Based on the unofficial names of cities (astionyms) and contexts of their use represented in the electronic dictionary “Languages of Russian cities”, there are revealed the structural and word formative models and the appropriate territorial and socially conditioned stylistic variations of astionyms.

There are sorted out three main research areas of proper names pragmatics: finding out the pragmatic component in onyms semantics; analysis of the relations of an author and an addressee, as well as the conditions, in which the name is given; research of onyms correlation with the closest and the farthest context.