Original Article 255 Geopolitics of geographical urbanonyms: evidence from Ukrainian cities Oleksiy Gnatiuk*, Anatoliy Melnychuk Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of Economic and Social Geography, Ukraine * Corresponding author:
[email protected] ABSTRACT This article focuses on geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine – names of streets, squares, lanes, etc. that refer to the names of oth- er geographical objects like cities, regions, countries, or continents. It shows the role of geographical urbanonyms as a powerful instrument used by political regimes to shape political identity by constructing and legitimizing borders between “us” and “them” at different spatial scales. The analysis revealed a significantly higher presence of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine compared to former state socialist countries in Central Europe. The widespread presence of street names related to the former USSR proves the absence of post-Soviet decolonization in semiotic space, going beyond the pure decommunization, in the majority of Ukrainian cities since 1991. Regional differences in the dynamics, distribution and structure of geographical urbanonyms in Ukraine are explained by the historical, cultural and (geo)political divisions. KEYWORDS urban toponyms; geographical urbanonyms; geopolitics; Ukraine Received: 16 July 2020 Accepted: 23 September 2020 Published online: 3 November 2020 Gnatiuk, O., Melnychuk, A. (2020): Geopolitics of geographical urbanonyms: evidence from Ukrainian cities. AUC Geographica 55(2), 255–268 https://doi.org/10.14712/23361980.2020.19 © 2020 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). 256 Oleksiy Gnatiuk, Anatoliy Melnychuk 1. Introduction - semiotics plays a key role in this representation.