Motivation of the names of settlement places in Luhansk region

Vasyl Yatsiy, Candidate of Sciences in Philology, Senior Researcher in the Department of History of the Ukrainian Language and Onomastics
Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
4 Mykhailo Hrushevskyi St., Kyiv 01001, Ukraine

Е-mail: jatsiy@ukr.net
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3691-2154

Heading: Discussions
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: The article is devoted to the linguistic analysis (with etymological techniques) of historical and modern names of settlements (along with their variants) of the Luhansk region as of 2012. Based on the material of documented fixations of oikonyms of the studied administrative region of Eastern Ukraine, both the motivational basis for all the names of Luhansk settlements and the nature of local oikonym formation were traced; the typicality/untypicality of the toponymic models used in one of the Eastern Ukrainian oikonyms was determined. The study of all the names of settlements in this region allowed us to see the linguistic features and the nature of the mechanism of toponym formation in the Luhansk region. The final results of the analysis confirm that the creation of names of settlements took place mainly according to typical Old Ukrainian models of toponymic word formation. All names of settlements in the region are clearly subject to semantic differentiation into anthroponymic (in the bases of which proper personal names are attested, for example: Бокове, Вікторівка, Ганнівка, Данилівка, Іванівка, Ковалівка, Литвинове, Пелагіївка etc.) and non-anthroponymic (toponymic, hydronymic, and appellational, for example: Байрачки, Гірник, Діброва, Жолобок, Золоте, Калинове, Кам’янка, Новодачне, Плотина, Сизе, Хрустальне, Широкий etc.). Such semantic division of oikonyms made it possible to correctly qualify and explain the creative bases of the studied names. Some modern oikonyms of the region under consideration require corrections, since, unfortunately, they do not meet the standards of the state language, spelling and culture of the Ukrainian language, for example: the village of Наугóльне (Svativsk. district), Прохладне (Slovyanoserbsk. district), Ю́жна Ломувáтка (Lug.) etc.

Keywords: anthroponym, personal name, appellative, derivate, motivation, toponym, oikonym.

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Received 04.04.2026   Revised 26.05.2026   Accepted 00.06.2026