A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary, an important reference for information about places and place-names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with an atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social statistics and physical features, such as mountains, waterways, or roads. Examples of information you would find include the location of places, dimensions of physical features, population, GDP, literacy rate, etc. Toponomy is the study of place-names. ... For other uses, see Atlas (disambiguation). ... Physical map of the Earth (Medium) (Large 2 MB) Geography is the scientific study of the locational and spatial variation in both physical and human phenomena on Earth. ... In political geography and international politics a country is a geographical entity, a territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation. ... Look up Region in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Animated, colour-coded map showing the various continents. ... Social statistics is the use of statistical measurement systems to study human behavior in a social environment. ... Mount Cook, a mountain in New Zealand A mountain is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain in a limited area. ... This page is related to transport; you may be looking for the 2002 Bollywood movie Road. ... World literacy rates by country The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ...

Gazetteers are often categorized by the type, and scope, of the information presented. World gazetteers usually consist of an alphabetical listing of countries, with pertinent statistics for each one, with some gazetteers listing information on individual cities, towns, villages, and other settlements of varying sizes. Short-form gazetteers, often used in conjunction with computer mapping and GIS systems, may simply contain a list of place-names together with their locations in latitude and longitude or other spatial referencing systems (eg. British National Grid reference). Short-form gazetteers appear as a place-name index in the rear of major published atlases. Descriptive gazetteers may include lengthy textual descriptions of the places they contain, including explanation of industries, government, geography, together with historical perspectives, maps and / or photographs. Thematic gazetteers list places or geographical features by theme; for example fishing ports, nuclear power stations, or historic buildings. Their common element is that the geographical location is an important attribute of the features listed. A graph of a Normal bell curve showing statistics used in educational assessment and comparing various grading methods. ... A city is an urban area, differentiated from a town, village, or hamlet by size, population density, importance, or legal status. ... A street in Ynysybwl, Wales, relatively stereotypical of a small town A town is usually an urban area which is not considered to rank as a city. ... A village is a human settlement commonly found in rural areas. ... Ronda, Spain Main street in Bastrop, Texas, a small town A town is a community of people ranging from a few hundred to several thousands, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas. ... A geographic information system (GIS) is a system for capturing, storing, analyzing and managing data and associated attributes which are spatially referenced to the earth. ... Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi, , gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator. ... Longitude, sometimes denoted by the Greek letter λ (lambda),[1][2] describes the location of a place on Earth east or west of a north-south line called the Prime Meridian. ... Spatial referencing systems are coordinate-based local, regional or global systems used to locate geographical entities. ... The British national grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references commonly used in Great Britain, different from using latitude or longitude. ... A nuclear power station. ...

Gazetteer editors gather facts and other information from official government reports, the census, chambers of commerce, together with numerous other sources, and organise these in digest form. 1870 US Census for New York City A census is the process of obtaining information about every member of a population (not necessarily a human population). ... Chambers of commerce are business advocacy groups which are usually not associated with government. ... Digestion is the process whereby a biological entity processes a substance, in order to chemically convert the substance into nutrients. ...

History

Gazetteers became popular in Britain in the 19th Century, with publishers such as Fullarton, Mackenzie, Chambers and W & A.K. Johnston, many of whom were Scottish, meeting public demand for information on an expanding Empire. This British tradition continues in the electronic age with innovations such as the National Land and Property Gazetteer, the text-based Gazetteer for Scotland, and The Definitive National Address Gazetteer for Scotland known as DNA-Scotland (DNAS). Motto (Latin) No one provokes me with impunity Cha togar mfhearg gun dioladh (Scottish Gaelic)1 Wha daur meddle wi me?(Scots)1 Anthem (Multiple unofficial anthems) Scotlands location in Europe Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow Official languages English, Gaelic, Scots Government Constitutional monarchy  -  Queen Queen Elizabeth II... The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in the United Kingdom to provide a definitive and consistent address - see address (geography) - infrastructure for the whole of the UK. Up until recently the UK has not held a singular list of all addresses in the country, meaning that... The Gazetteer for Scotland is a geographical encyclopaedia covering the villages, towns, place, people and families of Scotland. ...

Gazetteers can be found in reference sections of most libraries as well as on the Web. Alternative meanings: Library (computer science), Library (biology) Modern-style library In its traditional sense, a library is a collection of books and periodicals. ...

List of gazetteers

Worldwide

Examples of electronic world gazetteers can be found at:

• NGA GEOnet Names Server
  • the GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names' (US BGN) database of foreign geographic feature names.

• The World Gazetteer
  • for a given city it gives the country, province, population, coordinates, population rank among all towns within the country
  • for each country it gives a map and table of provinces with area and population, a map of cities, an alphabetical table of cities, and a table of top cities - tables can be sorted by a column of choice
  • for each province it gives an alphabetical table of cities.

• Falling Rain Global Gazetteer
  • Contains 2,900,000 towns outside the US. For a given country and town it gives coordinates, altitude, weather forecast, and a map showing the position of the town with respect to topography and borders and bodies of water (not with respect to other towns); it also lists towns which are very nearby, within 3 km, with direction.

• ESRI World Gazetteer
  • for a given city it gives a map showing the position of the town with respect to some other cities, borders and bodies of water.

• GeoNames.org
  • global gazetteer with over 6.5 million toponyms
  • free download and wide range of web services

• The Alexandria Digital Library at UCSB
  • http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/
  • http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/clients/gazetteer/
    • allows searching for any or a specified type of geographical feature within a rectangular area or the whole world, with a name equal to or containing the search term; returns coordinates, country and province with a small scale map.

• The Getty Thesaurus of Geographical names
  • http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/
  • Similar to the previous one, except that not a rectangular area but a country can be specified, and that no map is produced.

• EarthSearch
  • http://www.earthsearch.net/
  • Similar to the previous two, dictionary search, returns coordinates, satellite image and CIA World factbook country map.

• The Fuzzy Gazetteer (European Commission/JRC Digital Map Archive)
  • http://tomcat-dmaweb1.jrc.it/fuzzyg/query/
  • Searches for place names world-wide and can handle variations in spelling, thereby making the searches more robust.

• The CIA World Factbook
  • https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
  • Compiled by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this reference includes country-level data on all countries recognized by the United States. The World Fact Book gives information for each country on geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues. Cross check with other references as this work contains numerous errors.

• http://www.statoids.com/statoids.html - Hierarchical administrative subdivision (HASC) codes

• Flags of the World, also of subnational entities, with some additional info

Antarctica

• SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica
• Bulgarian Antarctic Gazetteer
• USGS Geographic Names Information System: Antarctica
• British Antarctic Territory Gazetteer
• Australian Antarctic Data Centre: Antarctic Gazetteer

Asia

• Karnataka Gazetteer
• East Himalayan Gazetteer
  • Compiled by Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, UK. An online gazetteer of 5,000 plant collecting localities in East Nepal, Sikkim, Darjeeling District, Bhutan and the Chumbi Valley (Tibet).

Australia

• Gazetteer of Australia
  • Content from the Committee for Geographic Names in Australasia
  • Hosted by Geoscience Australia

Canada

• Gazetteers of Canada (English-language)
  • http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/search/advanced_findaplace_search_form?show=link
  • http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/index_e.php
  • Columbia Gazetteer of North America - Canada from AllRefer.com
  • Nova Scotia Gazetter

New Zealand

• Index to Geographical Place Names & Street Names, hosted by Land Information New Zealand

United Kingdom

• National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG)
• The Gazetteer for Scotland
  • Maintained by the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
• The Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland by Francis Groome (three editions, 1884, 1892 and 1901); earliest edition appears within The Gazetteer for Scotland
• Gazetteer of Scotland by Rev J.M. Wilson (mid-19th C.)
• Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales by J.H.F. Brabner (19th C.)

The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) is an initiative in the United Kingdom to provide a definitive and consistent address - see address (geography) - infrastructure for the whole of the UK. Up until recently the UK has not held a singular list of all addresses in the country, meaning that... The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582,[4] is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... The Royal Scottish Geographical Society is a learned society in Scotland, founded in 1884. ...

United States

• HomeTownLocator Gazetteer - US physical and cultural features, Census 2000 data
  • http://Gazetteer.HomeTownLocator.com/
• The U.S. Gazetteer (1990 Census)
  • http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer
• American FactFinder
  • American FactFinder
  • American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Data and Links
  • Censo 2000 Puerto Rico
• Columbia Gazetteer of North America - United States from AllRefer.com
• A Gazetteer of Texas, published 1902, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
• A Gazetteer of Texas, by Henry Gannett, published 1904, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
• Gazetteer of the State of New York
  • by Horatio Gates Spafford, A. M., published by H. C. Southwick, Albany, N.Y. 1813
  • by J. H. French, published by R. Pearsall Smith, Syracuse, N.Y. 1860

Year 1813 (MDCCCXIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar). ... 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. ...

Thematic Gazetteers

• Catalogue of Caravanserais/Khans
  • A catalogue of georeferenced caravanserais/khans and other built facilities (bedestans/qaysariyyas, bridges, forts, lighthouses/beacons, markets/bazaars, hospices, etc.) associated with long-distance trade routes across Eurasia.
• ShtetlSeeker and Town Locator search engine of the JewishGen website, based on Where Once We Walked and using the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system for approximate spellings of place names
  • Searchable catalogue of Jewish-populated locales in 19th – mid-20th century Central and Eastern Europe; features hotlinked map coordinates.

A caravanserai (also spelt caravansarai, caravansary Persian كاروانسرا, Turkish: kervansaray), means home or shelter for caravans (caravan meaning a group or convoy of soldiers, traders or pilgrims engaged in long distance travel). ... A Bedestan, in the most basic definition, is the central building of the commercial part of the town. ... A trade route is a commonly used path of travel for those (e. ... Where Once We Walked (full title: Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in The Holocaust), compiled by noted genealogist Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, is a gazetteer of 37,000 town names in Central and Eastern Europe focusing on those with Jewish populations in... Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex was invented in 1985 by Randy Daitch and Gary Mokotoff of the Jewish Genealogical Society. ... The word Jew (Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or a member of the Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999... Central Europe The Alpine Countries and the Visegrád Group (Political map, 2004) Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. ... Map of Eastern Europe Pre-1989 division between the West (grey) and Eastern Bloc (orange) superimposed on current national boundaries: Russia (dark orange), other countries of the former USSR (medium orange),members of the Warsaw pact (light orange), and other former Communist regimes not aligned with Moscow (lightest orange). ...

See also

• List of United Kingdom locations