Naming Of Geographic Features Research Articles

NORTH AMERICAN COMMISSION ON STRATIGRAPHIC NOMENCLATURE Note 72 - Application for Revisions to the North American Stratigraphic Code to Address Culturally Offensive or Inappropriate Unit Names and to Encourage the Use of Indigenous Place Names

The North American Stratigraphic Code ("the Code") addresses the naming of formal geologic units from a scientific perspective. Guidelines based on scientific rationale are provided for assigning and revising unit names. However, whereas some scientific codes and guidelines now address the problem of offensive or inappropriate names, the Code at present has no means of addressing such matters. This omission presents a problem because most categories of formal units covered by the Code are named after geographic features, and some units have thus inherited culturally offensive or inappropriate names. The naming of geographic features (toponymy) also has reflected the historic suppression of Indigenous languages in North America. To address the first issue, additions and changes to the Code are proposed around the use of culturally offensive or inappropriate names: to explicitly counsel against their use; to provide a simplified process to rename scientifically valid units; and to invalidate nomenclatural stability as a justification for retaining such unit names. To address the second issue, additions to the Code are proposed that recognize maps produced by Indigenous governments or organizations as sources of geographic names, and that encourage the respectful use of Indigenous place names.

Toponyms in uninhabited areas: the case of the southern North Sea

Endonyms and exonyms are usually defined as geographic name variants, used by communities in loco and by outsider communities, respectively. Jordan (Challenges in synchronic toponymy: structure, context and use. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tubingen, 2015) has argued that, at a cognitive level, coastal dwellers may be aware of an ‘artificial’ line between the sea area where their own name has endonym status, contrary to the area where others have different names for the same referents—the latter being exonyms in the view of the first mentioned community. Endonyms, the author states, reflect that the name giving community feels ‘at home’ in the territory concerned, or emotionally attached to it. The author has proposed to consider names in uninhabited areas as endonyms if they (1) have first been attributed by one of the adjoining language communities, or (2) have etymological roots in the language of such a community, or (3) have been attributed from the perspective of such a community. His proposal meets, however, with a difficulty: translations or adaptations in another language may be felt in due time as endonyms by the speakers of that language. This paper will mainly focus on names of geographic features in the southern North Sea. A strictly synchronic approach will be applied. The consequence is, that no distinction will be made between endonyms and exonyms in the sense that they would reflect the feeling of ‘being at home’. This paper discerns: (1) Dutch names without English equivalent, (2) English names without Dutch equivalent; and (3) Dutch and English name pairs. It examines their geographic distribution and will try to draw some conclusions concerning the name giving processes involved.

Severnaya Zemlya – geography with history at the turn of times

100 years ago, in 1913, there was committed last geographical discovery of world importance in the Russian Arctic. Icebreaking transports «Taimyr» and «Vaygach» discovered and photographed the eastern and southern shores of the unknown land separating the Kara and Laptev seas. Boris Vilkitski Strait was opened by the north of Taimyr Peninsula as well as two small islands. Coast of the newly discovered lands received a legal name «Emperor Nicholas II Land», one of the islands was named in honor of the heir of the monarch – Tsarevich Alexei. After 1924 there was introduced the common name for a geographic feature – «Severnaya Zemlya» (North Land). Since 1926, the name «Emperor Nicholas II Land» was removed for political reasons. North shore land remained anonymous until now. In world practice (on the map of Greenland, Antarctica) the description of shores by the names of monarchs shores coexist with the common name of the main geographical object. In 1930–1932 a full examination of Severnaya Zemlya was carried out by Ushakov–Urvantsev expedition. There was found that an archipelago consists of several islands. «Not-simultaneous» shore opening and land surveying all over the archipelago led to divergent assessments of the events and facts. Preservation of historic names as a cultural and historical heritage, the inadmissibility of the historical names abolition are supported by the acting Russian Federation Law on the names of geographic features. The authors emphasize the need to return to the historical names with the application of national legislation and with justification of solutions Russian Arctic toponymy problems from international practices.

The Drama of Naming Ireland: Brian Friel's Translations and The Communication Cord

AbstractIrish playwright Brian Friel explores the complexity of names as they relate to Gaelic culture and British imperialism. In Translations, Friel dramatizes the 19th century British Ordance Survey which attempted to standardize and Anglicize the names of geographic features of Ireland. I suggest a paradox of naming: reacting to the British Empire's naming as colonization, Irish nostalgia for national origins fictionalizes around the names of the past. Because of the British “misnaming,” the Irish must create a new past through an impossible search for “authentic” names.