Toponyms

Names on the Land
In Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, a review of George R. Stewart’s Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States, a 1945 work on place names in the United States. Bill Kauffman’s review “a learned… »
Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 at 8:04 AM
Categories: Books, Toponyms
Iran Accuses Google Earth of Provoking Regional Conflict
I told you Iran was campaigning against the use of the name “Arabian Gulf”; this time they’re accusing Google Earth managers of “knowingly or unknowingly” provoking conflict in the region. Wow. Illegal and insulting? Via Ogle Earth…. »
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 6:58 AM
Categories: Toponyms
Google and Disputed Place Names
How does a global mapping provider like Google deal with disputed map names? (Think, for example, of Iran’s campaign in favour of the Persian Gulf instead of the Arabian Gulf, or South Korea’s on behalf of the East Sea instead… »
Posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:00 PM
Categories: Google Earth, Toponyms
A Map of Dione and a Planetary Gazetteer
The Planetary Society’s blog reports that the International Astronomical Union has approved new names for features on Saturn’s moon Dione, and provides an equatorial map with the new names added to spaceprobe imagery. But what also caught my attention… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 9:00 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Toponyms
Frytown or Williamstown?
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names got a little bit more visibility recently, with a story in the October 25 edition of USA Today about the disconnect between what an unincorporated settlement in Iowa calls itself — Frytown — and… »
Posted on Monday, November 5, 2007 at 5:11 AM
Categories: Toponyms
Custom Globes and Contested Geographies
You’re no doubt familiar with the controversies about what gets depicted on a map: disputed territories, disputed names (e.g. Persian Gulf vs. Arabian Gulf, Sea of Japan vs. East Sea). Here’s an interesting article from the International Herald Tribune that… »
Posted on Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 9:21 PM
Categories: Globes, Toponyms
Whitwell’s Rational Geographical Nomenclature
Whitwell’s Rational Geographical Nomenclature: “Stedman Whitwell, 19th-century social reformer and architect of Robert Owen’s failed Utopian city at New Harmony, was deeply troubled by the will-nilly way that cities and towns were named in America, and proposed a more “rational”… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 6:05 PM
Categories: Toponyms
New Zealander’s Campaign to Correct Geographic Names
A retired public servant in Wellington, New Zealand is on a campaign to correct spelling mistakes in New Zealand place names, the New Zealand Herald reports. He’s made a total of 60 submissions to the Geographic Board pointing out errors… »
Posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Categories: Mapping Errors, Toponyms
Sea of Japan, East Sea, Sea of Korea
You may be familiar with the Korean campaign to change the international name of the Sea of Japan to the “East Sea.” It’s an aggressive campaign — even I got e-mail about it (see previous entry) — but one that… »
Posted on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 7:21 PM
Categories: Toponyms
Review: The Geist Atlas of Canada
The Geist Atlas of Canada: Meat Maps and Other Strange Cartographies by Melissa Edwards Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006. Softcover, 128 pp. ISBN 1-55152-216-0 Early on in The Map Room’s existence, we learned about a quirky feature emanating from Geist, a… »
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 at 1:23 PM
Categories: Book Reviews, Toponyms
NPR: ‘It’s Like a Mountain Office Range’
NPR science correspondent Robert Krulwich had a story over the weekend about the practice of naming places after living people: in the 19th century, towns had a distinct tendency to be named after their postmasters; nowadays, though U.S. places cannot… »
Posted on Monday, October 23, 2006 at 7:40 AM
Categories: Podcasts & Audio, Toponyms
Review: From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow
From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame by Mark Monmonier University of Chicago Press, 2006. Hardcover, 229 pp. ISBN 0-226-53465-0 When I was living in Edmonton, I heard the story of Chinaman’s Peak. In 1886,… »
Posted on Wednesday, July 26, 2006 at 9:32 PM
Categories: Book Reviews, Toponyms
Mark Monmonier Does NPR
Mark Monmonier appeared on NPR’s “Here and Now” yesterday to promote his new book about controversial place names, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim and Inflame. The interview, which you can listen to with RealPlayer,… »
Posted on Friday, July 7, 2006 at 10:46 AM
Categories: Books, Podcasts & Audio, Toponyms
Book Roundup
Cartography has a review of Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (web site), a collection of 40 essays; my impression is that the contributors come from a design rather than cartographic background. Meanwhile, on atlas(t), Claire has… »
Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 9:41 PM
Categories: Books, Toponyms
Onomastics of Geography
Great post by Claire on what she calls the “taxonomy of geographic names” — learn new and useful words like “toponym” (place name), “allonym” (one of two toponyms applied to a single feature, e.g. Istanbul/Constantinople) or “exonym” (place name in… »
Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006 at 8:22 AM
Categories: Toponyms

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