Toponymics as a means of patriotic education: Ukrainian aspects

The article is devoted to the problem of upbringing of the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism. The urgency of this problem is due to the processes of renewal of Ukrainian society, its national revival, consolidation in conditions of external military aggression. Ethnic and geographical names are original monuments of an epoch and place of the origin, each toponym keeps in itself information about features of culture, spiritual and material life of the people. Knowledge of geographical toponymy influences the formation of patriotic consciousness, arming with appropriate arguments in certain ideological discussions. A comprehensive study of toponyms provides an opportunity to obtain additional information for clarifying the current issues of Ukrainian science: the origins of the ancestral homeland, the origin of the name, the question of the autochthonousness of the Ukrainian population in the border regions of Ukraine, etc