For Immediate Release – June 6, 2008
Over the course of their three hundred-year history, the Doukhobors have both influenced, and been influenced by, the culture and geography of the places where they have settled and lived. For the first time ever, a comprehensive record has been compiled of the places of historic, cultural and religious significance to the Doukhobor people, presenting them in detail.
The ‘Doukhobor Place Names Database’ was originally conceived in 1999-2000 by writer and historian Jonathan J. Kalmakoff as a compilation of the origin and meaning of some 200 select Doukhobor village names. In the years that followed, Kalmakoff continued to expand the database, painstakingly gathering facts and details for hundreds of additional entries associated with the Doukhobors, including populated places such as localities, settlements, schools, post offices, railway sidings, subdivisions, streets, farms, bridges, cemeteries and parks, as well as natural geographic features such as lakes, streams, springs, bays, islands, hills, mountains, caves, woods, rocks and valleys.
Today, with over 1,000 entries, the database is the most complete and detailed database of Doukhobor geographic information ever compiled, with entries for place names, features and locations, large and small, well-known and obscure, past and present, throughout Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenia, Cyprus, Canada and the United States. It has been made available online and is searchable by keyword, feature type, geographically and alphabetically.
Each entry in the database contains a wealth of information relating to: the feature type; cross-references to current, previous and alternate names; the Russian (Cyrillic) spelling of the name; the origin and meaning of the name; current and previous political borders and administrative boundaries; the history of the place or feature, including dates of establishment and abandonment; the legal land description of the place or feature; the geographic coordinates (latitude, longitude) of the place or feature; and other descriptive information.
Recently, a number of researchers have suggested that the database has become much more than a compilation of place name origins; it is an important and authoritative online reference source for Doukhobor geographic information. To reflect this greater scope and purpose, the database has now been officially renamed ‘The Doukhobor Gazetteer’. It is believed that the new name provides a more accurate picture of what the database is about.
The Doukhobor Gazetteer is a tremendous achievement of detail and extraordinary research. Jonathan J. Kalmakoff has put in a prodigious amount of work to provide an accurate and definitive listing of Doukhobor geographic information. Packed with historical detail, interesting facts and entertaining anecdotes, it gives a fascinating panorama of Dukhoboria – the land of the Doukhobors. Ideal for browsing, its simple, easy-to-use format makes it the perfect reference companion for research and general interest purposes.
The Doukhobor Gazetteer will be continually updated with new information and additional features to ensure the user of data reliability and usability. The next phase of development will be to link the text entries to online maps utilizing Google Maps and Google Earths interactive software. It is anticipated that this new phase will be largely completed by fall as project volunteers conduct fieldwork over the summer to gather and compile GPS geographic coordinates of historic Doukhobor sites.
The Doukhobor Gazetteer can be accessed online through the Doukhobor Genealogy Website at https://www.doukhobor.org/gazetteer-intro.html.
