne Department, Île-de-France, north-central France), and Chanteloup (Ille-et-Vilaine Department, Brittany, northwest France).

Cantalupa is an imperative compound, used ironically to indicate a place where the wolves howl. Indeed, canta, in Italian, means ‘sing’ (imperative active present, second-person singular of the verb cantare ‘to sing’), while lupo (masculine singular) is ‘wolf’ (Reference OlivieriOlivieri, 1965, p. 111). The toponym is ‘ironic’ because in local folklore the wolves ‘sing’ when they are hungry, but the people are well protected within their village and, therefore, the wolves cannot reach them. It is akin to saying: ‘Sing, wolf, sing, but you cannot enter the village and eat us.’ Furthermore, in this case, the form is in its feminine singular version, lupa ‘she-wolf’. Hence, the morphology of the place name associates a verbal element with a noun, and is called ‘imperative composition’, frequent in local denominations in Romance contexts (Reference RohlfsRohlfs, 1969, § 343).

There is a debate over ‘place-name evidence for the former existence of extinct animals’ (Reference Aybes and YaldenAybes & Yalden, 1995, p. 202). Reference RackhamRackham (1986) pointed out how some place names that seem to derive from zoonyms in fact come from people’s names (e.g., Beowulf) or groups of people being labelled as such. For example, the scholar stated that ‘In Anglo-Saxon times, unpersons and men on the run were declared wulvesheafod (wolves-head) and if caught ended on a wolves-head tree’ (Reference Rackham1986, p. 34). Moreover, many places that apparently carry the names of animals actually do not refer to the presence of those animals at any time in the past in their territories (Reference GellingGelling, 1987; Reference RackhamRackham, 1986). For example, the relatively widespread toponymic-type montelupo can have two derivations; Montelupo Fiorentino, the name of a town ubicated in Florence province, Tuscany, central Italy, and which dates back to the Italian Middle Ages, derives from the zoonym lupus (Latin)/lupo (Italian) ‘wolf’, being thus monte ‘mountain’ + lupo ‘wolf’, and belongs to the set that includes the above-mentioned Lupara and the numerous Cantalupo. Montelupo Albese (the name of a small town located in Cuneo province, northwest Italy, southern Piedmont), could also be analysed as monte ‘mountain’ + lupo ‘wolf’. However, this etymology is wrong. In fact, the correct reconstruction segments the place name as monte ‘mountain’, plus the anthroponym Lupo (Italian), or Lupus (Medieval Latin) (Reference OlivieriOlivieri, 1965, p. 202). That is, the village, located on a mount, was named after a proper noun (Lupo), which, in Medieval Italian, was a common occurrence. Another interesting example is Montelupone, the denomination of a small town located in the province of Macerata, Marche, central Italy. This name could be analysed as monte ‘mountain’ + lupo ‘wolf’, in its augmentative variant lupone ‘big wolf’. However, this etymology is also wrong. The place name was first attested in the years between 1290 and 1292 as Monteluppone and Montelupone (Reference Gasca Queirazza, Marcato, Pellegrini, Petracco Sicardi, Rossebastiano and PapaGasca Queirazza et al., 1999, s.v. Montelupone). Both attestations are from the Rationes Decimarum Italiae, Marchia (Reference SellaSella, 1950), which cites, ‘a domno Iohanne de Monteluppone’ (n. 5794) ‘by lord Iohanne de Monteluppone’, and ‘ecclesie S. Michaelis de Montelupone’ (n. 5879) ‘the St Michael Church of Montelupone’. The place name Montelupone, like Montelupo Albese, derives from monte ‘mountain’ plus the above-mentioned proper noun Lupo. The ending in -ne is not to be identified as an augmentative suffix, but dates back to a Late Latin (and/or Vernacular Italian) version of the personal name Lupo (nominative singular masculine, not Lupus), Luponis (genitive singular masculine), assimilated to the Italian form Lupone, as a model of imparisyllabic inflection in -o/-one (therefore, Lup-o/Lup-one). This name was also widespread in the Italian Medieval anthroponymy.

All these examples tell us that place names can sometimes, when properly verified, be useful in providing scholars with information on the local fauna of a territory at a specific time. Reference Aybes and YaldenAybes and Yalden (1995, p. 202) said that, in the British context, a place name most likely refers to an actual animal, if that toponym is ‘traced back to an Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse form’. As an example, they show how Owlands (North Yorkshire, United Kingdom (UK)) seems to owe its name to the owls that may have once lived there. However, the authors proved that in historical documents the place was known as Ulvelundes (Old Norse ulfr ‘wolf’ and lundr ‘grove’), referencing the presence of wolves and not owls. Another example is Woodale (North Yorkshire, UK), which used to be wulf dael ‘wolf valley’.

The above discussion shows that, in a way, toponyms can have the function of supporting and/or replacing historical documents. Place names, therefore, are often able to provide us with important evidence on the local fauna of a territory at the diachronic level, unveiling the existence, in a specific area and at a specific time, of animal species which could have disappeared over centuries and millennia, or which are extinct due to a range of different reasons, for example, extensive hunting or the massive anthropisation of a territory. Nonetheless, those animals can survive in the names of the places, which tell us a story about when those creatures were emblematic and habitual presences (sometimes feared) of a territory.

To sum up, through this case study, we have been able to see how different scholars used historical records in their (sometimes not very effective or accurate) efforts to explain the place name Bistagno, albeit with varying successes. Among them, Reference BosioBosio’s (1972) reconstruction did not take into account the toponymic ‘stratigraphy’ and archaeological evidence and paleo-anthropological findings that attested the existence of prehistoric settlements along the Bormida River and around Bistagno’s territory. On the other hand, the analysis of available historical and physical-geographical records allowed us to propose and to postulate a plausible set of place names belonging to a toponymic type derived from a common root *agn-, including settlements located in proximity of ‘water’ and ‘water sources’, like the Bormida River. As we have mentioned several times in this book, ancient settlements were often named after natural resources and primary goods for humans. If we accept the ‘water’ hypothesis, the naming of Bistagno would have followed this same rationale, as Stone Age settlers would most likely have linked their dwelling to a natural, primary resource, in this case water, or, if we accept the ‘pheasant’ option, to the name of a possibly valued species of (local) bird. Hence, an accurate and plausible linguistic reconstruction of a place name must always take into account all the available historical and hydro-geo-morphological data and look for the most ancient possible origins of a toponym.

7.3 Historical Geography and Contemporary Odonymy: The Case Study of Bucharest

As we have seen in the section above, methods in historical geography and the examination of historical documents can be used to study the names of ancient settlements like Bistagno. This notwithstanding, the same tools are also essential in the analysis of street names in contemporary and urban contexts, offering to the researcher a glimpse of how their inhabitants used and transformed their surroundings and the related toponyms. This is something we will take up in this section. With the word ‘contemporary’, we mean to indicate a period of time within the last 200 years, usually from the nineteenth century to the present day. The term ‘contemporary’, indeed, is semantically different in the historical context from ‘modern’, which usually refers to the era between the end of the fifteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century, coming, therefore, just before the contemporary period. Therefore, settlements and cities developed in contemporary times are quite recent and connected with our everyday lives. They comprise streets, blocks, alleys, houses, parks, squares, and so on. The names of these places (or ‘micro-places’, or ‘places within places’) are part of an urbanonymic systemFootnote ² and are often considered micro-toponyms, as they are usually only known by the local people living in a specific area (Reference Urazmetova and ShamsutdinovaUrazmetova & Shamsutdinova, 2017).

By consulting historical records, a common practice in historical geography, such as bills, laws, newspapers, maps, and town plans of a city across different time periods and under various political regimes, researchers can investigate the changes in the urbanonyms and the social, political, and ideological events that motivated naming and renaming processes. Changes can be due to both practical and symbolic purposes. For new political regimes, the urban and toponymic landscape of capital cities presents a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the values, ideologies, meanings, and aspirations that they hold dear. Thus, toponyms, and particularly odonyms, of capital cities often have a rich stratigraphy, as successive governments use street names symbolically as tools to propagate their sociopolitical agenda. Historical geography allows us to study the connections between toponyms and the historical and/or political events that happened in the places they define, which eventually influenced their naming.

It is with this background that now we turn our attention to Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Bucharest has been the documentary source of and testbed for several historical geography studies focussing on changes in street names, especially from the late twentieth century (Reference LightLight, 2004; Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight, Nicolae, & Suditu, 2002; Reference Light and YoungLight & Young, 2014; Reference Niculescu-MizilNiculescu-Mizil & A-M., 2014). These scholars focussed, generally, on the renaming of streets in the Communist (Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al., 2002) and Post-Communist (Reference LightLight, 2004; Reference Light and YoungLight & Young, 2014) eras and showed, as aforementioned, how a historical-geographical analysis can help us understand the political and ideological shifts that resulted in the renaming of places.

In August 1944, the Soviet Army entered Romania and sought to bring the country, which at that point in time was ruled by Nazi Germany, into the Soviet orbit. The first Communist-dominated government was formed on 6 March 1945. On 30 December 1947, King Michael was forced to abdicate, and a Soviet-style Romanian People’s Republic was formed. It was ruled by the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP), which from 1948 ‘rapidly set about remaking Romania in accordance with the model of Soviet communism’ (Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al., 2002, p. 136). Romania was now ruled by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a committed Stalinist who pledged total loyalty to the Soviet Union. Just as how the Soviet Union and many of its satellite states mobilised a variety of symbols in the urban landscape (e.g., toponymic landmarks, memorial plaques, placards, signs, and banners) to legitimise the new rulers and their worldview, as well as to extol revolutionary Socialism, Romanian toponyms were politicised to ‘declare the ideology and orientation of the People’s Republic’ (Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al., 2002, p. 137).

Drawing from records of the Monitorul Comunal (Community Monitor), published by the Bucharest Primărie ‘city hall’ and Scânteia, the RWP’s newspaper, Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al. (2002) showed that over 150 toponyms were replaced in the first year that Romania turned Communist (see Table 7.1). This renaming process, therefore, has to be interpreted in the context of the ideology of the new Communist regime in the country. The motivations were mainly aimed at rewriting the nation’s history. Previous non-Communist rulers were portrayed as repressive and illegitimate, and Romania’s history was spun around the theme of a longstanding class struggle. The subsequent declaration of the People’s Republic of Romania thereby marked the victory of the Communists. The RWP was portrayed as being deeply embedded in Romania’s history (Shafir, 1985, cited in Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al., 2002, p. 137). At the same time, being led by a Stalinist, the country had to show the supposedly lasting Russian and Slavic influences on the Romanian language and culture, while removing any connections with the West and western Europe.

In line with the rewriting of Romania’s history to downplay the roles of former leaders, while celebrating Communism and its rulers, the names of major boulevards and squares were renamed to reflect the new political realities. Boulevards that were named after Romania’s first king and queen (i.e., Carol I and Elisabeta) were renamed Bulevardul Republicii ‘Boulevard of the Republic’ and Bulevardul 6 martie ‘6 March Boulevard’ after the date on which the first Communist government was formed in 1945. These were overtly ideological names which commemorated the establishment of a Communist government on a visible and public scale. Other boulevards were named after Communist leaders in neighbouring states, possibly to make reference to Romania’s position as a Soviet satellite state. For example, Bulevardul Ferdinand I, named after Romania’s second king, was renamed after the Bulgarian leader Georghi Dimitrov, while Bulevardul Regina Maria, named after Ferdinand’s wife, was renamed after Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia. Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al. (2002) also cited a 1948 Scânteia article that alluded to pre-Socialist politicians’ references which were removed from Bucharest’s north–south boulevard. These changes were announced on 11 June 1948, the same day that a law aimed at nationalising the majority of Romanian industries was passed. The use of historical sources allowed the above-mentioned researchers to conclude that ‘the replacement of the former order was marked in both concrete and symbolic ways’ (Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al., 2002, p. 137). The authors, from their analysis of historical documents, also argued that the renaming of streets was not the only symbolic aspect of the political (re)naming process that was produced in Romania under Communist rule. Records from the Monitorul Comunal and Scânteia published during that time showed that other public infrastructures were renamed. These included thirteen Bucharest hospitals, parks, markets, shops, factories, schools, cinemas, theatres, stadiums, university residences, and even bakeries. Indeed, the imposition of the Communist rule had changed the entire old urbanonymy in Bucharest into one that embodied the Communist worldview.

Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al. (2002) also drew on secondary sources, like street guides written by people who lived in the 1950s, and tabulated the strategies used by the Communists to politicise toponyms in Bucharest. For instance, a particular name could be used multiple times in different parts of the city (see Table 7.2). The denominations that appeared most frequently centred around dates and people. Popular dates included 23 August, the day of the coup which overthrew the former Romanian government and paved the way for the pro-Soviet RWP leadership over Romania; 30 December, the date of the proclamation of the Republic in 1947; 6 March, the date on which the first Communist-dominated government was formed in 1945. Popular street names were renamed with reference to Socialist and Communist activists, like Vasile Roaită, and other revolutionary figures from Romanian history (such as Nicolae Bălcescu, Ana Ipătescu, and Tudor Vladimirescu). Reference VerderyVerdery (1991) argued that the political aim of this process was to ingrain the populace with those ideals by saturating the consciousness of urban Romania with symbols of Communist presence and agenda, and over time to generate a new national narrative espoused by the Communists.

Through the use of historical records published by the Bucharest city hall and the RWP newsletter, along with secondary accounts by the residents of Bucharest in the 1940s and 1950s, Reference Light, Nicolae and SudituLight et al. (2002) found that toponyms mirrored the ‘changing constructions of history and identity in communist Romania’ (p. 142), as the Communist regime sought to remove the pre-Communist rulers from the local collective memory and to introduce a new Communist-sanctioned account of history, while promoting its allegiance to the Soviet Union and its other satellite states. In the final analysis, Romanian odonyms from the period between 1948 and 1965 were examples of how street names, although often overlooked, are the micro- or local-scale manifestations of broader structures of power that shape a society.

The Romanian Revolution of 1989 saw the overthrowing of the Communist government of Romania. This uprising was widely seen as the starting point of a new Romania without the presence of the oppressive Communist/Socialist rulers. In the aftermath of the revolution, a new round of street renaming ensued. As Reference Young and LightYoung and Light (2001) noted, the post-Socialist construction of national identities is often and expectedly marked by a rejection of the Socialist past. In this process, history was revised once again, as the national narrative that was imposed during the Socialist period was widely discarded. Instead, there was ‘a “return” to an earlier historical trajectory, which was “interrupted” by the “aberration” of four or more decades of state socialism’ (Reference Young and LightYoung & Light, 2001, pp. 947–8). In the aftermath of the post-Socialist and post-Communist era, public spaces, which had hitherto propagated Socialist ideals and worldviews as well as celebrating Socialist heroes, dates, and achievements, were being literally ‘reconstructed’. At the level of street names, it is possible to witness what Reference AzaryahuAzaryahu (1997, p. 482) called the process of ‘de-commemoration and a new commemoration’, where Socialism was de-commemorated and the old order and revolution that overthrew the Communist regime were celebrated.Footnote ³

Reference LightLight (2004) once again made use of historical records of the recent past to track the renaming of streets that occurred in the post-Socialist period. His key source was a document produced by the Bucharest Primărie, which listed street naming and renaming from 1990 to 1997. In total, he identified 288 streets in Bucharest that were renamed (along with their former and current names, and the dates when the renaming was approved). The researcher also utilised the Bucharest Primărie website and other newspapers to track street renaming in post-Socialist Bucharest. He found lists indicating former and current odonyms that had undergone renaming. These lists were published in newspapers in 1996, particularly in the România Liberă. In comparing these street names, Light also consulted a 1982 Bucharest street guide in order to obtain pre-1990 names of the streets. To confirm the names before adding them into his database, he also analysed various maps, and carried out fieldwork in the city. Reference LightLight (2004) found that, in the target period, streets were renamed to commemorate the 1989 revolution, to celebrate the period of the Greater Romania (which was constructed as the golden era of Romania’s history between the First World War and 1940), and to restore pre-Socialist names, such as those of pre-Socialist-era politicians and the monarchy.

An interesting point brought up by Reference LightLight (2004) is that most of the street renaming occurred in the city centre. In more peripheral parts of Bucharest, streets whose names referred to Socialism and its ideas generally remained untouched. These include odonyms with the words ‘Proletarian’, or ‘Workers’, or ‘Cooperative’ (all of which are undoubtedly Communist/Socialist concepts), important dates, and key figures in Socialist and Communist history. As Reference LightLight (2004) concluded, the focus on renaming streets in the Bucharest city centre, to a large extent, could be due to the high cost of street renaming. The post-Socialist economic austerity meant that the Bucharest Primărie focussed the renaming operation in places in the city where the greatest number of people were concentrated (i.e., the city centre) and, hence, where the demonstrative effects had to be the highest. Therefore, changing the names of odonyms in the heart of the city was an emphatic sign to the people of Bucharest and the foreign visitors about the fact that Romania was no longer Communist, and a new government was in charge.

This section is an effective case study pointing out how human geographers can use historical records and the methodologies and sources of historical geography to investigate the diachronic concept of change in places and spaces. In this section, we highlighted the example of Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, which represents a relatively recent case study that documents the process of (re)naming streets over the last century. Odonyms, as symbolic elements belonging to the sphere of urbanonymy and to the urban landscape, are useful in analysing the values and ideologies of political regimes, a topic we will explore more in depth in Chapters 8 and 9. Thus, to understand some of the macro-political shifts happening over time in the world, human geographers have increasingly turned to studying micro-urbanonyms, prevalently odonyms, and other names of the urban landscape, which have been modified as a result of new political regimes coming to power. The changes to these names can then be studied using relatively recent historical sources, like newspapers, newsletters, municipal records, maps, and street guides, which were compiled by people living in the locality during the time period in question. Ultimately, such an approach would benefit from the integration of ‘the historical geography of space and time within the frame of all our understandings of how human societies are constructed and change’ (Reference HarveyHarvey, 1990, p. 428). In this case study, the enmeshment of the historical geography of the street names in Bucharest over the last century contributes to our understanding of how political regimes seek to display their power via reshaping the urban landscape and, ultimately, of the sociopolitical changes in society that can be mapped within the context of urbanonymy. This also represents a shift from traditional approaches of historical geography, which were labelled as ‘too closely tied to the apron strings of archival data sources and field observation, producing meticulous reconstructions of past patterns but without either investigating the processes behind the patterns or evaluating the data themselves in their cultural and political context’ (Reference DennisDennis, 1991, p. 266). Such a focus is, indeed, also indicative of current approaches in historical geography, which from the 1990s has undergone a shift ‘from the study of residential patterns, interpreted according to the precepts of human ecology, towards more comprehensive analyses of urban structure, including industrial and commercial districts, and integrating social, economic, political, and architectural perspectives’ (Reference DennisDennis, 1991, p. 278).

7.4 Historical Toponomastics and Historical Geography in Singapore Toponymy

In the last section, we saw how a historical-toponomastic study can be developed by using sources and methods from historical geography, with the aim of reconstructing and determining changes to the physical and human landscapes and the related toponymy and, in so doing, understanding more about the culture of the humans occupying a territory. The same methods and approaches can be applied to a younger nation such as Singapore. Indeed, Singapore has a well-documented recent history since the arrival of the British in the early 1800s. However, researchers can also analyse a number of complementary sources from earlier periods to go into more depth in the diachronic investigations of Singapore, also known as the Lion City. These include ancient narrative poems, historical or pseudo-historical chronicles, travel diaries, logs, and letters. To provide an example, Reference HsüHsü (1972) asserted that P’u-lo chung is ‘the oldest name for Singapore’ (p. 9). He found two references to this toponym in the travel tales written by Chu Ying (宣化從事朱應) and Kāng Tài (中郎康泰) in the third century (Reference Cavallaro, Perono Cacciafoco and TanCavallaro, Perono Cacciafoco, & Tan, 2019). Travel accounts have been utilised by several historians, such as the renowned Southeast Asian expert John Miksic, who made extensive use of archaeological data and examined travel accounts in his analysis of the region’s history (Reference MiksicMiksic, 2007; Reference Miksic2013).

A seminal article by Reference YeohYeoh (1996) on street names in colonial Singapore is an application of historical geography to the Singaporean context. Through an investigation of colonial maps, like the Raffles Town Plan, also known as the Jackson Plan (Reference JacksonJackson, 1828), along with the Municipal Committee’s documents and earlier records of Indigenous street names, such as an article by Reference FirmstoneFirmstone (1905), Yeoh was able to delineate important remarks on the principle of parallel place names between the British and the locals in the island. Her study of Firmstone’s document also enabled her to come up with a description of the naming strategies behind Chinese odonyms in Singapore. These included streets named after symbols and landmarks, economic and agricultural activities, directions, and commemorative elements. In recent years, a number of studies have also applied these principles to investigate the changes in Singapore’s odonyms (and other toponyms) over time, consulting, among others, precolonial and colonial maps and other secondary sources on Singaporean toponyms (see Reference Cavallaro, Perono Cacciafoco and TanCavallaro et al., 2019; Reference Perono Cacciafoco and ShiaPerono Cacciafoco & Shia, 2020; Reference Yom and CavallaroYom & Cavallaro, 2020). In the sections below, we will highlight the changes in several of Singapore’s odonyms.

7.5 Historical Geographic Information Systems

Reference Gregory and EllGregory and Ell (2007, p. 1) pointed out that while geographic information systems (GIS) have been used in other disciplines, it was only very recently that they began to be adopted by historical geographers. Historical geographic information systems (HGIS) is thus a very new field of study. GIS is a framework which extracts and records spatial and geographic data, which can then be analysed and contextually mapped (see Chapter 10). GIS tools are computational applications which enable a generic user to perform active surveys, analyse, edit, and store spatial/non-spatial and geographic/non-geographic data. The analysis involves spatial information and the related output, and the results of the searches and analyses are visually shared in the format of digital maps. A HGIS, then, is a GIS that extracts, displays, records, and stores data of historical spaces and geographies from the past. This allows the user to keep a diachronic comparison of the changes that happened, over time, in those places and spaces. It is a new tool aimed at the historical analysis of environments and geographic areas and, as a discipline, is considered as a subfield of historical geography and GIS.

Bodenhamer is among the many who have pointed out the usefulness of this new field for many disciplines.

The value of such systems in the study of toponyms is quite evident, as the availability of large amounts of searchable data provided from different disciplines and methodologies allows for very detailed and in-depth quantitative and qualitative studies (Reference FuchsFuchs, 2015).

In the last decade or so, many projects in the field of HGIS have been carried out. A fine example is the Digitally Encoded Census Information and Mapping Archive (DECIMA), an adaptable and multipurpose platform that utilises a wide variety of data supplied by historians from different subfields. This HGIS project focusses on the city of Florence, Italy, and DECIMA was developed to be an instrument to enable collaboration among scholars and to ‘encourage historians working from various methodologies and in various subfields to begin thinking and practicing spatial history’ (Reference Rose, Terpstra and RoseRose, 2016, p. 15).

Another example of HGIS is the Archives Hub (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk), which manages the physical and digital collections of over 350 institution in the UK. One such collection is the Great Britain Historical GIS Project (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/locations/b029e58b-84f2-31c0-a9dc-46760f2e3e71). This database holds data from between 1801 and 2000, obtained from a variety of sources including statistics from general elections, census reports, historical maps, and travel writings from the UK. Its main collections are Old Maps Online and A Vision of Britain Through Time.

Several studies using HGIS and GIS to study place names and the ethnic and cultural aspects of the populations occupying their territories have been conducted in China (see, for instance, Reference Qian, Kang and WengQian, Kang, & Weng, 2016; Reference Wang, Hartmann, Luo and HuangWang et al., 2006; Reference Wang, Wang, Hartmann and LuoWang et al., 2012; Reference Zhao, Fu, Luan, Zhang, Cai, Ding, Qian and XieZhao et al., 2020; Reference Zhu, Zhang, Zhao, Guo, Zhang, Ding and XiongZhu et al., 2018), showing how scientific and objective approaches, when combined with the analysis of historical data and sources, can aid the study of historical geography and our understanding of toponymy in general.

The China Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS) is a recent example of HGIS that blends several scientific disciplines with physical geography and historical geography.Footnote ⁶ The aim of this project was to create a common GIS platform for Chinese history from 222 bce to 1911 ce (i.e., the period from the first symbolically unified Chinese Empire to the end of the Qing Dynasty). In this sense, the CHGIS is somewhat like an electronic and historical atlas of China that allows users to track all known boundary and settlement changes over time. The CHGIS functions, indeed, as a ‘historical gazetteer’ (Reference Bol and GeBol & Ge, 2005, p. 151). Researchers can use its data to find information about any place name that was handed down through historical records, which Bol and Ge attribute to ‘the government’s long tradition of conducting land surveys and household registration, holding censuses, and compiling national administrative geographies’ (Reference Bol and Ge2005, p. 150). Reference Wang, Zhang, Zhang and ZhangWang et al. (2014) described their efforts to develop a database of toponyms in Yunnan, southwest China, using an established toponymic dictionary, and to identify their ethnic roots. The authors classified place names in Yunnan according to three administrative subdivisions commonly adopted in China: prefecture, county, and township (in descending order of importance). They also classified the toponyms as either Han, Zang-Mian,Footnote ⁷ or Zhuang-Dong,Footnote ⁸ based on their linguistic origins. Using spatial analysis and statistical methods, the researchers also sought to identify possible clusters of ethnic toponyms and correlated these ethnic place names to the physical landscape features of their territories, like elevation (height above sea level), slope (measurement in degrees of the change of elevation), and aspect (denoting the compass direction faced by the slope of a mountain). Lending a historical perspective to their study, the authors examined the diachronic evolution of toponyms in Yunnan, with a particular attention to the ‘Sinification of Chinese toponyms’, an issue that we will discuss in Chapter 8.

Reference ChloupekChloupek (2018) provided us with a fascinating read in which he uses HGIS to analyse toponyms as an element of Nebraska’s cultural landscape. He collected information on the origins of nearly all of Nebraska’s toponyms (including those which have ceased to exist), from toponymic dictionaries compiled by scholars Lilian Fitzpatrick and Elton Perkey. Chloupek also created a taxonomy to classify these toponyms, so that most of them can be coded into one specific category, by using the ArcGIS 10.1 software. This allows for different categories to be ‘visualised discretely’ (Reference ChloupekChloupek, 2018, p. 27). Chloupek’s study utilised geographical and cartographic modes of analysis to identify the political actors and sociopolitical naming processes behind many Nebraskan toponyms in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Additionally, he also coded the founding dates of these toponyms to identify time-specific patterns in these chronological periods. He found the following.

The links between Chloupek’s findings and critical toponymies (see Chapter 8) are also evident, particularly the assertion of power onto the landscape via the naming process by a few prominent actors.

The use of HGIS approaches in themselves enables a new epistemological approach to, and substantially helps the study of, place names.

7.6 Summary

This chapter looked at how toponymists and linguists utilise diachronic evidence from the landscape and hydro-geo-morphology of territories, available written records, and historical maps in their bid to reconstruct the etymology of the names of places. This is where the fields of historical toponomastics and historical geography intersect with great success. This was shown in the example of Bistagno, for which several scholars, who did not apply proper historical-toponomastic and historical-geographical methods, came up with several interpretations with different degrees of success. The study of relatively recent historical documents (like newspapers, newsletters, and city hall records) and spatial representations (in maps and street guides) of Bucharest and Singapore over the years has allowed the analysis of the overtly political, social, and ideological considerations behind street renaming and, consequently, of how political shifts can impact an urban landscape. Moreover, we have also seen how various disciplines, like landscape sciences, computer engineering, computing, statistics, (historical) geography, toponymy, and linguistics, can converge in the implementation of HGIS to map toponyms and to describe their characteristics (be they physical, topographic, linguistic, demographic, or even depicting possible migration patterns) – a testament to the truly interdisciplinary nature of the study of toponymy.

In the following chapter, we will explore some of the above-mentioned thematic areas, such as street renaming and its politics, in greater detail, while looking at toponymy from a synchronic perspective.