Eight Million Congolese Names: A New Open Corpus for African Onomastics

 How can millions of personal names help us understand the linguistic and cultural diversity of an entire country? A new open-access dataset from the Democratic Republic of the Congo offers researchers an important resource for exploring this question.

Published on 8 July 2026 in the journal Data, the study “CongoNames Corpus: A Large-Scale Labeled Dataset of Congolese Personal Names” introduces a collection of more than 8 million personal-name records, compiled from national secondary-school examination results.

The corpus was developed by Tshabu Ngandu Bernard, Cansa Kayembe Amaury and Mpyana Mwamba Merlec, researchers affiliated with Université Nouveaux Horizons in Lubumbashi and Korea University in Seoul.

The authors present CongoNames as the first large-scale, openly available structured corpus of personal names from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Its significance extends beyond computational linguistics: it provides new opportunities for quantitative anthroponymy, sociolinguistics, language-contact research and the geographical study of personal names.

A Database Covering 16 Years

CongoNames is based on the Examen d'État, the national secondary-school examination in the DRC. The researchers processed official examination result lists (palmarès) published by the country's Ministry of Education.

The resulting corpus contains:

Feature	Coverage
Personal-name records	8,053,983
Distinct complete name strings (normalised)	6,370,887
Examination years	2008–2023
Provincial categories	12
Sub-provincial regions	304
Original PDF documents	469

Each record includes the candidate's complete personal name, an administrative sex marker (M/F), an examination year and regional information.

An important distinction is that the corpus contains more than eight million records, not eight million different names or surnames. Its uniqueness statistics concern complete personal-name strings, rather than separately identified given names or family names.

Approximately 78.5% of the records contain three name tokens, while the remainder contain two, four or more tokens. This distribution offers a useful starting point for investigating the structure of Congolese personal names.

What Can the Names Tell Us?

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is among the world's most linguistically diverse countries. Its naming traditions reflect interactions between indigenous African languages, particularly Bantu languages, French and Christian religious traditions.

The authors identify the coexistence of locally rooted Bantu elements and Christian or French-origin components as an important characteristic of contemporary Congolese personal naming.

From an onomastic perspective, the availability of such a large corpus creates opportunities to investigate several questions.

How do name structures vary between regions? Which name components occur across different linguistic areas? How do indigenous naming patterns coexist with names introduced through Christianity or colonial administration? And to what extent do successive examination cohorts reveal changes in the popularity and distribution of personal-name forms?

The study already provides descriptive analyses of name lengths, token distributions, character sequences, regional diversity and similarities between provincial name inventories.

Particularly interesting is the comparison of provincial name inventories using Jaccard similarity, a measure of the overlap between two sets. The authors report generally limited overlap between complete-name inventories from different provinces.

This result is intriguing, although complete-name comparisons must be interpreted cautiously: two regions may share many common given names or surname components while having relatively few identical full-name combinations.

From PDF Documents to Searchable Data

One notable feature of CongoNames is its transparent computational methodology.

Rather than relying on manually annotated lists, the researchers developed a reproducible processing system that extracts personal names from official PDF documents and converts them into structured CSV files.

The process follows three stages:

Bronze: collection of the original examination documents and extraction of their text.

Silver: cleaning and standardisation of the extracted material, including the handling of document formatting and inconsistent spacing.

Gold: production of structured datasets for statistical and linguistic analysis.

The authors validated their extraction procedure against examination statistics contained in the original documents. Reported extraction errors were below 2% for most years, although the figure reached 7.81% in 2023, when the original document layout changed.

The dataset and processing code are openly accessible, allowing other researchers to inspect the methodology and reproduce or extend the analyses.

Why CongoNames Matters for Onomastics

Large-scale name databases have become increasingly important for the study of anthroponymic variation. Yet the geographical distribution of available resources remains highly uneven.

European and North American naming systems have been the subject of extensive historical, statistical and computational investigation. Comparable structured resources for many African countries remain much less developed.

CongoNames therefore represents an important contribution to the expansion of empirical African anthroponymy.

Its potential applications include the study of personal-name morphology, regional naming traditions, lexical and phonotactic patterns, variation across examination cohorts and the relationship between naming practices and language contact.

The corpus could also help researchers develop better tools for recognising African personal names in digital texts, an area in which widely used natural language processing systems often have limited coverage.

For historical and comparative onomastics, the next challenge will be to connect quantitative patterns with linguistic interpretation.

A recurrent name component is not necessarily a surname, and the geographical concentration of a form does not establish its etymology. The identification of individual name functions, linguistic origins and historical motivations requires additional analysis.

The dataset's three-token classification, for example, is based on the number of words in a complete name. It should not be interpreted as a verified segmentation into given name, middle name and surname.

Important Limitations

The authors acknowledge several limitations that researchers should consider.

First, the corpus represents secondary-school examination candidates, not the entire population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its geographical and chronological distributions may therefore reflect differences in educational access, examination participation and source availability.

Second, regional information does not establish ethnicity or the language spoken by an individual. The database contains no verified ethnic or linguistic-origin labels.

Third, the administrative sex marker should not be confused with a person's gender identity, and the authors discourage using personal names for individual-level sex or gender prediction.

Finally, the records originate from examination results involving many young people. Although the original documents were publicly released, the researchers emphasise that large-scale access creates ethical responsibilities. Aggregated linguistic research is preferable to attempts to identify individuals or link records with external personal information.

These qualifications are particularly important for onomastic research, where the interpretation of names can otherwise lead to unsupported assumptions about identity, ancestry or cultural affiliation.

An Important Step Forward for African Name Research

The publication of CongoNames marks a valuable development in the availability of African anthroponymic data.

Its principal achievement is the creation of a large, documented and reproducible corpus that can support future linguistic investigations. The database does not, by itself, explain the origins of Congolese personal names. It does, however, provide an empirical foundation on which more detailed morphological, etymological, sociolinguistic and geographical analyses can be built.

For the international onomastic community, CongoNames also highlights the benefits of cooperation between computer scientists, linguists, historians and specialists in African languages.

As more historical records and administrative documents become available in structured form, comparable projects could gradually transform our understanding of personal naming across the African continent.

CongoNames is a welcome addition to the growing infrastructure of digital onomastics - and a reminder that the study of names has much to gain from regions whose linguistic diversity remains insufficiently represented in existing datasets.

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Publication and Database Links

Original publication

Bernard, T. N., Amaury, C. K., & Merlec, M. M. (2026). CongoNames Corpus: A large-scale labeled dataset of Congolese personal names. Data, 11(7), Article 169.

https://doi.org/10.3390/data11070169

Open-access dataset (Zenodo):
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19809985

Source code and documentation (GitHub):
https://github.com/bernard-ng/drc-names-corpus

Keywords: African onomastics, anthroponymy, CongoNames, Democratic Republic of the Congo, personal-name databases, African languages, computational onomastics, name geography.

When the Land Loses Its Names: Ecology and Onomastics at the XI Galician Onomastics Conference

 Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain — 10 October 2026

What happens to place names when the landscapes they describe disappear? Can the name of a field survive urban development, or the name of a coastal fishing ground remain meaningful after industrial expansion has transformed the shoreline? These questions formed the central theme of the XI Xornada de Onomástica Galega (11th Galician Onomastics Conference), held on 10 October 2026 at the Museo de Pontevedra in northwestern Spain.

Organised by the Onomastics Seminar of the Real Academia Galega (Royal Galician Academy), in collaboration with the Deputación de Pontevedra and the Museo de Pontevedra, the annual meeting adopted the theme Ecoloxía e onomástica (Ecology and Onomastics). The programme brought together researchers from linguistics, geography, biology and archaeology, alongside specialists in education and audiovisual documentation.

The conference was coordinated by Ana Boullón and Luz Méndez, both associated with the Instituto da Lingua Galega at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Its central argument was that environmental transformation has consequences extending beyond the physical landscape. When fields, rivers, paths and coastal features disappear, the traditional names attached to them may also vanish.

Place Names as an Endangered Cultural Ecosystem

Introducing the conference's underlying concerns, Ana Boullón emphasised the reciprocal relationship between human activity and toponymy. People create place names through their interaction with the environment, yet those same activities can eventually destroy the geographical features and social practices that sustain the names.

Microtoponyms are particularly vulnerable. Unlike the official names of settlements and municipalities, names referring to individual fields, springs, rocks, woodland areas and agricultural plots frequently depend on local oral transmission. Their preservation is closely connected with traditional land use and the knowledge of local communities.

The construction of reservoirs provides a striking illustration. Boullón referred to settlements such as Maiorga, submerged by the Os Peares reservoir, and Mourulle, Portomeñe and Castro Candaz, affected by the Belesar reservoir in the Miño basin. Some names of vanished settlements survive as surnames, demonstrating how geographical nomenclature can persist in anthroponymy even after the original locality has disappeared from the inhabited landscape.

Marilar Aleixandre: Defending the Names of Small Places

The opening scholarly contribution was delivered by Marilar Aleixandre, writer and member of the Royal Galician Academy, under the title Os nomes arrepóñense (The Names Resist).

Aleixandre concentrated on what she called os nomes do pequeno - the names of small places and local landscape features. Drawing on personal experience, she examined how urban expansion can erase centuries of accumulated geographical knowledge.

One example came from A Choupana, an area of Santiago de Compostela where 154 agricultural plots were acquired for a residential development comprising 240 dwellings. In 2004, Aleixandre attempted to preserve several traditional field names within the new street nomenclature. Her proposal did not receive sufficient political support.

Among the examples discussed were Eira da Palleira, a surviving traditional microtoponym, and Leiroas, a historical diminutive that disappeared from local use. Aleixandre also questioned the replacement of the traditional street name Rúa de Tras Espiñeira with Avenida de Barcelona.

Her contribution drew attention to the relationship between urban planning, cultural memory and the continuity of local naming traditions. The disappearance of a microtoponym may represent the loss of linguistic evidence that cannot easily be recovered from official maps.

Remembering Fernando Cabeza Quiles (1953–2026)

A particularly moving part of the conference was dedicated to the memory of Fernando Cabeza Quiles, the Galician toponymist who died earlier in 2026.

Cabeza Quiles had been associated with the Royal Galician Academy's Onomastics Seminar and was a member of the leadership of the Galician Onomastics Association (AGOn). He had originally been scheduled to contribute to the meeting with a presentation concerning the impact of sand-extraction activities in the Arousa estuary on local place-name heritage.

The tribute was delivered by his colleague and friend Xosé María Lema Suárez, who recalled Cabeza Quiles's contribution to making toponymic scholarship accessible beyond academic circles.

His publications helped bring questions of place-name origins, historical linguistics and cultural heritage to a broader readership. The tribute also acknowledged his interest in Galicia's pre-Roman toponymic heritage and the historical interpretation of names associated with the region's Celtic past.

Family members attended the commemoration, which gave the conference an additional personal dimension.

Valerià Paül Carril: The Changing Geography of Galicia's Regions

The relationship between geographical names and administrative structures was examined by Valerià Paül Carril, professor of geography at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

His presentation, As comarcas na Galiza autonómica: entre a agonía e a resistencia (The Comarcas in Autonomous Galicia: Between Decline and Resistance), addressed the historical development and uncertain administrative future of Galicia's comarcas, or traditional territorial regions.

The official division into 53 comarcas, approved in 1997, has had limited practical development. Paül Carril discussed the implications of proposed changes to local administration, which could further weaken the formal position of these territorial units.

He nevertheless stressed that geographical names do not depend entirely on administrative recognition. Regional names can retain their significance through collective identity, economic relationships, landscape perception and everyday usage.

Examples such as Ribeira Sacra and Costa da Morte illustrate how regional designations may develop functions that extend beyond established administrative boundaries, including tourism, cultural identification and territorial promotion.

The presentation highlighted a significant distinction between the official status of a geographical name and its continued relevance within the society that uses it.

Miguel Conde Teira: Six Centuries of Microtoponymic Change

A historical perspective was provided by the biologist Miguel Á. Conde Teira, whose presentation was entitled Unha viaxe toponímica no tempo en Posmarcos: de 1396 a 2013 (A Toponymic Journey Through Time in Posmarcos: From 1396 to 2013).

Conde Teira compared historical documentation relating to the boundaries of the parish of Lesón, in A Pobra do Caramiñal, with microtoponyms preserved through modern oral tradition.

His investigation demonstrated that some geographical boundaries and their associated names can remain remarkably stable over several centuries. Other names change as a consequence of agricultural development, urbanisation, alterations in landownership or the disappearance of physical landmarks.

The linguistic evidence was equally important. Some recorded changes could be explained through the internal historical development of the local Galician language rather than through geographical transformation.

The study offered an instructive example of how philological comparison, historical documentation and fieldwork can be combined to reconstruct the evolution of a local toponymic system.

Andrea Santiso: Bringing Microtoponymy into the Classroom

The educational dimension of place-name preservation was represented by Andrea Santiso Arias, teacher of Galician language and literature at IES Val do Asma in Chantada and secretary of the Galician Onomastics Association.

Her presentation, Cando a terra perde o nome: o impacto das industrias extractivas na microtoponimia (When the Land Loses Its Name: The Impact of Extractive Industries on Microtoponymy), introduced an interdisciplinary educational project involving secondary-school students.

The students are compiling a corpus of microtoponyms associated with their own families' lands. Their research also examines the potential impact of extractive industries on the landscape and its traditional nomenclature.

The project connects language education with geography, history, environmental awareness and the documentation of local heritage.

It also demonstrates the value of intergenerational cooperation. Students can contribute to the preservation of place names by interviewing relatives and other local residents whose knowledge may otherwise remain undocumented.

Lukas Santiago: Recovering the Lost Toponymy of Lourizán

The final research presentation was delivered by Lukas Santiago, archaeologist, toponymist and audiovisual professional, who examined the microtoponymy of Lourizán, near Pontevedra.

His presentation, Lourizán: desenterrando a súa toponimia (Lourizán: Unearthing Its Toponymy), drew on research conducted through the municipal project Chamámonos así (This Is What We Are Called).

Santiago worked with local residents, including members of his own family and women who had traditionally gathered shellfish along the coast. Their testimony helped recover names associated with sandbanks, rocks, fishing grounds and other maritime features.

Particular attention was paid to Areo de Pau, a former coastal sandbank affected by industrial development and dredging, and As Pedras Carneiras, a group of rocks remembered as an especially productive shellfish habitat.

These examples illustrated how the transformation of coastal environments can destroy both ecological resources and the place names through which generations of residents understood and navigated the shoreline.

The presentation concluded with a screening of Santiago's documentary Paraíso roubado (Stolen Paradise, 2017), produced by the Asociación pola Defensa da Ría. The film draws on local testimony and explores the environmental and cultural history of Lourizán.

Digital Cartography and the Future of Place Names

Beyond the individual presentations, the conference raised questions concerning the representation of Galician place names in digital environments.

Ana Boullón criticised the replacement of official Galician forms by Castilianised variants in certain online maps, navigation services and Spanish-language digital resources. She described this problem in terms of cartographic colonialism, arguing that digital platforms may weaken the visibility of locally established naming traditions.

The issue connects regional language policy with wider international discussions concerning geographical-name standardisation, endonyms and the responsibilities of cartographic institutions.

It also reveals a second dimension of toponymic preservation. Recording traditional names is only part of the task: ensuring their accurate and appropriate representation in widely used geographical information systems is another.

Conclusion: Environmental Loss and Toponymic Memory

The XI Xornada de Onomástica Galega demonstrated the importance of bringing environmental research and onomastics into closer dialogue.

Its contributions ranged from the historical reconstruction of medieval field names to the contemporary consequences of urbanisation, industrial development and administrative reorganisation. They also showed that documenting microtoponyms requires cooperation among scholars, teachers, local residents and cultural institutions.

Perhaps the most significant outcome was the recognition that environmental and toponymic preservation are closely connected. The loss of a forest, field, spring or coastal feature may eventually cause the disappearance of the name through which it was recognised, remembered and incorporated into local cultural knowledge.

Galicia's experience provides a valuable case study for the international onomastic community. Similar processes are affecting traditional geographical names in rural and urban landscapes throughout the world.

The conference therefore offered more than a regional discussion of Galician toponymy. It raised a fundamental question for contemporary place-name studies: how can linguistic heritage be preserved when the physical and social landscapes that gave rise to it are disappearing?

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Conference information

Event: XI Xornada de Onomástica Galega — Ecoloxía e onomástica
Date: 10 October 2026
Venue: Museo de Pontevedra, Edificio Castelao, Galicia, Spain
Organiser: Seminario de Onomástica da Real Academia Galega
Coordinators: Ana Boullón and Luz Méndez
Collaborating institutions: Deputación de Pontevedra and Museo de Pontevedra

Online resources

• Official post-conference report and photo gallery

• Video: Morning session

• Video: Afternoon session

• Official programme

Small Names, Big Heritage: What to Expect from the GeoNames Symposium 2026 in Austria

Hermagor, Austria | 12–13 October 2026

What can the name of a meadow tell us about a vanished village? How can a narrow alley preserve the memory of social inequality? And what happens when the last person who remembers the traditional name of a field is no longer there to pass it on?

These questions will take centre stage tomorrow, 12 October 2026, when the international GeoNames Symposium 2026, entitled “The heritage value of microtoponyms”, opens in Hermagor-Pressegger See, Carinthia, Austria.

Non-official poster, AI-illustration. 

Over two days, researchers and practitioners from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas will present 46 papers, including four keynote lectures, organised into eight thematic sessions. Their common subject is microtoponymy: the names of small geographical features and locally recognised places, including fields, pastures, paths, streams, buildings, neighbourhoods and other elements of the everyday landscape.

These names may be absent from official maps and unfamiliar to outsiders, yet they frequently preserve information about historical land use, local dialects, traditional occupations, environmental changes and collective memory.

Organised under the auspices of the Dutch- and German-speaking Division of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), chaired by Peter Jordan, the symposium brings together theoretical onomastics, dialectology, historical geography, cultural heritage studies, cartography and digital technologies.

Importantly, it is also part of a broader UNGEGN programme in Hermagor, continuing from 14 to 16 October with meetings of the Working Groups on Geographical Names as Cultural Heritage and Exonyms.

Monday, 12 October: From Theory to Living Landscapes

Opening and the cultural meaning of minor names

The symposium will open with addresses by Peter Jordan, organiser and Chair of the UNGEGN Dutch- and German-speaking Division; Heinz Pansi, District Governor; Leopold Astner, Mayor of Hermagor-Pressegger See; Pierre Jaillard, UNGEGN Chair; Mark Iliffe, UNGEGN Secretary; and Roman Stani-Fertl, Chair of the Austrian Board on Geographical Names.

The opening keynote, delivered by Milan Harvalík and Iveta Valentová (Slovakia), is entitled “The significance of minor place names from the perspective of cultural heritage”.

Their contribution will establish the conceptual foundation for the symposium, examining why names associated with relatively small and often obscure places should be regarded as an important component of cultural heritage.

A central question running through the subsequent programme is whether microtoponyms should be preserved simply as linguistic records or understood as living expressions of the communities that created and transmitted them.

Session 1: Methodological questions

Chaired by Emily Lethbridge (Iceland), the first session will address the theoretical and practical foundations of microtoponymic research.

Peder Gammeltoft (Norway) will present “Revisiting the Name-Semantic Model: integrating naming intention and focus of naming”, returning to the fundamental question of how and why particular geographical features receive names.

Sanda Rapa (Latvia), in “Talking landscapes: linguistic layers of cultural heritage in geographical names”, will explore the linguistic strata through which landscapes preserve traces of successive cultural and historical experiences.

The challenge of collecting names in the digital age will be addressed by Kristina Neumüller and Elin Pihl (Sweden) in “Collecting microtoponyms today – benefits and challenges of a digital world”. Their contribution is expected to consider how new technologies transform traditional fieldwork and the documentation of local knowledge.

Closely related is Christian Zschieschang's (Germany) paper, “Current challenges and solutions in digitizing microtoponymic collections as part of the cultural heritage in Germany”, which will examine the technical and scholarly difficulties of making historical name collections accessible in digital environments.

Abigail Lloyd (United Kingdom) will discuss “Dialect, local character and intangible heritage: Saving microtoponyms through modern development”, drawing attention to the relationship between naming traditions, linguistic variation and changing landscapes.

Finally, Federica Cugno and Sara Racca (Italy) will present “Orally transmitted place names as heritage: knowledge, safeguarding and valorization in the experience of the Atlante Toponomastico del Piemonte Montano”. Their paper will introduce a substantial Italian tradition of collecting orally transmitted local names and consider how such material can be preserved and made useful to contemporary communities.

Together, these presentations will raise one of the symposium's most important methodological questions: how can researchers transform fragile oral traditions into reliable scientific records without losing their linguistic and social specificity?

Session 2: At the margins of microtoponymy

Running in parallel, the second session, chaired by Marie Aurélie Thériault (Canada), will explore the boundaries of the concept itself.

Florian Koch (France) will present “Microtoponyms as local identity markers. Locally engaged supporters and their stadium names”. By examining stadium names and supporters' local attachments, this contribution moves microtoponymic research beyond its traditional rural setting.

Cosimo Palagiano and Davide Pavia (Italy) will examine “Microtoponyms in the Castelli Romani”, focusing on the historical and geographical significance of small place names in this distinctive Italian region.

From Taiwan, Yentsao Wei will present “An exploration of the land-sea changes and microtoponyms in the reclaimed land of Hsinchu, Taiwan”. This case study promises to demonstrate how local names can provide evidence of environmental transformation and changing relationships between human communities and coastal landscapes.

The session illustrates an important development: microtoponymy is no longer concerned exclusively with agricultural field names. Urban spaces, sporting identities and changing coastlines are also becoming relevant subjects of investigation.

Keynote 2: The challenge of standardisation

The afternoon will begin with Gerhard Rampl (Austria), whose keynote is entitled “Challenges in standardizing crowd-sourced microtoponyms”.

The subject is especially relevant to contemporary geographical-name management. Community-based documentation can produce extensive collections of local names, but it also raises questions about spelling, dialect pronunciation, geographical identification and database interoperability.

Rampl's abstract draws on a Tyrolean project that documented approximately 120,000 microtoponyms, demonstrating both the possibilities of large-scale digital collection and the unresolved problems of standardisation.

The underlying dilemma is clear: how can locally transmitted names be incorporated into official information systems without imposing forms that distort their traditional usage?

Session 3: Microtoponym surveys in the Alpine-Adriatic region

Chaired by Josip Faričić (Croatia), this session will highlight a region where multilingualism, historical settlement patterns and traditional naming practices are closely intertwined.

Florian Jordan and Martina Piko-Rustia (Austria) will present “Documentation, writing, standardization, localization, explanation and transfer of Slovenian field and farm names in Carinthia [Kärnten/Koroška]”. Their paper will examine efforts to document and transmit the Slovenian naming heritage of southern Austria.

Vinko Wieser (Austria) will introduce “FLU-LED: A cultural portal of field and house names (2011-2026) – a citizen science product. From handwritten notes by local idealists and supra-regional projects to a multilingual web portal with an online map based on a uniform database”.

This contribution represents one of the programme's particularly interesting examples of cooperation between local communities, cultural organisations and digital technologies. It illustrates how handwritten records and oral knowledge can evolve into a structured multilingual resource.

The documentation of South Tyrolean names will be examined by Johannes Ortner (Italy) in “Plandalineira, Piperbühl, Palù longia. Linguistic and ethnological aspects of the South Tyrol documentation of toponyms”.

Viviana Ferrario (Italy) will consider the cartographic dimension in “Giving micro-toponyms a second life: the power of map-making”, while Franco Finco (Austria) will investigate historical language contact in “The contribution of microtoponyms to the study of language contact: medieval Slavic colonization in Friuli (Italy)”.

The session concludes with Ivan Zupanc and Ivana Crljenko (Croatia), presenting “Names of Istrian residential houses as part of microtoponymic cultural heritage”.

These papers demonstrate how house names, field names and minor landscape designations can reveal information about settlement history, linguistic contact and cultural continuity in multilingual border regions.

Session 4: Microtoponyms in the post-Soviet realm and the Black Sea region

The parallel session, chaired by Milan Harvalík (Slovakia), will shift attention towards Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

Gevorg Manukyan, Vahagn Muradyan and Yuri Varyan (Armenia) will present “Microtoponyms of the Republic of Armenia as elements of historical and cultural heritage”.

Halyna Zymovets, Oksana Mykhalchuk and Serhii Yermolenko (Ukraine) will discuss “Microtoponyms as a source for the formation of urban object names in the context of contemporary renaming processes in Ukraine”. Their contribution is especially relevant to current debates about the reconstruction of Ukrainian urban naming landscapes and the role of historical local names in contemporary renaming.

Maya Vlahova-Angelova (Bulgaria) will present “Microtoponymy of the village of Starosel, Central Bulgaria”, offering a geographically focused investigation of a local naming system.

Finally, Vadzim Shkliaryk (Poland) will introduce “Online bibliography on Belarusian microtoponymy as an attempt to stimulate relevant research”. The project demonstrates how bibliographical infrastructure itself can become a tool for encouraging further fieldwork and identifying neglected research areas.

Taken together, the session will explore the value of microtoponyms not only for reconstructing regional history but also for strengthening cultural memory in societies experiencing linguistic, demographic and political change.

Tuesday, 13 October: Multilingual Communities, Historical Memory and Global Comparisons

Keynote 3: Surveying names in bilingual communities

The second day will open with Katalin Reszegi (Hungary), presenting “Microtoponym survey in bilingual communities”.

The keynote will address a particularly complex aspect of toponymic research: situations in which different linguistic communities name, pronounce and interpret the same geographical features differently.

Bilingual naming environments require researchers to consider not only linguistic forms but also questions of identity, usage, historical continuity and the representation of minority traditions.

Session 5: Microtoponyms from the Pannonian Basin to the Adriatic

Chaired by Ivana Crljenko (Croatia), this session will explore the historical and linguistic significance of microtoponyms across Central and Southeastern Europe.

Andrea Bölcskei and Gábor Mikesy (Hungary) will present “Microtoponyms in the reconstruction of the past”, examining how surviving local names can provide evidence about earlier settlement patterns and geographical organisation.

Erzsébet Győrffy and Anita Rácz (Hungary) will discuss “Microtoponyms in Hungary: current trends and approaches to preservation”, addressing ongoing documentation and preservation initiatives.

Oliviu Felecan and Adelina Emilia Mihali (Romania) will investigate “Habsburg microtoponyms in Transylvania, the Banat, and Bukovina”, focusing on a region whose geographical-name heritage reflects complex processes of historical administration, settlement and language contact.

Josip Faričić (Croatia) will present “Microtoponyms of the Croatian coastal area as linguistic fossils – indicators of the coexistence of humans and nature”. His contribution will explore the environmental and historical information embedded in coastal naming traditions.

Jožica Škofic (Slovenia) will discuss “Slovenian dialect microtoponymy – a dialectological contribution to the study and preservation of intangible cultural heritage”, highlighting the importance of local linguistic forms.

The session will conclude with Zoran Spasovski (North Macedonia), whose presentation “Cartography as a scientific tool: preserving and mapping microtoponyms for geographic and onomastic research” will consider the scientific importance of spatial documentation and visualisation.

A common theme unites these contributions: microtoponyms can function as historical evidence, but their interpretation requires the integration of linguistics, geography, cartography and local historical knowledge.

Session 6: Local case studies

The parallel session, chaired by Gerhard Rampl (Austria), will demonstrate how individual places can illuminate broader questions about cultural heritage.

Sungjae Choo (Republic of Korea) will present “Beyond small features: Rethinking microtoponyms through the case of Pimatgol (피맛골) in Seoul”.

Pimatgol, historically associated with narrow streets used by ordinary people to avoid encounters with high-ranking officials, offers a particularly striking example of how a local name can preserve memories of social hierarchy and everyday urban life.

Roman Stani-Fertl (Austria) will examine “Croatian field names in south-eastern Lower Austria. An unconventional approach to recovering lost toponyms”, illustrating the possibilities of reconstructing local naming traditions associated with historical linguistic minorities.

Hannes Guggenberger (Austria) and Ireno Sandri (Italy) will present “Four villages, four alpine pastures, many names. Valle and Rivalpo over there, and Goderschach and Stranig over there”, drawing attention to the richness and interconnectedness of naming practices in Alpine communities.

Finally, Jutta Willmann (Austria) will discuss “Microtoponyms as condensed multilingual narratives and markers of identity: the case of the linguistic enclave of Tischelwang”.

The session will demonstrate that even a relatively small geographical area may contain an unexpectedly complex archive of linguistic interaction, social relationships and cultural memory.

Keynote 4: The Norwegian experience

The fourth keynote will be delivered by Ingvil Nordland (Norway), entitled “Evaluating Norway's grant scheme for microtoponym collection: methods, challenges, and lessons learned”.

This presentation will introduce an important institutional perspective.

According to the published abstract, Norway's publicly supported collection initiative has registered more than 170,000 local place names, including names in Norwegian, Sámi and Kven. Its evaluation considers the effectiveness of financial support, digital registration tools, volunteer participation and cooperation between institutions.

The Norwegian experience may offer practical lessons for countries seeking to move from isolated documentation projects towards sustained national preservation programmes.

Session 7: Microtoponyms in Europe's centre and North

Chaired by Peder Gammeltoft (Norway), this session will bring together historical, geographical and sociolinguistic approaches.

Pavel Štěpán (Czechia) will present “Non-settlement names in Bohemia as cultural heritage”, examining a substantial tradition of collecting and interpreting minor geographical names.

Michael Albus and Holger Meyer (Germany) will investigate “Where are the lost places?”. Their paper raises the problem of identifying and locating deserted settlements whose names survive in historical records or local naming traditions.

Andreas Dix (Germany) will present “Agrarian microtoponyms and their value as sources for the historical-geographical study of river landscapes: The case study of the river Wiesent and its catchment area in the northern Franconian Alb in Bavaria”.

Marit Alas, Tiina Laansalu and Peeter Päll (Estonia) will discuss “Microtoponyms: resurrection or oblivion”, raising the question of whether historical names should be actively restored or whether documentation should reflect their actual contemporary use.

Josefin Devine (Sweden), in “‘This is not especially important’. Attitudes to preservation of a transhumance onomasticon”, will explore attitudes towards preserving names associated with traditional seasonal livestock movements.

The session concludes with Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill (Ireland), presenting “‘We used to play on the Cloch Bhán when my grandad was making the hay’: the survival of Irish-language microtoponymy in Dublin”.

These papers promise to address one of the most difficult questions facing heritage preservation: should researchers prioritise names that are still actively used, names surviving in individual memory, or historically documented names that have disappeared from everyday speech?

Session 8: Global comparison

Chaired by Sungjae Choo (Republic of Korea), the final thematic session will extend the geographical scope of the symposium well beyond Europe.

Marie Aurélie Thériault (Canada) will present “Rural microtoponymy in Québec: a cultural heritage of territorial organization in North America”, exploring how local naming systems structure agricultural landscapes and preserve regional linguistic traditions.

Ana Cláudia Araújo Diniz and Mircia Ribeiro Fortes (Brazil) will discuss “Indigenous toponymy and cultural memory: the Tarumã Waterfall as a microtoponym in the former rural area of Manaus/Amazonas/Brazil”. Their contribution will consider the cultural significance of an Indigenous name within the changing geographical environment of the Amazon region.

Sophia Waithera Muhuri (Kenya) will present “Microtoponyms of Kenya: mapping local names as intimate cultural heritage”, contributing an African perspective to the documentation of locally meaningful geographical names.

Jusmianti Garing (Indonesia) will examine “Naming and representation patterns in ancient Maros toponyms: linguistic and cultural perspectives”.

Debanjana Gupta and Tushar Vaish (India) will present “Mapping memory: small names, deep roots — heritage value of microtoponyms in the Indian landscape”, exploring the relationship between local names, cultural memory and geographical identity.

From Taiwan, Peter Kang will discuss “The microtoponyms along the littoral areas of Taiwan: based on the data collected by the research projects sponsored by the National Academy of Marine Research”. The paper will examine coastal naming traditions and their relationship to local environmental knowledge and linguistic diversity.

The final scientific presentation will be delivered by Jihwan Yoon (Republic of Korea), entitled “Everyday heritage in transition: the making and unmaking of microtoponyms in urbanizing Jeonju, South Korea”.

The Korean case will return the discussion to an issue introduced at the beginning of the symposium: what happens when urban development transforms or removes the environments in which traditional names once existed?

The symposium will conclude with contributions from Peter Jordan, Emily Lethbridge, co-convenor of the UNGEGN Working Group on Geographical Names as Cultural Heritage, Kohei Watanabe, convenor of the Working Group on Exonyms, Mark Iliffe and Pierre Jaillard.

A social dinner hosted by the Municipality of Hermagor-Pressegger See will follow.

Beyond the Symposium: A Week of UNGEGN Cooperation

The significance of the Hermagor meeting extends beyond the two-day scientific programme.

From 14 to 16 October, the venue will also host the 28th meeting of the UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms and the first in-person meeting of the revitalised Working Group on Geographical Names as Cultural Heritage.

Their joint discussions will focus particularly on “Exonyms as Cultural Heritage” and on ongoing efforts to reconcile aspects of UNGEGN's earlier resolutions and decisions concerning exonyms.

This combination creates an opportunity to connect scientific research on geographical names with institutional discussions about naming policies, multilingualism, standardisation and the protection of cultural heritage.

It also places the symposium within an increasingly international framework of cooperation between linguistic scholarship, geographical-name authorities and heritage organisations.

Conclusion: Where Is GeoNames Heading?

The 2026 symposium marks an important stage in the intellectual development of the GeoNames conference series.

Earlier meetings provide a useful historical perspective. GeoNames 2000 in Frankfurt am Main was strongly associated with the technical and administrative dimensions of geographical names, including standardisation, romanisation, exonyms and toponymic databases.

GeoNames 2005 in Leeuwarden turned particular attention to minority and Indigenous geographical names in multilingual environments. The 2008 Vienna symposium, “Geographical Names as a Part of the Cultural Heritage”, placed the heritage dimension at the centre of discussion. The 2019 Vienna meeting, “Place Names and Migration”, subsequently examined naming practices in the context of population movements, cultural encounters and changing identities.

The 2026 programme can be interpreted as a further development of this trajectory.

First, geographical names are increasingly being treated as cultural evidence rather than merely geographical identifiers. Microtoponyms are approached as sources for historical geography, dialectology, ethnology, environmental history and the reconstruction of everyday life. Their scientific value lies not only in identifying places but also in preserving information about how communities have perceived and organised their surroundings.

Second, the symposium demonstrates a clear movement towards participatory research and digital preservation. Community fieldwork, crowdsourced databases, online maps, digital archives and publicly supported documentation initiatives occupy a prominent place in the programme. This suggests that toponymic research is increasingly concerned not only with collecting names but also with ensuring their continued accessibility and transmission.

Third, the concept of microtoponymy is expanding. Traditional field and pasture names remain central, yet the programme also includes stadiums, urban alleys, residential houses, Indigenous sites, reclaimed coastal land and rapidly transforming neighbourhoods. This expansion is intellectually productive, although it also raises a methodological challenge: scholars will need clearer criteria for distinguishing microtoponyms from other categories of local geographical names.

Fourth, linguistic diversity and local communities are moving closer to the centre of geographical-name research. Presentations concerning Slovenian, Croatian, Irish, Belarusian, Sámi, Kven, Indigenous and other naming traditions demonstrate the importance of documenting forms that may not be adequately represented in official geographical-name systems.

Here, however, a fundamental tension remains. Standardisation can improve visibility, interoperability and institutional recognition, but it can also simplify linguistic variation and detach names from the communities whose pronunciation and usage give them meaning.

Finally, GeoNames 2026 reflects a growing internationalisation of microtoponymic research. The programme brings European documentation traditions into conversation with examples from Asia, Africa and the Americas. This wider perspective encourages comparative approaches while also showing that heritage preservation cannot rely on a single model applicable to all linguistic and cultural environments.

In this sense, the direction taken by GeoNames is not simply a departure from traditional geographical-name standardisation. It is better understood as an expansion of its purpose.

The question is no longer only “What is the correct name of this place?” It is increasingly also “Who uses this name, what knowledge does it preserve, and how can that knowledge be transmitted without losing its local meaning?”

That is a significant intellectual development. It moves the discussion from the management of names towards an understanding of naming as a relationship between people, language, memory and landscape.

Yet the future success of this approach will depend on whether the growing interest in cultural heritage can be translated into sustainable documentation methods, accessible research infrastructures, meaningful community participation and careful scientific analysis.

If the contributions in Hermagor succeed in connecting these priorities, GeoNames 2026 may become an important reference point for the next stage of international microtoponymic research.

The smallest names on the map may ultimately tell some of the largest stories about the people who have inhabited it.

---

Sources and further information

• GeoNames Symposium 2026 – Official Programme and Abstract Book (Austrian Board on Geographical Names)

• UNGEGN – Expert Consultation and Meeting on Exonyms and Cultural Heritage, Hermagor, 12–16 October 2026

• UNGEGN – Working Group on Geographical Names as Cultural Heritage

• GeoNames 2008 – Geographical Names as a Part of the Cultural Heritage

• GeoNames 2019 – Place Names and Migration

• Earlier e-Onomastics announcement of GeoNames 2026

A Park Path Becomes a Memorial: Paris Names an Allée After Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas

 On Tuesday 6 October 2026, the eve of the third anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attacks, the City of Paris inaugurated an allée in the Parc Monceau (8th arrondissement) carrying the names of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas. The ceremony was led by Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire, with part of the Bibas family and representatives of the Paris Council and the Jewish community of France attending. Shiri and her sons, Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months), were abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz by Hamas. The council adopted the naming unanimously after a minute of silence.

Three things a toponymist notices

1. A family, not a figure. Most commemorative names honour one individual. This one dedicates a path to a mother and two children together. The park's other allées honour single people, such as Michel Berger, whose allée was named in 2012 because he lived near the park for a long time. The park is also crossed by allées named for France Gall, the Comtesse de Ségur and Jacques Garnerin, and by the avenue Ferdousi.

2. Victims rather than achievers. The Parc Monceau names usually celebrate artists and public figures. This one is a memorial name. The City says it inscribes the memory of the Bibas family in public space and reaffirms its commitment to remembrance and to fighting antisemitism, racism and discrimination. The deliberation says the children's violated innocence has become a symbol of antisemitic hatred. Ariel and Kfir, with their red hair, have become emblematic of the drama of those abducted on 7 October.

3. The names themselves. All three are Hebrew. Ariel is usually glossed "lion of God", Kfir "young lion" and Shiri "my song". These meanings come from general onomastic knowledge, not from the sources above.

Why the place matters

The City chose an allée it describes as particularly calm, in what it calls one of the most beautiful gardens in Paris. A path in a park invites a pause in a way a street name does not. Memorial toponymy depends on that kind of setting: the name is meant to be read slowly, not passed on the way to somewhere else. timesofisrael

A name on a plaque is a modest thing. What matters is who gets to be named and where, and in the Conseil de Paris this decision was unanimous.

ONOMASTICS ONLINE | Sambulo Ndlovu: The headedness of proper names

 

The lecture series Onomastics Online continued on 8 October 2026 with a lecture presented by Sambulo Ndlovu (University of Eswatini, Eswatini) with the title "The headness of proper names". Keywords: #noun #propernoun #propernames #headedness #identity Abstract: Proper names pose several challenges if analysed using noun phrase rules and configurations in generative grammar. The refined definite reference in them marks the biggest difference with appellatives. This has resulted in several approaches to the structure of proper names in syntactic theory. Payne and Huddleston (2002) analyse them into proper nouns and proper names which are lexical and phrasal categories respectively. Such an analysis identifies the proper noun as the head of a proper name phrase. However, this approach runs into problems in cases of multiple proper nouns in the same proper name and proper names with no proper noun. Others have opted to analyse them using the DP Hypothesis and make them nominal phrases that complement the D in the DP structure (Abbott, 2002; Carroll, 1985). This approach also runs into its own structural problems too. This lecture uses X-bar schema to propose a different structure on the headedness of proper names. It challenges the proper noun and determiner heads and proposes a neutral head for the proper name NPs. Onomastics Online (ICOS – International Council of Onomastic Sciences) is a series of online lectures dealing with important timely topics related to names and naming. Presented by distinguished scholars from various academic backgrounds, the lectures demonstrate the importance and the multidisciplinary nature of onomastic research. To see the list of upcoming and past lectures, please visit our webpage at: https://icosweb.net/onomastics-online/. Previous lectures can be found on our YouTube channel:    / @theinternationalcouncilofo2460  . If you are interested in ICOS membership, please see the details here: https://icosweb.net/membership/member.... For updates and scholarly engagement, connect with us on any of our platforms: YOUTUBE    / @theinternationalcouncilofo2460   LINKEDIN   / 4081415   FACEBOOK   / icosweb   X https://x.com/ICOSnews

A Century of Names: Celebrating Belgium’s Royal Commission for Toponymy and Dialectology, 1926–2026

Poster concept by Eugen Schochenmaier - unofficial tribute

 

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}

The Commission was established by royal decree on 7 April 1926, under Minister of Arts and Sciences Camille Huysmans. Its Flemish and Walloon sections provided an enduring framework for cooperation. Its published history records discussions on municipal spelling in 1927 and work on names appearing on military maps in 1928. ³

The choice to bring toponymy and dialectology together was intellectually important. Historical spellings alone cannot always explain a name; local pronunciation and the history of sound change may be equally revealing. Jean Loicq’s methodological account insists on historical phonetics and warns against misleading appearances. The lesson remains pertinent: an attractive resemblance to a modern word is the beginning of a question, not the end of an etymology. ⁴

This tradition has depended on people as much as institutions. Jean Haust, a member from 1926, combined dialect enquiry with toponymic investigation; his Enquête dialectale sur la toponymie wallonne appeared in 1940–1941. H. J. Van de Wijer assembled a bibliography of Flemish toponymy for the Commission’s first volumes. Their complementary work illustrates two foundations of lasting research: listening carefully and making existing knowledge findable. ^{5, 6}

The bilingual Bulletin / Handelingen, first published in 1927, gave such work a continuing scholarly home. The Commission now directs readers to a peer-reviewed, open-access journal platform at Ghent University. The benefit is considerable: a local name studied many decades ago can re-enter a new investigation rather than remain buried in a difficult-to-find volume. ^{7, 8}

The breadth of that record also matters. Jan Grauls’s 1930 article on given names in Hasselt shows the early presence of anthroponymy. B. Frankinet’s 2021 study of Walloon dialect lexicography illustrates the continuing place of dialect research. The Commission’s achievement encompasses people’s names and living vocabularies as well as geographical names. ^{9, 10}

Its books turn cumulative research into tools that others can use. De Vlaamse gemeentenamen, first published in 2010 by Frans Debrabandere, Magda Devos, Paul Kempeneers, Victor Mennen, Hugo Ryckeboer and Ward Van Osta, appeared in a substantially revised edition in 2022. The additions include an index of Germanic personal names occurring in municipal names—a particularly revealing connection between anthroponymy and toponymy. ¹¹

Two further achievements deserve special mention. De Vlaamse waternamen appeared in 2016 and 2018, bringing together research on some 9,000 watercourses in Flanders and Brussels. On the Romance and German-speaking side, Jean Loicq’s Les noms de rivières de Wallonie y compris les régions germanophones appeared in 2014. Jean Germain’s 2020 study of official municipal names adds historical spellings, pronunciation, regional forms and names for inhabitants to the reference literature. ^{12, 13}

Such works are valuable because names rarely respect the boundaries of a single discipline. The historian needs linguistic expertise; the linguist needs dated documents and geographical context; the local researcher may preserve information unavailable in administrative records. A well-documented dictionary allows these kinds of knowledge to meet. Its authority comes from evidence that can be examined and, when necessary, revised.

The Commission also brings that discipline into public decision-making. Its published guidance addresses street names and the names of merged municipalities, recommending consultation early in the process. The example Pelt, bringing together Neerpelt and Overpelt, illustrates the possibility of retaining a shared historical name element. Crucially, the Commission supplies expertise: it is an advisory body, not the authority that decides every Belgian place name. ^{14, 15}

The anniversary announcement dates the cartographic partnership’s key milestone to 1947, following the Second International Congress of Toponymy and Anthroponymy. The institutional names require care: the partner then belonged to the IGN/NGI’s military predecessors. The current National Geographic Institute was created on 8 June 1976; its institutional lineage reaches back to 1831. ^{1, 2}

The wider international setting is equally significant. The second congress took place in Paris in 1947; in 1949, the Brussels congress established the international onomastic organisation now known as ICOS, with its early centre in Leuven. These are related chapters in the organisation of name studies, not interchangeable institutions. They show Belgium’s place in the development of international scholarly cooperation. ¹⁶

A contemporary example makes the partnership’s value especially tangible. In 2024, the IGN and the Service public de Wallonie launched a project to harmonise watercourse names across their datasets. It combines local consultation, historical and cartographic documentation, and linguistic validation by the Commission. The intended result is consistent naming of each river segment across the participating datasets. ¹⁷

This is where apparently specialised scholarship becomes public infrastructure. When a place is identified consistently, information about it is easier to connect. The UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names, UNGEGN, links standardisation with reliable mapping, navigation, administration and data integration, while encouraging names that reflect local languages and traditions. Scholarly care and practical clarity can reinforce one another. ¹⁸

The digital setting opens further possibilities. Through Cartesius, the IGN and partner heritage institutions make historical geographical material available for exploration. Used alongside modern maps and the Commission’s publications, such resources invite comparisons between successive representations of a place. They also invite a necessary question: whose usage did a particular map record? ¹⁹

The finest tribute to this centenary is therefore a commitment to the habits that make the work trustworthy: patient collection, criticism of sources, attention to pronunciation and respect for local knowledge. Digital tools can multiply access; they cannot, by themselves, decide whether a proposed etymology is sound.

A century of the KCTD/CRTD deserves celebration because it has helped make names a sustained object of scholarship and public care. We honour the researchers, local informants, editors and cartographers who have made that continuity possible—and the next generation who will question, enrich and carry it forward.

The anniversary gathering — Brussels, 17 October 2026

The academic session takes place at the Palace of the Academies, Rue Ducale/Hertogsstraat 1, Brussels, followed by a reception. The programme, supplied by the organisers, is:

• 10:00 — Doors open.
• 10:15 — Introduction by Chris De Wulf, Secretary-General of the KCTD/CRTD.
• 10:30 — Introduction by Ingrid Vanden Berghe, Administrator-General of the IGN/NGI.
• 10:45 — Looking back and ahead, with Ann Marynissen and Jean Germain.
• 11:15 — Water names in north-western Brussels, with Pierre van Nieuwenhuysen.
• 11:45 — From national toponymy to worldwide standardisation: UNGEGN’s role, with Jeanne Henrion.
• 12:15 — Reception and networking.

Participation is free. The announced registration deadline was 5 October 2026 and has passed. Anyone still wishing to attend should contact the organisers about availability; late registration is not confirmed. ¹

Un siècle de noms:

Hommage à la Commission royale de toponymie et de dialectologie de Belgique, 1926–2026

Nous employons les noms de lieux presque sans y penser. Pourtant, derrière le nom familier d’un village, d’un ruisseau ou d’une rue peuvent se cacher une langue ancienne, un paysage disparu, un métier oublié ou des générations de prononciations locales. Prendre ces noms au sérieux, c’est porter attention aux personnes qui ont habité, travaillé et décrit un territoire. En 2026, la Belgique célèbre le centenaire d’une institution qui cultive cette attention patiente : la Commission royale de toponymie et de dialectologie, la CRTD en français, la KCTD en néerlandais.

Ce centenaire coïncide avec les cinquante ans de l’Institut géographique national dans sa forme actuelle. Leur célébration commune met à l’honneur une rencontre féconde entre recherche linguistique et pratique géographique : comprendre les noms, les documenter et permettre leur utilisation dans la vie publique. ^{1, 2}

La Commission fut créée par arrêté royal le 7 avril 1926, sous le ministre des Arts et des Sciences Camille Huysmans. Ses sections flamande et wallonne ont offert un cadre durable de coopération. Son historique mentionne des discussions sur la graphie des noms de communes dès 1927 et des travaux sur les noms des cartes militaires en 1928. ³

Associer toponymie et dialectologie était un choix scientifique essentiel. Les graphies anciennes ne suffisent pas toujours à expliquer un nom ; sa prononciation locale et l’évolution des sons peuvent être tout aussi éclairantes. Dans son exposé méthodologique, Jean Loicq souligne l’importance de la phonétique historique et les pièges des apparences. La leçon reste actuelle : une ressemblance séduisante avec un mot moderne ouvre une question ; elle ne prouve pas une étymologie. ⁴

Cette tradition repose autant sur des personnes que sur des institutions. Jean Haust, membre dès 1926, associait enquête dialectale et recherche toponymique ; son Enquête dialectale sur la toponymie wallonne parut en 1940–1941. H. J. Van de Wijer établit une bibliographie de la toponymie flamande pour les premiers volumes de la Commission. Leurs contributions illustrent deux fondements d’une recherche durable : écouter avec précision et rendre les connaissances antérieures accessibles. ^{5, 6}

Le Bulletin / Handelingen, publication bilingue inaugurée en 1927, a donné à ces recherches un lieu de rencontre pérenne. La Commission renvoie aujourd’hui vers une plateforme de revue scientifique en libre accès, hébergée par l’Université de Gand. Un nom étudié il y a plusieurs décennies peut ainsi retrouver sa place dans une nouvelle enquête, au lieu de rester enfoui dans un volume difficile à consulter. ^{7, 8}

L’étendue de ce patrimoine éditorial mérite également d’être soulignée. L’article de Jan Grauls sur les prénoms à Hasselt, publié en 1930, témoigne de la présence ancienne de l’anthroponymie. L’étude de B. Frankinet sur l’actualisation de la lexicographie dialectale wallonne, parue en 2021, rappelle la continuité des recherches sur les parlers régionaux. L’apport de la Commission concerne donc aussi les noms de personnes et les vocabulaires vivants. ^{9, 10}

Ses ouvrages transforment les résultats accumulés en instruments de travail. De Vlaamse gemeentenamen, publié en 2010 par Frans Debrabandere, Magda Devos, Paul Kempeneers, Victor Mennen, Hugo Ryckeboer et Ward Van Osta, a connu une édition profondément remaniée en 2022. Parmi les nouveautés figure un index des noms de personnes germaniques présents dans les noms de communes : un lien particulièrement instructif entre anthroponymie et toponymie. ¹¹

Deux autres réalisations méritent une place d’honneur. Les volumes de De Vlaamse waternamen, parus en 2016 et 2018, réunissent des recherches sur quelque 9 000 cours d’eau de Flandre et de Bruxelles. Jean Loicq a publié en 2014 Les noms de rivières de Wallonie y compris les régions germanophones. L’ouvrage de Jean Germain sur les noms officiels des communes, paru en 2020, enrichit cet ensemble par l’histoire des graphies, la prononciation, les formes régionales et les gentilés. ^{12, 13}

La valeur de ces travaux tient aussi au fait que les noms traversent les frontières disciplinaires. L’historien a besoin du linguiste ; le linguiste, de documents datés et d’un contexte géographique ; l’enquêteur local peut conserver un savoir absent des archives administratives. Un dictionnaire solidement documenté permet la rencontre de ces connaissances. Son autorité repose sur des éléments vérifiables, susceptibles d’être réexaminés.

La Commission apporte également cette rigueur aux décisions publiques. Ses recommandations portent sur les noms de rues et de communes fusionnées et préconisent une consultation dès le début du processus. L’exemple de Pelt, issu de Neerpelt et d’Overpelt, montre comment préserver un élément historique commun. Une distinction demeure essentielle : la Commission conseille ; elle n’est pas l’autorité qui décide de tous les noms de lieux en Belgique. ^{14, 15}

L’annonce du centenaire situe en 1947, à la suite du Deuxième Congrès international de toponymie et d’anthroponymie, une étape déterminante du partenariat cartographique. Il convient toutefois de respecter la chronologie institutionnelle : le partenaire appartenait alors aux prédécesseurs militaires de l’IGN. L’Institut géographique national actuel fut créé le 8 juin 1976 ; sa filiation institutionnelle remonte à 1831. ^{1, 2}

Le contexte international est tout aussi significatif. Le deuxième congrès eut lieu à Paris en 1947 ; en 1949, le congrès de Bruxelles donna naissance à l’organisation onomastique internationale aujourd’hui connue sous le nom d’ICOS, dont le premier centre se trouvait à Louvain. Ces histoires se croisent sans se confondre. Elles rappellent la place de la Belgique dans la construction de la coopération scientifique internationale autour des noms. ¹⁶

Un projet contemporain rend particulièrement visible l’utilité du partenariat. En 2024, l’IGN et le Service public de Wallonie ont lancé un travail d’harmonisation des noms de cours d’eau dans leurs données. Il associe consultation locale, documentation historique et cartographique, et validation linguistique par la Commission. L’objectif est de désigner de manière cohérente chaque segment de cours d’eau dans les jeux de données concernés. ¹⁷

Une recherche apparemment spécialisée contribue ainsi à l’infrastructure de l’information publique. Identifier un lieu de façon cohérente facilite le rapprochement des données qui le concernent. Le Groupe d’experts des Nations unies pour les noms géographiques, GENUNG, relie la normalisation à la cartographie, à la navigation, à l’administration et à l’intégration des données, tout en encourageant le respect des langues et traditions locales. Rigueur scientifique et clarté pratique peuvent se renforcer mutuellement. ¹⁸

Le numérique ouvre d’autres possibilités. Avec Cartesius, l’IGN et des institutions patrimoniales partenaires donnent accès à des ressources géographiques historiques. Leur confrontation avec les cartes actuelles et les publications de la Commission permet d’étudier les représentations successives d’un territoire. Elle invite aussi à poser une question indispensable : de quel usage une carte donnée porte-t-elle témoignage ? ¹⁹

Le plus bel hommage à ce centenaire consiste donc à poursuivre les pratiques qui rendent cette recherche digne de confiance : collecte patiente, critique des sources, attention aux prononciations et respect des savoirs locaux. Les outils numériques multiplient les possibilités de consultation ; ils ne peuvent, à eux seuls, garantir la justesse d’une étymologie.

La CRTD mérite d’être célébrée pour avoir fait des noms un objet durable de recherche et d’attention publique. Rendons hommage aux chercheurs, informateurs locaux, responsables de publication et cartographes qui ont assuré cette continuité, ainsi qu’aux nouvelles générations qui la questionneront, l’enrichiront et la prolongeront.

La célébration — Bruxelles, le 17 octobre 2026

La séance académique se tiendra au Palais des Académies, rue Ducale 1, Bruxelles, et sera suivie d’une réception. Voici le programme communiqué par les organisateurs :

• 10 h 00 — Ouverture des portes.
• 10 h 15 — Introduction par Chris De Wulf, secrétaire général de la CRTD/KCTD.
• 10 h 30 — Introduction par Ingrid Vanden Berghe, administrateur général de l’IGN.
• 10 h 45 — Regard sur le passé et l’avenir, avec Ann Marynissen et Jean Germain.
• 11 h 15 — Les noms de cours d’eau dans le nord-ouest de Bruxelles, avec Pierre van Nieuwenhuysen.
• 11 h 45 — De la toponymie nationale à la normalisation mondiale : l’action de l’UNGEGN, avec Jeanne Henrion.
• 12 h 15 — Réception et échanges.

La participation est gratuite. La date limite d’inscription annoncée, le 5 octobre 2026, est dépassée. Les personnes souhaitant encore participer sont invitées à contacter les organisateurs pour connaître les disponibilités ; la possibilité d’une inscription tardive n’est pas confirmée. ¹

Een eeuw namen:

Hulde aan de Koninklijke Commissie voor Toponymie en Dialectologie, 1926–2026

We gebruiken plaatsnamen haast zonder erbij stil te staan. Toch kan achter de vertrouwde naam van een dorp, beek of straat een vroegere taal schuilgaan, een verdwenen landschap, een vergeten beroep of een uitspraak die generaties lang is doorgegeven. Wie zulke namen ernstig neemt, heeft ook aandacht voor de mensen die een plaats hebben bewoond, bewerkt en beschreven. In 2026 viert België honderd jaar Koninklijke Commissie voor Toponymie en Dialectologie, de KCTD in het Nederlands en de CRTD in het Frans: een instelling die van die geduldige aandacht haar opdracht heeft gemaakt.

Het eeuwfeest valt samen met het vijftigjarige bestaan van het Nationaal Geografisch Instituut in zijn huidige vorm. Hun gezamenlijke viering brengt een vruchtbare samenwerking voor het voetlicht: taalkundige kennis en geografische expertise helpen ons namen te begrijpen, te documenteren en zorgvuldig te gebruiken. ^{1, 2}

De Commissie werd opgericht bij koninklijk besluit van 7 april 1926, onder minister van Kunsten en Wetenschappen Camille Huysmans. Haar Vlaamse en Waalse afdeling boden een duurzaam kader voor samenwerking. De eigen geschiedschrijving vermeldt discussies over de spelling van gemeentenamen in 1927 en onderzoek naar namen op militaire kaarten in 1928. ³

Toponymie en dialectologie samenbrengen was een belangrijke wetenschappelijke keuze. Oude schrijfwijzen volstaan niet altijd om een naam te verklaren; de plaatselijke uitspraak en de geschiedenis van klankveranderingen kunnen even verhelderend zijn. Jean Loicq beklemtoont in zijn methodologische uiteenzetting het belang van de historische klankleer en waarschuwt voor bedrieglijke gelijkenissen. Die les blijft actueel: een treffende overeenkomst met een hedendaags woord roept een vraag op, maar bewijst nog geen etymologie. ⁴

Die traditie werd gedragen door mensen. Jean Haust, lid vanaf 1926, verbond dialectonderzoek met toponymie; zijn Enquête dialectale sur la toponymie wallonne verscheen in 1940–1941. H. J. Van de Wijer stelde voor de eerste jaargangen een bibliografie van de Vlaamse toponymie samen. Hun werk toont twee voorwaarden voor onderzoek dat standhoudt: nauwkeurig luisteren en bestaande kennis vindbaar maken. ^{5, 6}

De tweetalige Handelingen / Bulletin, waarvan de eerste jaargang in 1927 verscheen, gaf dat onderzoek een blijvend publicatieforum. Vandaag verwijst de Commissie naar een wetenschappelijk tijdschriftplatform in open access bij de Universiteit Gent. Dat maakt een wezenlijk verschil: een naam die tientallen jaren geleden werd onderzocht, kan opnieuw deel worden van een hedendaagse studie, zonder verborgen te blijven in een moeilijk bereikbaar boekdeel. ^{7, 8}

Ook de breedte van dat publicatiebestand verdient aandacht. Jan Grauls’ artikel uit 1930 over Hasseltse voornamen toont dat persoonsnaamkunde al vroeg aanwezig was. B. Frankinets bijdrage uit 2021 over de actualisering van de Waalse dialectlexicografie illustreert de blijvende aandacht voor streektaal. De betekenis van de Commissie reikt dus verder dan plaatsnamen alleen: ook persoonsnamen en levende woordenschat krijgen er een wetenschappelijke plaats. ^{9, 10}

De boeken van de Commissie maken opgebouwde kennis bruikbaar voor anderen. De Vlaamse gemeentenamen, in 2010 gepubliceerd door Frans Debrabandere, Magda Devos, Paul Kempeneers, Victor Mennen, Hugo Ryckeboer en Ward Van Osta, kreeg in 2022 een grondig herziene editie. Een van de aanvullingen is een index van Germaanse persoonsnamen die in gemeentenamen voorkomen: een bijzonder verhelderende verbinding tussen persoonsnaamkunde en plaatsnaamkunde. ¹¹

Twee andere verwezenlijkingen verdienen bijzondere vermelding. De Vlaamse waternamen verscheen in 2016 en 2018 en bundelt onderzoek naar ongeveer 9.000 waterlopen in Vlaanderen en Brussel. Jean Loicq publiceerde in 2014 Les noms de rivières de Wallonie y compris les régions germanophones. Jean Germains studie uit 2020 over officiële gemeentenamen verrijkt het geheel met historische schrijfwijzen, uitspraakgegevens, regionale vormen en inwonersnamen. ^{12, 13}

Zulke werken zijn waardevol omdat namen zich zelden aan de grenzen van één vakgebied houden. Historici hebben taalkundige kennis nodig; taalkundigen steunen op gedateerde documenten en geografische context; plaatselijke onderzoekers bewaren soms informatie die in administratieve bronnen ontbreekt. Een goed gedocumenteerd woordenboek laat die kennis samenkomen. Het gezag ervan berust op controleerbare gegevens die opnieuw onderzocht kunnen worden.

De Commissie brengt die zorgvuldigheid ook binnen in het openbaar bestuur. Haar richtlijnen gaan over straatnamen en namen van fusiegemeenten en bevelen aan om vroeg in het keuzeproces advies te vragen. Pelt, uit Neerpelt en Overpelt, illustreert hoe een gedeeld historisch naamelement behouden kan blijven. Daarbij is het onderscheid tussen adviseren en beslissen belangrijk: de Commissie geeft deskundig advies, maar bepaalt niet alle Belgische plaatsnamen. ^{14, 15}

De jubileumaankondiging noemt 1947, na het Tweede Internationale Congres voor Toponymie en Anthroponymie, als een belangrijke mijlpaal in de cartografische samenwerking. De institutionele chronologie verdient enige precisie: de partner behoorde toen tot de militaire voorgangers van het NGI. Het huidige Nationaal Geografisch Instituut werd opgericht op 8 juni 1976; zijn voorgeschiedenis gaat terug tot 1831. ^{1, 2}

Ook de internationale context is betekenisvol. Het tweede congres vond in 1947 plaats in Parijs; in 1949 ontstond tijdens het congres in Brussel de internationale naamkundige organisatie die we nu kennen als ICOS, met haar vroege centrum in Leuven. Dat zijn verbonden geschiedenissen, maar geen identieke instellingen. Ze tonen de plaats van België in de uitbouw van internationale samenwerking rond namenonderzoek. ¹⁶

Een hedendaags project maakt de waarde van de samenwerking bijzonder concreet. In 2024 startten het NGI en de Service public de Wallonie een project om waterloopnamen in hun gegevensbestanden op elkaar af te stemmen. Het combineert plaatselijk overleg, historische en cartografische documentatie en taalkundige toetsing door de Commissie. Het doel is elk riviersegment consequent te benoemen in de betrokken datasets. ¹⁷

Zo draagt ogenschijnlijk specialistisch onderzoek bij aan de infrastructuur van publieke informatie. Wanneer een plaats eenduidig wordt aangeduid, kunnen gegevens erover gemakkelijker met elkaar verbonden worden. De United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, UNGEGN, verbindt standaardisering met betrouwbare cartografie, navigatie, administratie en gegevensintegratie, en moedigt tegelijk het respect voor plaatselijke talen en tradities aan. Wetenschappelijke zorgvuldigheid en praktische duidelijkheid kunnen elkaar versterken. ¹⁸

De digitale omgeving opent bijkomende mogelijkheden. Via Cartesius maken het NGI en erfgoedpartners historisch geografisch materiaal toegankelijk. Samen met hedendaagse kaarten en publicaties van de Commissie nodigen die bronnen uit om opeenvolgende voorstellingen van een gebied te vergelijken. Daarbij hoort ook een noodzakelijke vraag: wiens naamgebruik heeft een bepaalde kaart eigenlijk vastgelegd? ¹⁹

De mooiste hulde aan dit eeuwfeest is daarom het voortzetten van de werkwijzen die dit onderzoek betrouwbaar maken: geduldig verzamelen, bronnen kritisch lezen, uitspraakvormen ernstig nemen en plaatselijke kennis waarderen. Digitale hulpmiddelen vergroten de toegankelijkheid; ze kunnen op zichzelf niet bepalen of een etymologische verklaring klopt.

Honderd jaar KCTD verdient een viering omdat de Commissie namen tot een blijvend voorwerp van onderzoek en publieke zorg heeft gemaakt. Hulde aan de onderzoekers, plaatselijke informanten, redacteurs en cartografen die die continuïteit mogelijk maakten, en aan de nieuwe generaties die hun werk kritisch zullen verrijken en voortzetten.

De jubileumviering — Brussel, 17 oktober 2026

De academische zitting vindt plaats in het Paleis der Academiën, Hertogsstraat 1, Brussel, gevolgd door een receptie. De organisatoren kondigen het volgende programma aan:

• 10.00 uur — Deuren open.
• 10.15 uur — Introductie door Chris De Wulf, algemeen secretaris van de KCTD/CRTD.
• 10.30 uur — Introductie door Ingrid Vanden Berghe, administrateur-generaal van het NGI.
• 10.45 uur — Een terug- en vooruitblik, met Ann Marynissen en Jean Germain.
• 11.15 uur — Waternamen in Noordwest-Brussel, met Pierre van Nieuwenhuysen.
• 11.45 uur — Van nationale toponymie tot wereldwijde standaardisering: de rol van de UNGEGN, met Jeanne Henrion.
• 12.15 uur — Receptie en netwerkmoment.

De deelname is gratis. De aangekondigde inschrijvingsdeadline van 5 oktober 2026 is verstreken. Wie nog wil deelnemen, neemt het best contact op met de organisatoren om naar beschikbare plaatsen te informeren; een laattijdige inschrijving is niet bevestigd. ¹

Links and references

1.KCTD/CRTD — Een eeuw vol taal / Un siècle placé sous le signe de la langue (2026)

2.IGN/NGI — Institutional timeline: 1831–2026

3.KCTD — Geschiedenis

4.Jean Loicq — Toponymie ou science des noms de lieux

5.Jean Lechanteur — Jean Haust. Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique

6.Jules Herbillon (1968) — In memoriam. Henri Joseph Van de Wijer (1883–1968). Revue internationale d’onomastique, 20(4), 6–7

7.Bulletin de la Commission royale de toponymie et de dialectologie, I (1927) — review in Revue du Nord (1928)

8.Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor Toponymie en Dialectologie / Bulletin de la Commission royale de toponymie et de dialectologie — Ghent University open-access platform

9.Jan Grauls (1930) — Iets over de Hasseltsche voornamen. Handelingen, 4(1), 217–229

10.B. Frankinet (2021) — Mots et choses de Wallonie: Actualisation de la lexicographie dialectale de nos régions. Bulletin, 93(1), 349–390

11.Paul Kempeneers (2022) — Sprokkel 424: De Vlaamse gemeentenamen

12.KCTD — Activiteiten: De Vlaamse waternamen (2016; 2018)

13.KCTD/CRTD — Werken van de Waalse afdeling / Mémoires de la section wallonne: Loicq (2014); Germain (2020)

14.KCTD — Adviesverlening: straatnamen en fusiegemeenten

15.IGN (3 September 2026) — Le rôle de l’IGN dans la gestion des noms géographiques

16.International Council of Onomastic Sciences — Brève histoire

17.IGN — Rapport annuel 2024: Toponymie, mise en cohérence des hydronymes de Wallonie

18.United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names — About UNGEGN

19.IGN — Cartesius