Naming the places of the world is an essential human act of territorialization. As the subject of conflict or dispute, naming plays out in numerous ways that involve collective and individual relationships to space, whether functional or imaginary, as well as the identities related to them. Name traces also differ together with their inscription within landscapes and history.

Names constitute a heritage, they bear witness, they mark places and thus contribute to the foundation of territories. Beyond place names, place naming reveals the functions and uses of names, but also the contradictory meanings that society bestows on them.

With this framework in mind, that of critical toponymy, The Politics of Place Naming considers different points of view when studying place naming. These vary from linguistics to political and cultural geography, via history, anthropology, cartography, urban planning, digital humanities, subaltern studies and many other disciplines. This book honors this transversality by taking such studies into account in its examination of place naming.

Frédéric Giraut is a political geographer. He studies borders and place naming in different contexts. He currently heads the "Naming the World" UNESCO chair in inclusive toponomy at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch is a geographer and professor at Grenoble Alpes University and the PACTE laboratory in France. Her research focuses on post-apartheid South Africa, and South African cities from a social and political geography perspective, as well as on critical epistemologies and pedagogies.