Editing Gazetteer (section)

===Western world===

====Hellenistic and Greco-Roman eras====
[[File:PtolemyWorldMap.jpg|thumb|right|A 15th-century manuscript copy of the [[Ptolemy world map]], reconstituted from Ptolemy's ''Geographia'' ({{circa|150}}), indicating the countries of "[[Serica]]" and "Sinae" ([[China]]) at the extreme right, beyond the island of "Taprobane" ([[Sri Lanka]], oversized) and the "Aurea Chersonesus" ([[Malay Peninsula]]).]]
[[File:London - John Norden's map of 1593.jpg|thumb|[[John Norden]]'s map of [[London]] published in 1593]]
[[File:Bedford - John Speed's map (1611).jpg|thumb|right|[[John Speed]]'s map of "[[Bedford]]e", from his ''Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine'', published in 1611]]
[[File:Brit IndianEmpireReligions3.jpg|thumb|right|"[[Religion in India|Prevailing Religions]] of the [[British Raj|British Indian Empire]]", from the [[The Imperial Gazetteer of India|Imperial Gazetteer of India]], [[Oxford University Press]], 1909]]
[[File:North America 1797 - U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1909.jpg|thumb|right|American geographer [[Jedidiah Morse]]'s "A New Map of North America Shewing all the New Discoveries" from his gazetteer of 1797]]
In his journal article "Alexander and the Ganges" (1923), the 20th-century historian [[William Woodthorpe Tarn|W.W. Tarn]] calls a list and description of [[satrap]]ies of [[Alexander the Great|Alexander's Empire]] written between 324 and 323 BC as an ancient gazetteer.<ref name="tarn 93 94">Tarn, 93–94.</ref> Tarn notes that the document is dated no later than June 323&nbsp;BC, since it features [[Partition of Babylon|Babylon as not yet partitioned]] by Alexander's generals.<ref name="tarn 94">Tarn, 94.</ref> It was revised by the Greek historian [[Diodorus Siculus]] in the 1st century BC.<ref name="tarn 94"/> In the 1st century BC, [[Dionysius of Halicarnassus]] mentioned the [[chronicle]]-type format of the writing of the [[Logographer (history)|logographers]] in the age before the founder of the Greek historiographic tradition, [[Herodotus]] (i.e.,&nbsp;before the 480s&nbsp;BC), saying "they did not write connected accounts but instead broke them up according to peoples and cities, treating each separately".<ref name="brown 1954 837">Brown (1954), 837.</ref> Historian [[Truesdell Sparhawk Brown|Truesdell S. Brown]] asserts that what Dionysius describes in this quote about the logographers should be categorized not as a true "history" but rather as a gazetteer.<ref name="brown 1954 837"/> While discussing the Greek conception of the [[river delta]] in ancient Greek literature, Francis Celoria notes that both [[Ptolemy]] and [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] of the 2nd century AD provided gazetteer information on geographical terms.<ref name="celoria 387">Celoria, 387.</ref>

Perhaps predating Greek gazetteers were those made in [[ancient Egypt]]. Although she does not specifically label the document as a gazetteer, [[Penelope Wilson]] (Department of Archaeology, [[Durham University]]) describes an ancient Egyptian [[papyrus]] found at the site of [[Tanis, Egypt]] (a city founded during the [[Twentieth dynasty of Egypt]]), which provides the following for each [[Nome (Egypt)|administrative area of Egypt]] at the time:<ref name="wilson 2003 98">Wilson (2003), 98.</ref>

<blockquote>...the name of a nome capital, its sacred barque, its sacred tree, its cemetery, the date of its festival, the names of forbidden objects, the local god, land, and lake of the city. This interesting codification of data, probably made by a priest, is paralleled by very similar editions of data on the temple walls at Edfu, for example.<ref name="wilson 2003 98"/></blockquote>

====Medieval and early modern eras====
The ''[[Domesday Book]]'' initiated by [[William&nbsp;I of England]] in 1086 was a government survey on all the administrative counties of England; it was used to assess the properties of farmsteads and landholders in order to tax them sufficiently. In the survey, numerous English [[castle]]s were listed; scholars debate on exactly how many were actually referenced in the book.<ref name="harfield 372">Harfield, 372.</ref> However, the ''Domesday Book'' does detail the fact that out of 3,558 registered houses destroyed in 112 different boroughs listed, 410 of these destroyed houses were the direct result of castle construction and expansion.<ref name="harfield 373 374">Harfield, 373–374.</ref> In 1316 the [[Nomina Villarum]] survey was initiated by [[Edward II of England]]; it was essentially a list of all the administrative subdivisions throughout England which could be utilized by the state in order to assess how much military troops could be conscripted and summoned from each region.<ref name="ravenhill 425">Ravenhill, 425.</ref> The ''[[Speculum Britanniae]]'' (1596) of the [[Tudor dynasty|Tudor era]] English cartographer and topographer [[John Norden]] (1548–1625) had an alphabetical list of places throughout England with headings showing their [[Hundred (country subdivision)|administrative hundreds]] and referenced to attached maps.<ref name="ravenhill 424">Ravenhill, 424.</ref> Englishman [[John Speed]]'s ''Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine'' published in 1611 provided gazetteers for counties throughout England, which included illustrative maps, short local histories, a list of administrative hundreds, an index of [[parish]]es, and the coordinates of [[longitude]] and [[latitude]] for county towns.<ref name="ravenhill 426">Ravenhill, 426.</ref> Starting in 1662, the Hearth Tax Returns with attached maps of local areas were compiled by individual parishes throughout England while a duplicate of their records were sent to the central government offices of the [[Exchequer]].<ref name="ravenhill 425"/> To supplement his "new large Map of England" from 1677, the English cartographer [[John Adams (cartographer)|John Adams]] compiled the extensive gazetteer "Index Villaris" in 1680 that had some 24,000 places listed with geographical coordinates coinciding with the map.<ref name="ravenhill 424"/> The "Geographical Dictionary" of [[Edmund Bohun]] was published in [[London]] in 1688, comprising 806 pages with some 8,500 entries.<ref name="white 657">White, 657.</ref> In his work, Edmund Bohun attributed the first known Western geographical dictionary to geographer [[Stephanus of Byzantium]] (fl. 6th century) while also noting influence in his work from the ''Thesaurus Geographicus'' (1587) by the [[Belgium|Belgian]] cartographer [[Abraham Ortelius]] (1527–1598), but stated that Ortelius' work dealt largely with ancient geography and not up-to-date information.<ref name="white 657"/> Only fragments of Stephanus' geographical work ''Ethnica'' (Εθνικά) have survived and were first examined by the Italian printer [[Aldus Manutius]] in his work of 1502.

The Italian monk [[Filippo Ferrari|Phillippus Ferrarius]] (d.&nbsp;1626) published his geographical dictionary "Epitome Geographicus in Quattuor Libros Divisum" in the Swiss city of [[Zürich]] in 1605.<ref name="white 656">White, 656.</ref> He divided this work into overhead topics of cities, rivers, mountains, and lakes and swamps.<ref name="white 656"/> All placenames, given in [[Latin]], were arranged in alphabetical order for each overhead division by geographic type;.<ref name="white 656"/> A year after his death, his "Lexicon Geographicum" was published, which contained more than 9,000 different entries for geographic places.<ref name="white 656"/> This was an improvement over Ortelius' work, since it included modern placenames and places discovered since the time of Ortelius.<ref name="white 656"/>

[[Pierre Duval (geographer)|Pierre Duval]] (1618–1683), a nephew of the French cartographer [[Nicolas Sanson]], wrote various geographical dictionaries. These include a dictionary on the [[abbey]]s of France, a dictionary on ancient sites of the [[Assyria]]ns, [[Persian Empire|Persians]], [[Ancient Greece|Greeks]], and [[Ancient Rome|Romans]] with their modern equivalent names, and a work published in [[Paris]] in 1651 that was both the first universal and [[vernacular]] geographical dictionary of Europe.<ref name="white 657"/> With the gradual expansion of [[Laurence Echard]]'s (d.&nbsp;1730) gazetteer of 1693, it too became a universal geographical dictionary that was translated into [[Spanish language|Spanish]] in 1750, into [[French language|French]] in 1809, and into [[Italian language|Italian]] in 1810.<ref name="white 659">White, 659.</ref>

Following the [[American Revolutionary War]], United States clergyman and historian [[Jeremy Belknap]] and [[United States Postmaster General|Postmaster General]] [[Ebenezer Hazard]] intended to create the first post-revolutionary geographical works and gazetteers, but they were anticipated by the clergyman and geographer [[Jedidiah Morse]] with his ''Geography Made Easy'' in 1784.<ref>Brown (1941), 153–154.</ref> However, Morse was unable to finish the gazetteer in time for his 1784 geography and postponed it.<ref name="brown 1941 189"/> Yet his delay to publish it lasted too long, as it was Joseph Scott in 1795 who published the first post-revolutionary American gazetteer, his ''Gazetteer of the United States''.<ref name="brown 1941 189">Brown (1941), 189.</ref> With the aid of [[Noah Webster]] and Rev. Samuel Austin, Morse finally published his gazetteer ''The American Universal Geography'' in 1797.<ref name="brown 1941 189 190">Brown (1941), 189–190.</ref> However, Morse's gazetteer did not receive distinction by literary critics, as gazetteers were deemed as belonging to a lower literary class.<ref name="brown 1941 190">Brown (1941), 190.</ref> The reviewer of Joseph Scott's 1795 gazetteer commented that it was "little more than medleys of politics, history and miscellaneous remarks on the manners, languages and arts of different nations, arranged in the order in which the territories stand on the map".<ref name="brown 1941 190"/> Nevertheless, in 1802 Morse followed up his original work by co-publishing ''A New Gazetteer of the Eastern Continent'' with Rev. Elijah Parish, the latter of whom Ralph H. Brown asserts did the "lion's share of the work in compiling it".<ref name="brown 1941 194">Brown (1941), 194.</ref>

====Modern era====
Gazetteers became widely popular in [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]] in the 19th century, with publishers such as [[Archibald Fullarton|Fullarton]], [[William Mackenzie (publisher)|Mackenzie]], [[William Chambers (publisher)|Chambers]] and [[Johnston Press#History|W & A.&nbsp;K. Johnston]], many of whom were [[Scotland|Scottish]], meeting public demand for information on an expanding Empire. This British tradition continues in the electronic age with innovations such as the [[National Land and Property Gazetteer]], the text-based [[Gazetteer for Scotland]], and the new (2008) [[National Gazetteer (for Scotland)]], formerly known as the Definitive National Address – Scotland National Gazetteer. In addition to local or regional gazetteers, there have also been comprehensive world gazetteers published; an early example would be the 1912 world gazetteer published by [[Lippincott Williams & Wilkins]].<ref name="aurousseau 66">Aurousseau, 66.</ref> There are also interregional gazetteers with a specific focus, such as the gazetteer of the Swedish atlas "Das Bästas Bilbok" (1969), a road atlas and guide for [[Sweden]], [[Norway]], [[Finland]], and [[Denmark]].<ref name="murphy 113">Murphy, 113.</ref>

The 19th century was also a time that gazetteers became popular in American states. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia were among states with their own versions. Other states appeared in collections, such as ''The New England Gazetteer'' (1839).<ref>Hayward, J. ''The New England Gazetteer''. 9<sup>th</sup> edition. Concord, NH: Boyd & White, 1839</ref> and ''The Western Gazetteer'' (1817).<ref>Brown, S.R. ''The Western Gazetteer; or, Emigrant's directory, containing a geographical description of the western states and territories, viz. the states of Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi: and the territories of Illinois, Missouri, Alabama, Michigan, and North-Western. '' Auburn, NY:  H.C. Southwick. 1817</ref>    New York State, which underwent rapid changes in population and infrastructure (canals; railroads) during the 19th century, saw published at least six substantial gazetteers.<ref>Goodman, W.M. “New York’s Century of Gazetteers: 1800-1899”. ''NewYorkAlmanack'' website. April 24, 2025.  URL: <nowiki>https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2025/04/new-yorks-gazetteers-1800-1899/</nowiki></ref>  The first two (1813 and 1824) were compiled by the writer and inventor [[Horatio Gates Spafford, Sr.|Horatio Gates Spafford]],<ref>Spafford, H.G. ''A Gazetteer of the State of New York ...'' Albany, N.Y.: B. D. Packard, 1824.  Archived and available online at: <nowiki>https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate00spaf/page/30/mode/2up</nowiki>  </ref> father of lawyer and poet [[Horatio Spafford|Horatio Gates Spafford]] (jr.) For John Homer French’s gazetteer (1860), he extensively re-surveyed the entire state, to improve the accuracy of his maps and geographic descriptions.<ref>French, J.H. ''Gazetteer of the State of New York ...'' Syracuse, N.Y.: R.P. Smith, 1860.  Archived and available online at: <nowiki>https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate04fren/page/n11/mode/2up</nowiki></ref> [[Franklin B. Hough]], a statistician who later gained renown in forestry, published his own gazetteer in 1872.<ref>Hough, F.B. ''Gazetteer of the State of New York ...'' Albany, N.Y.: Andrew Boyd, 1872.  Archived and available online at: <nowiki>https://archive.org/details/gazetteerofstate00houg/</nowiki></ref>