Aggressors may carry out the deliberate replacement of the historical geographic names, street names, city names, and region names of the Indigenous people with toponyms tied to the culture, ideology, and history of the metropole. Erasing the original names allows the colonizer to visually and mentally integrate the seized lands into its state space, and to deprive the colonized society of the physical markers of its national identity and historical memory.
The erasure of the historical names of the Cossack southern territories used as a springboard for the annexation of Crimea: Catherine II's manifesto of 3 August 1775 extirpated "the very name of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" and poured their lands into an imperial construct – "assigning them as convenient to the Novorossiysk Governorate"[1].
The Groznaya fortress, founded by General Yermolov on the Sunzha on 10 June 1818[2], became the town of Grozny in 1870[3]. On 21 March 1888, by decree of Emperor Alexander III, the names of peoples were erased from the names of the okrugs of the Terek oblast: the Chechen okrug was renamed the Grozny okrug, the Ingush - the Nazran, the Kabardian - the Nalchik, the Kumyk - the Khasav-Yurt, the Military-Ossetian - the Vladikavkaz[4]. Okrugs named after the peoples living in them received the names of imperial fortresses and slobodas - the map of governance ceased to call the peoples by name.
The colonizer erased Chechen and Ingush names from the map. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "Streets, settlements, auls and districts were hastily renamed"[3]. Historian P. M. Polian writes of the Ingush lands handed to North Ossetia: "all the Ingush place names were repressed as well; they were replaced with Ossetian or Russian ones" - by the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of 29 April 1944 the Psedakh district became Alansky, Nazran district - Kosta-Khetagurovsky, Achaluki district - Nartovsky, and by the decree of 30 August 1944 the colonizer renamed "all the districts and their centers" of Grozny Oblast[5]. The Chechen lands that had gone to Georgia the colonizer named the Akhalkhevi district[3].
Deliberate restoration of old Soviet or imperial names to captured cities and streets (in particular, the renaming of Bakhmut to Artemovsk) in order to erase Ukrainian national memory and visually integrate them into the space of the Russian Federation.