10.1 What Is Cartography?

As we are writing this chapter, we are thinking of the recent football news that caught our attention. The news reported Russia’s uproar over Ukraine’s football jersey, which was emblazoned with a map of Ukraine. What was significant about this map was that it included the Russian-annexed Crimea. Russia controversially took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and currently considers it part of its territory. This is something that Ukraine and the rest of the world reject. According to one Russian MP, the Ukrainian move amounted to a ‘political provocation’. Another MP called the shirt ‘totally inappropriate’ and asked the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to stop Ukraine from using it (BBC, 2021).

Beyond the umbrage taken by Moscow, this episode demonstrates the power of maps not only to identify and locate places, but also how maps and their content can be used as tools by political and administrative entities to stake their claims over a particular piece of land (see also Chapters 7, 8, and 10). Ukraine’s act of outlining a map that included a contested territory, before labelling the entire borders as belonging to Ukraine, was an effort to assert its control (albeit a symbolic one) over the Crimean Peninsula occupied by the Russians. Therefore, as mentioned, this episode is emblematic in illustrating how maps can be made and used politically, and therefore provides a glimpse into one of the most controversial aspects of the world of cartography.

The International Cartographic Association (ICA), the most authoritative organisation in the discipline, defines cartography as ‘the discipline dealing with the art, science, and technology of making and using maps’. The body also defines a map as ‘a symbolised representation of geographical reality, representing selected features or characteristics, resulting from the creative effort of its author’s execution of choices, and is designed for use when spatial relationships are of primary relevance’ (ICA, 2021).

It is worth noting that the ICA’s definitions of the cartographic discipline and maps in general have shifted over time. In 1995, the ICA defined a map as a ‘symbolised image of geographical reality’ (ICA, 2021). According to Reference KainzKainz (2020, p. 56), the newer definition includes the art of making and using maps, which he notes accounts for a growing tendency to consider the ‘artistic aspect in maps and map making’. Moreover, while both definitions of a map describe a model of geographical reality, the newer definition uses the word ‘representation’ whereas the older one uses the word ‘image’ to describe this model of reality (Reference KainzKainz, 2020, p. 56). The use of the term ‘image’ seems to indicate, semantically, an exact and ‘neutral’, and therefore unbiased, reproduction of the ‘cartographic item(s)’, while ‘representation’ could imply a sort of ‘interpretation’, which may also be ‘non-neutral’, and therefore potentially biased.

Beyond the making and using of maps, the perennial question over the definition of cartography has been explored by many scholars. Research has focussed on the definitions of cartography (Reference GoodrickGoodrick, 1982), past and present definitions of maps and cartography as provided by the ICA (Reference Kraak and FabrikantKraak & Fabrikant, 2017), and on creating working definitions of the discipline, even as the field has undergone significant changes over time (Reference MorrisonMorrison, 1978; Reference OlsonOlson, 2004; Reference TaylorTaylor, 1994). Other scholars have reflected on the art/science dichotomy in the discipline. Some have approached cartography according to artistic (Reference Cartwright, Gartner and LehnCartwright, Gartner, & Lehn, 2009) or scientific perspectives (Reference Buchroithner and FernándezBuchroithner & Fernández, 2011; Reference MorrisonMorrison, 1978), while other researchers have called for a greater convergence of both art and science (Reference KrygierKrygier, 1995). The aim of this discussion is not to provide an exhaustive summary of the field. This chapter instead focusses on an area that has so far received little attention: the links between toponymy and cartography.

Consequently, this chapter aims at briefly introducing the relationship between toponymy and cartography through case studies from different historical periods. It begins by giving an overview on how place names might be made or used in maps. We will then see how toponyms are reflected in ancient and contemporary maps and what a study of these names tell us. The chapter also aims to unveil how toponyms and maps might go hand-in-hand in two situations: to possess and control (especially during colonial times) territories, and the generation of imaginary place names and their representations on the map.

10.2 The Functions of Place Names on the Map

Mark Monmonier, in his celebrated book How to Lie with Maps (Reference Monmonier2018), noted that there are three main elements of a cartographic document: map scales, map projections, and map symbols. He writes that ‘most maps are smaller than the reality they represent, and map scales tell us how much smaller’ (Reference MonmonierMonmonier, 2018, p. 5). Scales can assume the form of a ratio or fraction (e.g., 1:10,000 or 1/10,000, where a distance of one unit on the map represents a distance of 10,000 units on the ground), a short sentence (e.g., one centimetre represents one kilometre), or a graph (see Figure 10.1). Map projection transforms the curved, three-dimensional surface of the earth to the flat, two-dimensional layout that we see on maps. This normally occurs in a two-stage process. First, the earth is shrunk to a globe, for which the ratio holds true everywhere and in all directions. Then, the symbols from the globe are projected onto a surface that can be flattened (e.g., a plane, a cone, or a cylinder). Finally, map symbols make the features, places, and other locational information on the map visible. Road maps and most generic maps use a combination of three types of symbols: point symbols, to mark where landmarks and villages are; line symbols, to indicate the length and layout of rivers and roads; and area symbols, to show the shape and size of major cities and state parks.

Figure 10.1 Scale and symbols on an old map

(adapted from Megistias, 2010)

Beyond point, line, and areal symbols, which are essential visual elements of the map, Reference FairbairnFairbairn (1993, p. 104) stated that ‘text is one of the four main components contributing to the visual appearance of a map’, with the other three being the aforementioned map symbols. Reference FairbairnFairbairn (1993, p. 104) also underscored the importance of the textual aspect on maps, noting that:

The focus of this chapter is not on how these three symbols (and even how map scales and map projections) are used in cartography; rather, we will focus on how toponyms, as ‘map symbols’, came to be used and represented on maps. Reference AtchisonAtchison (1982) noted that toponyms are generally taken for granted on maps. Place names, he said, ‘seem so minor an aspect of map production that the cartographer can ignore them, surely, to concentrate on what is, after all, the massive task of mastering the ever-technological requirements of his trade’ (p. 111). It is worth noting that most of the textual components on maps are toponymic in nature, that is, appearing to indicate the names of objects which are located by point, line, and areal symbols. However, text can be used for other purposes. Among some of these functions are describing additional properties of the object portrayed by map symbols (e.g., the use of the expression ‘conspic.’ to indicate the visibility of the object), ‘warnings’ to caution against the dangerous nature of the feature (e.g., through the expression ‘danger area’), and terms used to indicate the legal, administrative, or political bodies which own or govern the territory.

Reference JordanJordan (2009) provides an excellent read on the practical functions of place names on maps. He divides their uses into two: for map users who are not acquainted with the place name (and/or place) on the map and, conversely, for people who are acquainted with the place name (and/or place). For the former group, place names, as text on the map, help the user to identify and search for places. As Reference JordanJordan (2009, p. 1) stated:

Place names make maps easier to use; they attach a word to the cartographic symbol, thereby complementing these symbols and providing geographical and topographic meaning to them. In doing so, toponyms facilitate map use as they are signifiers of places in the representation of the geographical reality. At the same time, toponyms help users to search for places on maps. Indeed, the place name is the first thing we type when we do an Internet search for a place or location.

For those acquainted with the place name (and/or the place), the act of seeing and reading place names on the map evokes an emotional function that (re)connects the person with the place, and is reminiscent of the identity building and emotive functions of place names, as highlighted in Chapter 9. Reference JordanJordan (2009) sums it up as follows.

Beyond the geo-locational and emotional functions of toponyms on cartographic documents, maps are also ideological weapons (Reference Harley, Cosgrove and DanielsHarley, 1988). They appear to be innocently factual, representing the geographical and topographic reality as it is. However, they are cloaked in an ‘elaborate rhetoric of power’ that determines the map symbols, destines the inclusion and exclusion of territories, and decides the intrinsic ‘discourse’ of toponyms (Reference JacobJacob, 1996, p. 194). The sociopolitical and ideological functions of maps and representations of place names is a theme that we will explore later in this chapter.

10.3 Place Names and Cartography across Time

While toponymy and cartography might have played an integral role in the age of colonialism, some of the earliest maps also recorded place names of ancient settlements. Maps are a very ancient invention, although the modern historical phenomenon of colonialism led to the contemporary cartographic development of map making techniques and the use of maps as tools to subjugate Indigenous peoples. Cartography has undergone a series of phases, across its history. In this section, we will give a brief outline of how these phases transitioned from Ptolemaic cartography to modern and contemporary cartography.

The Ptolemaic conception of the universe is that of a geocentric world, where the Earth is at the centre of the universe itself, surrounded by the ‘spheres’ of the planets which are, in turn, surrounded by the fixed stars and the band of the Zodiac. Till the sixteenth century, this conception was dominant. In medieval maps, the world is often drawn as a trilobate figure, with three areas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. These areas are completely surrounded by the Ocean. In other medieval maps, the Ocean surrounds the Earth and is configured as a swirling river. In some other maps from the Middle Ages, conversely, the Mediterranean Sea becomes an internal ‘cavity’, with Europe located in the north, Asia in the east, and Africa in the west. In many maps from this period, the Finis Terrae ‘the end of the Earth’ is the westernmost point of the world, represented by Spain. The system of the world which would replace the Ptolemaic conception is the heliocentric setting proposed by Copernicus, with the Earth in motion around the sun and with new astronomical dynamics generated by this change.

At the cartographic level, the Ptolemaic contribution to the history of cartography was significant because it strove for an accurate cartographic representation of the ‘Ecumene’, that is, the inhabited and known world. Indeed, this aspect of cartography was absent from maps produced in the Middle Ages. Only in the fifteenth century, with the rediscovery of the Ptolemaic cartography tradition from several maps recovered in the East, did the Earth regain its real ‘shape’, that is, a sphere which has to be represented on a geometrical plane in order to keep the proportion consistent. This is something that could be achieved through the Ptolemaic projection techniques, as they allowed cartographers to represent the planet and the morphology of the territories in an impressively exact way.

After this rediscovery, modern cartography generated a better understanding of the world by cartographers and geographers due, mainly, to the more detailed observations made by explorers and the development of new surveying techniques. These techniques were helped by the invention of surveying tools that made observations and measurements much more accurate, such as the magnetic compass, the telescope, and the sextant. Cartographers, therefore, aimed for perfection both at the level of the drawing of maps and at the level of the accuracy of measurements.

Contemporary cartography has been influenced by many advancements in technology. Aerial photography, satellite imagery, remote sensing, and, more recently, global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS) have provided efficient and very precise means for mapping physical features. This has allowed the enhancement of cartographic techniques and of the quality and accuracy of maps in general. The impressive progress of the cartographic models and procedures across centuries, however, has been achieved without distorting their essential principles of accuracy originated from the Ptolemaic cartography.

The passage between Ptolemaic cartography and modern cartography, as mentioned, can be attributed to several historical events, such as the discovery of America (1492) and the subsequent transfer of economic trades to the Atlantic, the loss of the Middle East’s privileged position in Western commercial routes that followed the circumnavigation of Africa, the rise of modern states and the centralisation of power in Europe, and what was perceived by the West as an increasingly aggressive attitude on behalf of Islam against Christianity (evidenced by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453). These events meant that map making, in the context of modern cartography, became less the product of exploration and increasingly subservient to the ‘needs of knowledge and territorial control of the modern state’ (Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi & Palagiano, 2018, p. 207).

Reference KainzKainz (2020) listed some of the earliest maps. He noted that the oldest map, dating back to around 25,000 bce, was found near Pavlov, Czechia, and was carved on a mammoth tusk (see Figure 10.2).

Figure 10.2 Carving on a mammoth tusk found near Pavlov, Czech Republic

(Zde, 2007)

In Ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians developed a remarkable system of land measurement and allocation, and examples of early cartographic attempts were the Gasur Map and the City Map of Nippur, engraved on clay tablets and dating back to 2350 bce and 1500 bce, respectively. The Romans developed a road map of the Roman Empire. The only copy remaining is a medieval copy from the twelfth/thirteenth century known as the Tabula Peutingeriana. The map is made up of eleven sheets, each thirty-four centimetres wide. When placed alongside each other, the sheets form a 6.82-metre-long map. Due to the odd size, the territories outlined on the cartographic document are drawn out almost beyond recognition. An excerpt can be seen in Figure 10.3.

Figure 10.3 Part of the Tabula Peutingeriana, from the Austrian National Library

(Reference SayatekSayatek, 2019)

The markings on these maps reveal to us important information about the landscape as well as the symbolic nature of place names. For example, Reference SvobodaSvoboda (2017) notes that the linear symbols on the Pavlov tusk, shown in Figure 10.2, could have represented landmarks (like rivers and slopes) and their qualities (such as accessibility to animals and humans or natural barriers). The markings found on the tusk could have been used by prehistoric people to locate and direct animal herds, and to develop their hunting strategy. The Tabula Peutingeriana is, in itself, a significant treasure trove of information, containing around 2,700 place names, as well as relatively detailed depictions of ancient cities like Rome, Antioch, and Constantinople. It also shows the main roads of the Roman Empire and landscape features like rivers, mountains, and islands (Reference Fodorean, Bagnall, Brodersen, Champion, Erskine and HuebnerFodorean, 2013), making it possible to study place names and the landscape of territories during the Roman Empire, as some scholars have done using this map (see, for instance, Reference FinkelsteinFinkelstein, 1979; Reference PazarliPazarli, 2009; Reference Pazarli, Livieratos and BoutouraPazarli, Livieratos, & Boutoura, 2007; Reference TappyTappy, 2012).

Silvano’s map (1511) represented a modified version of Ptolemaic cartography‘s models. It integrated classic Ptolemaic geography with the knowledge coming from more contemporary nautical charts. Silvano mapped the world’s regions in a more realistic manner that is similar to the modern depiction of the globe. His world map (Figure 10.4) was designed in a heart-shaped form, which projected the world very differently from the way Ptolemy did (Reference ContiConti, 2009). Silvano’s map is thus a fine example of the Ptolemaic cartographic tradition that integrated modern techniques, thereby improving on Ptolemy’s original maps (Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi & Palagiano, 2018, p. 209).

Figure 10.4 Silvano’s 1511 map of the world

(Lanamy, 2020)

Very old maps, like the Tabula Peutingeriana, record ancient place names and provide us with an insight into the ancient cultures and civilisations they document. Because of this, they allow us to study ancient toponyms and landscapes, as well as enabling us to develop a study of early cartography. A good example of this is how Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi and Palagiano (2018) compared the representation of Syria and Iraq in five Western maps from between the sixteenth end eighteenth centuries, as well as in modern maps (see Table 10.1). In the process, they highlighted some of the above-mentioned cultural changes in the relationship between the West and the Middle East.

Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi and Palagiano (2018) argued that these changes are evident in the transformation of place names as they transitioned from the Ptolemaic geography context, which depicted a single large world and the Mediterranean Sea ‘as a common connotative sign of the countries that overlook it’ (Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi & Palagiano, 2018, p. 206), to what we call modern cartography. What the authors found was that historical denominations of countries and territories, such as Babylonia and Mesopotamia, and the names of cities like Chalybon, Nicephorium, Bibla, and Hierapolis were replaced by other names, in a process that the authors argue is indicative of the gradual disappearance of the ‘vision of the classical world’ as reflected by Ptolemaic cartography (Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi & Palagiano, 2018, p. 209).

These toponymic changes were not immediate and all-encompassing. The use of Latin for many former Roman place names, for instance, demonstrates that this transition did not happen instantaneously and that there are still remnants of the Latin Western culture in Middle Eastern place names. Furthermore, some place names, like Damascus and Palmyra, survived these cultural and ideological changes. These are ancient cities which have been attested in both ancient and modern cartography with the same name, and they are naturally linked to the Semitic civilisations of Mesopotamia and their subsequent, Semitic and non-Semitic, cultures and civilisations (e.g., Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans).

As an example of how maps are used for political purposes rather than having a geographical-cultural slant from Ptolemaic cartography, Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi and Palagiano (2018) noted that The New & Accurate Map of Turkey in Asia, Arabia & c., by Emanuel Bowen (1744) (reproduced in Reference Siniscalchi and PalagianoSiniscalchi & Palagiano, 2018, p. 212), displayed the Ottoman Empire in all its complexity. Its Asian part is divided into states and governates, much like how modern maps are, and there is evidence of how place names do not follow those of the Ptolemaic tradition, that is, they have been updated to better represent geographical and political contexts of that time.

10.4 Colonialism and the Age of Discoveries

There is abundant scientific literature on colonialism and cartography, particularly on how the colonial powers utilised maps and the making of colonial boundaries to extend their powers over colonised groups (Reference BrealeyBrealey, 1995; Reference CollierCollier, 2006; Reference FedmanFedman, 2012; Reference KalpagamKalpagam, 1995; Reference Kaufman, Schayegh and ArsanKaufman, 2015; Reference RivardRivard, 2008). Indeed, as Mishuana Goeman suggested, ‘maps, in their most traditional sense as a representation of authority, have incredible power and have been essential to colonial and imperial projects’ (Reference GoemanGoeman, 2013, p. 16). As we have seen while discussing the definition of maps, they are representations of geographical reality. In the colonial context, these topographicFootnote ¹ depictions, as well as the toponymic inclusions and exclusions we can find in them, are neither ‘arbitrary’ nor ‘apolitical’ (Reference Hunt and StevensonHunt & Stevenson, 2017, p. 375). Rather, they are part of the geographical understandings (Reference HarveyHarvey, 2001, p. 213) that serve to ‘entrench and justify European colonialist and nationalist narratives’ (Reference OliverOliver, 2011, p. 67).

In this section, however, our discussion moves away from the framing of maps solely as a power exercise and a form of governmentality by the colonisers. While considering the overtly political and ideological slants of map making and map usage, something that maps share with toponyms, we hope to delve deeper into the intersection of and the relationships between toponymy and cartography during the age of colonialism. Through the study of map making and map usage during colonial times, scholars can extract and use toponyms as primary data, which in turn yield important information on the sociopolitical and ideological motivations and attitudes of the colonisers.

The analysis of maps drawn up by colonial powers and the toponyms they display highlight the political objective of the colonisers to show that they are firmly in charge. This was evident, for example, in what is now Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, where the toponymic process was:

Colonial maps of Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia (named after the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury), show that in urban areas where the Europeans resided, toponyms in European languages sought to immortalise the colonisers’ presence in the landscape. Many place names honoured the British royal family and paid homage to personalities and politicians who made Rhodesia a colonial state, including Cecil Rhodes himself, whom the colony was named after. These European toponyms ‘naturalised the relationship between Europeans and places that had European identities’ (Reference Mamvura, Mutasa and PfukwaMamvura, Mutasa, & Pfukwa, 2017, p. 45). Meanwhile, the British, as the colonial masters in Rhodesia, ensured that all local politically loaded toponyms were removed. Although many of the local urban areas in Salisbury were named in native languages, the colonial naming authorities banned local inhabitants from immortalising and memorialising those who fought against colonisation. As argued by other scholars, ‘this was a clear message that as a defeated people, the locals had lost all freedoms, including the freedom to an identity that the local names represented’ (Reference Snodia, Muguti and MutamiSnodia et al., 2010).

Unsurprisingly, the desire to impose political control has resulted in the erasure of Indigenous knowledge and ways of life. Mapping and toponymy were tools used by the colonial authorities to disconnect Indigenous peoples ‘from their histories, their landscapes, their languages, their social relations and their own ways of thinking, feeling, and interacting with the world’ (Smith, n.d., cited in Reference GoemanGoeman, 2013, p. 3). Place names in the Indigenous landscape that are attested on Western maps are ‘most often reinterpreted, decontextualized, and deprived of their true cultural meanings and histories’ (Reference Aporta, Kritsch, Andre, Taylor and LauriahaultAporta et al., 2014, p. 230).

Indigenous toponyms were heavily regulated or ignored in colonial times, as seen in the Rhodesia example. In other instances, they were adapted to the colonial place naming strategy, particularly the ‘one name for one place’ method. This is exemplified by Peel River in western Canada, named in commemoration of British Prime Minister Robert Peel. The same area and watercourse are known to the Gwich’in people living in the Northwest Territories (NWT) of Canada as Teetł’it Gwinjik ‘at the head of the waters river’. Indeed, many islands, riverbanks, canyons, hills, and camps along the river have traditional Gwich’in names, which do not show up on official colonial maps. This reveals that the Gwich’in people have an intensive use of and intimate relationship with the landscape and highlight the multiple connections that the Indigenous people share with the landscape, as opposed to the singular connection indicated by the official label of Peel River (Reference Aporta, Kritsch, Andre, Taylor and LauriahaultAporta et al., 2014). The erasure of Indigenous peoples’ knowledge from the geographical representation of their toponyms is representative of how people in power – in the past and present – use the mapping of place names as a form of governmentality, to control the territories they rule. It is, therefore, little wonder that Vuolteenaho and Berg (2009, p. 4) argue that ‘[…] the mapping of toponyms has formed an ancillary form of knowledge production in the service of a wider scientific-geopolitical project of knowing the world as accurately as possible as part of the process of controlling its spaces’.

The playbook of erasure is utilised in modern settler colonies as well. A case in point would be present-day Palestine. As we briefly discussed in Chapter 9, after the reorganisation of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of Israel, the newly formed state superimposed biblical and talmudic toponyms to erase the Indigenous Palestinian and Arab-Islamic heritage of the land. This renaming project demonstrates the indelible impact of colonial methods in exercising power and control over the modern toponymic and cartographic process. The Israeli Governmental Names Committee of the 1950s sought to impose a ‘New Hebrew’ identity on the landscape. To this end, new Hebrew place names appeared, and Israeli maps slowly removed Palestinian-Arabic toponyms. Palestinian historian Ilan Pappe drew on the concept of cultural memoricide as he highlighted how the Israeli state de-Arabised the Palestinian landscape of its names for religious sites, villages, towns, and cityscapes (Reference PappePappe, 2006). Some examples are the Hebrew versus Arabic names of Jerusalem – Al-Quds, Akko (Acre) – Akka, Yafo (Jaffa) – Yafa, Tzora – Sora’a, Ayelet Hashaḥar – Najmat al-Subh, Agur – Ajur, and Ein Limor – Eyn Al’amor. This systematic deletion of the Palestinian past had the aim of not only strengthening the newly created state, but also to allude to a continued passage from biblical Israel to the modern Israeli state (Reference MasalhaMasalha, 2015, p. 31). Thus, Reference MasalhaMasalha (2015, p. 30) argued that the Palestinians share similarities with Indigenous groups who were colonised elsewhere; their self-determination and narratives were discredited, their culture was devastated, and their histories were distorted.

As we have mentioned in this book, place names can have an ideological function; toponyms are an ‘instrument of an ideological imposition, because there is a direct connection between the name and the ideology that binds it’ (Reference Carvalhinhos, Lima-Hernandes and LimaCarvalhinhos, Lima-Hernandes, & Lima, 2018, p. 96). Reference Herling and LevkovychHerling (2020) analysed colonial maps of coastal areas in present-day USA from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She notes that these maps provide a ‘detailed insight’ into the toponymy (Reference Herling and LevkovychHerling, 2020, p. 28) and inscribe the ‘moment of naming’ as geographical reality (Reference Herling and LevkovychHerling, 2020, p. 29). This offers crucial information on colonial naming practices. She found that commemorative toponyms are common in Spanish and French linguistic contexts. Spanish and French place names contain, among others, references to kings and notable people, or allude to dynasties (e.g., Louisiane, Charlesfort, Punta de los Reyes ‘Headland of the Kings’), politicians (e.g., Rivière Colbert ‘Colbert River’), explorers (e.g., Val Laudonnière ‘Valley Laudonnière’, Bahía de Juan Ponce ‘Bay of Juan Ponce’), or Saints (e.g., Isle Saint Michel ‘Saint Michael Island’, Río de San Antonio ‘River of Saint Anthony’). Herling noted that 89.5 per cent of the Spanish toponyms examined, as well as 77.5 per cent of the French toponyms, are exonymous (i.e., they originate from the language of the colonial power, not from local languages). A number of these toponyms also contain geo-classifiers (e.g., Punta ‘Headland’ (Spanish), Rivière ‘River’ (French), Val ‘Valley’ (French), Bahía/Baia ‘Bay’ (Spanish)). These classifiers, coined in the language of the colonisers, reflect how the European powers organised their landscapes. In choosing to name places in the colonies in their language(s), with references to important European figures and geography, the rulers were developing a colonial strategy to install their languages, histories, social relationships, landscapes, and worldviews on their newly conquered territories – all of which have an overtly ideological function of demonstrating the supremacy of the Western worldview.

Similar practices can be observed in colonial toponyms in Africa. Reference BatomaBatoma (2006, p. 3) noted that ‘some of the names bestowed by European or Arab colonialists on African people and places tell more about the colonial mind of the namers and of their intentions than about the named African reality’. As argued elsewhere in this volume, a study of colonial maps and toponyms can reveal the projection of idyllic colonial imagery into Western-dominated areas in the urban landscape (see Chapters 8 and 9), or the portrayal of Indigenous residential areas as ‘rural’, as opposed to the ‘urban’ places where the Europeans lived, thereby promoting the colonial ‘civilising mission’, extolling the colonial narrative and values (see Chapter 8), and ultimately allowing for European colonialist and nationalist values to take root and be magnified in the colonial landscape.

Yet, it is worth noting that colonialism was not simply a process of ‘coming and conquering’. Far from seeing voyages as the foreshadow of colonisation, where great (and White) men discovered new places, named them, and ignored or demonised Indigenous presence, there was Indigenous presence, action, and agency during these encounters. Reference DouglasDouglas (2014) cautions against viewing the cartographic construction of the world as a ‘confident, cumulative, linear process of imperial “discovery,” knowing, and naming’ (p. 24). Reference DouglasDouglas (2014) proposes the notion of ‘countersigns’, which are lexical, grammatical, and syntactical items, or visual analogues. These ‘countersigns’ were created in the uncertainties and whirlwind of emotions, and express distrust, dissatisfaction, and despair during human encounters between the colonisers and the Indigenous people. Most recognisable in their choice of words, names, and motifs, the ‘countersigns’ become embedded in the narrative, cartographic, and toponymic processes.

Reference DouglasDouglas (2014) based his argument on his analysis of the travel journals of two Dutch explorers who were searching for the Terra Australis, in modern-day Oceania. He found that, rather than proving colonial beliefs ‘of the natural domination of Christian Europeans over Wilden (savages)’ (Reference DouglasDouglas, 2014, p. 17), his analysis strongly suggests ‘that Dutch recourse to violence was usually preemptive or defensive, signalling their own anxieties and tenuous control of encounters’ (Reference DouglasDouglas, 2014, p. 17). A notable example is the Dutch renaming of the island of Niuatoputapu (located in Tonga) as Verraders Eylandt ‘Traitors Island’. The journals of two leading Dutch explorers, Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, reported that after an initial peaceful and fruitful encounter and trade, their ship, the Eendracht, was surrounded by close to 1,000 people on canoes. The chief or king of the island signalled for an attempt to capture the ship, which the locals bombarded with stones. However, the Dutch were able to repel the attack. Douglas argues that the name Verraders is a ‘double-countersign’; it encodes Indigenous agency and the rarely acknowledged weakness of these explorers, who rely on the cooperation and goodwill of the Indigenous people for important supplies. As Reference DouglasDouglas (2014, p. 19) noted, the name ‘is thus a metonym for a whole narrative of foreign arrival, indigenous action, and European response’. This toponym and its multilingual variants (Verraders Eiland, Ile des Traîtres, or Traitor’s Island) were recorded in some of the most widespread maps well into the nineteenth century.

Cartographic agency can be exercised by various parties involved in contested places. Maps can be depicted in unconventional ways, as we saw with the Ukrainian football jersey at the beginning of the chapter. A 1992 Argentinian postage stamp shows a map with the Argentinian province of Tierra del Fuego, parts of Antarctica, and the South Islands. The map includes the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) as part of the Argentinian Tierra del Fuego province. The Falkland Islands (or Falklands) are a British overseas territory located near Argentina. However, Argentina lays territorial claims to these islands, calling them the Islas Malvinas. An armed conflict erupted between Argentina and the UK over the sovereignty of the islands in June 1982, when the Argentinian army invaded them. After seventy-four days of fighting, the occupying forces were defeated, and the islands were returned to the British.

The inclusion of the disputed islands on the postage stamp was an effective act of cartographic propaganda over Argentina’s claim on the Falklands (Reference KlinefelterKlinefelter, 1992). In response, the Falkland Islands Philatelic Bureau published its own stamps portraying a narrative of continuous British control over the islands since the eighteenth century. Beyond demonstrating the agency of the local Falklanders and their allegiance to the British, this episode also highlights how maps can name a place, claim a stake over it, and inflame great passions among those with opposing claims.

Another example is the long-disputed name of the stretch of water between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. In the 1920s, without any Korean representation, the International Hydrographic Bureau accepted the Japanese recommendation to name it the Sea of Japan. This has been disputed by both North and South Korea. The arguments for and against this toponym by the Japanese and Koreans have been largely based on the names reported on historical maps. Japan has been arguing that the name did not come about due to its annexing of the Korean Peninsula in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but it has a much longer history, dating back to the early 1600s, and hence it has priority. Korean scholars have argued that there were other historical maps from the same period that do not refer to that body of water by that name. Reference MonmonierMonmonier (2007), however, argued that ‘old maps seem neither relevant nor definitive, while current usage, clearly on the side of the Japanese, ignores the historical reality that toponyms, like boundaries, are political constructions, subject to change’ (p. 94). The reality now is that most maps still label this sea as the Sea of Japan, and others have the alternative name the East Sea in parenthesis alongside the Sea of Japan or below it.

10.5 Cartography Today

Cartography has evolved over time with the development of navigational instruments, like the sextant, and with the invention of other technological innovations, such as the printing press. These technological advancements have allowed for more accuracy in drawing maps and for their quick and mass printing and dissemination. Nonetheless, with the digital innovations of our times, the technological processes in cartography have been tremendously accelerated. Two complementary aspects have developed over the last thirty to forty years: satellite remote-sensing (and image processing techniques), and geographic information systems (GIS), including computer-aided cartography and database management systems (Reference DenegreDenegre, 1992). These have been aided by advancements in computer-aided drawing of maps. The increasing shift to GIS has led scholars to ponder on how GIS has influenced the discipline of cartography and how cartographers should use digital tools to ensure that ‘the heterogeneous datasets in databases will be made comparable, both from a geometrical, semantical, updatedness and completeness point of view’ (Reference GrelotGrelot, 1994, p. 56). In essence, technology has revolutionised the way maps are made and used, and it is the reason why the ICA includes ‘technology of map making and map using’ in its definition of the field.

GIS and other ‘modern spatio-statistical methods and cartographic techniques’ can ‘provide new perspectives for toponymic research by evoking and directing interpretive discussions’ (Reference FuchsFuchs, 2015, p. 331). To this end, toponymic mapping, that is, the combination of spatial analysis and cartographic methods to map the complex rules and characteristics in a particular locality, has been gaining traction as a research methodology (Reference Slingsby, Wood and DykesSlingsby, Wood, & Dykes, 2010). As covered in Chapter 7, in recent years, there has been an upsurge in research that utilises toponymic mapping and other GIS tools to present the geophysical, environmental, cultural, historical (see the discussion on historical GIS in Chapter 7), and linguistic characteristics of toponyms in maps.

Ultimately, GIS allows for ‘patterns to be discovered within immense historical datasets’. These findings help geographers, historians, and of course toponymists and linguists with new and previously undiscovered research foci, ‘which can then be regarded with the nuanced interpretation of qualitative, critical historical research methods’ (Reference ChloupekChloupek, 2018).

Modern technologies like GIS and GPS are steadily diminishing the importance of hand-drawn, pen-and-paper maps. Yet, traditional maps still offer an insight into the intersections between language, feelings, geographical and Indigenous knowledge, history, and collective imaginary. Reference NashNash (2018) experienced this in his ‘linguistic pilgrimage’ in Norfolk Island, which describes essentially a personal relationship between the human and the observed environment (see also Chapters 2 and 8 for more information on Nash’s research in Norfolk Island). The ‘linguistic pilgrim’ reflects as they see language in the landscape, signs, and how language is used within sociocultural contexts. Nash recounted how a Norfolk Islander, Bev McCoy, drew a map of Shallow Water for him, an offshore fishing ground. This drawing is a ‘drawn linguistic artefact, a map, language as spatial representation, and an aesthetic marker of cultural selfhood impounded within the Norfolk Islander community’ (Reference NashNash, 2018, p. 139). The drawing also contained other place names, such as No Trouble Reef, Mount Pitt, Alligator’s Eye, Duncombe Bay, and Captain Cook Monument, which Nash described as being part of the ‘linguistic and non-linguistic appeal of Shallow Water’ (Reference NashNash, 2018, p. 145). In this sense, the map drawn indicates other connected place names and their significance in the toponymic landscape, which may not always appear on the official map. Bev also recounted the landscape, locality, and naming process of Shallow Water to Nash. A digital map of the offshore islands of Norfolk Island compiled by Nash then showed Shallow Water, and is evidence of how the drawn has become ‘computerised’. Nash poignantly notes that there is a movement within the name-event, where cultural and Indigenous knowledge is transferred:

Ultimately, Nash blends the analogue (Bev’s drawing) with the digital (digitised mapping), demonstrating the interface between the old and new, traditional and modern. And, despite modern technologies like GPS making Bev’s drawings or even these offshore fishing ground names potentially worthless, Nash’s quote, penned in a beautiful, emotive language, highlights that map drawing (and the connected toponyms drawn on the map) still has a place within the larger toponymic ecosystem and epistemology, and is an art in itself.

10.6 Phantom Place Names on the Map

We have seen, thus far, that maps have been made and used to represent geographical realities in the ancient and colonial world. Of particular salience is how maps are intertwined with the sociopolitical and ideological attitudes and motivations of the rulers of the day, an argument which can be also proven by analysing place names on early cartographic endeavours. See, for example, the above-mentioned Tabula Peutingeriana, a map of the Roman Empire with ‘Romanised’ place names; the various cartographic documents that represented the world from a ‘Christianised’ perspective, such as the Χριστιανικὴ Τοπογραφία ‘Christian Topography’ by Cosmas Indicopleustes (sixth century ce); the T and O Map (Isidoran Map), another ‘Christianised’ map of the world from the seventh century ce representing the Earth as described by Isidore of Seville in his De Natura Rerum and in his Etymologiae, with the representation of the ‘location’ of the ‘Paradise’. The question we hope to explore in this section is inherent in the opposite: can maps illustrate places (believed to exist) that may not exist? ‘Phantom places’ are defined as places that, although believed to be real and despite having been officially charted on maps, turned out to be non-existent. Phantom places form part of a broader umbrella of fascinating legendary places that include lands that really existed but are shrouded in mystery, lands that are thought to have enjoyed a purely ‘spiritual’ existence and others that existed only in religion, lands that clearly do not exist today but that may have existed once, and destinations borne out of false documentation (Reference EcoEco, 2015, pp. 8–9). These places, which often are islands (Reference Nah and Perono CacciafocoNah & Perono Cacciafoco, 2018), can be labelled on historical maps with the words ‘E.D.’, which represent ‘existence doubtful’. The phenomenon of phantom islands is instructive in demonstrating that maps can indeed demarcate geographical fiction. In the North Pacific alone, the British Royal Navy cleared at least 123 such falsely recorded islands in 1875 (Reference Brooke-HitchingBrooke-Hitching, 2016). There are two broad reasons explaining why phantom islands were mapped: error and human imagination (Reference TallackTallack, 2016, p. 5). As a result of human error, sailors and seafarers mistake mirages, low clouds, rock formations, and other misleading geographical phenomena for land. Imprecise navigational equipment can also deceive explorers, ultimately leading to phantom islands being drawn on maps (Reference Brooke-HitchingBrooke-Hitching, 2016, pp. 9–10). On other occasions, phantom islands can also emerge due to the human imagination, most noticeable in creative writers whose tales of adventure claim to have discovered new lands (Reference Brooke-HitchingBrooke-Hitching, 2016, p. 11).

Modernisation has resulted in technological advancements and improvements in navigation and mapping. This has led to the debunking of these phantom places and islands. Modern technology diminishes the need for explorers to solve geographical mysteries in the form of searching and uncovering new places. Today, we have comprehensive navigational databases, free and accessible maps on our computers and phones, and satellites telling us where we are and what is around us (Reference TallackTallack, 2016). This has led to a feeling of our world being ‘flatter’. Places feel extremely familiar, and people may think that the world is not as extraordinary or exciting as it was in the age of discoveries. To put it simply, it feels that our world is becoming ‘all-discovered’ (Reference ElboroughElborough, 2016, p. 8). Yet, there will always be something else to discover or, in some cases, something else to be un-discovered – some phantom ‘hiding in plain sight […] masquerading as fact, enjoying its quiet nonexistence, just waiting to be undiscovered’ (Reference Brooke-HitchingBrooke-Hitching, 2016, p. 11).

Reference Nah and Perono CacciafocoNah and Perono Cacciafoco (2018) presented the histories (and stories) of three such phantom place names. One of them constitutes the recent example of Sandy Island, supposedly located between Australia and New Caledonia, in the South Pacific. The island was first reported by a whaling ship called Velocity in 1876 and its first cartographic appearance was in 1908 (see Figure 10.5) in a British admiralty chart (Reference Seton, Williams, Zahirovic and MicklethwaiteSeton et al., 2013). This phantom island could also be the Sandy I(sland) that Captain James Cook charted off of the cost of northeast Australia and published in The Chart of Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1776). Not much is known about how Sandy Island got its name, although one self-evident and possible reason is that the place was christened after its sandy appearance (Reference Nah and Perono CacciafocoNah & Perono Cacciafoco, 2018).

Figure 10.5 The 1908 British chart showing Sandy Island

(ZX95, 2012)

Sandy Island remained in roughly the same shape, size, and location for around 100 years in various maps (Reference TallackTallack, 2016). The insulonym continued to appear in maps even in the twenty-first century. One such example was the World Vector Shoreline Database (WVS), a free and readily accessible data source used by a large proportion of the international scientific community. Its ‘un-discovery’ happened only in 2012, when Australian oceanographers surveying the floor of the Coral Sea and plate tectonics in the area where Sandy Island was believed to be located found no trace of the island itself (Reference DosseyDossey, 2015). The ‘removal’ of Sandy Island from the maps was rapid. Google deleted it from the Google Earth database and National Geographic removed the island from its maps by the end of November 2012 (Reference TallackTallack, 2016).

How did the island possibly end up on maps and what did the whaling ship Velocity see? Scholars believe that it was a case of human error handed down through the years, because the island was attested on admiralty maps, and this meant that the error continued during the conversion from hard-copy maps to digitised map forms like the WVS and Google Earth (Reference Seton, Williams, Zahirovic and MicklethwaiteSeton et al., 2013). It is widely accepted that what the crew members on Velocity saw could have been a large pumice sea raft. Pumice rafts refer to lava that has been ejected into the sea from an underwater volcano and that has cooled rapidly. These rafts are light enough to float on water and can travel for long distances (Reference DosseyDossey, 2015). Considering that Sandy Island was reported to be twenty-five kilometres long and five kilometres wide, it is possible the island spotted in 1876 was not an island that was sandy, but a large raft made of cooled, solidified floating lava (Reference Seton, Williams, Zahirovic and MicklethwaiteSeton et al., 2013). The case of Sandy Island is, thus, a good example of a ‘phantom island’. It was believed to be real and featured on maps for centuries, although no such place existed, and was arguably a result of both human error in mapping and mistaking the possible pumice sea raft for a whole island.

Another source of phantom place names comes from and is witnessed in literary works which are often guided by ideologies of adventure, wonder, and utopia. Phantom and imaginary places have been attested since antiquity. The Greek explorer Pytheas allegedly sailed northward from Marseilles (Massalía [Μασσαλία], or Masalía [Μασαλία] in Ancient Greek, having been founded by Greek settlers from Phocaea around 600 bce), France, around 330 bce. Six days later, he reached the land he called Thule. The exact location of Thule was hotly debated, as Pytheas’ accounts were lost and later were dismissed by scholars as fabrication (Reference StefanssonStefansson, 2019). Iceland, the Shetland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Norway, and Finland have been cited as possible options of the legendary place (Reference Simpson-HousleySimpson-Housley, 1996). The phrase ‘Ultima Thule’, meaning ‘Furthest Thule’, became widespread and appeared in poems and tales, symbolising a distant northern place which was geographically undefined and cloaked in mystery (Reference GilbergGilberg, 1976). Many fables about Thulean discoveries abound, and each story tells of Thule ‘as a place of mysteries and wonders, a distillation of northern myths and fantasies, but also, at the same time, a reminder of their imaginative limits’ (Reference Huggan and ThompsonHuggan, 2015, p. 331).

Since the Middle Ages, Cockaigne, an imaginary place filled with natural beauties and earthly pleasures, has also consistently appeared in utopian literary works across time and space, be they poems (The Big Rock Candy Mountain in Medieval England, for example), or a folksong that was popular in the USA during the Great Depression (Reference Elliott and WegnerElliott, 2013), or the Cuccagna in the well-known book Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un Burattino (Pinocchio’s Adventures: Story of a Puppet), published in 1881–3 by Carlo Collodi.

In more recent times, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (Reference Calvino1972) portrayed fifty-five literary ‘fantastical constructions’ in which cities, fashioned from an imaginary dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan, were described in detail. Kublai Khan asks Marco Polo to describe to him the cities he has visited across the Chinese Empire he rules, but the latter talks about fabulous cities, which are a product of his imagination, for example, reflected in lakes or located under the surface of the earth (Reference PsarraPsarra, 2018, p. 143). These cities are ‘invisible’ because they do not exist and are fantastic variations on the theme of Marco Polo’s hometown, Venice. Each city has the name of a woman. The Invisible Cities has become somewhat of a manifesto for the notion of ‘imaginary places’ and ‘imaginary place names’.

Literature, toponymy, and cartography all have one element in common. They are, essentially, and for different reasons, narratives at work. ‘Narratives’, in this context, refers to what we can call the what and the how. That is, the stories that are told constitute the ‘what is told’ and, as defined by Reference PrincePrince (1987), the presentation of the stories in particular ways, gives us the ‘how it is told’.

(Literary) place names presented in this section, like Ultima Thule, Cockaigne, and those in Invisible Cities, evoke the ‘feeling of place’, which constructs the narrative world that is the heart of literature. The sense and ‘feeling of place’ evoked by place names in literary texts relate to their associative meanings, defined by the information, images, and, importantly, the associations surrounding toponyms (Reference Ameel and AinialaAmeel & Ainiala, 2018). In turn, these meanings help the audience to make sense of the story’s narrative both rationally, by placing the location within a network of complex relationships, and ‘corporeally’, by triggering sensory experiences, especially if there are counterparts in the real world (Reference Ameel and AinialaAmeel & Ainiala, 2018). Moreover, toponyms build up, by themselves, a narrative strategy that identify meta-poetical relations within the text or place a character within a social or moral epistemology. In some cases, the act of narration in folklores and ballads, which can naturally be considered literary genres, precedes the act of naming a place. This is where place names crystallise the narrative and act as a ‘shorthand’ of the story. A narrative of truth becomes synonymous with the toponym. As Reference NicolaisenNicolaisen (1984, pp. 266–7) noted:

The narrative potential of literary toponyms is concomitant with how toponyms, as demonstrated throughout this book, tell stories about cultures and civilisations and, particularly for Indigenous communities, are part of the everyday narrative and discourse that are passed from generation to generation, forming a mental map of the characteristics of the landscape and facilitating communication about the place names and the ‘hidden landscape’ attached to the places they name (Reference Cogos, Roué and RoturierCogos et al., 2017, p. 46). Likewise, maps tell stories. A particularly useful quote on the narratives and stories that map tell comes from Kenneth Field, who writes the following.

The storytelling potential of maps can be harnessed to tell and support narratives, particularly in novels and films, in what are known as ‘internal maps’, where, among other functions, they base the story at a specific site (Reference Ryan and HermanRyan, 2003). Maps can also support the narrative process. It is well known that James Joyce wrote Ulysses with Dublin’s map in front of him (Reference BudgenBudgen, 1934). Increasingly, over time, a focus has developed on linking maps with the map making process from which they emerge. This narrative of mapping, particularly in an era where maps are believed to be an ‘unfinished business’, ‘is essential to documenting the mapping genealogy and to tell the story of the map’s life’ (Reference Caquard and CartwrightCaquard & Cartwright, 2014, p. 105). The process of mapping place names, then, builds on the narrative structures that not only tell what a place is, but, through encoding affective, sociopolitical, cultural, historical, and ideological stories, tell of the prevailing (and competing) discourses that come to characterise these places.

10.7 Summary

This chapter explores the relationship between cartography and toponymy. Toponyms on the map not only have a locational function, whereby they give geographical and topographic meaning to map symbols and help the user to better navigate the environment using a map, but they also have an affective role and bring about certain emotions when people familiar with specific places look at the map that records them. More importantly, place names allow us to study the sociopolitical, cultural, and ideological functions of maps – both in ancient times and in more recent years, and even now that mapping technologies have undergone significant changes in the GIS age. For example, an analysis of place names and their representations on the maps show the cultural division that existed between the West and the Middle East during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. On the sociopolitical and ideological front, the survey of historical literature and documents reveals that ruling bodies (particularly colonisers) use maps to impose political control and enforce the superiority of their worldviews, often at the expense of Indigenous cultures, languages, knowledge, and toponyms. Maps confirm this power differential and portray the historical events through their representations of places and place naming. Furthermore, literary place names, like Ultima Thule and Cockaigne, mapped and at the same time unmapped, also reveal certain traits of human nature, such as the propensity for travel and exploration and the desire for beauty and earthly pleasures. While most people think that the map is innocent and neutral, especially the study of the toponyms on the map, which is just one of the many ways of approaching cartographic documents, the reality is that maps, like toponyms, are ‘political’ and ultimately ‘human products’, and hence they are ‘an abstraction of reality’ according to the mapper and reflect their political and ideological goals, but they are ‘not reality itself’ (Reference Taylor and TaylorTaylor, 1991, p. 2).