Kolonisatsioon ja kohanimed. Abhaasia eestlaste toponüümiast

The Estonian villages of Salme, Sulevi, Estonia, and Linda were established along the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus in the 1880s. This was part of a broader migration movement that began in the mid-19th century, following the implementation of peasant laws and passport reforms that allowed peasants to leave their home provinces. Key push factors included demographic transition, overpopulation, and land shortages, while Russian imperial policies encouraged colonization in the southern and eastern regions of the empire. Estonians settled in Abkhazia after the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), a period during which much of the local population was exiled to the Ottoman Empire. The process of colonization involved the renaming of places, a practice undertaken both by central government officials and the settlers themselves. This article examines how Estonians named their new settlements and the ideological considerations that shaped these naming practices. The colonists drew inspiration from several sources, including place names from their homeland (such as the village name Estonia and farm names), features of the local environment, and figures from Estonian pseudomythology (e.g., Salme, Sulevi, Linda), which was highly popular during Estonia’s national awakening movement at the time. The microtoponymy created by Estonians reflected practical needs to designate key locations for daily life, such as mountains, fields, and forests. In general, the settlers disregarded the preexisting toponymy of the land, especially in the villages of Salme and Sulevi in northwestern Abkhazia, where the indigenous population had been forcibly removed as early as the 1860s – two decades before the arrival of Estonian migrants. As a result, the names given by Estonians also reflect the cultural rupture of the colonial era.