What Is a Gazetteer?
A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names (see: toponomy), used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social statistics and physical features, such as mountains, waterways, or roads.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazetteer
A geographical index or dictionary.
A work of this kind, by L. Echard (ed. 2, 1693), bore the title ‘The Gazetteer's: or, Newsman's Interpreter: Being A Geographical Index’. ‘The Title’, he says, ‘was given me by a very eminent Person, whom I forbear to name’ (Pref. p. 1). In Part II, published in 1704, the author refers to the book as ‘the Gazetteer’ simply (see quot.).
1704 L. Echard Gazetteer's or Newsman's Interpr. II. Pref., The kind Reception the Gazetteer has met with in the World..[has] induced us to go on with a second Part. 1751 (title) England's Gazetteer, and accurate Description of all the Towns, Cities, Villages, &c. 1803 Gazetteer Scotl. Introd. p. xvii, Scotland has five Universities‥of which an account will be found in the Gazetteer. 1853 (title) Dictionary of Geography, forming a complete Gazetteer of the world. 1875 J. R. Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. II. (1876) 137 The ‘Polyolbion’ is nothing less than a versified gazetteer of England and Wales.
From the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989.
Online Gazetteers
- Columbia Gazetteer of the World This link opens in a new window
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Geographical encyclopedia of names, descriptions, and characteristics of places in the world. Entries include: demography; physical geography; political boundaries; industry, trade, and service activities; agriculture; cultural, historical, and archeological points of interest; transportation lines; longitude, latitude, and elevations; distance to relevant places; pronunciations; official local government place-names and changed or variant names and spellings.
- US Board on Geographic NamesPlace names for US and Antarctica. A federal body created in 1890 and established in its present form by public law in 1947 to maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the federal government.
- National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency GeoNET Names ServerOfficial repository of standard spellings of foreign place names, as sanctioned by the US Board on Geographic Names.
How to Find Print Gazetteers
To find Gazetteers in the UCLA Library Collection, search the Library Catalog. Here are some search strategies:
- gazetteers in Subject List
- names, geographic in Subject List
To focus your search, you can add a country or region to the search
- gazetteers france in Subject List
- place names [country] in keywords
- street names [country] in keywords