No. 51 NOVEMBER 2016 National Names Authorities - structures and operations UNGEGN Information Bulletin No. 51 November 2106 Page 1 In this issue The Information Bulletin of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (formerly UNGEGN Newsletter) is issued twice a year by the Secretariat of the Group of Experts. The Secretariat is served by the Statistics Division (UNSD), Preface Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Secretariat Message from the Chairperson 3 of the United Nations. Contributions and reports received from From the Secretariat the Experts of the Group, its Linguistic/Geographical Divisions Message from the Secretariat 4 and its Working Groups are reviewed and edited jointly by the Amor Laaribi – Promoted UNGEGN 6 Secretariat and the UNGEGN Working Group on Publicity and and the importance of geographical Funding. Contributions for the Information Bulletin can only be names considered when they are made available digitally in Microsoft Word or compatible format. They should be sent to the Special Feature – Exonyms – following address: standards or standardization? Cyprus National Names Authority - 7 Secretariat of the Group of Experts on Structure and Operations Geographical Names (UNGEGN) Czech Names Authorities – structure 9 Room DC2-1678 and operation United Nations The Danish Place-Name Commission 11 New York, NY 10017 Standardization, competency and 14 USA authorities in geographical names in Spain Tel: (212) 963-5823 The structure and operation of New 13 Fax: (212) 963-9851 Zealand’s national naming authority E-Mail: Botswana: "National Names 16 [email protected] as Authorities - structures and [email protected] operations" Republic of Korea: National Names 18 Authorities The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: 19 National Committee on Geographical Names National Geographical Names 21 Authority: state of the art in Italy Peru: Los Nombres Geográficos, 22 Patrimonio Social De La Humanidad Structure and Operations of the 24 United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names Information Geographical Names Board of Bulletin (ISSN 1014-798) is published by United Nations Statistics Canada Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Sultanate of Oman’s Geographic 27 Names Achievement The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this From the Countries publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on The origin of equivalent place names 29 the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal (in Suriname) and on other continents status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities or Chad and Eritrea - toponomastics of 31 concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. the fringe areas of the Arabic- speaking world Previous issues of the Bulletin (formerly Newsletter) can be found at Education and Training UNGEGN Advanced Toponymy 34 http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn_info_bulletins.htm Manua International Symposium on Place 35 Names Upcoming Meetings 36 UNGEGN Information Bulletin No. 51 November 2016 Page 2 Message from the Chairperson Dear Colleagues, read with a great deal of Emergency service benefits – covering every aspect from interest the articles below local issues, search and rescue, emergency preparedness relating to the national through to natural disaster and emergency relief operations, I structures in a number of Security strategies, map production and more modern GIS countries, noting both the similarities based applications and in time automatic navigation and and differences in the structures driverless cars, presented. Tourism benefits, and As I read this I had a question General unambiguous communications about place. coming into my mind. Why are we doing this? I was quite comfortable Since this brochure was first produced, we have greatly that I knew the answer to this, but expanded our understanding and awareness of the cultural aspect of wondered if we are promoting the reasons for the place names work place names, so we are now in a position to add to the list above such that we do widely enough so that the why is very clear. benefits as: We have had the benefit of a comparatively recent addition to Cultural awareness, recognition and equality, the staff involved in place names work who is not simply willing to Heritage protection, accept established process and continually asked why do we do this or Language retention and, in some instances, revitalization, why do we do it that way. I have found this quite refreshing as it and makes me assess our processes and rational rather than simply Reconciliation benefits. accepting the status quo. I would hope that we keep all these benefits in the public eye I would like to encourage us to take this approach on occasions and understand that we have to sell these points to the community as so that we can ensure that the reasons we undertake this work are necessary to ensure that this work commences, continues or relevant and current and that we are in a position to articulate these accelerates as required in each of our jurisdictions. reasons in a manner that is understandable and acceptable to the wider community. On a different matter, work continues on the investigations of the potential future operational methods for UNGEGN and on the I am mindful of the UNGEGN brochure – “Consistent Use of relationship with UN-GGIM. I would like to thank the bureau, Place Names” – and the summary of the benefits to be gained and felt working group convenors and the Secretariat for the efforts that have that these bear repeating and perhaps enlarging as necessary. been made so far. We should be in apposition very soon to release two documents covering this matter for general consideration and The benefits can be summarised as follows and please recognise comment and look forward to getting your feedback. that I have done this under the main benefit only and there are some that have multiple benefits: Commercial benefits - for trade and commerce, property Bill Watt rights and planning, Chair, UNGEGN Environmental management benefits that impact on Email: [email protected] conservation and sustainable development, UNGEGN Information Bulletin No. 51 November 2016 Page 3 Message from the Secretariat Dear UNGEGN Experts, ational geographical conference and session documents. The “Manual for the national names standardization standardization of geographical names” is one such resource; it is N including the creation of available in all six United Nations languages and Korean, and may be names authority downloaded or purchased from the UNGEGN website at administrative structures, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/publications.html . legislation, policies and procedures is a core objective of Readers will note that in addition to the featured articles this the Group of Experts; a mandate issue includes an article on the steps taken to prepare and submit a that was adopted (Resolution I/4) resolution on the strengthening of the United Nations Committee of at the first United Nations Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). Conference on the Other articles cover Member State activities, training and education Standardization of Geographical and a schedule of upcoming meetings. At the time of preparing this Names (UNCSGN) in 1967, in article we were still awaiting updates from the divisions and working Switzerland. In furtherance of this groups. objective at its fifth UNCSGN in 1987, resolution V/15 urged countries not having national geographical names authorities to create The Secretariat is delighted to report that the collection, scanning them. This topic has been a staple item on the UNCSGN agenda and and uploading of conference and session documents, a work item continues to be a major area of work of the Group of Experts. Based originating from Resolution VII/14 is more or less completed, with the on the data available as at March 31 2016, of 193 Member States, 91 small exception of the Spanish documents from the first conference. or 47% have established national geographical names authorities; Under this reference collection building exercise, over 1,700 technical further strengthening the need for continued focus on supporting their session documents and some 2,351 conference documents were creation. scanned and uploaded to the UNGEGN website. The Secretariat recognises Ms Helen Kerfoot for her commitment and perspicacity Based on the forgoing, the Working Group on Publicity and and Mrs Vilma Frani whose diligence and cogency carried this Funding and the Secretariat are pleased to present this issue of the exercise to its completion. Bulletin on “National Names Authorities- structures and operations.” Once again this unique professional community has prepared over 10 Experts wishing to identify and access earlier documents, the articles that share valuable information on their names authorities’ easiest route is: evolution, creation, structure, operations and achievements. This information should serve not only those Members States wishing to 1. To check through the pdf or Excel file of: create naming bodies but also those in transition wanting to resuscitate and strengthen existing ones. a. UNGEGN documents (see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/general.ht Having reviewed the articles on names authorities, I wondered, ml then List of documents of all UNGEGN sessions) are there any commonalities and or differences in terms of structure, b. Conference documents (see membership etc. among them? To satisfy my curiosity a comparative http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/UNGEGN/confGene table featuring 11 names authorities was created, as shown below. It ral.html then List of documents of all Conferences) was found that the names authorities largely shared one common thread, which was inter-agency membership. You are invited to The Excel files can be searched by year, event number, review the articles and make your own assessment. paper title (or individual words), country, author, division, or working group. Should readers wish to gain additional information on this topic, they are encouraged to visit the UNGEGN website, as it is a 2.