Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography (GUGiK)

On the  June 6th, 2025, a one-day Polish-Czech-Slovak meeting was held at the headquarters of the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography. The meeting was focused on:

• discussing issues related to the standardization of geographical names in the individual countries participating in the meeting,

• exchanging experiences and information on the activities of names and onomastics commissions and other institutions dealing with the standardization of geographical names,

• exchanging information on national toponymic databases, registers and national gazetteers,

• other issues related to the standardization of geographical names.

Tripartite meetings are held cyclically and are a continuation of the cooperation that was initiated at the symposium on the dictionary of terminology used in the standardization of geographical names, which was held in 2013 in Prague.

The meeting in Warsaw was attended by 11 people (2 from the Czech Republic, 3 from Slovakia, 4 from Poland).

The Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography was represented by Justyna Kacprzak and Karolina Szyszkowska from the Department of Information on Real Estate. On the Polish side, the meeting was also attended by representatives of the Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names Outside the Borders of the Republic of Poland at the Surveyor General of Poland and the Commission for the Names of Localities and Physiographic Objects at the Ministry of the Interior and Administration.

The participants of the meeting were welcomed by Anna Bober - Deputy Surveyor General of Poland, who presented a video about the main tasks and projects implemented in the Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography, and then Maciej Zych - Chairman of the Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names Outside the Borders of Poland took the floor, outlining the history and tradition of tripartite meetings.

In the further part of the meeting, experts from individual countries presented papers on:

• Geographical nomenclature and the Council of Europe. Cooperation with the EU Terminology and Translation Section in the Czech Republic

• Secrets of Marco Polo maps

• Proposal for a joint tripartite project (Czech-Polish-Slovak) of a list of geographical names of Arab countries

• Standardization of geographical names and spelling reforms in Poland

• Report on the work of the Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names Outside the Borders of the Republic of Poland

• Database of the state register of geographical names in the part concerning names outside the borders of Poland

• Cyberattack in the Department of Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre of the Slovak Republic

• Activities of the Commission on Names of the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography of the Slovak Republic

• Improvement of selected objects of the topographic database of Slovakia

The next tripartite meeting of the commissions on names from the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia is planned in Bratislava in 2027.