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Article published In:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Vol. 11:2 (2023) ► pp.226–255

Competing place names

Malvinas vs. Falklands: When a sovereignty conflict becomes a name conflict

ORCID logo | Universidad de la República , Uruguay
ORCID logo | Universidad de la República , Uruguay | Academia Nacional de Letras, Uruguay

The ongoing Argentinian claim of sovereignty over the Falklands has impacted its toponymy by assigning the archipelago, and places within it, different names than those used on the Islands. Place naming phenomena like this one have not received much attention. To our knowledge, there is no prior research either on place naming in the Falklands within the framework of critical toponomatics or on ethnography regarding Islanders’ language attitudes. This is a preliminary attempt to do so, by looking into the Spanish place names used in Argentinian maps but not in local ones. In our analysis, we further resort to in situ interviews, participant observation, and social media data. Our analysis suggests that these Argentinian toponyms receive neither official nor societal approval by Islanders. We conclude that Argentinian Spanish names became a point of contention because of the political conflict, leading to a linguistic conflict scenario.

Keywords: contact onomastics, Argentinian toponyms, Falkland/Malvinas Islands, language attitudes, parallel toponymy, conflict linguistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The renaming of toponyms
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1A linguistic war over the name of the archipelago
    • 4.2The “M word”
    • 4.3The capital dispute
    • 4.4Other conflicting place-names
  • 5.Is it about islandness, nationalism, and/or a claim instrument?
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00080.rod
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