The Place-Name as an Intangible Place of Memory (A Holistic Approach in Reading the Place-Names through a Comparative-Analytical Study on the Character of Name and Place)

Understanding architectural heritage and their various aspects have always been a subject of focus for the international conservation communities. Within the recent decades, eventhough the place-names are part of the living history as well as cultural heritage, they have still constantly been facing quick precipitant changes. As such, in the Conservation literature, most studies have skipped addressing this phenomenon other than through a historic-geographical approach; thus, neglecting the specific character of place-names in the context of Architecture and not analyzed with a conservational approach apt for revisiting their cultural significance and dynamism. Since any change regarding the places’ names is a form of change in the totality of the object named, this study will attempt to firstly discuss the propriety and necessity of regarding place-names through the perspective of Conservation, and eventually provide a theoretical approach to understand them in the light of a new holistic approach in which a place-name can be depicted with a spatial aspect. With this objectiv, we will evaluate the definitions of a “name” and a “place” and an architectural edifice in its place, where the following questions of “what the resemblance between the character of a name and that of a place is” and “how these characters relate to the memory of place” could be addressed. In this regard, by exploring the toponymical resources and those references related to the phenomenology of place, along with few place-name examples, the character of name and place will be represented in relation to life, events, and the associated meanings to them. At last, the results will be demonstrated in a comparative format between the current historical and the proposed holistic approach, within a few major principles as a new way to re-reading of the place-names. This comparative paradigm, that is, the explanation of a new conservational approach to the place-names, can be viewed as providing a theoretical context to view the names of historic sites and architectural edifices as intangible forms for the “places of cultural significance” and not just as historical-linguistic aspects to naming a location. Moreover, these deductions also provide a concrete foundation as to why a place-name must be seen in the light of contemporary conservation discourses, seen to be also focusing on the name character as an intangible form of place, and on the dynamics of names’ association to the objects of architecture over time.