Placename dictionaries and dictionaries of places: An Australian perspective. ANPS Occasional Paper No. 5

Toponyms denote or identify human habitation sites (cities, towns, villages etc.), natural geographic features (mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, seas etc.), and political precincts (states, municipalities, parishes etc.). They also identify and reflect culture, heritage and landscape, and therefore offer much to cartographers, geographers, historians, genealogists, linguists, language planners and tourists. In addition, toponyms are a vehicle for public and personal reference (Kostanski, 2009). In the former, they are used for location delineation and identification (e.g. for emergency services, postal services, deliveries, communication, defence, navigation etc.). They can also function as powerful political tools (as in, for example, the renaming of 69 German placenames in South Australia because of anti-German sentiment during World War I, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, or the dispute between Greece and the former Yugoslav republic’s use of the name Macedonia)