A Semiotic Perspective on the Presence of Clergy in Romanian Hodonymy

Abstract:

Street names can be interpreted as sociolinguistically motivated signs resulting from socio-political conventions of decision-makers who hold power at a given time. As producers of the message, they can take into account the will, sympathy, preferences of the recipients (the majority of the population); similarly, they can take arbitrary decisions, not agreed by voters, but through which to convey an intention, a signal capable of shaping people’s thinking and behaviour patterns. A hodonym arouses in the mind of the receiver a number of semiotic judgments, of interpretations. The correct decoding of the semantic content depends on people’s level of education, in-depth information, and general culture.

The act of choosing street names and public squares according to the hierarchs of the churches represents a common strategy in the contemporary Romanian microtoponymic landscape. Thus, promoting and producing hodonyms based on illustrious cultural and religious figures from one’s nation represents an act of piety in memory of the famous forerunners, a way of homage and anchoring them in history.

From a profane perspective, assigning a religious name to a street is similar, keeping the proportions to the religious act of canonization. If a saint is included in religious calendars and, through adoration, is remembered forever, the repetition of a street name validates, from a socio-political perspective, the preservation in memory of important names from various denominations. The simple association of a religious name with a street name connotes the idea of prestige, greatness, importance, even for those who had not been raised to the rank of altars.