The article discusses the role of affi xed elements in determining the status of ideographic place names. The importance of toponymic formants in this aspect is exemplifi ed, fi rst, by the suffi x -k(a), forming, in a variety of different urban toponymic systems, mental associative representations
of geographic objects: e.g. in Moscow, it translates the idea of a small old street (Znamenka, Petrovka, Sretenka), in St Petersburg — the idea of a waterfront (Krestovka, Moyka, Fontanka) or of a certain part of the city (Grazhdanka, Ligovka, Tekhnolozhka). Secondly, the importance
of formants for an ideographic description of place names is illustrated in the article by the suffi xes -at, -ets/-ovets, -its(а), and -ishch(a), attested in the toponymy of the Russian North and adjacent territories. The author believes that the structural and semantic commonality of names, indicating
a single local mental naming model, not only facilitates the defi nition of the ideographic status of certain toponyms, but also allows to trace the boundaries of toponymic systems and subsystems.