Abstract
Introduction. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors, motives and features of the transformation of the toponymy of Kazakhstan as an important marker of cultural landscapes caused by historical and geographical changes in the territory of the republic. The paper have been analyzed the processes of changing geographical names on the example of ethnonyms (names of cities) for the period from the end of the XIX century to the present. The relevance of this issue from the point of view of the study of toponymy as part of the geo-cultural space have been emphasized. Onomastic practice in post-Soviet Kazakhstan does not differ from that in other former Soviet republics. A new wave of transformation is one of the consequences of delimitation. Monitoring of this process is necessary for the development of optimal directions of regional and interstate policy. Materials and methods of research. Materials and methods of research. A system of geographical and inter- disciplinary approaches and methods, including historical-geographical, chorological, cartographic, statistical, and content analysis, have been used. The information base habe been the materials of the official websites of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation, reflecting the legislative and factual base, materials of population censuses, scientific and other publications, maps of different years of publication. The results of the study and their discussion. The semantic classification of city names and its changes over the period under study were carried out. It have been ased on the analysis of a large number of data. Two most important waves of transformation over the period under study have been analyzed. The structure of the types of renaming of astyonyms in the post-Soviet period have been studied. The most stable astyonyms of Kazakhstan are determined. It have been revealed that the renaming affected a significant part of the toponyms. According to this indicator, the republic should be considered a territory with a modiied cultural space. Conclusions. The transformations of the astyonyms of Kazakhstan are primarily due to geopolitical and socio-economic changes in the territory of the republic. A particularly serious transformation took place in the post-Soviet period. Most of the renaming have been associated with desovietization. The elements of the previous toponymic and cultural layers have been characterized by compression. The current trend indicates the possibility of a total and irreversible transformation of astyonyms. The most susceptible to transformation were «anthropotonyms», and the most stable were «hy-dronyms» and «oronyms».