Change of Cultural and Natural Names in Pöide Parish (Saarema, Estonia)

Abstract

Place names can be classified into cultural and natural names. This classification is expedient, because the names change differently as do their referents. The present article is focused on the evolution of the place names of a single parish in Estonia from 1787 through to this day. Although nearly half of the names of either group have not survived, the changes observed across the groups are different. Cultural names tend to be subject to total lexical replacement, whereas natural names are rather replaced partly, change affecting either the determinative or a part of the attribute.