Suchergebnisse

This work discusses Slovenian geographical names: endonyms in Slovenia and in border areas inhabited by Slovenians in neighboring countries, and Slovenian exonyms used in Slovenian to describe geographical features outside the Slovenian settlement area. First, it gives a historical overview of dealing with geographical names in Slovenia and especially emphasizes their scholarly and cartographic significance. Then it presents macrotoponyms and microtoponyms, especially geographical names in Slovenian normative guides, names of countries, and foreign exonyms for Slovenian endonyms. All of this is connected with the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) and the Slovenian Government Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names. The former body handles geographical names globally and the latter nationally.

The geographic literature made an important contribution to the development of national consciousness among Slovenes in the 19thcentury, as well as to the reinforcement of Slovene identity after Slovenia's independence in 1991. A typical example of this kind of geographic publication is Atlant, the first atlas of the world in the Slovene language, which was published in installments from 1869 to 1877. Atlant followed the concept of a Unified Slovenia, and this idea boosted the confidence of Slovenes, the bulk of whom were incorporated into Austria-Hungary as they entered the stage of European politics as a nation for the first time. With the publication of Atlant, a number of geographical names were trans-lated into Slovene or Slovenized for the first time. The geographic, linguistic, and political conditions in which Slovenes lived, as well as the relations at the time between Slovene, German, and Slavic languages, are reflect-ed in the way foreign place names were adapted. The reprinting of Atlant in 2005 is also associated with a critical period in history, since it was published after the independence of Slovenia and its inclusion in the European Union, a time when the young state has been seeking its identity among all the world's nations.