UNGEGN Norden Division Meeting
8-9 October 2008, Copenhagen

In connection with the Division Meeting a symposium was held at University of Copenhagen on October 7th with the title:  

Making Minority Languages Visible

Programme


Guy Puzey, Scotland: The Implementations of Road Signage for Linguistic Minorities.

Kaisa Rautio Helander, Norway/Saami-Region: Retten til å få sine stedsnavn i offentlig bruk. [The right to have one’s own language place-names in public use]

Peder Gammeltoft, Denmark: The use of Minotity Language place-names in Denmark.

Erik Randrup, Denmark: Konsekvenserne ved flersproget skiltning set fra en vejforvaltning. [The consequences of multilingual signage as seen from a Highway Department]

 


A list of participants in the Division Meeting is enclosed with the meeting minutes.

Since the Faeroese representatives were not able to attend the meeting, Kristin Magnussen had submitted a memo on the Faeroese situation in relation to item 2 and 3.


 

1. Opening of the Norden Division Meeting

On behalf of the National Survey and Cadastre, John Jensen welcomed the participants to Copenhagen with the hope that the Norden Division Meeting would bring a couple of days where relevant and interesting issues would be discussed on a lively and positive accord.

A special welcome was directed at Helen Kerfoot, Chairperson of UNGEGN.

2. Place-name legislation

Each language area presented a short overview.

All language areas have language laws and regulations on language use, but of the Nordic countries only Norway has a specific law on place-names, whereas place-names are protected under the law on cultural heritage in Sweden, as does this country have formalised guidelines on ‘Proper Place-Name Usage’. The other Nordic countries have departmental orders, which, to greater or lesser degrees, stipulate rules for standardization of place-names. Some countries, such as e.g. Denmark, wish to have a law on place-names or a more formalised set of rules for place-name standardization.

3. Implementation of resolutions

Each language area presented a short overview.

Among the member states of the Norden Division, the main focus had been on the problems of implementation of the resolution on commemorative naming of living or newly deceased persons (resolution VIII/2, E/CONF.94/3).

4. Linguistic minorities and place-name usage

Each language area presented a short overview.

Saami is recognized as a minority language in Finland, Norway and Sweden, as is Finnish and Meänkieli (Finnish variant spoken in the Tornedal area) in Sweden, Swedish in Finland. Additionally, Kven (of Finnish origin) is recognised as a minority language in Norway.

Being a language area with a distribution across several national borders Saami place-names are housed in the individual national place-name databases with no common place-name facility available. For this reason, the possibility of establishing a common Saami place-name database was discussed.

In Denmark German in Southern Jutland (i.e. the former parts of the duchy of Schleswig) is recognised as a minority language. However, no policy for own place-name usage for this minority had  been established as by yet.

Iceland and the Faeroes have no minority languages. Faeroese is recognised as a regional language within the Danish Realm, as is Greenlandic.

Greenland has dialectal differences, but no minority languages. Being a regional language with official status under the Danish realm, the problem in Greenland was how to make known to other users (esp. outside of Greenland) when an European name was replaced by an indigenous Greenlandic one.

Helen Kerfoot encouraged the division to contact the Working Group on the Promotion of Recording and Use of Indigenous, Minority and Regional Language Group Geographical Names in relation to the resolution: ”Promotion of recording and use of indigenous, minority and regional language group geographical names” (IX/5, E/CONF.98/136).

5. The content of the Norden Division Report at the 25. UNGEGN Session

The Norden Division discussed a range of subjects which could be of relevance for inclusion in the next ND-Division report.

Following main issues of relevance were mentioned:

  • To possibly work for the establishment of a common Saami place-name database or web service, possibly even a ‘Minority Database’
  • Laws on place-names and place-name usage
  • Place-names as part of the intangible cultural heritage
  • The work of establishing a division home page (treated below as an independent item)
  • Cooperation with other divisions and working groups
  • Status for ”Toponymic Guidelines”
  • To possibly work for a harmonisation of feature types and other place-name database elements, as well as database structures
  • Airline companies’ use of place-names in route overviews
  • Administrative reforms

The layout of the report must be in accordance with the UNGEGN standard and must as a minimum contain minutes from the division meetings (in New York and Copenhagen) and which advances and/or developments that have been made within the field of place-name standardization since the last session meeting (the 24th Session in New York).

It was agreed that the deadline for submission of information for the report was December 15th, 2008. All submissions should be sent by e-mail to Peder Gammeltoft (gammelt@hum.ku.dk) with c.c. to John Jensen (jnj@kms.dk).

6. Plea for financial support to encourage African countries to participate in the 25th UNGEGN Session

The chairman of UNGEGN, Helen Kerfoot, encouraged the division to work for enabling and extending the African engagement in the UNGEGN work. If there are any possibilities for e.g. paying for the participation of African members, it is possible to inform the UNGEGN secretariat about this. View the plea in pdf format.

7. EuroGeoNames – an overview

Johnny Andersen, Norway, oriented the ND-Division of the ongoing project, EuroGeoNames, of establishing a common European geographical names infrastructure and service platform.
Among other things, it was mentioned that there are problems with getting minority languages implemented and that there are great differences among the participating countries with regard to pricing policies. The project phase finishes in the first quarter of 2009.

Johnny Andersen’s PowerPoint-presentation can be seen in pdf format here. Read more at Eurogeographics.

8. The INSPIRE directive

Teemu Leskinen, Finland, informed the ND-Division of the work progress on the INSPIRE directive and his involvement in the TWG – ‘Thematic Working Group on Geographical Names’. The result of the work of the first part, the so-called ”Annex 1”, will be available for commenting in December 2008. For more information, please see Teemus Leskinen’s PowerPoint-presentation in pdf format here and the INSPIRE home page.

9. News from Working Groups with Norden Division member participation

Working Group of Implementation and Evaluation/Publication and Funding

Botolv Helleland, Norway, reported from a meeting in this working group and queried, among other things, as to whether division members had any questions from the public which might be of interest to a wider audience.

This Working Group has, e.g. produced the ”Manual for the National Standardization of Geographical Names” and folders on UNGEGN.

Working Group on Toponymic Terminology

Staffan Nyström, Sweden, reported from the ongoing work in this working group. One of his focal issues was the recently established contact to the ‘Terminology Group’ of ICOS (The International Council of Onomastic Sciences) with the aim of a possible coordination of UNGEGN and ICOS terminology lists.

This working group is also in charge of the revision of ”Glossary of Terms for the Standardization of Geographical Names”.

In addition to the above reports, Helen Kerfoot, gave a PowerPoint presentation of the UNGEGN-structure and the hierarchy of the United Nations work on the standardization of geographical names from conferences, sessions and on to working groups and divisions. View the structure chart here.

10. Presentation of NunaGis

Lisathe Møller Kruse, Greenland, gave examples of ongoing place-name collection in Greenland, which is presently carried out in MapInfo.

After this, NunaGIS, the Greenland Home Rule WebGIS portal, was presented. This web service consists of internet-based maps of Greenland with a variety of themes, including place-names. NunaGIS is planned to be the catalyst for the creation of the digital geographical infrastructure of Greenland.

Place-names will be transferred from MapInfo to NunaGis simultaneously with the compilation of the new Greenlandic sea charts.

NunaGis may be accessed from this website, from where it is possible to find a link to an English language version.

11. Presentation of DigDag

Peder Gammeltoft, Denmark, presented DigDag (Digitalt atlas of Denmark’s historical-administrative geography), which is a project which aims to create a research infrastructure which records all known Danish administrative units by period of activity and with exact spatial representation of units. The plan is to be able to represent an exact year-by-year administrative status of Denmark, including a place-name facility which will aid querying into the research infrastructure. The result of the DigDag project is planned to be in the form of a research infrastructure for professional and academic use, a search facility for state archives and a webGIS facility for the ordinary user. Place-names will occupy a central position in all outputs.

A pre-project has been successfully carried out and a full-scale application has been submitted for funding 2009-2011.

Gammeltoft’s PowerPoint-presentation may be viewed in pdf format here.

12. Norden Division home page and organisation

The need of ND to establish a “Division homepage” was discussed. Items discussed were:

  • Where should the platform be registered?
  • Should the homepage follow the chairmanship or should it remain in one place?
  • Could contain minutes from division meetings
  • Could contain history of the Norden Division and its work within the UN

It was agreed that Denmark proceed with the idea and attempt to establish a ”beta version”.

13. Place-name usage in electronic media/web-applications

Again the problem with Airline companies’ use of place-names in route overviews was discussed, see items 4 and 5.

Several members had noted examples of spellings of place-names in web-applications which have been less than successful, in particular with Google Earth. However, many of the inappropriate name forms have been corrected recently. At the last UNGEGN-conference (9. UNCSGN) a paper was presented by a representative of Google-Earth; thus UNGEGN will remain in contact with them with regard to the standardization of place-names.

Additionally the ND discussed the issues of addresses/street names and how the division member countries’ geographical institutions viewed the possibility of “free-of-charge services” via the internet.

Jonny Andersen, Norway, showed a new weather forecast web application for Norway and the reset of the world (a cooperation between NRK, Norges Rikskringkasting, and the Norwegian Meterological Institute). This application utilises place-name data from the official Norwegian place-name database (SSR at Statens Kartverk – The Norwegian Survey and Cadastre), and with every place-name search result was added an information box from from Statens Kartverk with data on correct spelling of the place-name etc. For place-names outside of Norway data was supplied from Geonames database.

14. Rounding off and next meeting

This item concluded the Norden Division meeting.

Next meeting will be held in connection with the 25th UNGEGN Session, May 5th – 12th, 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Keeper of minutes
John Jensen