Toponyms in cartography

The ICA 25th International Cartographic Conference in Paris in July 2011 is special from a toponymical point of view because it marks the first meeting of the joint ICA-IGU Commission on Toponymy. Toponymy has been a regular theme for international cartographic conferences for decades, and it is only proper that this has been institutionalized now. The subject of toponymy is now not only dealt within an onomastical context at the biannual ICOS meetings, and within an administrative context at the biannual UNGEGN meetings, but also within a geo-cartographic context at joint ICA-IGU meetings. The toponymical contributions to the Paris International Cartographic Conference are diverse, both geographically and thematically. Geographically, the focus is on Brazil and on Europe, with a paper on Tunis as a Mediterranean extension of Europe. The subjects range from the collection of geographical names to the operation of names servers, from the use of exonyms in school atlases to the creation of names data bases and from the reconstruction of former namescapes to the creation of new ones.