ANAS Scientists Cleanse Azerbaijani Place Names from Armenian Perversions

Baku / 26.11.20 / Turan: During the hostile actions of Armenia against Azerbaijan, since 1991, the Armenians have introduced illegal toponyms into the geographical and administrative maps published outside our country that distort or completely change the Azerbaijani names of geographical objects. In the media of Russia and other countries, Kalbajar is called Karvachar, Gubadli - Sanasar, Lachin - Berdzor, Zangilan - Korvasar, Fizuli - Maranda, Aghdam - Akna, etc. Under pressure from Armenians and Armenianophiles in other countries, Azerbaijani toponyms legalized in Soviet times disappear from maps, and in the best case, next to the new Armenian names in brackets, legal ones - Azerbaijani are indicated.

Azerbaijani scientists from the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) are fighting against the Armenization of the names of Azerbaijani settlements. Scientists-geographers collect place names invented by Armenians, their fellow historians find Azerbaijani original names, and their lists are sent to the Institute of Linguistics named after Nasimi of ANAS, where the head of the toponyms sector, Doctor of Philology, Professor Gara Meshadiev specifies the correct Azerbaijani spelling of toponyms. The corrected and corrected Azerbaijani toponyms are then sent from ANAS to the world cartographic resources - Google and others, Doctor of Sciences Gara Meshadiev told Turan.

In an interview with Turan, he said that he receives 10-100 toponyms from colleagues from the Institute of Geography every day that need to be cleared of Armenian lies. The end of this work is not visible, it is not known how many perverted names need to be corrected. We can talk about 2-10 thousand place names.

“The toponyms sector was opened at the Institute of Linguistics about two weeks ago by order of the President of Azerbaijan. Our task is to restore the former, Azerbaijani historical names of settlements liberated by our army. There is a lot of work, since the Armenians have changed all the names. They changed some names completely (Khojaly - Ivanyan, Gunashli - Konoshlu), and they Armenianized other names, replacing one or two letters. In the latter case, they, not knowing the meaning of the name in the original, left the root of the toponym, which made it meaningless in Armenian (Chyldyran - Chldran). There are new names of settlements, created by the restoration of historical Azerbaijani names and legalized by the decision of Milli Majdis - Agdere - Mardakert, Khojavend - Martuni, Sugovushan - Madagiz.

When discussing the names in the Milli Majlis, the deputies work together with the specialists of ANAS,” Gara Meshadiev said.

In Azerbaijan, the public expresses dissatisfaction, seeing in the foreign media and maps incorrect names of Azerbaijani settlements, deliberately changed by Armenians. In this regard, ANAS receives appeals with demands to the state to correct the current ugly situation with names.

G. Meshadiev says that after the complete liberation of all of Karabakh from the Armenian occupation, when the settlements in which the Armenian population remained under the control of Azerbaijan will be returned, the world community will return to the legitimate Azerbaijani names of cities and villages in Karabakh.

Professor Meshadiev agreed with the statement that another problem persisted: incorrect pronunciation and spelling of Azerbaijani toponyms in Russian. From the Russian language, the Azerbaijani names characteristic of the Russian pronunciation migrate to English and other languages. So the Azerbaijani city of Baki began to be called Baku all over the world.

“From time to time, ANAS notifies foreign toponymic centers about the need to use names that sound as close as possible to the Azerbaijani original. For now, we believe that it is enough if the root of the toponym does not change, and the endings and other, non-primary, parts of the toponyms can change," Professor of the Institute of Linguistics of ANAS Gara Meshadiev concluded the interview for Turan. –0 --