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Transforming historical street names into FAIR research data

collage combining a fragments of the 18th-century plastic panorama of Lviv by Ihor and Liubov Kachor (source: underpetrapavla.lviv.ua), a page from a tax (szoss) book of Lviv (Central State His-torical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, fond 52 [Magistrate of the City of Lviv], inventory 2, file 770), and a screenshot from the Interactive Map of Lviv (https://map.humaniora.ucu.edu.ua/en/).

by Orysia Vira, Ukrainian Catholic University

Street names are more than simple labels on a map ‒ they are historical documents that record the life of a city. When a street name changes abruptly or when two names coexist for the same place, these shifts reveal stories about the people who lived there and transformations that cities underwent over centuries. In medieval and early modern Lviv, a multiethnic trading hub in what is now western Ukraine, street names were recorded in Latin, German, and later Polish, reflecting the linguistic landscape of a city where Armenian merchants, Jewish craftsmen, Polish burghers, and Ruthenian communities and smaller groups representing other nations and ethnic communities (Greeks, Italians, Scots, and Welsh etc.) negotiated shared urban space.

For nearly a decade, I collected street names from Lviv’s medieval and early modern tax registers and council records, creating a database of street names covered 1382-1768 years. The data was there, carefully transcribed and analysed as part of my PhD research on the historical urbanonymy of Lviv. But how could I make this research not just accessible, but truly reusable? How could I transform years of archival work into a resource that other scholars could discover and access?

These questions led me to apply for an NFDI4Memory FAIR Data Fellowship at the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz. I had the historical data and the research findings. What I needed was guidance in transforming this material into a properly documented, well-structured, and openly accessible dataset that would meet international standards for research data management. The fellowship offered exactly that: expert support in understanding and implementing FAIR principles: making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, and preparing my dataset for long-term preservation and scholarly use.

Research context

The dataset originates from my PhD research project “Hodonymia of Lviv: genesis and development in the Magdeburg period,” completed at the Ukrainian Catholic University. This study examined the emergence and evolution of Lviv’s street names during a period when the city was governed under Magdeburg Law ‒ a legal framework that granted urban autonomy and shaped municipal organisation across Central and Eastern Europe.

Lviv, located in what is now western Ukraine, was founded by King Danylo of Galicia, who named the fortified settlement after his son Lev (Leo). The city was first mentioned in chronicles in 1256 and later served as the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia. Strategically positioned at the crossroads of major trade routes connecting Western and Eastern Europe, Lviv developed as a multiethnic and multilingual urban center where four main communities (Ruthenian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish) and other smaller communities coexisted and conducted business. After the city became part of the Kingdom of Poland (1349-1569) and subsequently the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1772), it received Magdeburg rights, which fundamentally reorganized its municipal self-government and legal framework. This diversity left distinct traces in the city’s urban landscape. The city’s toponymy reflects layers of Ruthenian, German, Latin, and Polish linguistic influences, offering a unique window into the complex cultural dynamics of early modern urban life and the ways different communities negotiated shared space.

The research sought to answer several key questions: how did street naming in Lviv emerge and evolve from the late 14th to the 18th century? What linguistic and cultural patterns can be observed in the historical urbanonymy of a multiethnic city? And how can we analyse the etymology and duration of street name usage, identifying stages of development ‒ from descriptive phrases (which I call “proto-names,” such as “the street going to the Armenian church”) to established, proper names (like “Armenian Street”)?

Street names are not merely administrative labels, they are markers of ethnic groups, social memory or economic activity. In Lviv, street names referenced property owners in particular districts, religious institutions, craft guilds, and topographical features, creating a linguistic map that encoded the city’s social and spatial organisation. Understanding this naming system provides crucial insights into how urban communities structured and perceived their spaces.

Content of the dataset

The dataset contains 3342 records documenting historical references to street names and urban topographical features as they appear in archival and published sources from 1382 to 1768. Each record captures a single attestation of a street name in a specific document, preserving the original Latin, German, or Polish form alongside modern Ukrainian and English translations.

Figure 1. Screenshot of the database
Figure 1. Screenshot of the database

The data was compiled primarily from Lviv’s municipal documentation, including city council books and tax (schoss) registers, which provide the richest sources for reconstructing the city’s historical toponymy. These archival materials, written predominantly in Latin, sometimes in German and later mostly in Polish, record street names in the context of property transactions, tax assessments, and legal proceedings.

For each street name attestation, the dataset includes:

  • Unique identifier (str_id): numerical identifier for each record
  • Street name (str_name): the name as it appears in the source, in standardized form
  • Date (str_date): year or specific date of the record
  • Translations (str_translate_eng/ua): English and Ukrainian translations
  • Source reference (str_source): full archival or bibliographic citation
  • Page/folio (source_page): specific location within the source
  • Case number (source_case): court case number when applicable
  • Archival details (fond, opys, sprava): archival fund, inventory, and file numbers
  • Language (str_lang): language of the original record (Latin, Polish, or German)

This structured approach allows to trace the appearance and evolution of individual street names across time, identify linguistic patterns, and map the spatial organisation of the medieval city.

Methodological challenges

One of the primary challenges in creating this dataset was managing the heterogeneity of historical sources. Medieval and early modern documents present numerous difficulties: inconsistent spelling, varying orthographic conventions, abbreviations, damaged or illegible text, and the use of multiple languages within single documents.

Figure 2. Fragment of the book Acta consularia Leopoliensia showing Latin street names.Source: Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, fund 52, inventory 2, file 8.
Figure 2. Fragment of the book Acta consularia Leopoliensia showing Latin street names. Source: Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, fund 52, inventory 2, file 8.

Latin sources, which dominate the earlier period, often Latinize Polish or German street names, creating additional layers of interpretation. For example, a street known colloquially in Polish might appear in Latin documents with a translated or transliterated form. Uncertain readings or damaged portions of text were marked with brackets ([]) to indicate editorial uncertainty.

Standardization was essential but had to be balanced against preserving the historical character of the names. However, unlike the approach taken in earlier published editions of Lviv’s sources (such as the four volumes of Pomniki dziejowe Lwowa), which unified texts according to classical Latin orthography, I chose to preserve original spellings with minimal intervention. This approach maintains all original sounds and spellings, allowing the dataset to serve not only historical research but also philological studies of Latin and Polish writing formation, local influences, and borrowings in medieval and early modern Eastern Europe.

This preservation approach meant:

  • Preserving medieval mixing of diphthongs and monophthongs (e.g., platee instead of classical plateae)
  • Keeping the medieval tendency to interchange “t” and “th” (plathea vs platea, Tartharorum vs Tartarorum)
  • Maintaining the multifunctional use of letter “U” for V and W (ulica/vlica/wlitza, Valaski/Walachien[sis])
  • Preserving Polish spellings without diacritical marks, as scribes often neglected them (ą, ę, ł, ó)

Partially lost text fragments were reconstructed in square brackets based on previous or subsequent registers. Names consisting of two words are presented according to the original, not separated if written together (Calieczagora, Psirinek).

Another methodological concern involved temporal coverage. The dataset spans nearly four centuries, during which Lviv underwent significant political, demographic, and cultural changes. Street names could emerge, disappear, or be renamed, reflecting shifts in the urban landscape, changes in property ownership, or the arrival of new religious or ethnic communities. Tracking these transformations required careful dating and contextual documentation.

The concept of “street” and conceptual history

Following Reinhart Koselleck’s approach to Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), I discovered that even such seemingly simple term as “street” carried different meanings across periods and languages. Koselleck argued that historical concepts must be understood not as static definitions but as dynamic semantic fields that evolve in response to social and political transformations. In Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, he distinguished between concepts “lending the source-language its shape” as heuristic tools and “concepts constructed and defined ex post, scientific categories applied to the sources without being present within them” (Koselleck, 255).

In late medieval Lviv, the Latin term platea was associated more with open, area-based spaces, closer to our understanding of “square” or “plaza.” The German gasse referred to passages and roads leading to city gates (Tyszka, 135). Later, the Polish ulica began to be perceived more linearly, as we understand streets today.

This shift in spatial perception became particularly visible in records from the second half of the 16th to the first half of the 17th century. Starting from 1569, tax records from the suburbs began to include specifications like “alia pars” (Latin: “the other part”) or “druga strona” (Polish: “the second side”) of the street. These streets were located along roads, so one part (in modern understanding) was on the right side of the road, the other on the left.

These expressions reflected a new level of spatial imagination where streets were conceived as linear entities with two distinct sides, rather than as area-based territories encompassing clusters of households. This transformation demonstrates what Koselleck called the historical semantics of concepts, how the meaning and use of fundamental terms shift in response to changing social realities, in this case, the densification of suburban settlement and the evolution of urban spatial organization.

This finding has important implications for how we visualize historical urban space. Because medieval and early modern streets were understood as area-based territories rather than linear thoroughfares, in the interactive map application I represent streets as polygons (area shapes) rather than simple lines. This cartographic choice reflects the historical reality that a “street” in 14th-18th century Lviv encompassed a cluster of properties unified under a common name, not merely the roadway between them. Only gradually, through the appearance of “other side” and “second part” designations, did the linear conception of streets only begin to emerge.

Proto-names and name formation

An important discovery was the phenomenon of “proto-names” ‒ intermediate variants used before a stable name emerged. For example:

  • “plathea ad balneam stubam transeundo” (street going to the bathhouse) preceded “platea balnei” (Bathhouse Street)
  • “der gassen kegen den spital” (street near the hospital) evolved into “platea hospitalis” (Hospital Street)
  • “platea qua itur ad Templum Divae Annae” (street which leads to the Temple of St. Anne) became simply St. Anne Street

These proto-names show that street naming was a gradual process where descriptive phrases slowly crystallized into proper names.

Linguistic and translational considerations

Working with historical multilingual sources raises questions about translation and representation. How should street names that carry religious, ethnic, or social meanings be translated into modern languages? Should translations prioritize literal accuracy or convey the cultural significance of a name?

I chose to provide both Ukrainian and English translations to present the data for different scholarly communities. The Ukrainian translations connect contemporary Ukrainian speakers to their city’s past, while English translations make the data accessible to international researchers.

Data quality and platform selection

With support from the NFDI4Memory FAIR Data Fellowship and guidance from the DH Lab at IEG, I undertook a thorough data cleaning and quality assurance process.

For publication, Zenodo was selected, a general-purpose research data repository that ensures long-term provision and provides a persistent DOI for citation and offered the necessary features: public accessibility, version control, stable storage, and compliance with FAIR principles.

I chose a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license to facilitate maximum reusability while requiring attribution. This licensing decision recognizes that the data, while compiled through my research, ultimately belongs to the scholarly community and should be available for educational, analytical, and public history purposes.

To enhance discoverability and usability, I created documentation that describes the dataset’s contents, methodology etc. This documentation helps researchers determine whether the data suits their needs, even if they are not specialists in Lviv’s history or historical toponymy.

Fascinating cases of street name evolution

Several street names revealed particularly interesting patterns of change:

The Tatar-to-Krakow transformation: One of the most dramatic renamings occurred between 1427 and 1440 (unfortunately, no sources survived for this period). A street originally called Tartharorum (Tatar Street) suddenly appears in documents as Krakowska (Krakow Street). The reasons for this abrupt change remain unclear, it could reflect the integration of the Tatar community. This gap in sources demonstrates how even a well-preserved archive can hide crucial moments of urban transformation.

The double-named street: In the late 16th century, one street was simultaneously referred to as both Sutorum/Szewska (Cobblers’ Street) and Jezuicka (Jesuit Street). This dual naming reflected a period of transition when the Jesuit order established their college on the cobblers’ quarter. For decades, both names coexisted in official documents, showing how slowly toponymic change could occur even when new landmark institutions emerged.

The Scottish market translational challenge: Historian Denys Zubrytsky interpreted the name “Cattle Market” (Skotski Rynok) as deriving from Scottish merchants. However, the Latin variant “Forum Peccorum” clearly indicates that this was actually a cattle market (from “pecus” ‒ cattle), not a Scottish market. The similarity between Polish “Skotski” (Scottish) and “skot” (cattle) led to this misinterpretation.

The unclear origins of the Dog Market: The most challenging name’s origin is “Dog Market” (Psi Rynok). Similar names appear across Polish and German cities (Wrocław, Kraków, Gdańsk, Poznań, Elbląg) with different explanations: contempt for poor residents, dog-keeping alleys, owners’ surnames (Gdańsk’s Hund family), or nearby streams. My tax register analysis (1569, 1580) showed bakers dominated: 11 of 51 residents in 1580 were bakers, plus combmakers. The earliest record (1562) uses Ruthenian “Sobachyi rynok.” I examined whether landowner Eysinhutel’s (1403) distorted surname might resemble “Hunde,” but found no evidence. Despite analyzing professions and surnames across years, the name’s origin remains unexplained.

The interactive map application

In collaboration with the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Ukrainian Catholic University, espesially Hlib Solodzhuk, was created an interactive web application: https://map.humaniora.ucu.edu.ua/en/. This tool allows users to explore historical street names overlaid on Friedrich von Mieg’s 1779-1782 map of Lviv and compare their locations on the modern map.

The application includes several important features:

  • Adjustable transparency: A slider allows users to toggle between the historical 18th-century map and a modern map layer, making it easier to orient oneself and compare historical and contemporary street layouts
  • Polygon objects: Streets and squares are represented as area-based polygons rather than simple lines, reflecting the medieval understanding of streets as territorial units rather than purely linear features
  • Search functionality: Users can search for records in original forms, by year, archival reference, or other criteria

 

It’s important to note that the street locations on this map are approximate, not exact. Medieval streets worked differently than modern ones, they were territorial areas grouping several households together, not linear roads with clear edges. Natural featurs like forests, valleys, and rivers often formed the boundaries of suburban districts, which makes it impossible to draw them as precise lines on a map.

Also, the von Mieg map was created in the late 18th century, much later than most of my research period. Between the 14th and 18th centuries, Lviv’s physical landscape changed significantly: rivers shifted their courses, hills were quarried for stone, new buildings changed street patterns, and large monastery complexes transformed suburban areas from the 1600s onward. One map cannot show four centuries of urban changes.

Still, the von Mieg map is very detailed cartographic source we have for Lviv and offers a valuable starting point for connecting historical street names with today’s city geography.

Value of the fellowship

My experience as an NFDI4Memory FAIR Data Fellow was invaluable, particularly the expertise and support provided by the IEG team, as I received step-by-step guidance in improving and publishing my dataset.

The fellowship introduced me to the principles of FAIR data management, ensuring research data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. These principles, while increasingly important in historical research, remain unfamiliar to many scholars trained primarily in traditional archival methods. Learning to think systematically about data structure, documentation, and long-term preservation has fundamentally changed how I approach my research.

I am especially grateful to Constanze Buyken, Fabian Cremer for their patient, knowledgeable, and friendly support throughout the fellowship. Their expertise transformed what initially seemed like a technical challenge into an intellectually rewarding process.

Conclusion

Publishing this dataset represents more than making research data publicly available ‒ it is an act of scholarly stewardship and an investment in future research. Historical data, carefully extracted from medieval and early modern documents, deserves preservation in formats that ensure its long-term accessibility and usability. This approach is especially urgent for Ukraine, where war has made digital preservation not merely a necessity but a vital safeguard for cultural heritage.

The transformation of archival transcriptions into structured, machine-readable, and well-documented data required significant effort, but the result is a resource that can serve multiple scholarly communities and support diverse research questions. By adhering to FAIR principles, the dataset can be discovered by different researchers, integrated with other historical datasets, and reused in many ways.

This research has revealed several important findings about how urban space was perceived and named in pre-modern Central European cities. The evolution from area-based “proto-names” to stable street names, the shift from Latin to vernacular languages in municipal records, the intimate connection between physical urban development and toponymic change, and contribute to our understanding of medieval and early modern urban life.

The interactive web application https://map.humaniora.ucu.edu.ua/en/ stands as an example of interdisciplinary collaboration between historians and computer scientists, demonstrating how digital tools can make historical research more accessible and engaging. It is my hope that this project will inspire similar efforts for other Ukrainian and Central European cities, gradually building a network of comparable datasets that can support large-scale comparative research on urban development in the region.

There is still much work to be done. Streets within the castle jurisdiction require separate investigation with different sources. The etymologies of several mysterious names remain unresolved. And the comparative analysis with other European cities deserves deeper exploration. But this dataset provides a solid foundation for such future researches.

Dataset

Vira, O., Street names as data in the case of Lviv (1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo, 2025. [10.5281/zenodo.17512159]

Bibliography

  • Koselleck, Reinhart. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
  • Tyszka, Przemysław. Obraz przestrzeni miejskiej Krakowa XIV-XV wieku w świadomości jego mieszkańców [The Image of Kraków’s Urban Space in the 14th-15th Centuries in the Consciousness of Its Inhabitants]. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2001.
  • Vira, O. V. “Hodonymia of Lviv: Genesis and Development in the Magdeburg Period.” PhD diss., Ukrainian Catholic University, 2023.
  • Vira, O. “Changes in the Perception of Space Based on Street Names in Lviv.” In Space in Historical Research: Collection of Scientific Papers, issue 2, 100-104. Pereiaslav, 2021.
  • Vira, O. “The Street Names in East Central European Cities and Towns in the Pre-Industrial Period in Comparative Perspective.” Klio 72, no. 3 (2024): 17-35.

Featured Image: collage combining a fragments of the 18th-century plastic panorama of Lviv by Ihor and Liubov Kachor (source: underpetrapavla.lviv.ua), a page from a tax (szoss) book of Lviv (Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv, fond 52 [Magistrate of the City of Lviv], inventory 2, file 770), and a screenshot from the Interactive Map of Lviv (https://map.humaniora.ucu.edu.ua/en/).


Nur der Text ist unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International nutzbar. Alle anderen Elemente (Abbildungen, importierte Anhänge) sind „Alle Rechte vorbehalten“, sofern nicht anders angegeben.


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Orysia Vira (23. Januar 2026). Transforming historical street names into FAIR research data. DH Lab. Abgerufen am 16. Mai 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/15jsp


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