Place Naming, Identities and Geography

“I don’t know if we have ever encountered a more globally and conceptually wide-ranging examination of the naming of land and sea than Gerry O’Reilly’s edited volume. Place Naming, Identities, and Geography will be important for anyone coming to terms with society’s ongoing “naming turn.” As part of this turn, academics, activists, policy-makers, and capitalists alike increasingly realize that toponyms are deeply connected to the human social and spatial condition and lie at the center of so many political changes, heritage campaigns, and development projects. O’Reilly and his contributors abandon the comfort of a traditional uniform interpretation of place naming to amplify the many, conflicting voices and experiences flowing through namescapes—highlighting the different ways people use and map toponyms as data, regulate and standardize them as navigation systems, connect and fight over them as cultural symbols, and fashion them into neoliberal place brands. No doubt, PlaceNaming, Identities, and Geography will soon become essential reading for emerging and established scholars in toponymy while also informing geographic thought more broadly.” (Derek H. Alderman, University of Tennessee, USA — Co-Editor, The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place)