Reflecting on the restless volumetric place (re)naming race

Abstract Drawing on the critical toponymic approaches that theorised place naming as an instrument for contested spatial politics of interaction between power, people, and places, and the emerging volumetric geopolitics scholarship which considers the political processes in three dimensions, rather than flat two‐dimensional space, this short commentary analyses the volumetric (geo)political motivations and potential consequences for the symbolic landscapes of the recent notable (re)naming events worldwide. The paper concludes that, in the current volatile geopolitical processes, the powerful actors (state leaders, politicians, or oligarchs) use toponyms as one of the most easily accessible, relatively inexpensive, and comprehensible tools for the general public to transmit ideas of nationalistic domination through volumetric territorialisation and transformation of symbolic landscapes.