Development of a geographic information system for toponyms of Karelia: historical and cultural aspect

Introduction. The article considers the description of the geographic information system for toponyms of Karelia, which is developed by the Linguistics sector of the ILLH KarRC RAS as a deliverable of a grant of the Russian Science Foundation. It reviews the structure, features of the database and the toponymic material; it discusses the parameters for presenting various information about geographical objects (linguistic, historical, ethnographic, folklore), and reveals the possibilities and prospects for using the resource.
Materials and Methods. The main material is the field toponymic data stored in the collections of the Card index of place names at ILLH KarRC RAS, information from the Register of the State Catalog of Geographical Names for the Republic of Karelia and the GIS “Catalogue of settlements in Karelia and adjacent areas of the XV–XX centuries”. The article employs a number of methods such as descriptive, structural derivational, etymological, comparative, statistical.
Results and Discussion. The paper analyzes the toponymic electronic resources presented in the public domain. It considers the structure of the created database of the geographic information system and the main parameters of the presentation of toponymic material in it. The following features that distinguish the new resource are described: the use of open source code, the presence of the fields “Mention in historical sources”, “Folk interpretation, legend”, binding the names of objects to electronic maps. It presents the examples of toponym descriptions. It has been established that, in addition to the tasks of preserving and systematizing the toponymic heritage of the peoples of Karelia, displaying the desired geographical objects on maps, the created resource provides the access to the field materials of toponymists not only in linguistic research, but also for solving ethnohistorical and historical and cultural problems.
Conclusions. The project deliverable can make a significant contribution to the development of onomastics, ethnology, history, folklore and can be in demand by a wide audience. The information entered into the system, in future, can serve as the basis for interdisciplinary research, the preparation of a series of dictionaries, catalogs, collections of toponymic legends.