Toponymy of different epochs on the map of Tajikistan, as well as other complex ethno-cultural regions, coexists. It is explained by the dynamics of the ethnic composition of the population for millennia. Toponymy in a certain extent reflects the historical and geographical specifics of the region. Several toponymic layers are highlighted on the map of the republic. The “Soviet” layer reflects the processes of unification that were prevailing during this period of time throughout the entire Soviet space. As part of the project, supported by a grant from the Russian Geographical Society, it is planned to create a series of maps showing the change in toponymy in the post-Soviet space. The purpose of this stage of the study was to analyze the transformation of the oikonyms of the level of district centers throughout the 20th–21st centuries, and especially in the post-Soviet period. The scale of renaming is much wider and applies to oronyms, hydronyms and other toponyms. In the framework of the historical and geographical approach, we used a system of methods to identify transformation trends: comparison of multi-temporal maps, statistical, geoinformation. We have created a database based on an analysis of the dynamics of the oikonymy of sixty-five settlements of Tajikistan over the period of the 20th–21st centuries.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the processes of regionalization and transformation of the cultural and geographical space intensified and accelerated on the territory of the newly formed sovereign states. One of the indicators of these processes became a large-scale tendency to rename the names of geographical objects. In the Republic of Tajikistan, the renaming of districts, cities, rural settlements and individual objects is carried out in the several directions. They are: a replacement of “Soviet” (for the most part Russian) names, renaming some Turkic (Uzbek) place names, and renaming also some place names in Tajik. Most of the renamed settlements received historical names or the names of figures of Tajik history and culture.

An analysis of the processes of change, in particular, desovetization, derusification, deturization and transformation of traditional Tajik toponyms, revealed the need to fix the current and lost toponymic system of Tajikistan, as well as other post-Soviet countries.