Grammatical aspects of rendering Lithuanian and Latvian toponyms

The article discusses the correctness of toponym usage found in various Lithuanian and Latvian press and tourist publications. The research employs comparative and descriptive methods. Summarizing the research done on rendering Lithuanian place names into the Latvian language and Latvian place names into Lithuanian, it can be concluded that on the whole a tendency prevails to render these names into a target language. Lithuanian toponyms rendered into Latvian usually correspond to the general rules, e.g. most of masculine Lithuanian place names become feminine in Latvian, while rendering Latvian place names into Lithuanian both traditional and transcribed forms are being used. However, the analysed material allows to make an assumption that it is not easy to apply in practice theoretically regulated norms of rendering Lithuanian and Latvian names into another Baltic language. In Lithuania a recent tendency is not to decline Latvian place names, but to use them in nominative case. In the symbolic place names in Lithuanian and Latvian it is accepted to use their original spelling while skipping the language specific diacritic marks. Rendering LithuanianñLatvian symbolic names a problem of word order in a sentence arises