The value of names: toponymic commercialization in late nineteenth-century Kyiv

Abstract This article analyses the naming of streets in late nineteenth-century Kyiv. Building on scholarship on critical toponymy and using unpublished archival sources, it presents street naming as more multifunctional than usually recognized. Besides orientation and ideology, toponyms were believed to be able to raise property value and attract tourists. By highlighting the debates among landlords, municipal authorities and imperial officials around commercialization and temporalization of the streetscape of late imperial Kyiv, the article demonstrates how economic priorities accompanied and even sometimes outweighed political considerations in determining toponymical choices.