The aim of the article is to present the current understanding of the term topographic names in relation to Polish urban names, especially street names. The material for analysis has been extracted from numerous linguistic works published during the period between the 1960s and the second decade of the 21st century. Topographical names were introduced to Polish linguistics by Witold Taszycki, who considered them an important semantic category of local names. This term was later used in the divisions of the urban nomenclature. For years, however, it has not been possible to create a generally accepted definition of topographical street names. All proposals in this respect oscillate between a narrow (represented e.g. by Mieczysław Buczyński) ...