After the demise of state socialism, public space became an issue of contention that occupied an important place within societies’ efforts to come to terms with the recent past. Extant scholarship documented extensively how postcommunist societies in Central and Eastern Europe have reconfigured the public space by removing the symbolic presence of the former regime (e.g., monuments and statues, but also place- and street names). However, there is a scarcity of research done on exploring the reception of these broad changes brought to the public statuary and urban nomenclature. In this study, we aim to contribute to this nascent strand of literature by investigating the generational differences in social attitudes towards the symbolic transformation of public space in postcommunist Romania. Data collected through a national web-survey conducted in February 2021 (n = 1156) revealed significant intergenerational differences regarding the removal of monuments and the renaming of streets. In particular, higher approval of such memory work was found among the generations born during communism in comparison to the postcommunist generation. Taking stock of these generational differences, as well as the factors underpinning them, contributes to a better understanding of how ordinary people relate to the politics of memory enacted in transforming societies.

Recent scholarship in critical toponymy studies has refashioned the understanding of street names from innocent labels to nominal loci of historical memory and vectors of collective identity that are embroiled with power relations. Urban nomenclatures consist of more than mere linguistic signposts deployed onto space to facilitate navigation. Street names are also powerful signposts that indicate the political regime and its socio-cultural values. Drawing on these theoretical insights, this paper is focused on Sibiu (Romania) and explore the city’s shifting namescape in a longitudinal perspective spanning one century and a half of modern history (1875–2020). The analysis is based on a complete dataset of street names and street name changes registered across five political regimes (Habsburg Empire, Kingdom of Romania, Romanian People’s Republic, Socialist Republic of Romania, and post-socialist Romania). A series of multiple logistic regression models were carried out to determine the factors that influence toponymic change. The statistical results point out several significant predictors of street renaming: (1) the streets’ toponymic characteristics (politicized or neutral name); (2) artery rank (public squares and large avenues or ordinary streets and alleys); and (3) topographic features (a street’s size and centrality). Such a quantitative approach coupled with a longitudinal perspective contributes to the scholarly literature on place-naming practices in three major ways: firstly, by advancing an innovative methodological framework and analytical model for the study of street name changes; secondly, by delineating with statistical precision the factors that model toponymic change; and thirdly, by embedding these renaming practices observed especially after significant power shifts in the broader historical context of the changes brought in the city’s street nomenclature.

Extant scholarship on football stadium names is almost exclusively restricted to discussing naming rights deals as expressions of toponymic commodification. Departing from this rather strict focus, this paper sets out to examine the patterns of stadium names from a quantitative perspective that is based on a dataset comprising football stadiums from around the world (n=1485). Drawing on this empirical material, the paper conducts a multinomial logistic regression analysis focused on determining the factors that influence a stadium’s name as: (a) being neutral (names carrying generic, local and/or descriptive connotations); (b) being political (names celebrating ideological values, historical dates and/or political personalities); (c) representing sports figures (names commemorating sportspersons, either former players or club officials); and (d) representing sponsorship (corporate names). The model points out that variations in stadium names are accounted for mostly by the football continental confederation, but are also influenced by a stadium’s features such as capacity, year of construction and the status of being a shared venue or designated as the national stadium.

Critical scholars of place-name studies have compellingly demonstrated that significant transformations in a society's namescape follow suit major power shifts and regime changes. However, despite the wealth of particular case studies existing in the literature, scarce efforts have been made to examine street name changes in a comparative framework using statistical modeling techniques of multivariate analysis. This paper aims to overcome these shortcomings by developing a comparative approach to analyzing post-socialist street-naming transformations in three Romanian cities from Transylvania (Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, and Sibiu). Based on comprehensive data collected from multiple sources, the study builds a logistic regression model that allows identifying the contribution of each factor to post-socialist toponymic change. The findings pinpoint two classes of factors that influence streets renaming after the fall of state-socialism in Romania: street name characteristics (politicized designations directly associated with the socialist regime) and topographic features (geographical centrality and size). The paper concludes by highlighting the street names' intrinsic vulnerability as political devices of commemoration and makes the case that toponymic change is structured by topographic importance.

Street names express the spatial materialisation of nominative discourses articulated and deployed by the powerful in their politicisation of the urban landscape with self-legitimising ideological values, political symbols and historical narratives. Using an approach grounded upon the theoretical principles of critical toponymies, this paper sets out a longitudinal perspective on the politics of street nomenclature in Hermannstadt/Sibiu (Romania). For this purpose, a dataset comprising the complete historical record of street names in Sibiu between 1829 and 2018 was constructed. The analysis focuses on capturing the ethnopolitics played out at the level of the city's street names through the dual toponymic means of naming and renaming. Subsequently turning to a cross-sectional and comparative approach, the paper then explores the spatialisation of post-communist toponymic change. The statistical analyses performed on these data reveal how the streetscape became a canvas for political authorities' attempts to inscribe and reinscribe ethnicity onto urban space.

This study sets out to map the political toponymy of Romanian schooling network. Starting from the theoretical premise that national memory is toponymically inscribed, inter alia, on a series of public organizations that form an institutional namescape, the paper reads the Romanian historical memory through the looking glass of school names. Exhaustive data was collected for the Romanian secondary schools bearing a nominal identity (N = 2850). Data were analyzed in terms of the ethnic and gender distribution, the social (occupational), spatial, and historical structures of the Romanian educational namescape. Our findings reveal that the political toponymy of the Romanian schooling network is dominated by the generations of nation-makers (intellectuals who imagined the nation in literature and the arts) and state-builders (politicians and statesmen who transformed the national community imagined by the intellectuals into a political nation-state).

Street names are mundane spatial markers that besides providing a sense of orientation inscribe onto the landscape the ideological ethos and political symbols of hegemonic discourses. This review article takes stock of the existing scholarship done on the politics of street naming practices in human (political, cultural, and social) geography and rethinks these insights from sociological perspectives. Drawing on Randall Collins’ taxonomy of sociological theory, the paper interprets urban street nomenclatures along functionalist, conflictualist, constructionist, and utilitarian lines. The analysis is delivered in two installments: Part I addresses urban nomenclatures from functionalist and conflictualist perspectives, while Part II (published in the next issue of this journal) approaches street names as social constructions and examines their utilitarian value. In doing so, the paper advances the argument that urban namescapes in general and street names in particular should make an important object of sociological reflection and empirical analysis. It is one of the key arguments developed in this paper that toponymy encapsulates broader and intersecting issues of power, memory, identity, language, and space which can be rendered visible through sociological analysis.

As toponymic means of inscribing urban space, street names have been addressed mainly by human geographers, who have articulated the field of critical place-name studies. In this paper, I continue the endeavor started in the previous issue published in Social Change Review of reading street names through sociological lenses. Whereas in the first part of this two-part contribution the analysis was made from functionalist and conflictualist perspectives, this second and final part employs social constructionism and the utilitarian theoretical tradition in making sociological sense of street nomenclatures. First, conceiving of street names as forming discursively constructed linguistic landscapes, the paper shows how urban namescapes – the “city-text” – are written, erased, and rewritten to reflect the shifting political powers. Second, the paper examines the neoliberal processes of place branding and toponymic commodification by which street names are turned into sought-after urban commodities with transactional value on the real estate market. The paper concludes by inviting sociologists to join the conversation on street names, which should become an important topic of sociological reflection.

Six decades after the resolution of the Second World War, the Romanian state finally assumed its responsibility for the Romanian Holocaust by commissioning the Wiesel Report and accepting the conclusions delivered by the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania in November 2004. Synchronizing its legislative agenda with the working of the Commission, in the same year, the government ruled the day of 9 October as The National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust in Romania. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly decreed 27 January as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The present study sets out to investigate the memorial practices related to the observance of the National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust enacted in the Romanian education system. In examining the regional patterns of commemorating the Holocaust in the Romanian schooling network, the study attempts to map out a national topography of remembrance. Based on our statistical findings, the study explores the hypothesis of a “double externalization” of state responsibility, consisting in a double deflection performed by the Romanian educational authorities: a) first, by commemorating predominantly the Hungarian Holocaust in Northern Transylvania, b) and secondly, by focusing on the Nazi Holocaust instead of the Holocaust in Romania in the rest of the country.