Gazetteer

How it is used

Useful for changing place names and boundaries; check the date and purpose of compilation.

Example sentences

1. The gazetteer identifies the village under its nineteenth-century name.

   Place-name information helps connect old records to locations.

2. A provincial gazetteer describes markets absent from the surviving maps.

   Descriptive place records can complement cartographic evidence.

Common collocations

• a historical gazetteer
• consult a gazetteer

Related terms

• primary sourceEvidence created at the time being studied or by people who witnessed it, such as letters, diaries, official records, photographs or objects.
• trade routeA regular path by land, river or sea along which merchants carried goods between regions, such as the Silk Road or the spice routes of the Indian Ocean.

More terms: Sources and Archives

• secondary source
• archive
• manuscript
• bias
• census
• chronicle
• source criticism
• oral history
• inscription
• provenance
• archivist
• palaeography