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.
