Standing Committee on Geographical Names

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The Standing Committee for Geographical Names ( StAGN ) is an expert body responsible for the standardization of geographical names in the German-speaking area. It is an independent scientific body with no sovereign functions based in Frankfurt am Main .

Tasks and way of working

The central tasks of the Standing Committee on Geographical Names are the recommendation, promotion and development of rules for the uniform use of geographical names. These agendas were laid down in 1975 in rules of procedure that were updated in 2010. The aim of the activities of the StAGN is to standardize the official and private use of geographic names in the German-speaking area by issuing appropriate recommendations and guidelines. These are represented by the StAGN at home and abroad and in international committees. To this end, he participates in geographical name registers, which are to follow the recommendations and resolutions of the United Nations for the standardization of geographical names. The publications developed by the StAGN and published on its homepage include: B. at regular intervals revised lists and recommendations of the endonyms and German exonyms of foreign state names used in the German-speaking area .

The office of the Standing Committee for Geographical Names is located at the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) in Frankfurt am Main. This federal agency is by its nature most concerned with geographical names. The six-monthly meetings of the committee sometimes take place there. Its permanent, temporary and corresponding members are determined by election and work on a voluntary basis.

composition

The Standing Committee for Geographical Names is made up of representatives of various institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany and other countries in which the German language has an official status that deal with geographical names :

history

In 1952 a working group for naming and spelling of names of the German Society for Cartography (DGfK) at the Institute for Regional Studies in Bad Godesberg was founded . After 1959, the Expert Group of the United Nations on Geographical Names (United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names - UNGEGN) had been constituted, was supported by the Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Standing Committee on the spelling of geographical names launched, who had his office at the Institute for Regional Studies . This was renamed the Standing Committee on Geographical Names (StAGN) in 1965 . In 1973 the office of the StAGN changed from what was now the Federal Research Center for Regional Studies and Regional Planning ( Bonn-Bad Godesberg ) to the Institute for Applied Geodesy (IfAG), the forerunner of the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) in Frankfurt am Main.

In 1996 the 100th meeting of the StAGN was celebrated with an international symposium on geographical names in Vienna . Its second edition took place under the title GeoNames 2000 in 2000 in Frankfurt am Main. In the following year the StAGN organized the international workshop GeoNames 2001 in Berchtesgaden . A year later, the StAGN played a key role in organizing the 8th United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names in Berlin . The 50th anniversary of the StAGN was celebrated in 2009 with a festive event at the Polish Institute in Leipzig . In 2014 the first joint meeting of the Commissions for Geographical Names of Poland and the StAGN took place in Görlitz Town Hall .

StAGN chair:

  • 1959–1976 Emil Meynen
  • 1976–1982 Josef Breu (at the same time chairman of UNGEGN)
  • 1982–1991 Herbert Liedtke
  • 1991–1994 Karl August Seel
  • 1994–2009 Jörn Sievers (at the same time deputy chairman of UNGEGN)
  • since 2009 Helge Paulig

StAGN publications (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.stagn.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/StAGN_Publikationen/150306_Neu_Geschaeftsordnung.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=4
  2. ↑ http://www.stagn.de/DE/1_Der_StAGN/derstagn_node.html
  3. ^ Sievers, J. (Ed.): Second International Symposium on Geographical Names "GeoNames 2000" Frankfurt am Main, March 28-30, 2000. Frankfurt am Main 2000 (= communications from the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy, 19)
  4. ↑ http://www.stagn.de/DE/1_Der_StAGN/Historie/historie_node.html