One of the fourteen gazetteers in Durham's Place-Names of California series is guaranteed to provide addictively entertaining browsing. Great for tourists, travelers, hikers, and campers, for students, writers, genealogists, historians, geographers, and cartographers.Derived from David Durham's definitive gazetteer of California, California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State, this new popularly priced series is certain to attract the attention of every new or longtime resident of California. Each volume of the series contains the complete body of entries listed in California's Geographic Names for the counties covered in that volume.Thousands of geographical features, such as mountains, streams, and canyons are extensively defined, as are cities, towns, and villages. Many entries include information about who named the feature, when and why, and alternate or obsolete names are given. Each entry gives the exact longitude and latitude of the feature -- terrific for,use with GPS devices!Perfect for park and forestry rangers, natural history buffs, real estate offices, and media news desks.

Every populated place, however small, has a name, and every name is chosen for a reason. This fascinating dictionary gives the history, meanings, and origin of an enormous range of country, region, island, city, and town names from across the world, as well as the name in the local language. It also includes key historical facts associated with many place names. Place-names are continually changing. New names are adopted for many different reasons such as invasion, revolution, and decolonization. This dictionary includes selected former names, and, where appropriate, some historical detail to explain the transition. The names of places often offer a real insight into the places themselves, revealing religious and cultural traditions, the migration of peoples, the ebb and flow of armies, the presence of explorers, local languages, industrial developments and topography. Superstition and legend can also play a part. All this fascinating detail is included in the Concise Dictionary of World Place Names. In addition to the entries themselves, the dictionary includes two appendices: a glossary of foreign word elements which appear in place names and their meanings, and a list of personalities and leaders from all over the world who have influenced the naming of places. Containing over 10,000 names, from Aachen to Zyrardów, this is a unique and fascinating guide for geographers, travellers, and all with an interest in current world affairs.

The origin of the names of many English towns, hamlets and villages date as far back as Saxon times, when kings like Alfred the Great established fortified borough towns to defend against the Danes. A number of settlements were established and named by French Normans following the Conquest. Many are even older and are derived from Roman placenames. Some hark back to the Vikings who invaded our shores and established settlements in the eighth and ninth centuries. Most began as simple descriptions of the location; some identified its founder, marked territorial limits, or gave tribal people a sense of their place in the grand scheme of things. Whatever their derivation, placenames are inextricably bound up in our history and they tell us a great deal about the place where we live.

From Abbas Combe to Zennor, this dictionary gives the meaning and origin of place names in the British Isles, tracing their development from earliest times to the present day.