Exploring the Spatial Distribution of Toponyms and Its Correlation with Landscape Characteristics: A Case Study in Wuhan, China

Toponyms reflect the multifaceted relationship between humans and nature, recording and transmitting important cultural information. A toponymic cultural landscape (TCL) is the comprehensive embodiment of the cultural connotations and landscape significance carried by toponyms, reflecting various factors such as regional culture, historical memory, and social values. Wuhan, as the hinterland of Jing-Chu culture, carries a profound geo-culture and brings together numerous toponymic cultural heritages. Studying the spatial distribution characteristics of Wuhan’s toponymic cultural heritage and their association with landscape elements is of great significance in promoting the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage and realizing the orderly continuation of local culture, and it also confers deeper cultural connotations and local characteristics to the process of landscape characterization. This study analyzes 3638 toponyms in Wuhan as the research objects, utilizing geospatial analysis methods, including kernel density analysis, standard deviation ellipse analysis, and average nearest neighbor analysis, to visualize the spatial distribution of Wuhan’s TCL. It further combines these methods with the optimal parameter geographic detector (OPGD) model to explore the influence of landscape elements on the spatial distribution of different types of toponyms and their interaction effects. The results show the following: (1) The TCL of Wuhan is divided into two basic types, the natural landscape (61.16%) and the humanistic landscape (41.37%), of which hydrological-related toponyms occupy a significant proportion, reaching 35.02% of the total number of toponyms in Wuhan. (2) The distribution of Wuhan’s TCL is characterized by aggregation, mostly in the core area of the city, with the Yangtze River as the main axis, and the density of the spatial distribution of humanistic landscape toponyms varies greatly. (3) The results of a single-factor analysis show that construction land (X2) is an important influencing factor in both natural and humanistic landscape toponyms, which indicates the central role of human activities in the formation of toponyms. (4) The explanatory power of the interaction effect of two factors on the spatial differentiation of Wuhan’s TCL is stronger than that of the single factors, which suggests that the spatial differentiation characteristics of the TCL of Wuhan are formed under the joint influence of the respective variables.