Acta geographica Slovenica, 57-1, 2017, 153–159
DOES GOOGLE SERVE AS A MODEL
FOR USING PLACE NAMES?
Gábor Gercsák, Gábor Mikesy
GrácMező instead of Feldkirchen bei Graz.
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Gábor Gercsák, Gábor Mikesy, Does Google serve as a model for using place names?
Does Google serve as a model for using place names?
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3986/AGS.4668
UDC: 91:811.511.141’373.21
811.511.141’373.21:004.738.5
COBISS: 1.01
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the reliability of geographical names published on various internet plat-
forms and seeks to improve the place-name content of internet maps. Hungarian examples of incorrect
place names from various online maps draw attention to the need for cooperation between those that pro-
vide internet maps or map-based applications and relevant national or professional institutions.
KEY WORDS: geographical name, Hungarian name, place name, toponymy, internet, Google
The article was submitted for publication on August 30th, 2016
ADDRESSES:
Gábor Gercsák, Ph.D.
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány P. s. 1/A, H-1117 Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: gercsak@map.elte.hu
Gábor Mikesy, Ph.D.
Institute of Geodesy, Cartography, and Remote Sensing
Bosnyák tér 5, H-1149 Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: mikesy.gabor@fomi.hu
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1 Introduction
Not only have printed maps been losing importance, but several traditional tools that help in correctly under-
standing and interpreting place names on maps, such as names indexes and legends, also seem to be
disappearing from everyday use. In the world of computers, most map users are turning to online meth-
ods or mobile applications when they look for any spatial information. This approach has also become
the primary source of information for places and place names. Unfortunately, automatic and non-critical
acceptance of names from the web is everyday practice; therefore, it is very important that the names avail-
able from these sources be reliable and correct in all aspects, including linguistics, science, and
administration, and that the names be professionally verified.
2 Examples of misused place names
This article presents the most common types of names arranged according to type of mistake. These exam-
ples are mostly taken from Google Maps and Google Earth pages and from applications based on them
accessed from Hungarian IP addresses. These place names demonstrate a lack of critical use of sources or
distortions of names due to various technical reasons. The most common mistakes are missing diacritics,
use of historical names without modern equivalents, use of names never approved, false linking of exonyms,
and automatic translations of place names.
2.1 Missing diacritics
The name of the Hungarian village Kővágószőlős appears in the form Kovágószolos (Figure 1), although
the correct spellings of all town and village names can be accessed freely and without any restriction (e.g.,
from the homepage of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office). It is worth mentioning that no other alpha-
bet uses the letter ő but the Hungarian alphabet.
2.2 Historical names without modern equivalents
The name of the capital city of the Italian region Piedmont is unanimously Torino in Hungarian today.
This form has been used consistently in the press, schoolbooks, and atlases. Only well-educated people
and the older generation with some knowledge of German can match the form Turin (Figure 2) on this
Google Earth map with Torino.
Similarly, a major historical site for Hungarians is Rodostó in Turkey, but Tekirdağ, the Turkish form,
has geographical relevance. There are several similar cases. The Croatian town of Opatija has always been
a popular holiday resort for Hungarians. Its exonym is Abbázia, which obviously exists for Hungarians,
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Figure 1: Kővágószőlős with incorrect diacritics. Meanwhile, this mistake
has already been corrected on the internet (Internet 1).
Figure 2: Turin; the old Hungarian form of Torino. This mistake has already
been corrected on the internet (GoogleEarth, 4. 10. 2013).
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but is passing out of use (this exonym is not listed in the official catalogue of approved place names;
Pokoly 2012). It is interesting to note that some town names that reflect German and Italian influence and
belong to the same name type appear in Hungarian (Zára for Zadar and Zengg for Senj), whereas others
are shown without their historical exonyms (Raguza, Trau, and Spalato) and only the modern Croatian names
appear (Dubrovnik, Trogir, and Split, respectively). These examples demonstrate the inconsistent use of place
names.
Hungarian names used in medieval sources are revitalized in those areas of Romania that were out-
side the territory of historical Hungary (e.g. Karácsonkő for Piatra Neamţ, or Németvásár for Târgu Neamţ;
Figure 3). These forms do not respect the requirement of correct information and they also do not follow
the modern use of these geographical names by the Hungarians living in Romania (Mikesy 2014, 219).
It seems that the use of historical names depends on the country concerned. We found that name forms
that can be considered either exonyms or historical exonyms are less frequently shown, although their appear-
ance would be much more reasonable for Hungarian readers (e.g. Boroszló for Polish Wrocław, Lemberg
for Ukrainian Lviv, Drinápoly for Turkish Edirne, or Spárta for Greek Spárti »Sparta«).
2.3 Names never approved
Newly created Hungarian names have begun to appear on online maps (Hlács 2015). Some of them come
from false etymologies or incorrect associations. Reliable sources indicate that the Moldovan town of Chişinău
never had a Hungarian exonym, although the form Kisjenő (Figure 4) can be seen increasingly frequent-
ly today. This name is based on a false etymology.
However, the historically ethnically Hungarian settlement of Kisjenő in Transylvania has an official
Romanian name, Chişineu, which is indeed spelled almost in the same way as the name of the capital city
of Moldova (Kiss 1987, 230). The Hungarian name comes from the ancient Hungarian tribal name Jenő
and the modifier kis »little«.
Figure 3: Only historical names in Moldavia (Internet 2). Figure 4: Kisjenő in place of Chişinău (Internet 3).
Figure 5: Ónfalva in place of Oneşti/Onyest (Internet 4). Figure 6: Magyarsárvár in place of Uherský Ostroh (Internet 5).
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The Romanian settlement of Oneşti is a place with a considerable number of Hungarian speakers. Its
Hungarian forms Onest and Onyest are justified by old documents. The name Ónfalva (with the meaning
»tin village«) appeared in the first half of the past century, but there are no historical or folk data to con-
firm this name as an exonym (Figure 5). The Hungarian ethnographer Pál Péter Domokos presumed that
the first part of Onest includes ón, the Hungarian word for »tin« (Domokos 1987, 179). The new name
was developed from this explanation. The renowned etymologist Lajos Kiss derived it from the personal
name Ion (Kiss 1988, 746).
The name Magyarsárvár (Figure 6) can be found in place of the Czech settlement Uherský Ostroh.
The Czech word uherský means »Hungarian« and relates either to the nearness of the Hungarian border
or to the fact that the place was controlled by the king of Hungary for a short time at the end of the fif-
teenth century. The use of the Hungarian exonym is justified by nothing else than an association based
on the meaning. There are no traces of any Hungarian population here or in the area that could have pro-
vided the name. The common word ostroh »enclosed place«, »fence« was replaced by Hungarian sárvár
»mud castle« because an early medieval chronicle mentions a place called saruuar (Anonymous c. 1200)
that might have been located there. However, this name had no any relevance in later documents. The new
name is a combination of a vaguely justified anterior constituent and a questionable medieval item.
2.4 False linking of exonyms
Urziceni is an important Romanian place north of Bucharest in Ialomiţa County. Its name on the inter-
net is Csanálos in Hungarian (Figure 7). However, there is a Hungarian village named Csanálos (»nettle
place«) near Carei in the Romanian part of the former Hungarian Szatmár County (Figure 8); its name
was directly translated into Romanian as Urziceni, which is an officially established name. Because the mak-
ers of the electronic map probably had no available sources that would have provided coordinates for the
location of Csanálos, they applied it to both places named Urziceni.
A  similar mistake was made in the case of two Ukrainian settlements, both named Новоселиця
(Novoselytsya). One of them lies in Zakarpattia Oblast, in the area of historical Hungary, and the other in
Chernivtsi Oblast. The former settlement has the Hungarian name Taracújfalu; however, it is not shown
there (Figure 9) but on the other side of the Carpathian Mountains (Figure 10). The Hungarian name of
the place was incorrectly assigned to another place due to their identical forms in Ukrainian.
2.5 Automatic translations?
The question mark in the header of this section indicates that the authors can only guess at the reasons
for the creation of sometimes comic Hungarian names, which absolutely depart from correct Hungarian
place-name practice. These strange names typically appear on the web pages of Austrian and Slovenian
territories. For instance, the Austrian name Leitersdorf im Raabtal near Feldbach was replaced by the name
Rábakarmestere, which means »conductor of the Rába River«; instead of Raabau one finds Rábaakadálymentes,
which roughly means »obstacle-free Rába River« (Figure 11); the name Radkersburg/Gornja Radgona on
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157
Figure 7: Csanálos in place of Urziceni (Internet 6). Figure 8: Csanálos in the correct location (Internet 7).
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Gábor Gercsák, Gábor Mikesy, Does Google serve as a model for using place names?
the Austrian–Slovenian border is translated as Kerékerősítővár (»wheel-strengthening castle«), and the name
Podgrad on the Slovenian side is Keréknekfel (»up on the wheel«) in Hungarian (Figure 12).
Another strange example is the Hungarian exonym Élőbecsület (»living honesty«) for the southern Austrian
settlement of Ehrenhausen (Figure 13). The meaning of certain elements of the original names can be iden-
tified in unjustified Hungarian forms; therefore, it may be presumed that a translation program was active
in the background when the Hungarian names were uploaded, and these names were generated by a com-
puter. In any case, a map with this »Hungarian« place name comes up with the hits for Ehrenhausen.
The major problem here is that the names were not checked at all. When we searched for further infor-
mation on the false names above, it turned out that various applications using computer procedures disseminate
these names; for instance, we were able to find offers for transportation services to the »aforementioned«
places (Internet 13; Internet 14).
158
Figure 9: Only the Ukrainian form for Taracújfalu (Internet 8). Figure 10: Taracújfalu in the incorrect place (Internet 9).
Figure 11: Incorrect names for Raabau and Leitersdorf im Raabtal (Internet 10).
Figure 13: Incorrect name for Ehrenhausen (Internet 12).
Figure 12: Incorrect names for Radkersburg and Gornja Radgona (Internet 11).
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3 Conclusion
It is no exaggeration that, based on the examples discussed above, the birth of false geographic names in
large numbers in popular media represents a considerable linguistic, cultural, informational, and economic
danger, partly because the false names are mixed with relevant data. The authors believe it very impor-
tant that there should be institutional contact between the responsible geographical name authorities and
the developers of online maps. It is advisable to monitor and examine the use of place names on the inter-
net. Geographical name committees and national cartographic services will do the most to disseminate
and popularize correct forms of geographic names if they make increasingly more standardized databas-
es of such names freely available on the internet.
4 References
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Domokos, P. P. 1987: A moldvai magyarság. Budapest.
GoogleEarth (4. 10. 2013).
Hlács, F. 2015: Határon túl is magyarít a  Google Maps. Internet: http://www.hwsw.hu/hirek/53626/
google-maps-terkep-varosnev-magyar-nyelv.html (26. 2. 2015).
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