The Toponymy of the Argentine Islands area, the Kyiv Peninsula (West Antarctica)

Abstract

The Argentine Islands – Kyiv Peninsula region is one of the birthplaces of Antarctic research. It lacks any aboriginal people, and so much of the toponymy was contributed by the first expeditions. As the official Ukrainian toponymy of Antarctica is still being worked out, it is important to foster further development of this branch of geography. Outside of this region, there are only a few geographical features given internationally recognized placenames honouring Ukraine and Ukrainians. Thus, the paper aims to prepare the official Ukrainian spelling for the already established toponyms and to propose new ones, including microtoponyms, for the yet-nameless objects of the Argentine Islands area (West Antarctica), considering the already amassed experience of other countries and the current requirements for writing the geographical names. To achieve this, there were used such methods, singly or in combination: transliteration, transcription, adaptive transcoding, and translation. The underlying research presented the history of the local placenames, whereupon they were collected and their standardized Ukrainian written representations spelled out. Based on the history of the Ukrainian contribution to the Antarctic studies, the region's toponymic traditions, and characteristic features of topography, flora and fauna of the Argentine Islands, it was proposed a list of names for the nameless geographical features and microtoponyms in the central Argentine Islands region. The list is far from exhaustive, but rather the first attempt to develop Ukrainian Antarctic toponymy. The results will allow unifying placenames use, help to present the expeditions' findings, and make information searches for the geographical features easier.