United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names

Working Paper No. 17

Twentieth Session New,York, 17 - 28 January 2000

ftem 5 of the Provisional Agenda

REPORTS OF THE DIVISIONS

Country Paper/Jordan

Submitted by Ibrahim M, Zoqurti, Chairman of Geographical Names Committee, Royal jordanian Geographic Centre

Geographical names arc strongly rciated to the listory of a- country, and Jordan is not an exception to that case. A quickl 1 look at the history of Jordan and the civilizations and peoples who h .ve lived on its land shows clearly the link between those peoples and th names of the cities and towns that are still keeping these names for ~ousands ofyears. Among those ancient civilizations are the E moites, Ivloabites, Ammonites, in the 7’h

Nabataeans, Greeks and Remans. Isiam Same to the=country century AD and its el’fect has been clear13 left on the majority

of names of towns and viltagcs and ahnost all th : names of natural. topographic fealurcs.

Jordan was put under the Brilish mandate diret :Iy after World War I the British government produced maps at various talcs in English f-‘or Jordan and Palestine . In the early 1960’s the An :&an AMS ( Army Map Service ) produced a Compiete cover for the K ngdom at a scaic of 1:50,000. In 19SO the French IGN (Institute Gee; raphique National ) produced 30 sheets at scale 125,000 tbr the north reg on ( Irbid District ), the quality of names in these maps wa.s excellent,

,Those maps were in English arid the transliterz :ion system adopted came from BGN/PCGN systems. The Americans al o published in 1972 an official Standard Names Gazetteer for Jordan . I epartment of Lands and Surveys transliterated some small scale maps. I However, the bulk of this work was accomplished at the Royal Jordanian G :ographic Centre.

The Arabic names on these transl.iterated map have suffered from some mistakes for various reasons. The lnost impor ant of those was the ignorance of some of those who did this work c * the, transiiferation system which the Americans and British have adopte I. This is in addition to the existence of some mistakes made on these n aps when they were originally produced, and the inconsistency in followi .g the transliteration system adopted, Then in the early 19SO’s the Royal JI rdanian Geographic Centre ( RJGC ) adopted a special transliteration system based on the Modified Rayrut System with little amendments mad

The Arab group of experts on geographical tames, and the UN. group of experts on geographical names have adopt !d this sysfern at the

2

eighteenth session of U.N. group of experts xxn :ge, lgraphical names, Geneva 12-23/8/1996. ( Annex 1).

The project is to be achieved and edited in sep rate parts, one for each governorate( Muhafadha ). One part , Muhafi dhat As-Zarqa is currently under printing, The field work has been dl ne to Muhafadhat Ajlun. Muhafadhat Al-Balqa was printed in 1997 cant ins 272 pages, 17

I maps ( Puil pages) 62 maps ( part of page ) .

l- 2- 3- 4

The major resources and references ol’ this projec : Books and magazines. ’ Topographic maps 1:25,000. 1~50 000. 1: 100,OOC Government statististics and data, Field work including interviews.

The Encyclopedia contains: l- General and various information concerning the I Zuhafadha. 2- Information on each town, village, and agglomer tion such as :

;- Name: Its meaning and origin. History.

& Locati0.n: coordinates. Site: plain, slope, summit, &rd&ting ..etc.

;: Suburbs (Ahya): Names, altitudes and loca ion. Rivers and valleys (wadis).

[I Mountains and areas. Population: statistics, tribs, familys.

i- Local administrative: Municipality, village council, j- Services: Religious, education, water suppl I, electricity,

post, health, clubs, roads, agriculture ( cul ivated area, forest, livestock ).

3

l-

a-

b- C-

d-

2-

a- b- C-

d- e-

2) Gazetteer of &m&m

Gazetteer of Jordan Towns, villages an&@glo nerations:

This work was, produced in Arabic and has already been entered into the computer. It is divided according :o the main district: (governorate) ( Muhafadha) and subdistricts ( ,i wa, Qada).

It includes various information about tl as:

N&e: In Arabic with short vowels, (Romanization).

Coordinates. Population: 1994 census. AItitude..

Gazetteer of Jordan: Work has already begun ip producing net

se scttfements, suck

znd Transliteration

geographica name:; gazetteer of 3ordan, depending on severai sour :es: Gazetteer of Jordan Towns. Encyciopedia of Jordan Towns. The new and updated topographic maps t scales 1:25.000 , I :50000, 1: 100.000.

Field completion names registers. The official standard names gazetteer of J x-dan, produced by AMS, 1990.

It includes: Name: Arabic fcttcrs, Roman letters. Designation: Town, River, Wadi (Valley), Mountain Hill, Area.. -etc. Coordinates: Geographic, Other. Sheet: sheet name or number, scale. Notes.

Up to 1- 1 l- 1999,9SSO names have been entered into :he computer.

(Annex 2).

4

l- First, the Government af Jti %XXXZXY aM& Sn~al Committee for Geogrc?phicaI Names. The ~DX&~EZ wss .&z&i qe for three years in the earIy 1980’s

2- Another committee was also fmed ti fi geographic Centre for the same purpose, and Some of its activities include the checking name registers of field completion and the c their final form.

4-J A&Qases: l- National Atlas of Jordan:

a- The first part of the National Atlas of Jc Agrohydrology” was published in 19: maps.

b- The second part of the National Atlas of and Agrohydrology” was published in 1 maps.

3 I- School atlas: In 1988, RJGC published the first 1 in Arabic and was confronted by the problem c ffom of names of cities and even countries hoted that most general atlases in Arabic do nc form of exonymes.

A new Updated and reviewed edition of the SC was published in t996. RJGC did its best 1 names, by writing to the foreign embass consulting the Jordanians who have studied abt pages, 101 maps, 12 geographical information include exonyms of some world’s countries anC l- Native name 2- Arabic name. 3- English name. Another tabies include all the world’s countries An English edition of this atlas is under work. (

! Royal Jordanian is still active today. tnd verifying of the oosing of names in

*dan “ Climate and 4. It contains 135

ordan “Hydrology 186. It contains 14 1

rint of school atlas !’ choosing the right >f the world. It was t agree on the same

1001 atlas in Arabic I choose the right 2s in Jordan and >ad. Tt contains 128 tables two of these some of capitals:

lnd their capitals. Annex 3).

The Royal Jordanian Geographic Centre has p~Hish :d this book in. 1997 in Arabic (62) pages.

The book contains: .. I-

2-

3-

4-

5- 6-

7- 8- 9- 1 o- ll- 12-

Importance of geographical names, their I Jattion to Personal documents, media, history, education, culture a rd map production.

UN and geographic names: Goals of UN con: :renc& and meeting on geographical names.

Geographic names and Arabic language: I: ictation, grammar, accents, using short vowels.

Transliteration, Historical view, adopted tran: jiteration system in R&X ( Assorted by Arab Group of Expel s on Geographical Names at Eighteenth Session, Geneva 1 Z-23/8/ 996). Spell as you pronounce: local spelling. Principle of Geographic Names.

Topography, climate, colour, geology, m’ lera.1, water. Religious.

- ’ . Persons, Tribe, people, events, animals.. . .etc.

Translation of geographic names. Changing of geographic names. New geographic names. Historical changing of geographic names, Official and field work, collecting geographic n mes. Gazetteer and Encyclopedia of geographic naml s.

Transliteration Svstem for Arabic GeoPraDhi

The transhteration (romanization) syster the RJGC since 1980 is practically tbe same as 1

used in ” The OfficiaI .Standard Names Gazetteer and as it appears in ” The American Heritage D. Language, ed. I981 “with 2 main modifications :

Names:-

adopted &d used t-y lat of the BG5UPCG.V of Jordan, ed. 197 1” xionaxy of the English

I- .b is transliterated as & and not as z- (n -iinly because dh is the

form that was used on 1 : 50,000 maps of ‘ordan produced by the American AMS) .

ij (ta’marbaia) is transliterated as “a” and lot as h (or ah).

The basic rule for transliterating Arbic get gaphic names is to consider the standard (formal) form of the aord as it is pronounced, regardless of the actual spelh tg of the word _

rlrransliteration System for Arabic Geographic N; tries .

1) Arabic Consonants .

Arabic Letter Tran.sliter&on Examples

2 2 Wr

t

Ill

j

h

k.h

3; tall

, oj: thaghra

& jabal

0~ ham \

+p khirba

7

,ArabicLetter Trmslitcxat”ion

3' d

J r

s

sh

s

d

k

L

i, n

h

6

,

.

Most of the examples ;&ken am mc:t *mm which explains using sma.II letters .

Arabic vowels , diphthongs , and special .diac .itical marks ,

VW0 a LG s&l

(kasra) i -T- jisr

Gl-a) u L& juxf

(fatha alif) a 4 bab

(kasra ya’) 7 ci+

C&mma w&v) Ii &

(allifmaqsura) a’ L5-G-i

(sbadda) doubling ti

s;iq

siih

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k3.d : L1;7J

harmat al madd is equivalent to I F (hamza alif) an 1 is transliterated as

a kg., Qur’zn. ST> .

2) ?“a : marbEta 6) occurs at the end of many words, . sually fxninine;

it is represented a , (e.g., ‘4~ : Khirba) which is ,c lorter thk ,

and preferable to “ah” (kbirbah) because “h” repre: mts the letter A

@a’> which is different Tom t2’ marbaLa, md also because transliterating it as “a” does not cause any confkic I .

However if ta’ marbDla is preceded by (alif) (whit h occurs in very few

words) it should be repersented by “ah”, (e.g., e&. : S&h)

if ta’ rnwbula is followed by another word in a unit uy expression, it is

9

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transliterated as “t” e.g., Ghazzat I-Rshim : I +-L$ :a i> (act-orciingto

the basic rule aforementioned) .

3) The definite article (Ji> is transliterated (according t I the basic rule) as

“al” if the “1” is pronounced ; that is , before the so - called ” moon letters ” but when the definite article preced s a word-be-g witht,th,dI-dh,r,z,s,sh,s,d, :~&,l,n,(.le:pq-carred ” sun letters ” ) the “1” is assimilated in pronunciatio L , @vmg, “t t” + ‘wl th” ,

etc , e.g. , al jabal, # as s&t &I .

4) Hyphens should not be used to connect parts of nan es ; e.g. ;

Bayt lb’s & w Al Ka.ra.k .i_‘fii.

5) The word 31 is always transliterated as Ibn even Fit is written s as

is the case when it comes between two proper names .g.

sL&;r!iL.a ‘ Uthmm ibn ‘AfEn , since it is E ways pronouced as

rbn.

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