© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1751-8040 Place Branding and Public Diplomacy Vol. 7, 1, 9–22 www.palgrave-journals.com/pb/ Correspondence: Laura Kostanski Adjunct Research Fellow, University of Ballarat, c/o Research Office, PO Box 663, Ballarat, Victoria 3353, Australia E-mail: laura.kostanski@ gmail.com INTRODUCTION This article makes a contribution to the discussions on place branding, in that it is based on information gathered from people who have been impacted upon by a Victorian Government (Australia) 1 renaming programme. The article gives background details and discussion on the impetus for the Government renaming programme and contains unique insights into how communities react to, and how individuals perceive, government attempts to rename places for the purposes of place branding and tourism promotion. These insights are discussed in this article alongside current theories on place dependence and branding, for the purposes of highlighting the existence of what the author terms toponymic dependence – which, it is argued, is both the reason for the Government renaming programme and also the underlying rationale for people’s objections to and/or support for the proposal. Although the research and arguments are focused on toponymy, and not wholly contained within the field of Original Article Toponymic dependence research and its possible contribution to the field of place branding Received (in revised form): 8th November 2010 Laura Kostanski is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Ballarat, Australia. Her research focuses on the social import of toponyms, in particular the identities and dependencies that are formed with various names in the natural and built environment. She is Secretary of the Committee for Geographical Names Australasia and in 2007 was an Australian delegate to the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. Kostanski is a founding member of the TopoTrends International Research Group organised the second Trends in Toponymy conference in Ballarat in 2007 and is collaborating on an edited publication of papers from the 2010 conference in Edinburgh. ABSTRACT The researcher set out to investigate whether people form dependencies with toponyms (place names) in similar ways to which dependencies can be formed with places. It has been found that while people are dependent on a place to provide particular facilities, people and governments are also dependent on toponyms to provide particular branding requirements. The theory of toponymic dependence has been developed and this article outlines how toponymic dependence is determined by the ability of a toponym to provide a unique representation, or branding opportunity, of a place. This article provides the framework for future publications, which assess the adequacy of past government place branding proposals, and discusses the importance of considering the construct of place dependence when developing place branding campaigns. Place Branding and Public Diplomacy (2011) 7, 9–22. doi:10.1057/pb.2010.35 Keywords: place (regional economic) development; place marketing; place branding; destination branding; place identity and image; toponymic dependence