This map shows the distribution of Turkish place names in Turkey as of the early 20th century. In the light-colored provinces, the proportion of Turkish place names is 90% and above. In the second group, Turkish place names range between 50% and 90%, and in the third group, between 10% and 50%. In the dark-colored provinces, 90% or more of the place names are in languages other than Turkish. The black boundary line indicates the realm of sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire in 1451.The count considers only official names recorded in Ottoman and Republican Turkish records; it disregards unofficial names given to those locations in other local languages (e.g., Circassian village names). Personal and clan names ambiguous as to whether they count as Turkish, Kurdish, or Arabic (such as Şeyhhaci, Hasankom) are counted as Turkish. Among place names of foreign origin corrupted into an ostensibly "Turkish" form in daily use (Heraklia > Erikli, Potami > Bademli, Basilika > Paslıkaya), those we could detect were classified as foreign, while the undetectable ones were deemed Turkish.The result is a striking map. It serves as an excellent starting point to question much of what one assumes about the history of Turkey. For instance, consider the question: the province of Erzurum came under Turkish rule in the 1070s, or even earlier, whereas Bursa and İzmir did so more than 200 years later. Why, then, are Turkish place names around 40% in Erzurum, but 97% in Bursa and 91% in İzmir? Was Erzurum less "Turkified" than İzmir at the beginning of the 20th century, and if so, why? Or could there be no logical connection between the transformation of place names and shifts in ethnic fabric? For instance, could an administrative decree rename a district populated by Greeks as Akçaviran or Kınık?To state it theoretically: are place names a POLITICAL rather than a sociological phenomenon?