Place-Name Changes, 1900-1991 - Softcover

Room, Adrian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810844664 ISBN 13: 9780810844667

Publisher: Scarecrow Press, 1993

Synopsis

Contains over 4,500 name changes worldwide, ranging from small villages to entire countries.

About this title

About the Author:

Adrian Room (MA, Oxford) is the author of about 35 popular reference books, mainly on the origins of words and names. He has taught English and modern foreign languages at a number of schools and colleges, and in 1984 left his post as Senior Lecturer in Russian with the Ministry of Defence to pursue writing full-time. He has long specialized in the field of place names, and his first book on the subject (and his first book overall) was Place Names of the World (David & Charles, 1974). His recent publications include Dictionary of Place-Names in the British Isles (Bloomsbury, 1989) and Street Names of England (Paul Watkins, 1992). He is currently working on two new dictionaries of first names, and his largest work ever on the subject of names will be published as Brewer's Dictionary of Names (Cassell, 1992). He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the English Place-Name Society and the American Name Society.

From Booklist:

This update of the original (1979) gazetteer provides information for approximately 4,500 places that have had name changes since 1900. Beginning with essays on why place-name changes occur and how the author has identified the changes included here, the bulk of the book is an alphabetical listing of places, followed by an appendix of official country names (in the country's language), and an extensive bibliography of other books that provide place-names. Included are "officially decided or decreed" renamings, with most of the new entries for the former Soviet Union, China, and Africa. For example, more than a dozen places that changed their names from some form of Stalin- can be found.

Main entries are current names in English (former names and former variant spellings of names are cross-referenced to the present names), followed, if necessary, by foreign-language versions. Each main entry contains an identification of the type of place (e.g., city, village, mountain, island, capital); a broad locator (e.g., northern Brazil, suburb of Chicago, IL, USA); the former name or names; and the year in which the former name ceased to be used. Chinese names are transliterated via the Wade-Giles system; this means the main entry for Beijing is Peking.

Although much of the information here remains unchanged since the earlier edition, the updated information for all parts of the world makes this book useful even for those libraries that have the earlier edition. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0810844664
• ISBN 13: 9780810844667
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 318