Towards a conceptual framework of place name and message reader in association with its nature and capacity, Case Study: the city of Ardabil

Place names, as identity roots of those places, are able to convey the nature and flavor of the place and space through reconsidering its connection with the contextual and temporal needs. As soon as the name is heard, an image of its wholeness and figure is shaped in our mind. The connection between a place’s name and the natural or build environment can be the same connection between the formal and conceptual components. When the original name of a city, neighborhood, alley or a specific place is mentioned, it will be illustrated with its unique characteristics in one’s mind. A place could be physically destroyed for a long time, but its name may stay in the minds of people and recall the quality, concept and feature of the place and its inhabitant’s mood and taste. Whether or not a place’s name is consistent with its objective reality and existing attributes can be considered as a significant measure of transparency and readability. However, the identity, quality and subjective dimensions of names are ignored in contemporary urban developments. Urban studies do not address the connection between the objective-subjective and semantic-physical factors of place names in the urban and landscape design. The purpose of this paper is to recognize the importance of connection between urban areas and places and their naming. It focuses on explaining its reflection and its force on the urban place’s perspective. The case study is Ardabil city and its historical fabric. It is of utmost importance to investigate this matter due to the historical-cultural eminence of Ardabil with more than 30 centuries of history. Most of the old neighborhoods and alleys in the historical fabric of the city have historical names, in a way that the old passages of the city are still called by the same historical names. This study is in need of credible documents and sources. The research method in this study is the mixed approach. To identify the original names of the places, the descriptive-analytic research method was used, which is based on documentation (texts, maps, images) along with field studies. The research results showed that political, economic, social, cultural and environmental factors had significant effects on traditional naming of urban places, especially in Ardabil. In addition, in some cases, the physical form and soul of a place is determined by its formation process. Such processes give more weight and color to the holiness of the city and its political and commercial dimensions. It seems that the names are metaphors representing the same things that were, are or could be in the city’s landscape, capacity and subjectivity.