ICA course on Toponymy

So geographical names are irreplaceable cultural values of vital significance to people's sense of well-being. They are an important part of local identity and contribute to a sense of belonging.

Geographical names constitute a part of the collective memory and heritage and thus function as social identifiers.

But they are threatened by:

the continued extension of towns and cities over the rural countryside, with the related loss of geographical names for fields and hamlets, villages and farms.
The same is due to extensification of agriculture, or the abandoning of marginal farms;
there is the immigration of population groups speaking ohter languages without previous links to the environment.
there is the lack of interest in the names minority groups are using to refer to their environment.
New mapping methods, not depending on terrain surveys tend to loose on toponyms.
Toponymical cleansing: countries try to change the names because they want other countries to believe that the names areas are only inhabited by citizens speaking the country's major language.