Changes of Geographical Names in the Kłodzko Land after the World War II

Abstract

In the 20th century toponymy of the Kłodzko Land underwent serious changes, which with no doubt can be called a revolution. After 1945 and the displacement of the German population all the pre-war names were substituted with Polish ones, which, unfortunately, only rarely were connected with the former tradition, in some cases as old as the middle ages. Most of new names were introduced by a special commission whose main aim was to mark that the new areas gained by Poland after the World War II (the so called Regained Territories) were successfully taken into possession. However, many places and objects (some mountain tops, rock formations, springs, parts of villages) did not receive a name. In the next decades, new local communities started to accustom the mountainous landscape and independently gave names to various nameless (in Polish) places. Unfortunately, due to the depopulation of rural areas in the Kłodzko Land and other formal reasons, the process was quite slow. The main aim of the paper is not only to analyse those changes, but also to compare the numbers of names in chosen moments of the 20th century. For this purpose three types of maps in 1 : 25 000 scale were used: pre-war (German) “Meßtischblatt”, a Polish topographic map representing the situation at the beginning of the 1970s and, finally, the “Army topographic map” from the end of the 20th century. On the first map 531 geographical names were marked, on the second — only 225, and on the third — 277, which is still approximately half of the number before 1945.