Minutes of the 18th Meeting of the Baltic Division of United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN)

Saint Petersburg, 23 – 25 August 2016

Русская версия

  1. The 18th Meeting of the Baltic Division of United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) took place on 23 – 25 August 2016 in Saint Petersburg (Russia), at the invitation of the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography and was organized in cooperation with the Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences.
  2. Experts from the following member countries took part in the meeting: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Estonia, an expert from the observing country – Republic of Belarus.
    Full list of participants is given in Annex 1.
  3. Participants of the meeting discussed and adopted the agenda of the 18th meeting of the Baltic Division (Annex 2).
  4. The participants of the meeting exchanged information on the status of work on national standardization of geographical names carried out in the countries; national bodies on the standardization of geographical names and the legislation in the field of naming of geographical objects; the status and development perspectives of national toponymic databases of cadasters, registers etc.; perspectives of national toponymy development; detection peculiar properties and registration of undersea features; the standardization of the names of natural objects; geographical names in the light of the reform of local governments; problems of transferring Cyrillic geographical names in Latin alphabet; Status of UN romanization systems for geographical names.
    17 reports were presented and discussed.
  5. An exhibition was organized, that consisted of published in the participating countries of the meeting toponymic dictionaries and other publications on geographical names, as well as cartographic works.
  6. The participants discussed issues of preparation for participation in the 30th session of the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names and the 11th UN Conference on the standardization of geographical names (New York, August 2017).
    Information for the preparation of the report of the Baltic Division to the 30th session of UNGEGN is expected by the Chair of the Baltic Division until 15 April 2017.
  7. The participants of the meeting discussed the issue of holding the next meeting of the Baltic Division. The participants put forward a proposal to host the 19th meeting of the Baltic Division in the first half of 2018 in Lithuania.
  8. It was recommended to publish materials and other documents of the 18th meeting of the Baltic Division on the website of the Division (http://eki.ee/knn/ungegn/index.htm; http://eki.ee/knn/ungegn/bd_ru.htm).
  9. Representatives of participating countries expressed desire for further cooperation and contacts.
  10. Representatives of participating countries expressed appreciation and gratitude to the organizers of the 18th meeting of the Baltic Division.

Marina Morozova,
Chair of the Baltic Division