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

Redditt is a small community 27 kilometres north of Kenora, Ontario, with 139 residents recorded in the 2021 census. Does anyone know who or what it was named after, or have a source on its name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redditt

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.

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.

Les noms de lieux ne sont jamais de simples étiquettes géographiques. Ils portent des traces de langues, d’histoires, de mémoires et d’identités. Dans son ouvrage Toponymie algérienne, Brahim Atoui, spécialiste de la toponymie en Algérie, propose une réflexion sur la gestion, la normalisation et la portée culturelle des noms de lieux algériens.

By 164 votes to 1, with 6 abstentions, the Assembly adopted “Correct the map: rebalancing global cartographic representation and promoting equitable representation of the world’s regions, particularly Africa.” The draft you sent me, A/80/L.104, dated 4 August, has now become General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/307. The United States cast the only vote against; Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine abstained.

From the perspective of toponymy, however, the most interesting consequence may lie beyond the mathematical question of projection. 

How much can place-names tell us about landscapes that have disappeared? On 1 December 2026, Dr Kathryn Bullen will explore this question in the online lunchtime lecture “Watery Place-Names in Axholme: History, Evolution and Value”, organised by North Lincolnshire Museum. The online session is scheduled for 12:30–13:30 GMT.

I noticed that Wiltshire has Salisbury, Amesbury, and Ramsbury and yet in the middle of them Marlborough. That would seem to be a counter-example against a clear geographical pattern. My perception is that -bury is overall more common, but do we know why -burgh evolved into -bury in some places and -borough in others?

Donald Trump’s suggestion that Lake Ontario could be renamed “Lake America” is not just a passing political provocation. It belongs to a larger pattern in which geographical names become instruments of symbolic power, national assertion, media conflict, and diplomatic pressure. According to AP and ABC News, Trump said the United States was giving “serious consideration” to renaming Lake Ontario, after already promoting the federal U.S. name “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico. From a toponymic point of view, the proposal is .here.

I have been working on this map for a while and it is still a work in progress. It aims to show the principal locations and broad-brush ethnic groupings in Britain and Ireland in 900 AD, with a particular focus on using contemporary placenames. The placenames have been further colour-coded to show which language(s) they are derived from, to show the incredible degree of ethnic diversity and cultural mixing at this time. There are lots of minor tribes that haven't made the cut, simply because they won't all fit on the map.

While the representation is artistic, I've tried to broadly reflect the areas of wetlands and forests at the time, based on the evidence I have looked at, to give an idea of what the landscape would have been like (very different from today!).

Scotland in particular needs a lot more work, and I'm researching that at the moment. While I am an archaeologist, I'm not a linguist so let me know if I have gotten a placename wrong. If you spot any mistakes or think that I have left off an important site, let me know!

Hi-res version available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TfD3L8yU6Q3FbcrLSZCaGz35EiH0RjKX?usp=drive_link

This map was made using the Inkarnate program, no AI has been used at any point.

 Place names are much more than labels on a map. Their elements and endings preserve traces of earlier language areas, landscapes, and patterns of settlement. The endings -ing, -ingen, and -bach are particularly revealing because their present-day distribution reflects different phases in the settlement history of Germany.

Read here

I just now had to fill in a census, which asked about my heritage. I am Australian with heritage from New Zealand. But how do I say that as an adjective (yes I know this topic has been done but I am expanding it)? Generally how does one use as an adjective ANY country or
place which ends with "-land?"

English (from England) -land +ish

Scottish / Scot (from Scotland) -land +t +ish

Irish (from Ireland) -land -e +ish

Finnish (from Finland) -land +n +ish

Icelandic (Note the internal "i" shift, from Iceland) +ic

Polish (from Poland) -land +ish - or a person is a Pole.

Greenlandic (from Greenland) +ic

Thai (from Thailand) -land

Swazi (from Swaziland) -land

Somali (from Somaliland) -land

Swiss (from Switzerland) -land -er -tz +ss: ouch. Lovely word though.

Dutch (from Netherlands) - yikes.

but Hollandic (from Holland) +ic is considered valid in posh English.

Using a nation's mascot is not a valid answer. Kiwi doesn't fit our analysis.
Of course, a person from Greenland is a Dane.
But a house built to a style unique to Greenland has a... Greenlandic style.
Also the language spoken there is Greenlandic, also known as Kalaallisut.
An inhabitant of the Falkland Islands is difficult to nail down:
I favor Flalklandic but they are called Kelpers, though this does not convey information easily.

Adding -er is an inadequate solution to our problem and is not counted:

Thus Somaliland → Somalilander is disregarded.
Newfoundland [Newfoundlander is an inadequate answer]

So New Zealand could become, using the formulae above,

+ic: New Zealandic,
-land +ish: New Zealish, or (doubling the final letter of the stem) the hellish New Zeallish, or
-land: New Zeal - which is very enthusiastic - a great sports team name.

A few more to finnish (cough - sorry) up.

Rhineland → Rhenish

Lapland → Lappish (or Sámi for those watching ALONE AUSTRALIA in the Arctic Circle).

Friesland → Frisian

Götaland → Geatish / Gothic.
So all you Goths out there ... it was originally Gotland. {insert Dracula emoji HERE.}

OUTLAND-ish!!

I was thinking about British place names in french. Nearly always the English name would be used, unchanged, but there are a handful of exceptions:

* Grande Bretagne (Great Britain)
* Angleterre (England)
* Pays de Galles (Wales)
* Écosse (Scotland)
* Les Cornouailles (Cornwall)
* Les Orcades (Orkney)
* Est-Anglie (East Anglia)
* Douvres (Dover)
* Londres (London)
* Lancastre (Lancaster)
* Le comté de Lancastre (Lancashire — though the English county name is also used)
* Édimbourg (Edinburgh)
* La Tamise (Thames)

Is anybody aware of more historic or current french localisations like these of British toponyms?

ones that are attested into at least the 20th century. Feel free to offer any suggestions etc. for inclusion!

A new volume from Polis Institute Press turns to one of the most symbolically charged cities in the world through a specifically linguistic and onomastic lens. The Names of Jerusalem: Jewish, Christian and Islamic Traditions, by Aaron Demsky, Christophe Rico and Iraj Sheidaee, explores why Jerusalem has been known by so many names - and why those names still matter today.

The book examines names such as Salem, Jerusalem, Hierosoluma, Moriah, Zion, Ilia, Beit il Maqdis and al-Quds, tracing their etymology, linguistic development, historical use and symbolic meaning in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Arabic. In doing so, it shows that the city’s names are not merely alternative labels for the same geographical place. They represent different religious memories, theological interpretations and cultural visions of Jerusalem.