Proceedings of the international conference on Minority Names/Indigenous Names and Multilingual Areas

on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) has started the initiative to organise scientific symposia or conferences, to prepare for the decision-making process during the sessions of UNGEGN and the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names (UNCSGN). In 19.. the first symposium was organised, in Frankfurt, with... as theme, and in March 2000 Frankfurt was again the venue, now for the Second International Symposium on Geographical names, Geonames 2000, with as themes National standardization, Concepts of names databases, Romanization systems and –again – exonyms. These meetings on exonyms, which were later pursued in Slovenia(?) have been instrumental in developing new ideas for the UNGEGN sessions and the work of the Working Group on Exonyms. Since the 8th UNCSGN, held at Berlin in 2002, a working group was set up to deal with minority names and indigenous names. There had been attention for this aspect also within the framework on the discussion on multilingual areas, but the discussion has only picked up momentum since the cultural heritage aspect was linked to it. Since then it has become politically correct to talk about minorit