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,
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
http://www.doukhobor.org/gazetteer-intro.html.
