Toponymic Environments of New Urban Settlements in Transbaikalia: Soviet Legacy and Contemporary Nomenclature

Introduction. Despite studies in Transbaikalia’s onomastics are voluminous enough, the toponymic environments of its urban settlements remain somewhat understudied. Goals. The work attempts a comprehensive insight — at oikonymic, urbanonymic and ergonymic levels — into how the specified field formed and developed. Materials and methods. The empirical basis comprises official names of urban objects within a total of six towns/cities located in two administrative territorial units of Transbaikalia (Republic of Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai), the former be identified across a variety of documentary, journalistic, pictorial and oral sources. The toponymic study of new towns and cities in Transbaikalia employs the etymological, semantic, comparative historical and statistical methods. Results. The paper analyzes and systematizes oikonyms, urbanonyms and ergonyms of the region’s new towns and cities, reveals some distinctive features of toponymic formation for three types of urban settlements — transport, industrial and youth ones, shows key stages of state toponymic policies, hypothesizes as to causes and consequences of renaming arrangements. Conclusions. The analysis into the three levels of Transbaikalia’s urban toponymic environments makes it possible to conclude that the latter remains systemically organized and — in the context of the transition from a unified Soviet toponymic policy to present-day nominative differentiations — maintains its integral and continuous essentials.