Soviet toponymy according to old cartographical sources

Abstract

Studing of toponyms is very important from many points of view. First of all, some of the toponyms are quite stable, which allows to find out the elements that existed in ancient languages and are no longer used. In some geographical names, the old words or its old grammatical forms are preserved. In addition, through toponyms, it’s possible to determine the level of existence elements other languages on different areas. Toponymy helps the linguist to determine the existence of the linguistic substrate of different peoples. For example, the presence of a Georgian substratum in the geographical names of the North Caucasus, Eastern and Minor Asia. Common names are often preserved in toponyms, which are no longer preserved in the modern lexical fund. The toponym often contains a historical fact, indicating the old area of settlement of a certain part of the population. Accordingly, it is possible to determine the settlement area of different peoples, the directions of migration flows. Toponyms often indicate the distribution of certain types of flora and fauna, the population's agricultural activities, etc.

Because toponyms belong to different geographical environments, historical periods, and civilizations, they reflect geographical environments, historical moments, ethnographic, and lexical features at the same time. That is why the study of toponyms is especially important for such disciplines as linguistics, history, ethnography and geography.

The process of naming geographical names is regular and they are primarily due to historical reasons, the necessity of the origin of names [Kharadze, 1980]. Therefore, toponyms preserve the "pictures" of the past, often they also provide the opportunity to restore a retrospective picture of the past.

During the Soviet period, many old Georgian toponyms changed their names and many of them were forgotten. Since the 1990s, some Georgian toponyms have been restored in Georgia, while some Soviet-era toponyms have survived to this day. It should be noted that the natural process of naming was neglected under the conditions of ideologizing in the Soviet period. Obviously, they no longer used names related to Christianity, kings, princes or nobles. Such names were replaced by ideological names. as G. Khoranauli notes that the process of dechristianization of people's names began in the Soviet period [Khoranauli, 2003. 296]. This article serves to research this issue and determine its territorial scope.