Hello Maps-L-ers,
I am forwarding below the text of a reference question on which I request your assistance. I have been unable to find a specific resource listing authoritative English language spellings for subnational administrative unit names of Uzbekistan (as a starting point – I believe other nations in that same region are of interest to the questioner), although I have identified a number of entities which might be working on this – sadly links from their websites yield nothing relevant to subnational names in Uzbekistan.
o UN Group of Experts on Geographic Names
o UN Second Administrative Level Boundaries
o Uzbekistan government website – the English translation of the site lists regional names but how authoritative is that spelling? Where is it even coming from? A translation bot? A website author?
https://www.gov.uz/en/organizations/kind/local o The State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Land Resources, Geodesy, Cartography and State Cadastre
My search in Worldcat (Uzbekistan AND gazetteer; “geographic names” AND Uzbekistan) shows only one item published after 1990 and I suspect the gazetteer included in the DK Geography of the World is less detailed than desired (see subject heading “Juvenile literature” attached to this title).
~~~~ The original question ~~~~~~
I am writing to ask for your input on where to find a definitive guide to the English names of administrative districts in other countries. The names of foreign countries are generally standardized and accepted. Sometimes even the first level divisions, but beyond that it becomes more challenging. It seems the EU has tackled this with their NUTS system, but we are interested in the 'stan countries.
For example, the Qashqadaryo region in Uzbekistan is also spelled Kashkadaryo, Kashkadarya and Kashka−Darya. I have looked at Geonames, Columbia Gazetteer of the World, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographical Names Online. Uzbekistan has been challenging because they are abandoning Cyrillic and switching to Latin script.
Do you have any suggestions for a source that is generally accepted internationally and can give us these names in English? We have a team of translators working on a project and need to keep our naming consistent. Our audience is the international community and we have settled on UK English.
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Your suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you!!
Anne
Anne Zald
Instruction & Curriculum Support
Subjects: Government Information, Social Sciences Data, Regulatory Compliance, Economics (interim)
Northwestern University Libraries
Adjunct Faculty, iSchool at Syracuse University
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