Orthography is the practice of correct spelling according to established usage. It is a set of conventions for writing a language. A central question for the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in the nineteenth century was whether or not it should, as a geographical authority, set those conventions for the spelling of place names in respect to its publications, or whether authors should be allowed to spell names as they pleased. From almost its inception, the issue of orthography and consistency in spelling of place names was being discussed at the Society. Several different orthographic systems for transliterating foreign place names into English were in use which led to confusion in maps, gazetteers, and other printed geographical works. Inconsistencies in the spelling of place names led to uncertainty and a sense that geography lacked the precision and certainty of other scientific disciplines. The Society decided, therefore, that it was time to tackle the problem of orthography in a systematic way.
A system of orthography prior to 1878
Despite a range of orthographic systems in use when recording place names during the early nineteenth century, the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London generally adopted a system of orthography. The system was for so-called “Eastern” names and was produced by the linguist, geographer, and botanist, George Cecil Renouard. Renouard was one of the founders of the Society and was appointed Foreign and Honorary Secretary of the Society on its foundation in 1830, holding this position until 1846. Renouard’s orthographic system ruled that consonants in place names should be sounded as in English and vowels sounded as in Italian. In a letter from October 1836, Renouard expressed how for his system the “object is the writing rather than the sound,” preferring to reproduce the written word into English, rather than reproducing the sound/pronunciation into English, the way that many other scholars were using [1]. However, not everyone followed Renouard’s system when writing for the Journal, and the Society did not oblige authors to use it.
Not everyone agreed with the use of Renouard’s system in geographical works. In May 1838 the Society’s secretary, John Washington, received a letter from the esteemed author Thomas Best Jervis expressing his profound dismay at the alteration of names in his paper.
"Mr Reynouard or you have so totally disfigured all the names that any one who was acquainted with the real names would smirk at such an appearance of pedantry. I have therefore given back as near to Sir William Jones’ orthography as possible – to meet your wishes, but protest against say alterations of orthography to any paper to which my name is affirmed." [2]
Renouard’s system was not always favoured by authors writing for the journal and it was inconsistently employed, causing confusion and uncertainty over which system of orthography to adopt. In the 1870s, the Society decided that it was time to tackle the problem of orthography in a systematic way.
Addressing the problem of orthography
At the first International Geographical Congress held in Antwerp in 1871, the opening address reviewed the progress of geography over the past two centuries, and the Congress proposed several questions of international importance for nations to consider and find solutions for. One of these questions was the “adoption of a uniform system of orthography for proper names, both in maps and in treatises of geography” [3]. This proposal reflected an emerging consensus amongst learned societies, geographical societies, and various institutions who were having debates on orthography throughout the nineteenth century, arguing that the standardisation of the spelling of geographical place names was an urgent problem.
On 9 December 1878, the Council of the Royal Geographical Society decided that a committee should be appointed to consider adopting a uniform system of orthography. The aim was to standardise how place names were spelled in the Society’s publications. Clements Markham, the Society’s then secretary, initiated the discussion through a memorandum.
Maull and Co., 'Sir Clements R. Markham', n.d., rgs52146, PR/051569(i).
Markham proposed that the Council should decide “whether a uniform system of orthography should be adopted for our publications, or whether authors should be allowed to spell names as they please”. [4]
The Orthography Committee met for the first time in early 1879. The Committee decided that two previously established systems of orthography should be the systems used for the Society’s publications. The Committee was suspended in 1881 with the problem of orthography seemingly solved.
The renewed focus on orthography (1885)
In 1885, the question of orthography was readdressed by Captain William Wharton of the Admiralty. Wharton suggested the formation of a committee tasked with evaluating the orthographic conventions employed on Admiralty charts for Indigenous names in non-Roman character languages. He proposed that this committee assess whether these conventions could also be embraced by the RGS.
Maull & Fox, 'Capt. W. J. L. Wharton', n.d., rgs052415, PR/052415.
In responding to the proposal, the Council agreed that a committee be appointed to address the questions the proposal raised. At a meeting in June 1885, the Orthography Committee recommended that Wharton’s proposal be adopted by the Society.
The solution: a system of orthography
In August 1885, the Society published its System of Orthography for Native Names of Places, intended for the use of English-speaking communities and based on the Admiralty’s rules. The system aimed to provide a set of rules which would solve the confusion around spelling place names in maps, gazetteers, and other printed geographical works.
The system prioritised capturing the principal syllabic sounds with its overarching goal to offer an approximation of the sound. It was believed that attempting to capture all the delicate inflections in a language would make it too complicated and defeat the object of a system that could be used by most.
Circulation and reception of the system
In 1891, then-president, Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff published a circular regarding the Orthography of Geographical Names. Grant Duff conveyed the Council's profound satisfaction at the widespread adoption of the system, surpassing their initial expectations. Since the publication of the system in 1885, the Admiralty and War Office charts and maps had been compiled and revised in accordance with it. The Foreign and Colonial Offices accepted it with the Colonial Office communicating with the Colonies requesting them to use it in respect to names of native origin. Across the Atlantic, the Government of the United States of America adopted a system closely mirroring that of the RGS. Grant Duff also noted with satisfaction that France and Germany had both formulated systems of orthography for foreign words which were similar to the English system.
To disseminate the system even wider, Grant Duff’s circular was sent to geographical societies, government departments, Chambers of Commerce, map makers, newspapers, missionary societies, colonial Bishops, corresponding members, military and naval institutions, English embassies and ministries, and Indian authorities. A concerted effort toward standardising orthography was evidently underway, with the Society endeavouring to promote a cohesive and uniform system.
The circular was received by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Grant Duff’s circular, accompanied by the system, was published in their journal Science. The scientific journal Nature also accepted it for publication. Therefore, leading scientific journals in both Great Britain and the US were publishing the Society’s system for a wider audience as a standard to be used. However, to a variety of extents, the system was not approved by everyone, and even a member of the Orthography Committee did not agree entirely with the progress the Committee had made on a system of orthography.
RGS-IBG, Committee Minute Book, Orthography Committee, 11 December 1891, 32-33.
Frederic Goldsmid, in a letter to then-Secretary, John Scott Keltie, in September 1892, wrote about his thoughts on the Committee stating that he wished they had achieved “more regard for the correct principles of transliteration of, a least, Oriental names”.
Some years later in a letter to Keltie he expressed his wish to someday “explain the difficulties which still stand in the way of a fixed rule for orthography in regard to…R.G.S. rules”. Being on the Committee did not necessarily equate to agreement with all its progress and decisions. Goldsmid also stated that in the future they needed to “secure uniformity, and work out a list of names for each country or region” [5].
Chisholm had a query in relation to rule 3 of the system which stated that “the true sound of the word as locally pronounced will be taken as the basis of spelling”. Chisholm asked:
This is a question of accuracy. Is the local form, the form used by the people who regularly use that name the most accurate, or is the form that is more widely used, but not by the local users, deemed the accurate version? The Scientific Purposes and Education Committee, to whom this problem was handed, responded that “the term local must not be taken in too restricted a sense, nor as applying to the dialects of the less educated inhabitants”. So, a question of accuracy was turned into a question of authority. It was at the individual’s discretion who was to be considered an authoritative source, but it was clear that the ‘local’ had to be someone of a certain social standing.
A similar situation occurred when the Ordnance Survey mapped Irish and Gaelic Scottish place names in the nineteenth century. It was recommended that informants record place names from the best authorities – locals of various social positions and textual sources [7]. However, these best authorities did not necessarily provide the most authentic version since there was a range of variations of words and the ones recorded were not necessarily the version spoken by locals. The system’s approach to phonetically spelling place names was not favoured by everyone. In a paper discussing the orthography of foreign place names published in the Scottish Geographical Magazine, Dr James Burgess stated that spelling names by how they sound rather than according to their vernacular written forms laid too much stress on sound to the neglect of vernacular spelling. Burgess believed that:
"if the geographer would call in the aid of the scholar and accept his decision as to transliteration, the greatest of all the difficulties would disappear; persist in aiming at spelling names by the ear only, and all progress will be stopped by multiplied difficulties". [8]
Burgess appeared concerned with the accuracy the system provided. Since local pronunciation varied so greatly, making it difficult to fix with certainty, Burgess thought that the personal differences of pronunciation and of hearing would always combine to produce countless divergences in the representation of names. Therefore, the written form, if accurately transliterated, would produce a better representation of the name than any attempt to write it down from the pronunciation alone. For Burgess, maps should not be turned into a pronouncing vocabulary. Despite the system employed by various institutions, there were people who critiqued it and thought it was the wrong approach, revealing the tensions between institutional authority and individual expertise.
Orthography in practice
George Curzon proposed to the RGS Council in 1890 that he produce a map of Persia using pre-existing maps, indexes, and other authorised sources. The Council sanctioned this map for several reasons. The first reason was due to an absence of a reliable map of the country from neither recent travel by private individuals or of authoritative surveys conducted by emissaries of the British and Russian Governments. The second, the increasing interest in the kingdom of the Shah, and the growing extent it was being visited by English people. The third, procuring as complete a collection as was possible of pre-existing materials that would assist with the production of the map. The system of orthography was used by Curzon to inform the spelling of place names on the map of Persia. Curzon was a member of the Orthography Committee and stated that he had “broadly speaking…observed the [orthographic] rules laid down by the Society” [9].
Comparing the names on Curzon’s map to maps produced later by the Survey of India (1897) and the RGS (1902), both organisations of which were supposedly using the same system of orthography, reveals inconsistencies in the spelling of the same place names. For example, of the names compared, only four names were spelt the same way: ‘Borasjun’ on the 1897 map, ‘Azerbaijan’ and ‘Meshed’ on the 1902 map, and ‘Shahrud’ on both maps. Several names on the 1897 and 1902 maps differed from Curzon’s map. ‘Barfurush’ was the version on Curzon’s map, but it was spelt ‘Barfarush’ and ‘Barfrush’ on the 1897 and 1902 maps respectively. ‘Semnan’ was spelt ‘Samnan’ on the 1897 map and ‘Semnán’ on the 1902 map – the accent being an interesting addition considering the RGS’s system discouraged its use. Similarly, ‘Kazerun’ was spelt ‘Kazran’ and ‘Kázerun’ in 1897 and 1902 respectively. The system was either being used inconsistently or failing to be used at all. In similar instances in Canada and Uganda where the RGS’s orthographic system was proposed for use when recording terra nullius land and mapping newly established British protectorates respectively, inconsistencies in the spelling of names on maps continued to persist.
Concluding remarks
While the system of orthography was regarded as an authoritative source within the walls of the RGS, its lack of uptake beyond the RGS and criticisms it received meant it lacked the authority the Orthography Committee and the RGS hoped for. In 1919, after the First World War, the Admiralty, War Office, India Office, Colonial Office, and the RGS decided to establish the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN). The war had highlighted confusion in the transliteration of place names, and these organisations decided a collaborative effort was needed to deal with orthography once and for all. With the PCGN in place, the RGS Council determined it necessary to abolish the Orthography Committee. Despite the Orthography Committee’s attempts to overcome the confusion in orthography, they failed to fully become the ultimate authority on the matter.
About the project
This research has drawn on material from the RGS-IBG Collections, including committee and council minute books, correspondence, fellowship certificates, the journal manuscript collection, and the map collection. The Wiley Digital Archive was also used, which holds hundreds of thousands of digitised records from the RGS-IBG Collections. In 2024 Beth designed an exhibition at the RGS-IBG showcasing the story of orthography at the Society. This online exhibition expands on that to reveal how the RGS-IBG tackled the problem of orthography and the outcome of these efforts.
At the 2024 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Beth discussed her use of maps during the Map Room Conversations session, Mapping Language, alongside Philip Jagessar (King’s College London) [10].
As a historical geographer, Beth recognises the importance of reflecting on the nature of the archive she is researching, and how this shapes and informs the story that can is told about the Society. Due to the colonial/imperial nature of the archive typically only certain voices are heard, and certain stories told. The voices of those whose place names were altered are, very often, absent or hidden. Therefore, Beth acknowledges that this project cannot speak directly to the lived experiences of Indigenous people who had their place names altered by the system. Rather, she uses what remains in the RGS Collections to understand how the Society approached the problem of orthography as an imperial institution, and what this meant for Indigenous place names. The research is a collaboration between the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London and the RGS-IBG and is funded by Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.
About the researcher
Beth Williamson is a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research explores how, in the period 1830–1919, the RGS approached the problem of accurately and authoritatively recording the world’s place names when faced with variety in global spelling, alphabet, and pronunciation. Beth’s research offers a new perspective on how imperial organisations engaged with the politics of naming and Indigenous orthographies, demonstrating that questions of orthography are fundamental to disciplinary debates in geography in the nineteenth century and beyond. Beth completed her thesis in March 2026 titled Translating Place: Orthography and the Problem of Place Names at the Royal Geographical Society, 1830–1919.
References
[1] George Cecil Renouard to John Washington, 25 October 1836, CB2/445. [2] Thomas Best Jervis to John Washington, 11 May 1838, CB2/445. [3] Ommanney Erasmus. “Report of Vice-Admiral Ommanney, C. B., on the International Congress for Geographical Sciences Held at Antwerp,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 16, no. 2 (1871): 132–35. [4] RGS-IBG, Council Minute Book 1877-1881, 9 December 1878, 85. [5] Frederic Goldsmid to John Scott Keltie, 23 September 1892, CB7/1138/3. [6] RGS-IBG, Committee Minute Book, Scientific Purposes and Education Committee, 10 June 1890, 329-331. [7] Withers, Charles W. J. “Authorizing Landscape: ‘Authority’, Naming and the Ordnance Survey’s Mapping of the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Historical Geography 26, no. 4 (2000): 532–554. [8] Burgess, James. “The Orthography of Foreign Place‐names.” Scottish Geographical Magazine 8, no. 1 (1892): 23–39. [9] Curzon, George Nathaniel. “Memorandum on the Society’s New Map of Persia,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography 14, no. 2 (1892): 69. [10] Williamson, Beth, and Philip Jagessar. “Mapping Language: Names, Speakers and Voices.” Area, 10.1111/area.70068.
All images © Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) unless stated otherwise
All text © Creative Commons BY 4.0
Credits:
Beth Williamson