#Indigenous #Australia #maps #PlaceNames #AppleMaps

"Millions of Australians will be able to request directions from Warrane (Sydney Cove) to Meanjin (Brisbane), tracing the original custodians of the land along the way, via a new feature on one of the world’s leading navigational apps. In a major collaboration with Indigenous groups, Apple Maps will now include more than 250 dual placenames for cities and towns across the country, with more to be added."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/27/apple-maps-indigenous-place-names-australia

#GulfOfMexico or #GulfOfAmerica? Competitive renaming of seawater is actually already a thing in #geopolitics: See Arabian / #PersianGulf, #SeaOfJapan / #EastSea, #SouthChinaSea / #WestPhilippineSea. But it implies the country doing the renaming feels threatened by equal or more powerful neighbor.

#geography #hydrology #maritime #nautical #ocean #toponymy #placenames #naming @geography @geopolitics

In interesting show of restraint, #USA president's order to change "#GulfOfMexico" to "#GulfOfAmerica" on govt maps seems to specify that only the part under US jurisdiction is being renamed.

(Order also renames "#Denali" back to "#MountMcKinley")

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-names-that-honor-american-greatness/

#toponymy #geography #mapping #hydrology #UNCLOS #maritime #names #policy #geography #GIS #placenames #Alaska #GulfCoast #nautical #hydrology #GNIS @geography @geopolitics

“Perhaps the executive order will lead to paper maps and student handbooks showing the Gulf of America in the United States. To the rest of the world — including the US military that adheres to international naming conventions — it'll be the Gulf of Mexico.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Maps #Geography #PlaceNames #GulfOfMexico #AppleMaps

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/01/21/apple-maps-still-calls-it-the-gulf-of-mexico-and-politicians-are-upset

Urban place in a small town in Ireland.

The Green...

Funny thing about American #fantasy novels and games: the *place names* are often clearly American colonial, even in a pseudo-Medieval European setting. You'll arrive at this village threatened by goblin raiders, and it's named Burton's Freehold. Aha, right. This is a re-skinned Western movie.

Wouldn't it be nice to call the islands in the pink zone on this map, here labelled as "South East Asia Isl.", Skaianesia instead?

σκαιός / skaios is the ancient Greek for west. The name I propose suits the group of islands that lie to the west of the other three named groups.

On the ridge from Benlettery to Bengower in Connemara. A good Sunday hike, and we dodged the showers until the home stretch

The anglicized names obscure the natural Irish ones: Binn Leitrí is "peak of the wet hillsides"; Binn Gabhar is "goats' peak"

In my ongoing quest to provide something more uplifting to #StartTheDay than the day's news here's a look at British place names.

https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4?si=wByJAdII2CtTT56s

#followFriday

If you are into history and Scotland's languages, I heartily recommend you follow
@dgplacenames
Just arrived here from 'other places', and extremely interesting and knowledgeable about the meaning and history of place names!

The Wampanoag tribe, whose ancestors trace back at least 10,000 years, lived in the area, and the indigenous name for the place was "Patuxet".

The Wampanoags watched as the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, and the village where they settled was known as Patuxet by the Native Americans.

Still way nicer than Misery Corners.

A couple of years ago this bit of #HistoricalMaps of #Ireland was floating around and my friends and I had fun trying to work out the place names. Any #mastodaoine want to help us complete the job?

#toponymy #PlaceNames

What we have:
Mapmaker probably Dutch going by the spelling. I’m sure someone will recognise the actual map, this is a small part of it but is all I’ve seen.

Bless the cartographer, he’s trying his best.

I interviewed Lauren Beck, author of Canada's Place Names and How to Change Them. (I also read the book!) I think this is an interesting and thought-provoking story, and it gets into a few aspects of naming I hadn't really thought of before.

https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/arts-and-culture/local-history/to-rename-or-not-to-rename-mount-a-prof-grapples-with-canadas-place-names-in-new-book/

' Often, when we give a blank map of the surrounding areas to Inuit who are helping us [they] have no problem recognizing and identifying features on the map, going only from their recollections of the land and what their families have described to them in words or in songs — without otherwise having used maps. They’ll even correct you, explaining something like, “there should be a lake there, but it’s not on your map.” '

#PlaceNames #Indigenous #Nunavut #Canada #maps

https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/mapping-traditional-place-names-in-canadas-north/

I have a bit of a nerdy obsession with unusual place names (amongst other things). This is one of my favourites The village of Ae in Dumfries and Galloway. Purported to have the shortest place name in the UK bearing no consonants. It is also one of the youngest villages in Britain established in 1947 by the Forestry Commission in Scotland. Pronounced “ei” and the name probably derived from Old Norse “aa” meaning water #villages #placenames #scotland