Falkland Islands Toponymy through the Prism of Territorial Disputes
The toponymy of the Falkland Islands today needs a thorough investigation: at present, the authors of scientific articles and monographs devoted to certain aspects of the life of the region relate to the description of the geographical names of the islands in fits and starts, there is no single comprehensive toponymic dictionary of the archipelago, the web pages of the cities contain extremely limited information about the etymology of the names or have no such information at all. The long-standing territorial dispute between Argentina and Britain led to an armed conflict in 1982. Argentina tried to gain a foothold on the islands, which the UK had been controlling since 1833. In the 72-day war, Britain won. However, even after losing the war, Argentina did not give up claims to the islands. This article is devoted to the peculiarities of the formation, development and modern functioning of the toponymy of the Falkland Islands through the prism of territorial disputes. The purpose of the article is to highlight the characteristic features of the formation of the regional toponymic corpus, to study the influence of historical events on the changes in the geographical nomenclature and to carry out a linguo-pragmatic analysis of the toponymic units identified. For the first time the article presents a historical-linguistic and etymological description of the geographical names of the islands and a quantitative estimation of English-speaking, Hispanic and French-speaking toponyms. The authors draw conclusions about the main nominative traditions in the Falkland Islands and provide numerous examples.