The Toponymic Heritage Of Bucharest.Hagionyms – An Administrative Act With Spiritual Connotations

Today’s city developed around the prince’s residence as well as around churches and monasteries. These places were the first administrative nuclei, especially since the Church had been, in the days before the first Civil Code, the keeper of most administrative functions, including indexes of dwellings, persons, births, marriages and deaths. Bucharest’s toponymic heritage, an expression of the city’s identity, must be preserved, being a mark of the history of each administrative division. This means it is necessary to compile an explanatory atlas of Bucharest streets, which must be well known by the local administration. The present study focuses on a thematic segment: streets bearing names of saints (hagionyms). Given that the number of streets bearing hagionyms is considerable, we shall divide the list into following categories: streets named after churches built before the 20th century, streets bearing religious names attributed to them in the first half of the 20th century and streets named after important figures of religious life. This classification centers on the public factors which determined the attribution of the respective names. We shall draw out a phenomenological analysis of the concept of public administration from a historic perspective, mentioning correlative political, artistic, religious and sociological aspects.