When places change their names and when they do not. Selected aspects of colonial and postcolonial toponymy in former French and Spanish colonies in West Africa - the cases of Saint Louis (Senegal) and the Western Sahara

Abstract The article aims at demonstrating that toponymy in colonial and postcolonial settings is a promising area for linguistically-informed research. On the basis of evidence drawn from erstwhile colonies of France (with a focus on Senegal) and Spain (with a focus on the Western Sahara) it is shown that, on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, the processes of naming and renaming places are conditioned by an intricate network of mostly social forces. The interaction of these forces may yield different results so that colonial toponyms are not necessarily doomed to disappear from the maps when decolonization sets in. The authors argue strongly for paying more attention to colonial and postcolonial toponymy especially from a comparative perspective.