The possibilities of supplementing the National Register Of Geographical Names with forest toponyms placed on military topographic maps from the period 1955-1965

Abstract

The Polish National Register of Geographical Names (PRNG) contains two hundred thousands of toponyms. Many of them describe forested areas or objects associated with silviculture. For several years, PRNG was regularly complemented and thus became the most valuable source of geographic names information on the Polish territory. The military topographic maps of 1:25000 and 1:50000 published in the period 1945-1989 were used as a research material for this paper. The possibilities of using these maps as supplementary material for PRNG with regard to the names of forest areas were analyzed. The search of selected categories of toponyms included 480 sheets of 1:25000 maps and corresponding 120 sheets of 1:50000 maps of the Mazowsze region. It was found that the location of forest toponyms in PRNG and on the studied maps is uneven. The PRNG contains significantly more forest toponyms, but it does not include as much as 60% of names shown on military maps. Moreover, the map of 1:25000 is a better research material, as the names of forest areas on the 1:50000 maps are very generalized.