The critical study of toponomy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of urban places following revolutionary political change. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes.Our paper investigates the role streets play in the formation of cultural and collective identity, collective awareness and the perception of history. Streets are thereby treated as the elements that get to be transformed, during the collective identity formation process, from the means of everyday communication and interaction to symbols constructed by political elites in order to manipulate and direct the collective history perception, collective memory and collective identity. The paper presents the study of the linguistic landscape of Chisinau (Kishinev), capital of Moldova, ex Soviet Republic. The paper focuses on the change of street names during the period 1989 till present. The paper lists and analyzes changes of names according to the data given in the official documents.Analysis of official changes in street names throughout Chisinau history resulted in categorisation of five groups.The changed street names indicate the orientation of Moldova toward national ideals, discarding and forgetting its heritage of socialism and Soviet Union. Yet, more than explore the persistence of the socialist-era name within everyday practice.By developing a richer and more nuanced understanding of the ways in which people respond to place names in their everyday lives, we can better appreciate why and how naming works (or does not work) and, more broadly, how relationships with urban landscapes contribute to the construction of collective memory.
