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DOI: 10.1177/0309132509351042
Geographies of toponymic inscription: new
directions in critical place-name studies
Reuben Rose-Redwood,
1
* Derek Alderman
2
and
Maoz Azaryahu
3
1
Department of Geography, University of Victoria, B203 Social Sciences and
Mathematics Building, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada
2
Department of Geography, East Carolina University, A-227 Brewster Building,
Greenville, NC 27858, USA
3
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa,
Haifa 31905, Israel
Abstract: The study of place naming, or toponymy, has recently undergone a critical reformulation
as scholars have moved beyond the traditional focus on etymology and taxonomy by examining the
politics of place-naming practices. In this article, we provide a selective genealogy of the ‘critical turn’
in place-name studies and consider three complementary approaches to analyzing spatial inscription
as a toponymic practice: political semiotics, governmentality studies, and normative theories of
social justice and symbolic resistance. We conclude by proposing that future scholarship should
explore the political economy of toponymic practices as a step toward expanding the conceptual
horizon of critical place-name studies.
Key words: critical place-name studies, governmentality, politics of calculation, semiotics, social
justice, symbolic resistance, toponymy.
*Author for correspondence. Email: redwood@uvic.ca
I Introduction
You won’t find Canal Road, California or
Coors Street on the commercial street maps
of Baghdad, but this is the new Iraq, where
US soldiers are redrawing the city one English
name at a time … Oklahoma and Pennsylvania
replaced street names in the industrial section
of the old city framed by historic Al-Rashid and
Khulafa streets. In the world of the occupier,
name familiarity breeds security, said Major
Dean Thurmond of the US Army’s Combined
Joint Task Force Seven … Main, Cigar, and
South streets were scribbled [on maps] over the
names more familiar to Baghdadis … ‘These
boys are far from home and they tend to use
names that remind them of home,’ said one
special forces sergeant in the town of Fallujah,
west of Baghdad, dismissing suggestions that
the practice carried an air of imperialism.
‘There’s nothing magical or sinister about it.’
(The Sydney Morning Herald, 2003)
Progress in Human Geography 34(4) (2010) pp. 453–470
© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
454 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
In early April 2003, a mere two weeks after
the initial invasion of Iraq, US troops com-
mandeered Saddam International Airport,
and the US Central Command swiftly re-
named the complex ‘Baghdad International
Airport’ (Woznicki, 2003; USA Today, 2003;
Hunt, 2005; Pike, 2007a). The renaming of
Baghdad’s airport marked the opening salvo
of the US occupation, which continues to
reshape Iraq’s toponymic landscape today.
New US military camps and bases were given
names that resonated with righteousness,
such as ‘Camp Freedom’, ‘Camp Liberty’, and
‘Camp Justice’, and other toponyms were
taken straight out of the American geograph-
ical lexicon, including ‘Camp Arkansas’ and
‘Forward Operating Base Manhattan’ (Pike,
2007b).
In an attempt to render the unfamiliar
more manageable, US forces also devised a
system of American-inspired street names
that they overlaid upon maps of Baghdad,
dotted with names like ‘California Street’,
‘Virginia Avenue’, and ‘Main Street’ (The
Sydney Morning Herald, 2003). The principal
highway to the Baghdad Airport was re-
christened as ‘Route Irish’, with a nod to the
‘Fighting Irish’ of Notre Dame, and various
other supply routes across the country
were also named for American sports teams
(Baggio, 2006). With a more familiar set of
toponyms at their disposal, US soldiers were
better able to navigate throughout Iraq and
‘pinpoint locations’ of potential interest. At
the onset of the occupation, US Army Major
Dean Thurmond explained the purpose of
such place-naming practices by noting that
‘[i]t’s for the sake of communication and
security and making sure everyone is on the
same sheet of music’ (The Sydney Morning
Herald, 2003). From the vantage point of
the occupier, Baghdad’s landscape was seen
as an unwieldy symphony that could only
be understood – and hence secured – if
its melodies were clearly demarcated and
inscribed on a single ‘sheet of music’, thereby
producing a toponymic text to serve as a
map of calculable territory.
The Americans were not the only ones to
remake Iraq’s toponymy after the fall of
the former regime. Shi’a communities in
Baghdad renamed streets, squares, bridges,
mosques, hospitals, universities, and entire
neighborhoods in an attempt to rid them-
selves of Saddam’s legacy. While many
were eager to replace the city’s Saddam-era
place names, some Shi’a themselves raised
concerns that this might result in additional
‘frictions’ with Sunnis. The renaming of
Baghdad’s streets opened a space of rec-
ognition for the Shi’a, which they had long
been denied, yet it also produced a symbolic
arena that held the potential to further divide
the city along sectarian lines at a time of
rising social tensions (Fox News, 2003; Price,
2003; Slevin, 2003).
As the case of Iraq’s toponymic reconfi gur-
ation during the US occupation powerfully
illustrates, the renaming of streets and other
landmarks often plays a crucial role in the
social production of ‘place’. The discursive
act of assigning a name to a given location
does much more than merely denote an
already-existing ‘place’. Rather, as scholars
from various fi elds have suggested, the act
of naming is itself a performative practice
that calls forth the ‘place’ to which it refers
by attempting to stabilize the unwieldy con-
tradictions of sociospatial processes into the
seemingly more ‘managable’ order of textual
inscription (Palonen, 1993; Yurchak, 2000;
Kearns and Berg, 2002; Rose-Redwood,
2008c). While Massey (2005: 54) rightly
warns us against embracing ‘the longstanding
tendency to tame the spatial into the textual’,
this need not imply a wholesale dismissal of
the interrelations of space, place, and text-
uality. On the contrary, a critical analysis
of the politics of spatial inscription remains
one of the most effective strategies for chal-
lenging essentialist claims to affi xing stable
identities to particular spaces. Moreover,
the naming of places is one of the primary
means of attempting to construct clearly de-
marcated spatial identities. Therefore, if we
are to call into question the ‘taming’ of the
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 455
spatial-into-the-textual, as Massey (2005)
insists, this nevertheless still requires a critical
analysis of the social and political struggles
over spatial inscription and related toponymic
practices.
We recognize that our call for a renewed
focus on the geography of place naming may
initially be received with a certain degree of
suspicion. After all, haven’t most geographers
attempted to distance themselves as much
as possible from the public perception that
geography is about nothing more than memor-
izing place names and state capitals? Such
skepticism is understandable considering the
largely esoteric and encyclopedic nature of
much of the traditional scholarship on place
names. This goes a long way toward ex-
plaining why place-name research has carved
out such a marginal existence within the dis-
cipline of geography and is commonly con-
ceived of as ‘the old and largely discredited
fi eld of toponymy’ (Goodchild, 2004: 712).
Even the long-time geographic proselytizer
for place-name studies, Wilbur Zelinsky
(2002: 243), laments that, after many years
of scholarship, ‘[t]he theoretical scene in
the study of names leaves everything to
be desired’. Yet, despite this association of
place-name studies with antiquarian empiri-
cism, there are signs that a sea-change is
currently under way in toponymic research.
A growing number of scholars have emphas-
ized the importance of understanding place
naming as a contested spatial practice rather
than viewing place names as transparent
signifi ers that designate places as ‘objects’ or
‘artifacts’ within a predefi ned geographical
space (Berg and Vuolteenaho, 2009).
In this article, we trace the recent shift
in place-name studies away from its trad-
itional focus on etymological and taxonomic
concerns and toward a critical interrogation
of the politics of place naming. If it could be
argued in the mid-1990s that a ‘critical ap-
preciation of power and ideology is often
far from the center of concern in toponymic
studies’ (Myers, 1996: 237), this is no longer
the case today since the ‘political’ has now
become one of the central concerns of
critical approaches to place-name studies.
This so-called ‘critical turn’ in toponymic
scholarship has produced an exciting new
body of research, which situates the study of
toponymy within the context of broader
debates in critical human geography.
We begin by providing a selective
genealogy of contemporary place-name
studies in the next section. The aim of this
genealogical investigation is not to propose
some sort of teleological progression from
the ‘traditional’ to the ‘critical’ in toponymic
scholarship. Such a characterization would
surely be an oversimplifi cation, since it ob-
scures the diversity of approaches currently
being employed in the multidisciplinary fi eld
of toponymy, which includes everything
from the unapologetic empiricism of applied
toponymy to the theoretical formulations of
poststructuralist critique. We would like to
argue, however, that the level of explicit and
self-refl exive engagement with critical the-
ories of space and place over the past two
decades has marked an important turning
point in toponymic research, and it is this
shift toward theorizing the politics of place-
naming practices that we seek to highlight
in our admittedly ‘selective’ genealogy. We
see in this work the potential to overturn
the long-standing perception that toponymy
is reducible to the encyclopedic search for
the authentic origins of names while also
challenging the notion that a ‘definitive’
classifi cation system can be constructed to
impose order on the bewildering multiplicity
of place names.
There are many different directions that
critical place-name studies might take in the
future. We have chosen to emphasize three
distinct approaches to examining toponymic
practices. First, we consider place naming
from the standpoint of semiotics. Next, we
draw upon governmentality studies to
theorize the making of regimes of spatial
inscription as an integral strategy in the pro-
duction of calculable spaces. Lastly, we focus
our attention on issues of social justice as
456 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
they relate to conceptualizing place-naming
systems as ‘cultural arenas’. These three
approaches to place-name studies are by no
means mutually exclusive nor do they ex-
haust the realm of theoretical approaches
at our disposal. Rather, they are highlighted
here to illustrate the multiple perspectives
that can inform a critical politics of place
naming, and we hope that future scholarship
will expand the epistemological, ontological,
and methodological horizon of critical place-
name studies.
II Towards a genealogy of the ‘critical
turn’ in contemporary place-name
studies
For much of the twentieth century, the
study of place names was preoccupied with
accumulating and cataloguing the names of
places rather than analyzing the sociospatial
practice of toponymic inscription itself.
Wright (1929: 140) long ago argued that this
approach to place-name studies could be
likened to that of ‘the botanical collector,
whose fi rst interest is in gathering and ticket-
ing specimens’. Similarly, he suggested that
the ‘toponym collector draws up lists of place
names and garners details regarding the
origin and meaning of each’. By focusing so
intently on the origins of individual place
names, such studies have tended to neglect
the political struggles over the processes
of place naming (Kearns and Berg, 2002).
As Withers (2000: 533) incisively argues,
‘Attention to the name alone, either on the
ground or on an historical map, runs the
risk of concerning itself with ends and not
with means; of ignoring, or, at best, under-
playing the social processes intrinsic to the
authoritative act of naming’. At the close of
the twentieth century, Zelinsky (1997: 465)
soberly observed that the study of geograph-
ical names amounted to little more than
‘collecting, classifying, and seeking origins for
names, with only occasional probes of the
connections to the encompassing totality of
human phenomena’.
By the mid-1980s, however, there were
already various scholars at work seeking to
challenge such traditional approaches to
toponymic research (Cohen and Kliot, 1981;
Azaryahu, 1986; 1988; Carter, 1987; Ferguson,
1988; Stump, 1988). Maoz Azaryahu’s
(1986; 1988; 1990; 1992; 1996) early work on
street naming and political identity laid the
groundwork for a critical interrogation of
urban toponymic practices and the politics of
commemoration. Moreover, the publication
of Paul Carter’s now-classic study, The road
to Botany Bay (1987), also drew attention to
the constitutive role of naming in the pro-
duction of ‘places’ that were invested with
cultural meaning and social power. Focusing
particularly on the ways in which naming
practices literally ‘invented’ new spaces of
colonial possession, Carter demonstrates
how the act of naming brought specifi c places
into the realm of ‘cultural circulation’, thereby
‘transforming space into an object of know-
ledge, something that could be explored and
read’ (Carter, 1987: 28, 67). Whatmore
(2002: 68), however, questions Carter’s
‘insistence on the primacy of language and
his preoccupation with naming as a defin-
itive spatial practice’. She contends that the
focus on imperial naming strategies – while
important – often results in the conceptual
erasure of those indigenous spaces that
were not subject to the intentional gaze of
imperial inscription (see also Ryan, 1996;
Clayton, 2000).
For the most part, these criticisms are
generally well founded, yet many of the issues
raised concerning Carter’s approach have
been remedied by other scholars who have
explored the social struggles over competing
systems of spatial signification (eg, Yeoh,
1992). Other studies have also explored how
colonial powers frequently erased, mar-
ginalized, or appropriated the languages
and place-name systems of colonized, indi-
genous groups (Bassett, 1994; Herman, 1999;
Withers, 2000; Grounds, 2001). Not sur-
risingly, a reclaiming of language, memory,
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 457
and identity has accompanied postcolonial
independence, and, as revealed in place-
renaming efforts, this reclamation has been
anything but straightforward politically (Berg
and Kearns, 1996; Yeoh, 1996; Nash, 1999).
In critical place-name studies, the emphasis
has been placed not so much on the name
itself but rather on the cultural politics of
naming – that is, how people seek to control,
negotiate, and contest the naming process as
they engage in wider struggles for legitimacy
and visibility.
By the mid-1990s, a signifi cant reorien-
tation in place-name studies was evident as
a growing number of scholars began ‘recon-
necting place-name analysis to the study of
power’ (Myers, 1996: 237). Many of these
studies drew upon Cohen and Kliot’s (1992)
seminal analysis of place naming as a strat-
egy of nation-building and state formation,
and a heavy emphasis was therefore placed
on how governmental authorities have con-
structed new regimes of toponymic inscrip-
tion to promote particular conceptions of
history and national identity. Subsequent
work has chronicled the toponymic changes
accompanying major ideological struggles
and power shifts within different countries
(Azaryahu, 1992; 1997; Faraco and Murphy,
1997; Azaryahu and Golan, 2001; Robinson
et al., 2001; Azaryahu and Kook, 2002; Light,
2004; Gill, 2005). As Whelan (2005: 62) main-
tains, these name changes ‘act as a spatializa-
tion of memory and power, making tangible
specifi c narratives of nationhood and reducing
otherwise fl uid histories into sanitized, con-
cretized myths that anchor the projection of
national identity onto physical territory’.
As this research shows, the renaming of
streets has proven to be an especially popular
strategy for removing signs of earlier regimes
and honoring a new set of heroes, campaigns,
and causes (Ferguson, 1988; Palonen, 1993;
Azaryahu, 1996; Yeoh, 1996; Faraco and
Murphy, 1997; Alderman, 2000; Light et al.,
2002; Pinchevski and Torgovnik, 2002; Light,
2004; Rose-Redwood, 2008b). This focus in
the literature on the naming of streets is
indicative of the power that street-naming
systems have in constituting the taken-for-
granted spaces of everyday life, especially
when ‘everybody uses them [street names]
but hardly anyone pays attention to their
specific historical meaning and to the fact
that they belong to the structures of power’
(Azaryahu, 1996: 321). It is precisely this
process of using street naming as a mec-
hanism for naturalizing hegemonic power
structures that critical place-name scholars
have sought to challenge by demonstrating
the historical instability and contingency of
place-naming regimes.
While the majority of studies on the politics
of place naming have emphasized questions
of nationalism and ideology, there is also a
growing recognition that the naming of places
is implicated in the production of racialized,
gendered, and commodified landscapes
(Berg and Kearns, 1996; Boyd, 2000; Yurchak,
2000; Kearns and Berg, 2002; Hagen,
2007; Mitchelson et al., 2007; Alderman,
2008; Rose-Redwood, 2008b). The image-
generating power of toponyms has long
played a role in the political economy of place
promotion; from the intentional misnaming
of Greenland to the more current practice
of giving subdivisions, businesses, casinos,
and even hospitals marketable monikers
(Zelinsky, 1989; Kearns and Barnett, 1999;
Raento and Douglass, 2001). Place-naming
rights are increasingly bought and sold like
commodities, used to project the power of
corporations and privatize public space and
memory (Boyd, 2000; Yurchak, 2000).
Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu,
recent studies have suggested that topo-
nyms function as a form of ‘symbolic capital’,
or a means of creating social distinction and
status for both elite and marginalized groups
as well as individual actors (Hagen, 2007;
Alderman, 2008; Rose-Redwood, 2008b).
Of course, symbolic capital can be converted
into economic capital, but it often holds even
greater currency as people vie for prestige
and infl uence within the larger social and pol-
itical order (Forest and Johnson, 2002).
458 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
The socially contested nature of place
names comes from the fact that they are
powerful semiotic texts embedded in larger
systems of meaning and discourse that are
read, interpreted, and acted upon socially
by people in different ways (Duncan, 1990;
Pinchevski and Torgovnik, 2002). Toponyms,
according to Thornton (1997: 221), ‘evoke a
wide range of poignant associations, mental
and physical, illustrating how people learn
to “think” with the landscape and not just
“about it”’. Place names are also import-
ant in creating and maintaining emotional
attachments to places, even in the face of
physical alienation from these very same
places (Kearney and Bradley, 2009; see also
Davidson et al., 2005). Associated inter-
textually with larger cultural narratives and
stories, toponymic inscriptions serve as a
‘means of situating people in places’ and as-
sisting the public in making moral and ethical
judgments about themselves and others
(Carbaugh and Rudnick, 2006: 167).
As this selective overview of critical place-
name studies shows, the fi eld of toponymy
has experienced a major transformation over
the course of the last 20 years. A variety of
new thematic concerns have been explored,
and there is now a far greater recognition
that toponymic research should be firmly
grounded in an explicit engagement with
critical theories of space, place, and land-
scape. In the remainder of this article, we con-
sider three distinct theoretical frameworks
that can be employed to critically analyze
toponymic practices: political semiotics,
governmentality studies, and normative
theories of social justice and symbolic resist-
ance. This discussion is meant to be a sug-
gestive, rather than comprehensive, account
of possible approaches to critical place-
name studies.
III Political semiotics and the cultural
economy of commemorative place naming
Names and the nomenclatures they belong to
occupy a central place in any cultural system.
Semiotics, or the study of signs, explores the
cultural communication of meaning and
how messages that are disseminated in the
sphere of social communication are encoded
and decoded. Since the pioneering work of
Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders
Peirce, a number of semiotic traditions have
developed as a means of examining sign
systems of various kinds (Chandler, 2007).
Applying a semiotic approach appears
to be especially rewarding for the study of
commemorative toponyms. The semiotic
association between place naming and pol-
itical power can be traced back throughout
the course of history. Naming places after
their founders, for instance, is an ancient trad-
ition. Following the example of Alexander
the Great, new cities in the Hellenistic and
the Roman Empire were named after em-
perors. Similarly, new settlements founded
in the American West were often named to
commemorate political leaders and prom-
inent citizens. Moreover, cities in the former
Soviet Union were also named after members
of the Soviet pantheon. In 1924, for example,
Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. Stalin’s
cult of personality was also evident in nam-
ing cities after him in each of the 16 Soviet
Republics. During the second half of the
twentieth century, in the era of mass travel,
airports have similarly been named after
national heroes.
In previous studies, one of the present
authors has drawn upon the work of Umberto
Eco to analyze the political semiotics of com-
memorative street naming, which involves
the interplay between primary, utilitarian
functions that are ‘denoted’ and a complex
set of secondary, symbolic functions, which
are ‘connoted’ (Azaryahu, 1996). The latter
involve cultural values, social norms, and pol-
itical ideologies that are associated with the
symbolic message of the sign (Eco, 1986).
The utilitarian function of toponyms is to
designate different ‘places’ as part of a gen-
eral system of spatial orientation. However,
the offi cial naming of places by authorities
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 459
opens up the possibility of instituting names
that, in their commemorative capacity, con-
form to and accord with the ideological
premises underlying the ruling sociopolitical
order. This commemorative dimension in-
vests place names with ideological meaning
and political significance (Palonen, 1993;
Azaryahu, 1996).
When commemoration is prioritized over
orientation, the commemorative function
can interfere with and even undermine
the utilitarian function of a toponym. One
example of such a situation is when geo-
graphically continuous thoroughfares are
divided into smaller units to accommodate
multiple commemorative names, each of
which is assigned to a particular consecutive
segment of a thoroughfare between neigh-
boring intersections. From the perspective
of those in charge of bestowing these com-
memorative names, the aim is to maximize
the number of commemorations in a given
area. For many who are attempting to navi-
gate through a city, however, such a practice
defi es ‘common-sense’ assumptions that a
continuous thoroughfare is one and the same
urban unit and should be designated as such.
The use of place names for commemor-
ative purposes is based on a long-standing
cross-cultural convention, which maintains
that pronouncing the proper names of the
dead facilitates remembrance. From a semi-
otic perspective, the commemoration of
Stalingrad is illuminating since it entails a
cluster of explicit and implicit commemor-
ations. Avenue de Stalingrad in Paris was
named after the Soviet city that, following
the decisive victory of the Red Army in 1943,
became a metaphor for the heroic and vic-
torious stand. On another commemorative
level, the name of the city commemorated
Stalin. A prominent symbol of the Stalinist
cult of personality, the city was renamed
Volgagrad in the course of de-Stalinization,
yet the commemoration of Stalin is pre-
served in the name Avenue de Stalingrad in
Paris. The name also appears in various other
European cities, such as Lyon and Brussels.
After a commemorative name is given to
a place, it increasingly becomes associated
with its geographic location: history becomes
geography. Kennedy, Bismarck, Martin
Luther King, and Ben Gurion come to answer
the question ‘where’ rather than the ques-
tion ‘who’. As a result of the conversion of
historical names into place names, the geo-
graphic denotation takes over while the
existence of a historical referent becomes
increasingly obscure to most users of the
city: ‘When I hear the name Friedrichstrasse
or similar street names, I don’t think in this
minute at all that the street is named after
Friedrich I or anyone else’ (Loewy, 1927: 303).
Notwithstanding the ideological perspec-
tives that underlie commemorative place
naming, the meaning individuals ascribe to
and associate with place names is to a sub-
stantial extent also a function of how per-
sonal experiences frame their semiotic
engagement with the landscape.
The version of history that commemor-
ative place naming introduces into social
communication is experienced as obvious,
part of the ‘natural order’. In this sense, the
apparent weakness of the historical referent
actually augments the power of commem-
orative place names to render a certain
version of history not only familiar, but also
self-evident. The merit of a place name as a
commemorative vehicle is that it transforms
an offi cial discourse of history into a shared
cultural experience that is embedded into
practices of everyday life.
In their commemorative capacity, place
names offer a mapping of space and historical
time that figures as a cartographic text.
Street names, for example, are embedded
into the cityscape to form a particular ‘city-
text’ displayed on street signs and maps
(Azaryahu, 1996). Notably, such a city-text
represents the priorities of former municipal
administrations and political regimes.
Written over prolonged periods of time and
eventually re- and over-inscribed, a city-
text at any given time is the sum of former
additions and erasures, and in this capacity is
460 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
a palimpsest (Ferguson, 1988; Crang, 1998).
The writers of a city-text are mostly lesser-
known members of committees and offi cials
put in charge of naming streets and other
public places. Their choices represent urban
contingencies but also the ideological com-
mitments and political concerns of local elites
in charge of the semiotic make-up of the city.
As a particular geography of public memory,
a city-text represents not only a version of
history but also commemorative priorities
and hegemonic discourses of former periods.
The association of commemorative topo-
nyms with specifi c social, cultural, and polit-
ical systems makes them vulnerable to shifts
in political ideologies and discourses of his-
tory. A pertinent issue is the impact a change
of local administration has on a city-text.
This is of special relevance when the new ad-
ministration champions a commemorative
agenda that differs from those of its pre-
decessors. When continuity is desired, a pos-
sible solution is the commemorative naming
of public spaces in newly built neighbor-
hoods to compensate for alleged or real past
commemorative defi ciencies.
Another option is to rename existing
landmarks, streets, and other places. This
phenomenon fi gures prominently in periods
of regime change and revolutionary trans-
formation, when ‘renaming the past’ is a
measure of officially promoted historical
revision. Together with pulling down monu-
ments, an ideologically motivated rewriting
of city-texts belongs to a ‘semiotic revolu-
tion’ that signifies discontinuities in polit-
ical history. Aimed at the reconstruction
of the symbolic infrastructure of society,
renaming places introduces the political
change and the ideology of the political order
into mundane spheres of human experi-
ence. When conducted in the context of a
regime change, the renaming of places is a
powerful message in its own right about the
new regime’s control over a community’s
symbolic infrastructure.
‘Toponymic cleansing’ has fi gured prom-
inently in nationalist contexts, where
‘renaming the landscape’ is directed to weld the
national language to the national territory by
excluding ‘foreign’ place names (Azaryahu
and Golan, 2001). The ‘nationalization’ of
toponymies as a symbolic homeland-building
measure has belonged to periods of nation-
building and state-formation in Europe since
it was fi rst practiced in a newly independent
Greece after 1830, when Turkish, Slavic, and
Italian place names were Hellenized. The
toponymic cleansing of colonial place names
is also a common feature in postcolonial
contexts (Yeoh, 1996).
Based on the premise that the political
economy of signs and social formations are
interrelated, political semiotics explores
ideology as a cultural form and investigates
the sociopolitical dimension of signs. The
political semiotics of place naming offers
important insights into the study of the rela-
tions between toponymy and the politics of
cultural signifi cation. In doing so, it sheds light
on how commemorative measures of place
naming are embedded within the political
geographies of public memory.
IV Governmentality, regimes of spatial
inscription, and the production of
calculable spaces
Most accounts of the semiotics of place nam-
ing devote considerable attention to the
ways in which toponyms constitute the land-
scape as a ‘text’ through which the commem-
orative priorities of a people can be read. As
noted above, the utilitarian function of a
sign is often contrasted with its commemo-
rative dimensions, whereby the former is
reduced to the commonsense notion of the
need for spatial orientation (denotation) and
the latter consists of the more complicated
world of symbolic associations (connotation).
This neat distinction between denotation
and connotation has not gone unchallenged
(eg, Baudrillard, 1981; Davis, 2005), yet
the logic of utilitarian denotation too often
goes unquestioned while much of the atten-
tion is concentrated on the politics of cul-
tural signifi cation that plays an admittedly
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 461
important role in the place-naming process. It
is high time, however, that we apply the same
level of critical scrutiny to the seemingly self-
evident rationalities of spatial calculation
and geographical orientation as place-name
scholarship has devoted to the social mean-
ings of commemoration and cultural iden-
tity. To put it more concisely, we need to
develop the theoretical tools necessary to pry
open the ‘blackbox’ of spatial denotation
much as has already been done with the
symbolic realm of connotation.
A useful point of departure to initiate
such an encounter between critical place-
name studies and an analysis of the politics
of calculation is to recognize that place
naming is part of a broader history of spatial
identification. A genealogy of the latter
requires not only a consideration of place
naming itself but also how it relates to a
whole series of spatial practices such as street
and house numbering, the establishment
of signage systems, cadastral mapping for
the purposes of property management, the
creation of postal codes, and other related
techniques of spatial inscription (geo-coding).
The naming of places, then, is not an isolated
semiotic activity but rather a form of spatial
inscription that has considerable material im-
plications as one among many ‘apparatuses
of identifi cation’ (Caplan and Torpey, 2001).
Since the eighteenth century, the con-
struction of regimes of spatial inscription
has become a key strategy for ordering geo-
graphical spaces, which is intimately linked to
the production of governmental knowledges
and the spatial identifi cation of individuals
that constitute a population (Curry et al.,
2004; Curry, 2005; Farvacque-Vitkovic
et al., 2005; Rose-Redwood, 2006; 2008a;
Thale, 2007). The history of governmental
rationalities, the governance of populations,
and the construction of calculable spaces
has become an important focus of critical
geographic scholarship over the past decade
(Braun, 2000; Hannah, 2000; 2009; Elden,
2001; 2005; 2007; Blomley, 2003; Pickles,
2004; Crampton and Elden, 2006; 2007;
Huxley, 2007; Mayhew, 2009). Much of this
work draws upon Michel Foucault’s (1991;
2007) discussions of governmentality, or
governmental rationality, particularly his
emphasis on the key role that statistics has
historically played in the formation of govern-
mental knowledges of ‘populations’. Foucault
was interested in understanding how power
is exercised through an assemblage of pol-
itical technologies enabling the production
of knowledge, which is targeted both at the
individual subject and at the population as
a whole.
Geographers who have engaged with the
literature on ‘governmentality studies’ have
generally focused on the history of popu-
lation censuses, mapping, and the partition-
ing of geographical spaces. Yet the use of
numerical ‘addressing’ as a political techno-
logy has received far less attention among
those interested in the relations of space,
knowledge, and power (Rose-Redwood,
2006; 2008a). At the same time, very few
place-name scholars have engaged with the
literature on governmentality and the pol-
itics of calculation. We would like to suggest
here that it is at the intersection of these
two emerging literatures that considerable
insights can be achieved concerning topo-
nymic inscription, systems of governmental
identifi cation, and the spaces of calculation.
When linked to a coordinated system of
house numbers and postal codes, a city’s
street names become elements of a geo-
locational regime that enables governmental
authorities to more easily tax, police, and
provide services to their populations, allows
companies to spatially target potential con-
sumers using various geodemographic infor-
mation systems; and becomes incorporated
into the taken-for-granted infrastructure of
daily life. While the practice of numerically
addressing geographical spaces can certainly
serve the repressive ends of social control, a
Foucauldian analysis of political technologies
is also concerned with how such techniques
462 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
produce new modes of subjectivity as geo-
coded spaces become the condition of pos-
sibility for locating the place of the ‘self’ and
‘others’ in both social and spatial terms.
Crampton and Elden (2006) highlight the
need to critically examine how techniques
of numerical calculation have reshaped the
politics of space since the seventeenth
century. More specifically, they seek to
reconsider the interrelations of calculative
thought and political action by exploring
the ‘geographies of mathematization and
calculation’ (Crampton and Elden, 2006:
681). If the history of place naming is reformu-
lated as part of a genealogy of geographical
addressing and geo-coding, then its rele-
vance to the project of a spatial history of
calculation becomes increasingly evident.
This is particularly the case when considering
the spatial organization of most American
cities, where street numbering systems are
utilized as a primary geo-locational strategy
of spatial ordering (Baldwin and Grimaud,
1989; Hamlin, 1999; Rose-Redwood, 2008a).
In large cities and small towns alike, the
numbering of streets is unquestionably one
of the most visible indications that ‘number’
and ‘calculation’ have been embedded into
the very spaces of everyday life.
A genealogy of the techniques of spatial
calculation must be attentive to the speci-
ficity of their emergence in different his-
torical and geographical contexts, including
the virtual realm of cyberspace (eg, McDowell
et al., 2008). While all such projects have
had the common goal of producing spaces of
‘legibility’ (Scott, 1998), this need not suggest
that we should envision a universal process of
state-driven spatial ‘rationalization’ encom-
passing the entire globe from the Age of
Enlightenment to the present. As Foucault
rightly argues, ‘the word rationalization is
dangerous. What we have to do is analyze
specific rationalities rather than always
invoking the progress of rationalization in
general’ (Foucault, 1983: 210, emphasis
in original). The spatial history of numerical
addressing is far too messy and piecemeal to
accommodate such grand theorizations on
a global scale.
Regardless of the scale of analysis, it is
critical that a genealogy of calculable space
should not merely superimpose a precon-
ceived theoretical lens upon its ‘object’ of
analysis but rather remain open to reformu-
lation, contradiction, and fundamental chal-
lenges to the theoretical frameworks that
inform genealogical investigations. What is
called for here, then, is not a strict adher-
ence to the Foucauldian perspective on
governmentality – if such a thing even exists.
Instead, Foucault’s work on governmental
rationalities and political technologies should
inspire further inquiry into the relationship
between toponymic inscription and the pro-
duction of calculable spaces as opposed to
constructing a rigid conceptual cage with all
the trappings of a theoretical straitjacket.
V Social justice, symbolic resistance,
and place naming as a cultural arena
Discussions of how place naming is involved
in the semiotics of political regime change
and the creation of governable spaces tend to
focus our attention on issues of social and
political control. No doubt, the naming pro-
cess sheds light on power relations – how
some social groups have the authority to
name while others do not – and the selective
way in which such relations reproduce the
dominance of certain ideologies and iden-
tities over others. Yet, in emphasizing the
control behind toponymic inscription, we
must also recognize the extent to which this
control can be challenged. The metaphor of
‘cultural arena’ focuses on the capacity of
place names to serve as sites of contest, de-
bate, and negotiation as social groups com-
pete for the right to name and, in the words
of Don Mitchell (2008: 43), ‘the power to
defi ne the meanings that are to be read into
and out of the landscape’. The results of
these naming struggles have a direct bearing
on whose vision of ‘reality’ will appear to
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 463
matter socially, since landscapes are not just
the products of social power but also tools
or resources for achieving it.
While theories of hegemony recognize
that dominant groups or classes control the
production of cultural space, they also insist
that this dominance is never complete and
is challenged by counter-hegemonic ideo-
logies of subordinate groups. Resistance
is sometimes confrontational, but often
symbolic. Symbolic resistance involves the
‘appropriation of certain artifacts and signifi -
cations from the dominant culture and their
transformation into symbolic forms that
take on new meaning and signifi cance’ for
subaltern groups (Cosgrove and Jackson,
1987: 99). Place naming can be interpreted
as a conduit for challenging dominant ideo-
logies as well as a means of introducing
alternative cultural meanings and narrations
of identity. Kadmon (2004) goes as far as to
use the notion of ‘toponymic warfare’ to de-
scribe the extent to which marginalized
nationalities and linguistic cultures within
countries have appropriated and rewritten
place names on maps as part of their cam-
paigns of resistance. Maps are more than
simply innocent repositories of name data.
They work – through their textual authority
and repeated use – to normalize certain ways
of knowing and naming the landscape over
others (Melville, 2006).
The material landscape itself can also be
an important site of toponymic resistance as
social actors and groups engage in the
‘counternaming’ of places (Zeidel, 2006: 201).
As Raento and Watson (2000) illustrate,
radical Basque groups have carried out some
of their territorially based political protest by
painting over Spanish place names on public
signs. ‘This linguistic redesign’, they argue,
‘constitutes a direct challenge to the authority
of both the Spanish state and the moderate
nationalist concept of Basque society,
politics, and culture’ (Raento and Watson,
2000: 727). A similar type of resistance has
long occurred in Northern Ireland with Irish
nationalists spray-painting through the word
‘London’ on road signs to Londonderry
(Doherty, 2007). When Chicago offi cials re-
buffed a proposal to rename Monroe Street
for Fred Hampton, a Black Panther leader
who had been killed on that street by city
police in 1969, members of the Illinois Black
Panther Party marched to the 2300 block of
Monroe and posted their own home-made
street signs with Hampton’s name written
on them (Grossman and Avila, 2006).
The aforementioned cases of people
claiming and reinscribing the landscape
through place-naming practices of var-
ious kinds are evocative and contribute to
bringing visibility, albeit often temporarily, to
their cause. However, the use of place nam-
ing as resistance is often done more subtly,
such as when a subordinate population em-
ploys a competing, informal system of geo-
graphical nomenclature rather than the
authorized system of naming (Yeoh, 1992;
Bigon, 2009). The very choice not to use the
offi cial place-name system is a practice of
self-determination. In addition, place-name
resistance can involve the ‘use of alternative
pronunciations for established names’, as
Kearns and Berg (2002: 286) suggest in
examining the postcolonial politics of rec-
ognizing the cultural rights of indigenous
people within Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Pronunciation of a place name, whether sym-
pathetic or not to the Maori, is a social act
of narrating identity, a way of ‘constructing
and positioning the Self in relation to Others’
(Kearns and Berg, 2002: 298).
While toponymic resistance is often
carried out through everyday practices and
performances, marginalized groups can and
do use formal, political means to challenge
established naming practices. The contested
and negotiated nature of naming is especially
evident in the use of toponymic inscriptions
to serve the ends of public commemoration
as people struggle to decide who has the
right to determine what is remembered (and
forgotten) publicly and offi cially. Racial and
ethnic minorities in the United States, for
example, are increasingly turning to place
464 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
naming as a political strategy for addressing
their exclusion and misrepresentation within
traditional, white-dominated constructions
of heritage. This strategy has led to the re-
moval of racially and ethnically derogatory
place names as well as the renaming of places
in ways that recognize the historical import-
ance of minorities (Monmonier, 2006).
In Phoenix, Arizona, for example, Native
American leaders and sympathetic state
offi cials successfully pushed to have Squaw
Peak renamed in honor of Lori Ann Piestewa.
Piestewa was the first Native American
female soldier to die in combat, a 2003
casualty of the Iraq War. The National
Congress of American Indians very much
interpreted the issue in terms of identity
politics, stating that the use of squaw as a
toponym is ‘an example of the disrespect for
and racism toward native women, who are
often political and social leaders of our com-
munities’ (quoted in Kelleher, 2004: 121).
The reidentification of Squaw Peak was
envisioned as a way of challenging sexism as
well as racial/ethnic stereotypes, prompting
us to consider the multiple layers and axes
of identity and contestation at work in
place naming.
African Americans have been particularly
active in using place names to challenge
racist commemorations of the past in cul-
tural landscapes. Schools have a long and
embattled history within US race relations
and the renaming of these institutions is
increasingly seen as a means of contesting
normative definitions of cultural and his-
torical identity (Alderman, 2002a). In the
early 1990s, the Orleans Parish school board in
Louisiana implemented a highly controversial
policy that prohibited school names honoring
slave owners and others who did not respect
racial equality. The names of many white
historical fi gures (including the slave-holding
fi rst president of the United States, George
Washington) were removed from schools
and replaced with names commemorating
prominent African-Americans, including
slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King,
Jr (Dart, 1997).
The renaming of streets for Martin Luther
King is the most widespread example of
African American efforts to contest the
hegemonic place-name landscape. Street
naming is an especially potent form of cul-
tural resistance and redefi nition because of
its potential to touch and connect disparate
groups – some of which may not identify with
King. Yet, the road-naming process is fre-
quently characterized by intense public
debate about King’s legacy and questions of
race and racism (Alderman, 2002b; 2006).
For many activists, finding the most
appropriate street to identify with King
comes with the diffi culty of convincing the
white establishment that his name belongs
on major roads, that his legacy has relevance
and resonance to everyone’s lives. In prac-
tice, public opposition has frequently led to
the segregation of his name on minor streets
or portions of larger roads located entirely in
the African American community, in effect
reinforcing traditional racial and economic
boundaries and reproducing the very same
white control of public space that the civil
rights leader fought to correct.
Attempts to limit and control public con-
sumption of King’s memory are not confi ned
to the naming of physical, material places.
The internet domain name martlutherking.
org is controlled by a white supremacist
organization that uses the URL to host a
website that defames King (Alderman, 2009).
Thus, protest through naming can be wielded
for reactionary objectives as well as pro-
gressive ones. Toponymic resistance, as
Kearns and Berg (2002: 286) rightly suggest,
can be ‘thought of not only in terms of the
politics of recognition invoked by marginal
groups, but also in terms of the resistances
enacted by members of hegemonic groups
in response to such politics’.
As we think about where the metaphor
of a ‘cultural arena’ might take place-name
research in the future, the controversies
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 465
surrounding King’s commemoration point to
the usefulness of analyzing toponymy from a
social justice perspective and understanding
how the naming of places, as a product of
uneven social relations, is used to advance or
obstruct opportunities for greater equity.
Mitchell (2003; 2008) has been especially
vocal in placing social justice at the center of
cultural landscape analysis. As he contends,
being seen and heard publicly is critical in
establishing who has a right to the city and
its public spaces (Mitchell, 2003). In asses-
sing the degree to which marginalized
groups are being seen and heard through the
toponymic process, it is possible to apply the
well-established concepts of procedural and
distributive justice.
Renaming particular places involves
decision-making procedures in addition to
ideological considerations (Azaryahu, 1997),
and it is worth thinking about what specifi c
legal or extra-legal factors impede or facili-
tate the participation of subaltern groups in
place naming. Even when the landscape is re-
named to make associations with previously
marginalized populations, this can still work
to exclude if these populations have no
actual voice in how their identities will be
used in the naming process (Herman, 1999;
Cowell, 2004). Greater procedural justice
for minority groups will inevitable require
analyzing the growing commodifi cation and
privatization of place naming and breaking
the stranglehold that class and economic
power have over the construction of public
space (Mitchell, 2003). Indeed, in the case of
the USA, those who own property along
potentially renamed streets often play a
deciding role in name changes, taking pre-
cedence over the pleas of other legitimate
stakeholders such as those who rent, work,
or simply travel on the road in question. In
exploring the procedural (in)justices of place
naming, scholars might benefi t from making
greater connections to research on the
injustices of neoliberal governance (Macleod,
2002), the ‘consequential geographies’ of
property (Blomley, 2005), and the politics
of urban citizenship and (dis)enfranchise-
ment (Purcell, 2002).
A consideration of distributive justice
prompts us to consider how the toponymic
landscape should be reconstructed in ways
that refl ect and give voice to previously sup-
pressed histories and identities. Exactly
how many of our schools, streets, bridges,
stadiums, and parks are named for minor-
ities? A concern with distribution also draws
attention to an analysis of the intra-urban
spatial context and the degree to which
toponyms work, depending on their location,
to marginalize or raise the perceived public
legitimacy of subordinate groups. What is
the ‘place’ of certain named public spaces in
relation to a city’s array of race-, gender-, and
class-based spatial distributions? Without
serious consideration of this question, places
named for marginalized groups could actu-
ally work to alienate and further segregate
these groups (Alderman, 2002a). As Raento
and Watson (2000: 728) recognize, ‘Naming
and re-naming are strategies of power, and
location matters, because this power is only
truly exercised when it is “seen” in the appro-
priate place’.
At the heart of minority efforts to be rec-
ognized publicly through naming is a social
reconstruction of the scale of commem-
oration and identity that challenges conven-
tional geographic and social boundaries
(Alderman, 2003). In this regard, scholars of
place naming might consider examining how
naming, rather than a mere symbolic act,
takes place within, and perhaps contributes
to, the larger geographies of social opportunity
and disparity (Bullard and Johnson, 1997).
Finally, to investigate the capacity of place
naming to be used as a tool for advancing or
hindering social justice, we must expand our
understanding of the nature of the symbolic
resistance and struggle that underlies the
naming process. The vision of the past that is
made socially important through place naming
is not simply a matter of ‘political correctness’,
as suggested by many opponents, but vital
to achieving fairness in cultural and political
466 Progress in Human Geography 34(4)
representation and preventing the symbolic
annihilation of marginalized social groups
and their historical identities.
VI Expanding the horizon of critical
place-name studies
The field of toponymy is currently under-
going a critical reformulation, and we have
attempted to convey some of the exciting
new directions in place-name studies as it
has developed over the last two decades.
No longer is most toponymic research blind
to the power structures that underpin the
naming process nor to the possibilities of
symbolic resistance. If anything, the issues
of ‘power’ and ‘politics’ have taken center
stage, and critical place-name scholarship
risks becoming a bit too predictable and
formulaic in its repetitious invocations of
toponymic domination and resistance (for
a similar critique of critical geography, see
Blomley, 2006). The point here is not to deny
the importance of political struggles over
naming, but rather to insist that we must
broaden our analysis by considering how the
‘political’ is related to other relatively un-
explored questions in place-name studies.
One recent trend, for instance, that has
received surprisingly little attention among
critical geographers and place-name scholars
is the commodifi cation of place-naming rights
(yet see Boyd, 2000; Yurchak, 2000). While
the association between property owner-
ship and place naming can be traced back
quite far in history, it was only within the
past few decades that a number of signifi -
cant steps have been taken toward the
wholesale commodifi cation of place names,
whereby the right to name a place is literally
sold for a monetary value like any other com-
modity. Since the 1970s, sports stadiums
around the world have been renamed by
large corporations that have acquired nam-
ing rights for considerable sums of money.
In recent years, this has led some cities and
towns to consider renaming various public
spaces – and in a few rare cases, such as
Half.com, Oregon, and DISH, Texas, even
renaming the town itself – for corporate
sponsors.
This raises a whole series of questions for
critical place-name studies, but what is most
intriguing is how far people may actually be
willing to take this process of commodifying
place names, particularly when it comes to
the naming of public spaces, such as parks,
schools, subway stations, and streets. Such
a proposal may appear to make short-term
economic sense for cash-strapped local gov-
ernments seeking new streams of revenue
and property owners in search of untapped
spheres of profi t-making. However, it also
poses serious risks to the very notion of
public space as a site of social life beyond the
commercialized world of corporate culture.
Given such a trend, it is critical to consider
the social costs of indiscriminately allowing
the exchange-value of a name to triumph
over its use-value in the public sphere. As place
names are increasingly being commodifi ed, it
is worth thinking more critically about the
importance of the use-value of place naming
as an integral part of the social production
of public space. This will also redirect our
attention to the ways in which such names
are performatively enacted through their
use in everyday speech, which offers the
potential for resisting an offi cially sanctioned
place name that has been sold to the highest
bidder. If enough people refuse to recognize
a commodifi ed name, the offi cial toponym
itself may actually lose some of its own per-
formative force (Rose-Redwood, 2008c).
Another important set of issues involves
the question of methodology. There is a
growing recognition that the traditional
reliance on maps and gazetteers to study
place names is inadequate and should be
supplemented with some combination of
archival research, participant observation,
interviews, and ethnographic methods
(Myers, 1996). Such a mixed-methods ap-
proach lends itself more to a consideration
of toponymic space not only as a ‘text’ but
also as resulting from a set of ‘performative’
practices. The aim of such a theoretical
Reuben Rose-Redwood et al.: New directions in critical place-name studies 467
reframing of toponymic analysis is not to
replace the textual metaphor with the notion
of performance, but rather to examine the
performativity of the landscape-as-text as
well as the textuality of toponymic per-
formance. In the future, we hope that the
ongoing process of rethinking the concep-
tual and methodological foundations
employed in critical place-name studies will
lead to a richer appreciation of the role of
toponymic practices in constructing the geo-
graphical spaces of everyday life.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the journal’s editors
as well as the three anonymous reviewers
for their helpful suggestions to improve this
manuscript. The idea behind this article
emerged out of discussions at the ‘Naming
Places/Placing Names’ workshop that we
organized at East Carolina University in
October 2007. The workshop was funded,
in part, by East Carolina University, Texas
A&M University, the American Name
Society, and the Place Name Research
Center at the University of Alabama. We
would like to thank all the participants who
attended the workshop for their efforts
toward rethinking the future directions of
critical place-name studies.
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