THE PROBLEMS OF SCALE AND STANDARDIZA TION
IN THE TOPONYMIC DATABASE
S. Berk?, D. Radovan?, D. Petrovic ^^
* Geodetic Institute of Slovenia, Jamova cesta 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
? University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, Jamova cesta 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
(sandi.berk, dalibor.radovan, dusan.petrovic)@geod-is.si
KEY WORDS: Data redundancy, Geographical entity, Geographical name, Map annotation, Standardization, Toponymic database
ABSTRACT
The toponymic database could be treated as a constituent part of the topographic database. Traditionally, the topographic maps were
organized into various scale levels. When objects for the topographic databases are digitised from maps, which are the most
frequently used sources of data, the content of the database is organized according to the given system of scales. Trying to uniform
the use of toponyms on the national level, one could be faced with difficulties. Many names from different levels should refer to the
same geographical entity; such names ought to be the same, but this is not always the case. There could be more than one name used
for an individual geographical entity. Various names are used for the same geographical entities at different scale levels; naming of
geographical entities is sometimes a question of the level of detail. That clearly opens up also the question of the levels of national
toponymic standardization. A problem here is also the definition of the toponym itself. A map annotation should not always meet the
linguistic definition of geographical name. One can imagine there is a lot of ways to solve these problems. Some Slovene
experiences are presented.
1. INTRODUCTION
The exact linguistic definition of the geographical name could
Slovene topographic system is based on the following scales: vary according to the language. The linguistic classification of
1: 5,000 (or 1:10,000), 125,000, 1 :50,000, 1 : 100,000, geographical names is important, because the way of writing
| : 250,000, 1 : 500,000, 1 : 750,000, and 1 : 1,000,000. Resear- could depend upon it; the rules for capitalization of non-first
ches have revealed that about 190,000 different geographical words of multi-word geographical names in the Slovene
names occur in Slovenia. Most of them have been shown language, for example, distinguish for the settlement names (eg.
repeatedly on the maps in different fore mentioned scales. This Kranjska Gora) and all the other geographical names (eg. Mirna
fact can lead to the redundancy in the toponymic database. The gora; gora — mountain). A complex study was carried out
Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia (Furlan et al., 2001) to be able to deal with this issue in the
began with toponymic database creation in the first half of REZI database.
nineties (Radovan et al., 1993; Radovan et al., 1996) and
concluded works at the end of the decade. The database is 3. GEOGRAPHICAL CLASSIFICATION OF
called Register of Geographical Names (Register zemljepisnih TOPONYMS
imen; in further text the REZI database). The REZI database
has been created for three different levels of detail: 1 : 5,000 (or Geographical classification of toponyms is actually classi-
1:10,000), 1: 25,000 (or 1: 50,000), and 1 : 250,000. Mean- fication of named geographical entities. It is of course very
while, the toponymy from the map at the scale of 1 : 1,000,000 important to know what type of geographical entity does the
has been standardized. In order to uniform different levels of name represent. The typology of the map annotations is based
detail and to be able to standardize part of the REZI database, a on this classification. In the REZI database these basic name
new scheme of the REZI database was proposed (Berk et al., categories are used:
2002). Lots of problems that could appear and some solutions = names of populated places or domicilonyms,
are presented in the following text. = names ofrunning and stagnant waters or hydronyms,
=" names of geographical features or oronyms,
2. DEFINITION AND LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION " names of geographical regions or choronyms, and
OF TOPONYMS = names of traffic entities or odonyms.
Toponym is a proper name applied to a topographical feature. These five categories are divided into eleven subgroups and
The toponym that refers to the Earth topography is called finally into forty-one individual types of geographical entities.
geographical name. It should be distinguished from the Each geographical entity is specified in details with the defi-
common name or appellative. Sometimes this is not so evident, nition, examples, and generic terms that could appear as a
because lots of common names by its origin are used today as common noun components of the name.
proper names (eg. Polje; from polje = field). However, some
common names still appear as separate map annotations, 4. FORMAL STATUS OF TOPONYMS
especially on the large scale maps (eg. pokopalisée = grave-
yard). Another problem are so called mixed names where A very important issue to be dealt with is the formal status of
proper and common geographical names are used together. the name. Geographical names in the REZI database are
Common noun used before the name is formally not a part of divided into five groups:
geographical name, but sometimes appears in a map annotation " official names,
(eg. rti¢ Ronek = the cape of Ronek). = official minority names,
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