Conference on Literary, polar and extraterrestrial place names

Venue: Rome, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei – November 23rd-24th 2023

The conference has been planned to set up in three distinct sessions.

The major themes to be develop are as follow:

(i) Place names in all ancient, medieval and modern literature

(ii) The names of polar lands enclosed those given by explorers

(iii) The names given to places of Moon and Mars in historical times and at present.

As for the place names of literature, the examples are very numerous. These are real or fictional place names, as in novel by Andrea Camilleri and by other significant authors of word literature.

As for the polar regions, there are many names related to expeditions and explorers of the Arctic and Antarctica, or place names inhabited by Aboriginal communities, such as the Inuit. As regards the Antarctica we can refer to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (Scar). The Scar Open Science Conference 2022 will be held online from 1-10 August 2022 .

As for extraterrestrial celestial bodies, we can refer above all to the Moon but also to Mars, where the place names are numerous.

On the Moon we can refer, for example, to the works by Giovanni Domenico Cassini and by others who presented interesting Lunar maps. The Lunar Astronautical Charts at scale of 1:1.000.000, published by the Defense Mapping Agency in 1973 and available online from Lunar and Planetary Institute. We can also refer also to the interesting paper by Casimir Borkowski, entytled Syntax and Semantics of Lunese I, a Microlanguage for Labeling Topographical Features of the Lunar Surface in “Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences”, Vienna, 1969).

There are many celestial atlases, such as that of John Flamseed (1776), which are also worth studying by us geographers.

We intend to involve the UNGEGN (United Nations on Geographical Names and Icos (International Council of Onomastic Science), due to affinity of some of the topics dealt with.

Organizing Committee

Roberto Antonelli
Piero Boitani
Mario Capaldo
Paolo Fedeli
Mario Mazza
Giorgio Parisi
Giuseppe Ricuperati

Experts on each field of research

Piero Boitani
Mario Capaldo
Paolo Fedeli
Marco Tavani

Scientific Committee

Choo, Sungjae (Republic of Korea)
Ferland, Yaïves (Canada)
Jordan, Peter (Austria, ICA co-chair)
Menezes, Paulo de (Brazil, Common IGU/ICA vice-chair)
Ormeling, Ferjan (Netherlands)
Palagiano, Cosimo (Italy, IGU co-chair)
Raper, Peter (South Africa)
Watanabe, Kohei (Japan)

Conference speakers and coordinators of the sections will be indicated in time.
Any expression of interest will be considered for a possible invitation.
Please contact: cosimo.palagiano@uniroma1.it