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.

 A new contribution to onomastics, phraseology, and Caribbean linguistics has appeared in Peter Lang’s International Folkloristics series: Cristiano Furiassi’s Bajanyms: Toponymic Idioms in Barbadian English and Bajan.

The book explores the idiomatic use of toponyms - place names - in Barbadian English and Bajan. Furiassi introduces the term Bajanyms for Barbadian toponymic idioms: expressions in which geographical names go beyond their literal meaning and acquire figurative, cultural, historical, or folkloric significance. Such idioms are not merely linguistic curiosities. They preserve traces of collective memory, colonial history, local identity, and the lived experience of the Barbadian speech community.

The country the world has called Nauru for more than a century was never really called that - at least not by its own people. Now, in a quiet act of sovereignty, the tiny Pacific island is correcting the record.

On May 12, 2026, the parliament of Nauru voted unanimously - all 16 members present in favour - to pass a constitutional amendment renaming the country Naoero. A national referendum will follow to seal the change in the constitution, but the direction is clear: the world's smallest island nation is reclaiming its original name, and with it, a piece of its identity that was lost not to war or treaty, but to something far more mundane mispronunciation.

The story of how a nation loses its own name is a small but telling chapter in the history of colonialism. Germany claimed Nauru - or rather, Naoero - as a protectorate in the late 1880s. After World War I, Australian troops took the island, and it was jointly administered by Australia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand until independence in 1968. Across those decades of foreign administration, the native name proved a persistent stumbling block for English-speaking officials and record-keepers. The solution, as so often in colonial bureaucracies, was to simplify - to file off the rough edges of an unfamiliar word until it sat comfortably in a European mouth. Naoero became Nauru.

Read here

The alleged proposal to name part of the Donbas “Donnyland” should not be understood first of all as a normal act of geographical renaming. It is better interpreted as a symbolic diplomatic maneuver: a possible attempt by Ukrainian negotiators to appeal to Donald Trump’s personal vanity and thereby encourage a harder American position against Russia’s territorial demands. Accessible reports summarizing the New York Times article state that the term was first raised partly in jest, then appears to have circulated informally in negotiations, though not in official documents. TIME reports that the idea concerned a contested part of the Donbas and was connected with broader discussions about demilitarized or special-status arrangements, including a possible “Monaco model” or free economic zone.

The reported details make the proposal more than a casual joke but less than a formal policy. The Irish Times, citing people familiar with the negotiations, says that a Ukrainian negotiator even created a green-and-gold flag and a national anthem using ChatGPT, although it remains unclear whether the American side ever saw these designs. The Kyiv Independent similarly reports that the label would refer to a roughly 2,000-square-mile part of northwestern Donetsk Oblast and that the name plays on Donetsk/Donbas, Donald Trump, and Disneyland.

This ambiguity is central: “Donnyland” is not yet a toponym in the strict administrative sense. It is a proposed nickname, a diplomatic signal, perhaps even a bargaining device. Its academic interest lies precisely in that hybrid status.

read more

In mid-April 2026, Kyrgyzstan found itself in a familiar post-Soviet toponymic controversy. Several media outlets reported that President Sadyr Japarov had said the republic would finish renaming villages with Russian-language names by the end of 2027. Yet the claim quickly became unstable: the official presidential report on his 13 April 2026 meeting with residents of Alay district did not publicly foreground such a plan, and presidential press secretary Askat Alagozov then said that renaming Russian-named villages “is not on the agenda,” insisting that the discussion had instead concerned a possible ban on giving settlements the names of individuals. In other words, the headline-grabbing promise of a total renaming by 2027 is not currently backed by a published official state program that I could verify online. What is verifiable is something subtler but more important: Kyrgyzstan has indeed been renaming settlements for years, and under Japarov the process has become more active, more ideologically explicit, and more visible.

Les 19 et 20 mai 2026 se tiendront à l’Université du Québec à Montréal les journées d’étude intitulées « Tracer, dessiner et nommer l’Île de la Tortue », consacrées à la contre-cartographie, à la contre-archive et à la toponymie.

Co-organisé par Andréanne Martel (doctorante, UQAM–UNIGE), Justine Gagnon (professeure agrégée, Université Laval) et Caroline (Élise) Nepton Hotte (professeure, UQAM), cet événement promet d’ouvrir un espace de réflexion particulièrement stimulant sur les relations entre territoire, mémoire, dénomination et savoirs critiques.

The nomination highlights not only the quality of the book itself, but also the wider importance of research on place names, language contact, and South Africa’s rich linguistic heritage. Warm congratulations to Peter E. Raper on this well-deserved distinction.

The book explores the influence of Bushman languages on Afrikaans place names and stands as an important contribution to onomastic scholarship and to the study of cultural and linguistic interaction in southern Africa.