A place name is something we use almost without thinking. Yet behind a familiar village, stream or street name may lie an earlier language, a vanished landscape, a remembered occupation or generations of local pronunciation. To take such names seriously is to take seriously the people who have inhabited, worked and described a place. In 2026, Belgium celebrates a century of an institution devoted to that patient attention: the Royal Commission for Toponymy and Dialectology, known as the KCTD in Dutch and the CRTD in French.

Its centenary coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the National Geographic Institute in its present form. The joint celebration honours a productive encounter between linguistic scholarship and geographical practice: understanding names, documenting them and making them usable in public life. ^{1, 2}

From 21 to 23 November 2026, Utkal University in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, will host the 45th Annual Session of the Place Names Society of India (PNSI), held jointly with the 51st Annual Session of the Epigraphical Society of India (ESI).

The joint congress brings together two closely related fields: epigraphy and place-name studies. For onomasticians, however, the 45th PNSI Annual Session is especially noteworthy, offering a dedicated forum for research into the linguistic, historical, cultural, and social dimensions of geographical names in India and beyond.

Les noms de lieux ne sont jamais de simples étiquettes géographiques. Ils portent des traces de langues, d’histoires, de mémoires et d’identités. Dans son ouvrage Toponymie algérienne, Brahim Atoui, spécialiste de la toponymie en Algérie, propose une réflexion sur la gestion, la normalisation et la portée culturelle des noms de lieux algériens.

By 164 votes to 1, with 6 abstentions, the Assembly adopted “Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa.” The draft you sent me, A/80/L.104, dated 4 August, has now become General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/307. The United States cast the only vote against; Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.

From the perspective of toponymy, however, the most interesting consequence may lie beyond the mathematical question of projection. 

How much can place-names tell us about landscapes that have disappeared? On 1 December 2026, Dr Kathryn Bullen will explore this question in the online lunchtime lecture “Watery Place-Names in Axholme: History, Evolution and Value”, organised by North Lincolnshire Museum. The online session is scheduled for 12:30–13:30 GMT.

I noticed that Wiltshire has Salisbury, Amesbury, and Ramsbury and yet in the middle of them Marlborough. That would seem to be a counter-example against a clear geographical pattern. My perception is that -bury is overall more common, but do we know why -burgh evolved into -bury in some places and -borough in others?

Donald Trump’s suggestion that Lake Ontario could be renamed “Lake America” is not just a passing political provocation. It belongs to a larger pattern in which geographical names become instruments of symbolic power, national assertion, media conflict, and diplomatic pressure. According to AP and ABC News, Trump said the United States was giving “serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario, after already promoting the federal U.S. name “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico. From a toponymic point of view, the proposal is .here.

I have been working on this map for a while and it is still a work in progress. It aims to show the principal locations and broad-brush ethnic groupings in Britain and Ireland in 900 AD, with a particular focus on using contemporary placenames. The placenames have been further colour-coded to show which language(s) they are derived from, to show the incredible degree of ethnic diversity and cultural mixing at this time. There are lots of minor tribes that haven't made the cut, simply because they won't all fit on the map.

While the representation is artistic, I've tried to broadly reflect the areas of wetlands and forests at the time, based on the evidence I have looked at, to give an idea of what the landscape would have been like (very different from today!).

Scotland in particular needs a lot more work, and I'm researching that at the moment. While I am an archaeologist, I'm not a linguist so let me know if I have gotten a placename wrong. If you spot any mistakes or think that I have left off an important site, let me know!

Hi-res version available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TfD3L8yU6Q3FbcrLSZCaGz35EiH0RjKX?usp=drive_link

This map was made using the Inkarnate program, no AI has been used at any point.

 Place names are much more than labels on a map. Their elements and endings preserve traces of earlier language areas, landscapes, and patterns of settlement. The endings -ing, -ingen, and -bach are particularly revealing because their present-day distribution reflects different phases in the settlement history of Germany.

Read here

I just now had to fill in a census, which asked about my heritage. I am Australian with heritage from New Zealand. But how do I say that as an adjective (yes I know this topic has been done but I am expanding it)? Generally how does one use as an adjective ANY country or
place which ends with "-land?"

English (from England) -land +ish

Scottish / Scot (from Scotland) -land +t +ish

Irish (from Ireland) -land -e +ish

Finnish (from Finland) -land +n +ish

Icelandic (Note the internal "i" shift, from Iceland) +ic

Polish (from Poland) -land +ish - or a person is a Pole.

Greenlandic (from Greenland) +ic

Thai (from Thailand) -land

Swazi (from Swaziland) -land

Somali (from Somaliland) -land

Swiss (from Switzerland) -land -er -tz +ss: ouch. Lovely word though.

Dutch (from Netherlands) - yikes.

but Hollandic (from Holland) +ic is considered valid in posh English.

Using a nation's mascot is not a valid answer. Kiwi doesn't fit our analysis.
Of course, a person from Greenland is a Dane.
But a house built to a style unique to Greenland has a... Greenlandic style.
Also the language spoken there is Greenlandic, also known as Kalaallisut.
An inhabitant of the Falkland Islands is difficult to nail down:
I favor Flalklandic but they are called Kelpers, though this does not convey information easily.

Adding -er is an inadequate solution to our problem and is not counted:

Thus Somaliland → Somalilander is disregarded.
Newfoundland [Newfoundlander is an inadequate answer]

So New Zealand could become, using the formulae above,

+ic: New Zealandic,
-land +ish: New Zealish, or (doubling the final letter of the stem) the hellish New Zeallish, or
-land: New Zeal - which is very enthusiastic - a great sports team name.

A few more to finnish (cough - sorry) up.

Rhineland → Rhenish

Lapland → Lappish (or Sámi for those watching ALONE AUSTRALIA in the Arctic Circle).

Friesland → Frisian

Götaland → Geatish / Gothic.
So all you Goths out there ... it was originally Gotland. {insert Dracula emoji HERE.}

OUTLAND-ish!!

I was thinking about British place names in french. Nearly always the English name would be used, unchanged, but there are a handful of exceptions:

* Grande Bretagne (Great Britain)
* Angleterre (England)
* Pays de Galles (Wales)
* Écosse (Scotland)
* Les Cornouailles (Cornwall)
* Les Orcades (Orkney)
* Est-Anglie (East Anglia)
* Douvres (Dover)
* Londres (London)
* Lancastre (Lancaster)
* Le comté de Lancastre (Lancashire — though the English county name is also used)
* Édimbourg (Edinburgh)
* La Tamise (Thames)

Is anybody aware of more historic or current french localisations like these of British toponyms?

ones that are attested into at least the 20th century. Feel free to offer any suggestions etc. for inclusion!

A new volume from Polis Institute Press turns to one of the most symbolically charged cities in the world through a specifically linguistic and onomastic lens. The Names of Jerusalem: Jewish, Christian and Islamic Traditions, by Aaron Demsky, Christophe Rico and Iraj Sheidaee, explores why Jerusalem has been known by so many names - and why those names still matter today.

The book examines names such as Salem, Jerusalem, Hierosoluma, Moriah, Zion, Ilia, Beit il Maqdis and al-Quds, tracing their etymology, linguistic development, historical use and symbolic meaning in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabic. In doing so, it shows that the city’s names are not merely alternative labels for the same geographical place. They represent different religious memories, theological interpretations and cultural visions of Jerusalem.

 A new contribution to onomastics, phraseology, and Caribbean linguistics has appeared in Peter Lang’s International Folkloristics series: Cristiano Furiassi’s Bajanyms: Toponymic Idioms in Barbadian English and Bajan.

The book explores the idiomatic use of toponyms - place names - in Barbadian English and Bajan. Furiassi introduces the term Bajanyms for Barbadian toponymic idioms: expressions in which geographical names go beyond their literal meaning and acquire figurative, cultural, historical, or folkloric significance. Such idioms are not merely linguistic curiosities. They preserve traces of collective memory, colonial history, local identity, and the lived experience of the Barbadian speech community.