Names and Their Environment. Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Glasgow, 25-29 August 2014. Vol. 2. Toponomastics II. Carole Hough and Daria Izdebska (eds.) First published 2016 by University of Glasgow under Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Developing a Gramscian Approach to Toponymy Guy Puzey Jani Vuolteenaho United Kingdom / Finland Abstract Power and place naming are intimately linked, as recognised by the growth of critical approaches to toponomastics, examining the effects of unequal power relations on place names and place naming practices. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is best known as a philosopher and politician whose original treatment of hegemony has been extremely influential. Less generally known is how profoundly Gramsci’s strong interest in linguistics defined his more general political thought. Of particular relevance to the present study is Gramsci’s understanding of the cultural roots of power and the processes of coercion and consent that determine, in this case, the struggles between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic toponymies. In 1917, Gramsci also wrote a harsh critique of changes to street names in Turin, which makes a compelling direct link between his promotion of a more ‘organic’ form of progress and a critical approach to toponymy. This paper discusses the advantages of Gramsci’s perspectives for the enrichment and further development of critical toponomastic theory. Gramscian thought is used here as a lens through which to view such onomastic phenomena as toponymic de- and re-commemorations after regime changes, tensions related to place names in minority-majority language situations, and recent attempts to commodify names. * * * Introduction Since the 1990s, a new politically-oriented turn has characterised place name research in disciplines from human geography to political sciences, with a strong focus on toponymy-related cultural conflicts and ideological strategies (e.g. Berg and Vuolteenaho 2009, Rose-Redwood et al. 2010). The key concern in this literature has been overtly political acts of naming, and above all the toponymic rhetoric of de- and re-commemoration processes that comply with dominant ideological worldviews and the established interpretations of the past, and that bolster hierarchical power structures and political elites in a given society. Especially with case studies conducted in varying historical and geographical contexts, the new power-sensitised toponomastics has facilitated understanding of the interconnectedness of place naming and the symbolic construction and consolidation of power structures through linguistic means (Vuolteenaho and Berg 2009, Vuolteenaho et al. 2012: 12). In this paper, we will attempt to advance the development of this research field with theoretical and empirical perspectives inspired by the work of Antonio Gramsci. In a sense, our intervention can be viewed as a response to the criticism by Reuben Rose-Redwood et al. (2010: 14) of the risk that critical toponymic studies may become ‘a bit too predictable’ in their ‘repetitious invocations of toponymic domination and resistance’ (see also Azaryahu 2011, Light and Young 2014: 669-672). Indeed, it seems to us that many recent case studies on the politics of place naming have focused too one-sidedly on ‘top-down’ dimensions of