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The term exonym was first used by the British toponymist Marcel AUROUSSEAU (1957) and – interestingly enough – the term endonym was coined only later (1975), by the Austrian Slavist Otto KRONSTEINER, even though endonym is the basic and primary concept, and endonyms prevail by far in number.

The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), whose main task is the international standardization of geographical names, had already defined these two terms in the first (1984) edition of its Glossary of Terms for the Standardization of Geographical Names. Later and after the establishment of the UNGEGN Working Group on Exonyms in 2002, these definitions were modified three times; most recently in 2007, following intensive discussions in the Working Group. Soon after their implementation, the 2007 definitions were called into question; on the one hand because of problems with their practical application in standardization, and on the other hand because of a perceived lack of comprehensiveness (i.e. that they perhaps do not include all possible eventualities).

So discussions on the definitions continued, latterly conducted for the most part within the annual meetings of the Working Group. The discussions centred mainly on these questions:

Who is the local community defining and “possessing? the endonym? How far does the “territory? of the local community extend? Can the endonym/exonym divide exist within a given language, and is language a necessary criterion for the endonym/exonym divide? Is an official name ipso facto an endonym? With regard to a new migrant community, at what point does its name for a place qualify for endonym status – how large does the community need to be and for how long do they have to have lived in that place?

In addition, a predominantly linguistic concept of the…

Schlagworte

Toponomastik, Goegraphie, Linguistik, Geographische Namen, Toponyme, Exonyme, Endonyme, Standardisierung, Namenverzeichnisse, Kartographie, Onomastik, United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Raumbezogene Identität, Sprachen