Place naming - logics, practices and identities in Africa and beyond

Abstract (English)

Toponyms are places or sites’ names that host huge knowledge reservoirs containing people’s cultures, languages, and histories, as well as their association with each other and with other people. Names that people give to places can be flagships to the history of the name givers, receivers or aspects of national and world history. How do people argue their statement of belonging through the names given to the places? How do people in and beyond Africa claim their autochthones or allochthones identities through toponyms? This panel is an interdisciplinary contribution to the African presences in Africa and its diaspora. Based on interdisciplinary, decolonial and actors-centered approaches, we highlight endogenous and exogenous names of different capital cities, streets, villages, countries, monuments, mines, rivers, shops, hills, valleys, trees, etc. in Africa and beyond. We welcome original papers that focus on the endogeneity of the history that led to the derivation of these toponyms and relate them to the notion of tokenism.