Pavel Skorupa. Vilnius county toponyms as signs of national and cultural identity
Pavel Skorupa. Vilnius county toponyms as signs of national and cultural identity
Study. Vilnius: Institute of the Lithuanian Language, 2021. ISBN 978-609-411-306-2, doi.org/10.35321/e-pub.18.vilnius-county-toponyms
The study focuses on the problem of cultural and national (ethnic) identity, reflected in the semantics of the selected present-day Vilnius County toponyms, and analyzes the meanings encoded in them. The research based on both the traditional and modern (Cognitive) Onomastics theories and methods reveals the complexity of the semantic substrate in the toponymy of the region, which is affected by language interactions (contacts) due to the cultural periphery and long-term multilingualism of the population. It is obvious that toponyms not only perform a referential function, but also convey the cognitive, emotional, cultural, and social dimensions of the places they denominate, i.e., they convey a wealth of information about nature, history, culture, and people of a given area.
