S01: Introduction
 
 

Table of contents

 


Currently, three training courses on the web are gradually being developed or extended:

  • a French-speaking course "introduction à la toponymie", to be found here, developed by Elisabeth Calvarin (Paris) and Henri Dorion (Montréal),

  • a Spanish-speaking course developed by PAIGH, and

  • this course developed by the International Cartographic Association.


The following books can be used in toponymic education:

Naftali Kadmon - Toponymy: The Lore, Laws of Language of Geographical Names (2000) New York: Vantage Press.

of the current cartography manuals the book by:

Kraak et al., Cartography, Visualisation of spatial data (3rd edition, Pearson, 2010, or Guilford Press 2011) has 3 pages on toponymy.

The United Nations sell the following publications which also can be downloaded from the UNGEGN website:

    • Glossary of Terms for the Standardization of Geographical Names (New York 2002)
    • Manual for the national standardization of geographical names (New York, 2006, available in the 6 UN langusges), and
    • Technical reference manual for the standardization of geographical names (New York, 2007).


The content of this module is based on teaching materials prepared by Ormeling. These teaching materials are also made available under the "documents" section.

In this lesson we try to look at geographical names in general. In this overview you can read about the objectives of the course, and we touch on the main problems and topics which will be covered later in more detail.

The module contains the following chapters:

Introduction
Chapter 1: Confusion because of different name variants (allonyms)
Chapter 2: Confusion because of same name for different locations (homonyms)

Chapter 3: Standardization of geographical names
Chapter 4: First awareness of toponymical problems: congresses
Chapter 5: Policies for standardization and attitudes
Chapter 6: International standardization policies
Chapter 7: Counter argument against standardization of geographical names

Chapter 8: Issues in names standardization
Chapter 9: Use of names should be predictable
Chapter 10: Names changes should be well advertised
Chapter 11: Need for standardization in related fields
Chapter 12: Place names are tools and have to be handy!
Chapter 13: Types of names on the map


When reading through the following pages, you will come across some unusual terms. These terms are hyperlinked to the UNGEGN Glossary of Terminology (pdf). Behind each term a number (#) is given that corresponds to the numbering applied in this glossary, e.g. toponymy (#344).

For exercises and an overview of relevant documents (and literature) on this topic see respectively the "Exercises" and/or the "Documents" section of this module.

The complete module can be downloaded here.

 

 
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Copyright United Nations Statistics Division and International Cartographic Association, July 2012