Naming space, creating territory : language practices, representations and urban imaginaries

En Algérie, la recherche onomastique s’est longtemps structurée autour d’approches essentiellement linguistiques, centrées sur la typologie, l’étymologie et la morphologie des noms. Si ces travaux ont permis de constituer un socle descriptif précieux, ils restent encore insuffisants pour saisir les dynamiques complexes qui façonnent les pratiques de nomination dans un contexte traversé par des transformations sociales, économiques, culturelles et territoriales profondes. Cette communication propose d’examiner les voies permettant de dépasser le cloisonnement disciplinaire traditionnel afin de construire une onomastique véritablement intégrée, articulant langue, société, culture et économie. À partir d’exemples tirés de corpus toponymiques et odonymiques contemporains, ainsi que des noms commerciaux en milieu urbain, nous montrons que les phénomènes de nomination constituent aujourd’hui des indicateurs sensibles des mutations locales : recompositions identitaires, réorganisation des espaces urbains, logiques marchandes, revalorisations patrimoniales, ou encore dynamiques de mondialisation linguistique. L’analyse mobilise une démarche croisée, empruntant à la sociolinguistique, à la géographie sociale, à l’anthropologie de l’espace et à l’économie symbolique. L’objectif est de démontrer que seule une approche interdisciplinaire permet de rendre compte de la dimension stratégique des noms dans l’Algérie actuelle, en éclairant les enjeux de pouvoir, de visibilité, de mémoire et de légitimité qu’ils véhiculent. Cette perspective ouvre des pistes pour le développement d’une onomastique nationale renouvelée, capable de contribuer à la compréhension fine des transformations socioterritoriales et à la valorisation du patrimoine immatériel.

The case of Chelas/Marvila, an eastern district of Lisbon, developed around industrial activities and social housing estates, shows how disputes over place names and their meanings evolve over time as different communities appropriate them to expose and defend their spatial identities. In this context, enabled by increased territorial connectivity and its associated socio-spatial dynamics, new residents and younger generations are reshaping the area’s symbolic landscape through culturally grounded visions of belonging. The communication examines the links between urban development processes and the evolution of place naming in this area, using the specific case of one of its neighbourhoods, Amendoeiras. It aims to reveal how the (recent) conflict over the names Marvila (the administrative district) and Chelas (the area of the social housing urban plan), and their correspondence in terms of neighbourhoods - Amendoeiras / Zona I – came about. The work draws on the research Homes2Live, which studies and documents the collective squatting process in a neighbourhood still under construction, in the context of the 1974 Portuguese revolution and the acute housing crisis. From this pivotal moment, the research analyses the neighbourhood’s spatial and social transformation, focusing on moments when the importance of place names takes centre stage in internal and external social representation, as well as in residents’ sense of belonging and identity. The research combines oral histories and ethnographic engagement, interviews with key actors, media text analysis, urban planning and territorial strategies, and documentary records, and traces the discussion around place names and identities triggered by elements such as art festivals, public signage, and films and songs. By situating residents’ views on this dispute within broader urban and social transformations, the Amendoeiras case illuminates how place names are mobilised to anchor personal, collective, and institutional processes of identity formation.

This paper examines the role of toponymy in the geopolitical transformation of Kavala between the late Ottoman period and the consolidation of the Greek nation-state. Building on research conducted for a Master’s thesis on urban geopolitical transformations in Southeastern Europe, the paper explores how successive regimes of sovereignty were inscribed not only through commercial and administrative changes in urban development but also through the symbolic practice of naming. Between 1870 and 1930, Kavala experienced a series of geopolitical ruptures: the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian occupation and eventual incorporation into the Greek state. These macro-scale transformations were manifested in micro-scale reconfigurations of the city’s spatial and symbolic landscape. Street names, neighbourhood designations and public place-names functioned as instruments of territorialisation, rearticulating urban space within shifting geopolitical frameworks—from the mahallahs of Ottoman imperial organisation to symbolic performances of the Greek national imaginary. Drawing on historical maps, municipal records and archival sources, this paper analyses how naming practices reflected broader processes of national territorialisation. Adopting a historical approach to Political Geography whilst building on the spatial turn in Ottoman Studies, particular attention is paid to the ways inherited imperial spatial structures were reinterpreted, replaced or layered with new meanings under Greek administration. Rather than viewing toponymy as purely symbolic, the paper situates language and nomenclature within the material and political production of urban space, demonstrating how naming practices operated as mechanisms through which sovereignty was asserted and normalised in the palimpsest post-imperial landscape of Northern Greece. By foregrounding the politics of naming in a peripheral yet strategically significant port city, the paper contributes to debates in Political Geography concerning urban manifestations of geopolitical change. In doing so, it highlights how historical, political and geographical transformations in Southeastern Europe were experienced and materialised through everyday urban spatial practices.

On 2 April 1952, the Municipal Council of Gidas unanimously resolved to rename the town ‘Alexandreia,’ a decision ratified by Royal Decree on 16 January 1953. In the resolution of the municipal authorities, it was noted that the name ‘Gidas’ failed to evoke historical associations and, moreover, was cacophonous—evidently because it alluded to the word ‘gida’ (goat in Greek). The tendency to rename places did not originate in Greece in the 1950s; rather, it had a lengthy history that began during the War of Independence in the 1820s. In the first half of the twentieth century, the arduous task of identifying ‘appropriate’ toponyms to replace ‘inappropriate’ ones was overseen by the Toponyms of Greece Committee (1909–1945), staffed by geographers, folklorists, linguists, and senior civil servants. This paper examines the case of Gidas–Alexandria within its historical context, with the aim of presenting the arguments for and against the initiative to rename the town and of elucidating the perspectives of both sides in the ensuing public debate, which was conducted primarily through the press. The association of the small town in Imathia with the name and historical weight of Alexander the Great served both the central national narrative—which sought, through the ideology of the continuity of Hellenism, a vindication of modern Greek identity in a country ravaged by the Second World War and the subsequent Civil War (1945–1949)—and the local aspirations of the newly established municipality, which made its advancement contingent upon an archaizing persona. Conversely, the principal argument of the critics of the renaming of Gidas to Alexandreia—of this ‘toponymic cleansing’—among whom was the distinguished philologist Emmanuel Kriaras, was grounded in the idea that the past may be recovered as a material and visible presence in the Greek nation’s recent past and present, within the language and culture of its people.

From a cultural-geographical point of view, geographical names are not only linguistic codes for geographical features. They are also social constructs that reflect the cultural, economic and political constitution of a society and play important roles as mediators between humans and space. Based on the cultural-geographical works of Carl SAUER (e.g. 1925, 1941) and Yi-Fu TUAN (e.g. 1974, 1977, 1991) this has more recently been pointed out especially by Derek H. ALDERMAN (e.g. 2000, 2003), Maoz AZARAYAHU (e.g. 1996, 1997, 2012) and Reuben ROSE-REDWOOD (e.g. 2008). In the wake of these pioneers, this field of research has become significantly denser, especially in recent years. This paper also takes up this approach and describes the symbolic effect of geographical names of cultural landscapes in the sense of historical political units, which are no longer administrative units today. It tries to show that in many cases it is just the name – with the concept it designates, of course – that keeps a cultural landscape in mind and allows it to remain visible. If the name (and the concept it designates) did not exist, there would be little or no evidence for some spatial identities. Before presenting examples of cultural landscapes in southeastern Europe, the article describes the fundamental roles that geographical names can play in the relationship and as mediators between humans and space in order to better understand the symbolic meaning of geographical names.

This paper aims at exploring and presenting the toponymic changes and tendencies in Syria since the fall of the Assad’s regime. Following an inductive reasoning, based on the hypothesis that toponymy is the expression of political dialectics and on official documents and inquiries, I census post-December-2024 toponymic tendencies from two perspectives: the government-led changes, and the popular acclamations of old or new toponymies. As early as December 2024, school, hospital and other institution names were changed and were given an Islamist dimension that was rather before. Some other landmarks were given the names of the new heroes (killed during the civil war). Such changes might not be astonishing when seen in an ideological perspective. Yet other official tendencies might be more interesting for future analyses: the first is the continuity in the globalised naming practices. The phenomenon began in Syria in the early 2000 (Damascus Hills) and accelerated during the war (Marota City, Basilia City, etc.). The provisional government continues in the same line with Damascus Towers and The Beaumont, amongst others. The second tendency is the formalised use of the religious connotations of established toponyms: Bab Touma and Bab Sharqi become synonyms for the Christians, Jaramana for the Druzes, and so on. This “singling out” is a novelty is modern Syrian toponymies. On the popular side, most toponymic tendencies express opposition or to the new government: some neotoponymies, denoting political projects, like Mount Bashan, Ugarit, Sahel, and Rojava, also reflect or urban toponymies and show that protests are expressed through the acclamations of neotoponyms or the refusal of government-imposed ones. This preliminary reading shows that both formalised connotative use of old toponyms and popular use of political neotoponyms stem from the religious divisions within Syria. What will the consequences of such practices be?

Development is all over the news and advertisements; as something positive and desirable, as the way forward. But what does development mean? And who does it really benefit? If we examine it a little more closely, we see development as a “canvas” onto which different ideologies, approaches, and images are envisaged. A floating signifier upon which imaginaries of a desired future of a society and a city are projected, as well as the preferred ways that such desired futures are to be realized. These development imaginaries are shaped both by discourses, policies, and projects, as well as by images and representations of the “desired” new world and the world we must “leave behind.” In today’s world, dominated by the rapid succession of images and grand declarations, development imaginaries and their illustrated “public relations” constitute a machinery of both propaganda and diplomacy. Via their visual rhetoric, these imaginaries define and legitimize not only the modes and aesthetics of development, but simultaneously political strategies demarcating which subjects belong to the visualised future and can benefit from its “gifts,” and which are “erased” or “forgotten” (explicitly or implicitly) from it. Yet, these “desirable” urban futures are often created through displacement and rampant speculation, while the “Others”—both people and materials—are eliminated, save for the necessary quota of diversity that each society defines. Thus, these glamorous development imaginaries often harbour pitfalls, as they tend to reproduce and further entrench segregation, discrimination, and injustices in both physical and imaginary spaces. In the end, resulting often in colonising or erasing of spaces, social infrastructures, memories and bodies – even of alternative, possible future imaginaries. This contribution aims to explore these questions through a verbal and visual analysis of the various plans and actions concerning the centre of Athens, and particularly the area around Omonoia Square.

Elefsina occupies a singular position in Greece's urban history. For nearly a century, two-thirds of the country’s heavy industry was concentrated within this city of 30,000 inhabitants, twenty kilometres from Athens, forging a working-class culture with distinct material and symbolic traces. Today, partially deindustrialized and still renowned as an archaeological site, it is found amid negotiations over the territorialization and exploitation of memory, land, and urban identity. Understanding toponymy not as a practice rooted in identity representation but as an inscription technology ‘inquiring into modes of existence’ (Latour 2013), our research examines the social imaginary tied to working-class history through name-giving on a double register: Firstly, it focuses on built environment: the neighborhoods of Stafida, Symiaka, Oikimata TITAN, and Rossika, built by and for factory workers, but also Vlycha, the ship scrapping yards, and Kynodontas, a former limestone quarry, landmarks repurposed during the city's tenure as European Capital of Culture; in so doing, it assess how toponyms encode corporate power and collective memory in ways that official cartography rarely acknowledges. Secondly, it turns to documentary, approaching it as a medium par excellence where reality is represented, manifesting the ability of language to visualize relationships in space. Whereas an episode of the series Anazitontas tin hameni ikona ( 1995) frames Elefsina as “the focal city,” projecting an imaginary of industrial modernity and civic pride that actively constructs the city’s identity through language, Takis Papagiannidis’s Elefsina (1986) documents the transitions brought by industrialization (labor struggles), granting the representations of the city some nominal attributes not for social classification, but the formation of a working-class community. By demonstrating the interrelatedness of these two registers, the paper renders Elefsina a privileged analytical site for the convergence of toponymy and symbolic designation, the vernacular and the institutional, power and memory.

This paper examines how place names in Lahore reflect and influence shifts in identity, occupancy, and urban form across different phases of the city’s development. Lahore has undergone multiple reconfigurations under successive regimes, including Mughal, Sikh, British colonial, and post-partition periods, each reshaping both the built environment and the linguistic landscape. Prior to the Partition of India, Lahore was marked by religious and cultural diversity, with Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities shaping neighbourhood identities. Following partition, demographic change led to a more homogenised population and systematic renaming practices. Neighbourhoods such as Krishan Nagar were renamed Islampura, and colonial-era roads were reassigned to national and religious figures. However, these changes did not fully replace earlier naming systems, many of which persist in everyday use. These layered naming practices correspond with shifts in urban morphology. In the historic inner city (Androon Shehr), older naming systems are associated with dense, organic, and incrementally developed settlements, where streets and neighbourhoods derive their names from local features, trades, and everyday practices. Areas such as Ichra and Mozang reflect similar conditions. In contrast, colonial and postcolonial expansions introduced more controlled spatial orders. Areas such as the Mall and Cantonment reflect colonial planning, while developments such as the Defence Housing Authority employ standardised systems, including alphabetic sectors and generic terms such as “avenue.” These names often signal aspiration and exclusivity, shaping patterns of use and occupation, even when such developments incorporate older village settlements (pinds), where earlier naming practices persist. Drawing on site surveys, archival sources, and ethnographic observation, the paper shows that naming in Lahore functions as both a planning instrument and a lived practice, revealing how urban space is continuously negotiated rather than fully redefined.

The role of road network in cities is fundamental, as it serves flows of people, goods, and ideas. In that way, it shapes not only mobility patterns but also social networks, economic activity, and political expression. In metropolitan settings, key urban axes operate as spatial condensations where history, power, economic dynamics, and social practices intersect. As a result, beyond serving as settings accommodate daily life, they also operate as arenas of symbolic and political expression, social claims, and shifting urban identities. Panepistimiou Avenue in Athens constitutes a representative example of such an urban axis. It was originally conceived as a boulevard by the German architect and painter Leo von Klenze, designed to link the city’s principal squares with its archaeological sites. Today, this avenue stands as one of the most emblematic urban axes of the Greek capital, characterized by a complex interplay of unique design, monumental charge, architectural finds as well as intertemporal political semiology. Political expression, in particular, is especially pronounced over time: marches, demonstrations, confrontations, and celebrations alike become inscribed onto the body of the city through the occupation of the street. The urban landscape is thus transformed into a stage upon which society negotiates rights, crises, and collective identities. Periods of tension — including economic crisis, social unrest, and transformations of the commercial centre — are reflected in changes in land use distribution, vacant shops, intensified policing, and urban regeneration interventions. Such regeneration proposals, that have led to a polarization of views among the public in the past, tend to reveal conflicts between competing visions for the city centre and its function: touristic and consumption-oriented, historic and monumental, or open and socially inclusive. Panepistimiou Avenue, therefore, is not a neutral space; it is a terrain of political choice that shapes who has the right to the city.