Ойконімна ретро- і перспектива Подільського воєводства

The article describes the retro- and perspective of place names in the Podil’s’ke voievodstvo. Studies show that this area belongs to Ukrainian territories settled a very long time ago but because of geographical, social, historical, economic and other reasons this area is represented by the archaic place names of a later period. Derivational stems of place names demonstrate their archaic origins besides their historical ascertainment. The analyzed materials demonstrate that there is a small percentage of place names formed from composite words. This is the evidence that these place names could be lost because of the circumstances: the decline of settlements under the infl uence of anthropogenic factors, the renaming of geographical objects, a change of name because of different language factors (substantivation) and social factors (the change of the formant of the place name when its derivational stem is the same) etc. It is possible that a lot of the archaic place names are not registered in historical sources. In fact, the area of the Podil’s’ke voievodstvo is represented by place names of an archaic type of the 13th century. The amount of place names has increased every century. Some of them have declined but many more place names have been saved upto today.