The Social Structure of Oikonyms. The Territorial and Administrative Reorganisation of the Romanian state by Decree no. 799/1964

This article provides a comparative approach, from a psycho-social perspective,of the change of locality names. Two long periods were analysed: the Communistdictatorship period and the period following the 1989 events. By using the case studyand social document review methods, we proved that oikonyms have a polymorphicsocial structure. In the last part of the article, we showed the current social trends withrespect to the renaming of human settlements. From a theoretical point of view, thestudy is founded on the social memory theories.