Evolution of toponymic cultural landscapes in Xinjiang’s Yulongkashi River Basin

Geographical names of traditional ethnic villages are an important entry point for exploring the local cultural characteristics of watersheds because of their profound historical, cultural, and socio-geographical information. However, the existing research lacks theoretical exploration from the perspective of genetic mapping of toponymic landscapes and in-depth study of the factors influencing the distribution of toponymic landscapes, and there are very few studies on the cultural landscapes of ethnic minority village names in the context of globalisation. Therefore, this paper takes traditional ethnic village names in the Yulongkashi River Basin as the object of study, and takes the meanings of words, spatial distribution characteristics, historical evolution, and influencing factors as the starting point, constructs a mapping system of village names, and puts forward the influence mechanism of ‘environmental sieve, human selection, and cultural inscription’. The aim is to provide a scientific basis for the protection of the international geographical names heritage.