1151 | | Minority place-name standardization in Europe | Peter Jordan (1,2)
Related to the representation of minority place names in public space (on town signs, road signs etc.) and on maps exist various regulations in Europe. They differ by
definition of the minority,
feature categories included (populated places, natural features etc.),
the administrative level where the decision is taken (national, province, district, commune level),
the share of minority population necessary for taking advantage of the regulation,
additional procedures necessary to effectuate the right on the name,
the choice between standard language and dialect name versions,
the kind of visual representation of the minority name,
comprehensiveness of the fields where the minority name has (in addition to the majority name) to be used (only on town signs, also on maps, in all kinds of communication),
the level of officiality of the minority name (as official as the majority name, supplementary official, just for information etc.)
and by several others.
The session is to highlight these regulations based on a research project of the Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy in cooperation with the IGU Commission on the Geography of Governance to be completed in 2024 attempting to compare such regulations in the countries of Europe with autochthonous linguistic minorities on the background of ethnic and linguistic structures, historical and political developments, the political landscape, governance structures, and external relations. Major questions of this project are: Is minority place-name standardization part of the general standardization process or are there specific regulations? Is it a bottom-up or a top-down process and which administrative levels are involved? To which extent do these regulations satisfy linguistic minorities and help to facilitate the relations between majority and minority.
Researchers cooperating in this project (35 individual researchers and research teams for almost all European countries) will be invited to this session to report on the situation in their countries as reflected in their contributions to the project. The session will, however, also be open for all other contributions with relevance for the topic. Presentations in English
Peter Jordan (1,2)
(1) Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Urban and Regional Research, (2) University of the Free State (South Africa), Faculty of Humanities
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