The Journal Voprosy onomastiki and Onomastic Studies in the Early 21st Century

This article marks the 20th anniversary of the journal Voprosy Onomastiki, based on responses to a questionnaire sent to its staff, editorial board, experts, and regular contributors. The questionnaire asked respondents to share their views on the current development of onomastic science, the journal’s role in Russian and global onomastics, and how various categories of onyms and areas of onomastic research are addressed. Respondents also commented on the diversity of authorship and the strengths and weaknesses of the editorial policy. The article presents these views alongside the authors’ own perspectives on the significant achievements and future directions of Russian and global onomastics at the start of the 21st century. It also provides an assessment of the state of the Russian onomastic community. Alongside these subjective opinions, the article includes objective scientometric data and a statistical analysis of the journal’s content over its twenty-year history, covering the linguistic and geographical diversity of published material and the most common reasons for article rejections. The analysis shows that at least 23% of published articles rely on field data, with a primary focus on historical onomastics, etymology, and onomasiology. In the past decade, the scope of articles has broadened, reflecting the rise of socioonomastics and topics such as proper name derivation, morphology, orthography, their study in historical sources and folklore, ethnolinguistics, and naming practices. The journal’s linguistic diversity is increasing, with each volume covering data from 13–16 language groups. To date, it has published manuscripts from authors in 40 countries.