Imperial mirrors: multifunctional urban toponymy in the Romanov Empire

Abstract The naming of cityscapes has never been a disinterested or straightforward affair. This article, which introduces the special issue on multifunctional urban toponymy in the Romanov Empire, opens by providing an overview of recent developments in critical place-name studies and bringing this field into dialogue with the historiography of the empire. It then delineates the main waves of toponymic changes in the empire from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, and proposes a typology of the main categories of imperial toponyms used for (re)naming. Our main argument is that place names performed a wider array of functions, beyond just orientational and ideological, and were also used to gain socio-economic capital and enhance the social desirability and economic value of urban areas. Having introduced the contributions to the special issue, the article then outlines several avenues for future research.