120 DOI https://doi.org/10.36059/978-966-397-127-8/120-142 MODERN UKRAINIAN OIKONYMICON: STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE RESEARCH Kotovych V. V. INTRODUCTION "Obviously, there was not so much amateurism, dilettantism and self-will in any field of Ukrainian science, as in the study of the origin and value of local names, or in toponymy. The infinite number of explanations which in science are called "folk etymology", prevailed and (with few exceptions) still prevails in the names of localities", – contemplated Ya. Rudnytskyi in the middle of the last century 1 . Nowadays, when onomastics has become a part of linguistics with a myriad of research units, the part which studies their own names, their essence, specificity, structure, grouping, regularities of functioning, origin and development, when scientists even suggest that it is "not a part, but a separate science, coordinating with linguistics" 2 , the study of all classes of onyms is becoming more versatile and multi-vectored. It is not easy to separate linguistic onomastic researches from historical and geographical, ethnographic, cultural ones. The existence of onym in time is history, in space it is geography, in the outlines of national specificity it is ethnography and culture. However, the name of a settlement is first of all a linguistic sign, a word, and every word is born according to certain laws of language. Understanding of this generated onomastics – the science of proper names, the active formation of which in Ukraine goes back to the middle of the last century. The first Republican Summit on Toponymy and Onomastics in 1959 and the establishment of the Ukrainian Onomastic Commission in 1960 (initiated by the Commission on Toponymy and Onomastics of Ukraine), headed by K. Tsiluiko, caused the appearance of fundamental general theoretical works on onomastics and the inception of the idea of regional implementation of onomastic researches, the collection of 1 Rudnicki J. O nazwie miejscowej Trembowla. Język Polski. Rocznik ХХІІ, 1937. S. 134. 2 Карпенко Ю. О. Ономастичні міркування. Записки з ономастики. Вип. 9. Одеса : Астропринт, 2005. С. 11.