Overview of toponymy

The study of geographical names has a long history. China ancient books not only recorded a large number of place names, but also expounded the pronunciation, meaning, location, evolution and naming rules of many place names. For example, Geography of Hanshu, written by Ban Gu in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, contains more than 4,000 place names, and explains the naming reasons and name evolution of some place names. Li Daoyuan's Notes on Water Classics in the Northern Wei Dynasty recorded about 20,000 place names, of which more than 2,300 were explained by etymology.

However, toponymy, as a discipline, first developed in the west in the late19th century, published toponymic works and established toponymic research institutions. Such as "Toponymy" by Eggli in 1872 and "Toponymy" by nagel in 1903; The United States Geographical Names Committee was established in 1890, the Swedish Geographical Names Committee in 1902, and the British Permanent Committee on Geographical Names in 19 19. Early works on place names and toponymy focused on the description of place names and etymological textual research.

After the beginning of the twentieth century, it gradually turned to the stage of comprehensive study of geographical names. George George published the Atlas of the French Language on 1902 ~ 19 10. This atlas shows the regional distribution of language and the restrictive relationship between language and geography, which promotes the development of place name research.

1926, French Dozza's Origin and Development of Geographical Names proposed to explore the chronological order of geographical names by means of cultural geography. He believes that ancient cultures, such as economic development, wars and ethnic migration, are often reflected in place names, and the chronological order of place names can be divided through the historical characteristics of place names in a certain area.

Since the end of 1950s, China has been studying the standardization of geographical names, and studying the law of their emergence, development and distribution as a whole. 1977 set up the geographical names Committee of China, 1980 ~ 1985 carried out the national geographical names survey. His published works include Ceng Shiying's Study on the Spelling of Place Names in China and Chu Yaping's Thesis on Toponymy.