ICA course on Toponymy

Names changes due to restoration of minority names (local majorities).

In many regions, minority language names are being restored to their original spellings. Examples are the province of Frisia in the Netherlands (where the original Frisian names are no longer translated into Dutch), Catalonia where the castilianised names have reverted to their original Catalan form. In the figure below, a model shows the actions needed to achieve such a transition. In this scheme, a minority language community is supposed to form a localised majority, and to be recognised as an official language.

Model for minority toponym restoration

First, the area for which the names have to revert to their minority form has to be defined, and it has to be found out what the official spelling is for the minority language. The next step would be to apply the official minority language spelling to the place names in the demarcated minority language area. In this process a number of restrictions would apply:

From a viewpoint of stability and safety, the former names should not disappear forthright, but there could be a transition period in which both the former majority language version and the new minority language version of the place name are rendered simultaneously. Depending on the scale of the map, not all names in the minority language can be incorporated on the map: because of legibility considerations this number should be restricted. Then not all name categories would be incorporated on the map, as this would depend on the function of the map. On road maps, for instance, only a few mountains would be rendered, as opposed to on mountaineering maps. Then there would be a number of names that refer to a larger area (national items such as Alps for instance) that would have to retain their names in the majority language. But the end product, after a transition period (of either 2 new editions or 10 years) should be a monolingual map with all local items named only in the official minority language. For examples of such procedures, you are referred to the chapter on minority languages.