Urbonnymy of new towns in Transbaikalia (case-study of Severobaikalsk)

The relevance of this work is associated with the attention of modern linguistics to the problems of studying the language of the city – a multifaceted phenomenon studied today from linguistic, historical, cultural and other sides. The purpose of the study is to classify urban names of new cities of Transbaikalia using Severobaikalsk as an example. The town is the most important settlement, the emergence of which is inextricably linked with the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, so the study of the Soviet legacy and new nomination practices is especially interesting. The area of consideration includes the most stable layer of onomastics – godonyms and the most mobile – ergurbonims, which very quickly reflect social and cultural changes. The research methods : the continuous sampling method was used to select the empirical material (godonyms and ergourbonyms). Structural-descriptive and quantitative methods were used to classify urbonyms and interpret the results, allowing to focus on the content of urbonyms and calculate the frequency of urbonym groups. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that works on the study of urbonymy and ergourbonymy of new towns of Transbaikalia are practically absent. The paper involves unused factual material, 177 urbonyms (names of streets, lanes, avenues, quarters) and more than 270 ergourbonyms (names of cafes, canteens, shops, studios, hairdressers, hotels and other objects of Severobaikalsk) are analyzed, their functions are described. The results of the study consist in identifying 11 thematic groups of godonyms and 11 groups of ergurbonims, among which are names referring to the Soviet past, geographical, metaphorical, navigational names, etc. The role of the Soviet past is great in the system of godonyms, ergurbonims to a greater extent reflect modern trends in the development of the onomastic system.