Culture: The Spice of Life and Place - Geography - page 219

. . . the list goes on and on. Toponymy, the study of place names, may provide diverse geographical
insights. As per the four locales mentioned, toponyms may tell us something about where the set-
tlers came from, who used to live here, and what language the settlers spoke. Toponyms may also
tell us something about past religious distributions. Catholic settlers in North America, for example,
had a propensity to bestow religious names on their settlements more so than Protestants, no doubt in
part to solicit the protective favor of the Almighty in an often-difficult frontier setting. Thus, towns
named for saints abound, especially in Quebec and California (San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Jose,
San Francisco, and so on).
Placenamesmayalsoprovidephilosophicalinsights.Forexample,abouttwocenturiesagoAmerican
culture was affected by the Classic Revival, which involved a new reverence of ancient Greece and
Rome. One manifestation is the existence in Upstate New York of literally dozens of cities and towns
that were named or renamed in accordance with the classical theme. Examples include Syracuse,
Rome, Utica, Ithaca, and Romulus.
One of the most maddening things about toponyms is that they can be literally changed overnight,
immediately rendering millions of maps and atlases out-of-date. The change of Burma to Myanmar
and Zaire to Congo are fairly recent examples. Prior to its dissolution, the USSR contained an estim-
ated 20,000places named forStalin —mountains, cities, alleys, youname it(literally). WhenStalin's
legacy suddenly fell out of favor, so did toponyms in his honor. Few remain.
Creating a Single Global Culture
Is the number of cultures on Earth today increasing or decreasing? Will the cultural mosaic of your
grandchildren's world have more pieces or fewer pieces? That is, will the world map contain more
culture areas or fewer culture areas than exist today? The search for answers reveals powerful oppos-
ing sets of social forces.
Promoting cultural divergence
Cultural divergence is the concept and process of culture creation. I have shown how this
works by virtue of isolation, adaptation, and barrier effects, as well as by the just-mentioned
processes of nationalistic aspirations and heritage preservation. Because of modern means
of communication, the first three of these are not nearly as powerful as they once were,