The Politicization of Street-Names

Τhis chapter covers the first attempts of the two communities to claim territorial space within Nicosia in terms of ethnic origin through the use of street-naming as a means of commemoration. While the Greek-Cypriot majority commemorated its glorious Greek past and the continuous presence of the Greek national element in Cyprus to ground itself in space, the Turkish-Cypriot community attempted to legitimize its presence by commemorating the Ottoman conquest, rule, and culture through street-naming. This chapter includes the significant finding of the cadastral plans published by the Department of Lands and Surveys of Cyprus in 1915. The names that appear in the cadastral plans were collected and classified, providing, for the first time, data on the naming of streets and quarters during the late Ottoman period upon the transfer of the island to the British Empire. This data, supplemented with information from the first tourist guide of Nicosia published in 1938, paints the picture of Nicosia street-names for the period between 1922 and 1938, a period for which the relevant municipality archives could not be located.