Vol.41-4 ABSTRACT

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Abstract

The United Nations Conference on Standardization of Geographical Names was established in 1967 in order to standardize geographical names internationally.
The Fourth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names recommended in resolution No.4, that countries should be encouraged to publish and keep up-to-date toponymic guidelines for map and other editors. As it enables cartographers of other countries to treat correctly all problems of cartographic toponymy of the countries that produced such guidelines, while also helping users to interpret maps.
Japan submitted "Toponymic Guidelines for Map and Other Editors : JAPAN" to the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names which was held in Montreal in 1987. However, this proposal did not adequately cover the items recommended by resolution No.4. This conference concluded by recommending that Toponymic Guidelines for Map and Other Editors be revised. The following conference, the Sixth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, held in 1992 in New York, recommended that toponymic guidelines be issued in combined volumes, in at least one of the working languages of the United Nations.
Under these conditions, the 1987 toponymic guidelines were reedited and the new "Toponymic Guidelines for Map and Other Editors : JAPAN (Second Edition)" was submitted to the Seventeenth Session of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names held at the United Nations headquarters in New York in 1994.
The main reedited points are:
-In the item of Japanese ; the international phonetic alphabet is added to the table of "the transliteration of Japanese Kana syllabaries into the Roman alphabet"
-More attention is directed to the understanding of Japanese geographical names through romanization of the Japanese geographical names.
-Domestic organizations and methods for standardizing geographical names are newly added.
The "Toponymic Guidelines for Map and Other Editors : JAPAN (Second Edition)" is prepared in cooperation with the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Hydrographic Department of the Maritime Safety Agency, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Concerning the transliteration of Japanese Kana syllabaries into the Roman alphabet, two ways, regulated in the Cabinet Notification ; the Kunrei Siki and the Syusei Hebon Siki are described.