As part of the historical series of maps in my portfolio, after the GIS file of the old Bulgarian borders, a geojson file is prepared with the names of 1600 settlements, as they were called in the period from 1912 to early 30’s.
Since liberation until now, there have been several periods of renaming of the settlements, the first being at the end of the 19th century. But the most important was the change of names in 1934, when absolutely all names remaining from the Ottoman Empire and the inherited Republic of Turkey were replaced. And the regime in the 50s and 60s replaced the names related to the Kingdom of Bulgaria (Ferdinand, Borisovo, Simeonovo) with the names of party majors and partisans. In the nineties, some of the settlements returned their names from 1934, but now with contemporary pronunciation and punctuation. That is why in this map I have written the names as they were written before the 1945 spelling reform, that is, with the letters Ѣ (E double) and Ѫ (big nasal).
What I noticed by naming the names is that these two letters have quite helped to properly accentuate pronunciation, what is now lost gives new meaning to part of the names of the settlements. The best example of this is the Ruska Bela village (pronounced like Russian Bella) that emerged as Bela Ruska (Biala – White in the sense of beauty/belle and Ruska as female name). Ѣ – Е double has helped a lot to preserve dialectical speaking, allowing the use of e or я (ya) depending on the location relative to the Ya boundary. Ѫ, it is used in names in which there is an accent, such as Ѫгленъ (Áglen), Бѫта (Báta), Дѫбене (Dábene) и Рѫждавица (Rázhdavitsa) (Original root name – rust – Ръждавица, and now Раждавица from birth because it sounds more positive)…
This map is suitable for historical summaries or maps reenactments and hope to have time to complete with new villages, existing or already extinct. Enjoy
This map can also be used as WMTS service and ArcGIS apps, if you need – send me mail
