Toponymic guidelines, published by UN member states, aim at systematically presenting information for each country about:

• Languages, their distribution and status
  
  
• Linguistic and administrative maps available
  
  
• Alphabet used, phonetic value of characters
  
  
• Use of capitalization, word strings
  
  
• Names standardization authorities
  
  
• Published source material on geographical names
  
  
• Glossary of generic elements* within toponyms
  
  

* definition can be found in UNGEGN Glossary of Terminology (pdf).

 

Toponymic guidelines aim to be practical professional instruments for:

toponymists, geographers and cartographers.

 

They show how geographic names for a specific country should be rendered.

 

Links to National Names authorities by country:

Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia