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105-1340: Arrozal was in Spain's gazetteers until Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1898 and became an unincorporated territory of the United States . In 1899, the United States Department of War conducted a census of Puerto Rico finding that the population of Arrozal barrio was 1,662. Barrios (which are, in contemporary times, roughly comparable to minor civil divisions ) in turn are further subdivided into smaller local populated place areas/units called sectores ( sectors in English). The types of sectores may vary, from normally sector to urbanización to reparto to barriada to residencial , among others. The following sectors are in Arrozal barrio: Sector Las Cántaras, Sector Los Muertos, Sector Los Puertos, Sector Quebrada del Palo, Sector Varela , and Sector Zenón Rivera . This Arecibo, Puerto Rico location article

210-408: A Millionenstadt , a city with anywhere between one and five million inhabitants (such as Cologne , Munich , Hamburg and Berlin ). Also, a city with more than five million inhabitants is often referred to as a Megastadt (commonly translated as megacity ). Historically, many settlements became a Stadt by being awarded a Stadtrecht in medieval times. In modern German language use,

315-537: A further 17 towns , which have merged with a municipal parish ( vallasisene linn ). In Finland, there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word kaupunki is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs; although when talking about the word town , the word pikkukaupunki is used ( pikku means 'little' or 'small'). There are over one hundred municipal towns in Finland. From an administrative standpoint,

420-519: A palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of the palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn , which was the model for the privy garden of William III and Mary II at Hampton Court ). In Old Norse tún means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and the word is still used with

525-457: A central government mandate. Historian Peter K. Bol states that local gazetteers composed in this manner were the result of increased domestic and international trade that facilitated greater local wealth throughout China. Historian R. H. Britnell writes of gazetteers in Ming China, "by the sixteenth century, for a county or monastery not to have a gazetteer was regarded as evidence that

630-587: A dictionary on ancient sites of the Assyrians , Persians , Greeks , and Romans with their modern equivalent names, and a work published in Paris in 1651 that was both the first universal and vernacular geographical dictionary of Europe. With the gradual expansion of Laurence Echard 's (d. 1730) gazetteer of 1693, it too became a universal geographical dictionary that was translated into Spanish in 1750, into French in 1809, and into Italian in 1810. Following

735-652: A duplicate of their records were sent to the central government offices of the Exchequer . To supplement his "new large Map of England" from 1677, the English cartographer John Adams compiled the extensive gazetteer "Index Villaris" in 1680 that had some 24,000 places listed with geographical coordinates coinciding with the map. The "Geographical Dictionary" of Edmund Bohun was published in London in 1688, comprising 806 pages with some 8,500 entries. In his work, Edmund Bohun attributed

840-669: A gazetteer ( Nainsi ri Khyat and Marwar rai Pargana ri Vigat) for the Marwar region in the 17th century. B. S. Baliga writes that the history of the gazetteer in Tamil Nadu can be traced back to the classical corpus of Sangam literature , dated 200 BC to 300 AD. Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak , the vizier to Akbar the Great of the Mughal Empire , wrote the Ain-e-Akbari , which included

945-474: A gazetteer with valuable information on India's population in the 16th century. The pre-modern Islamic world produced gazetteers. Cartographers of the Safavid dynasty of Iran made gazetteers of local areas. [REDACTED] Media related to Gazetteers at Wikimedia Commons Town A town is a type of a human settlement . Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities , though

1050-485: A geographical dictionary (which currently has missing parts) in the sixth century which influenced later European compilers. Modern gazetteers can be found in reference sections of most libraries as well as on the internet. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a "gazetteer" as a "geographical index or dictionary". It includes as an example a work by the British historian Laurence Echard (d. 1730) in 1693 that bore

1155-556: A higher degree of services . (There are a few exceptions, when towns of fewer than 50,000 people gained the status: Érd , Hódmezővásárhely , Salgótarján and Szekszárd ) As of middle 2013, there are only 23 such towns in Hungary. The 2011 Census of India defines towns of two types: statutory town and census town . Statutory town is defined as all places with a municipality , corporation , cantonment board or notified town area committee. Census towns are defined as places that satisfy

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1260-590: A higher tier of local government, larger towns and cities may have the status of a kreisfreie Stadt , combining both the powers of a municipality and a district. Designations in different states are as diverse as e.g. in Australian States and Territories, and differ from state to state. In some German states, the words Markt ('market'), Marktflecken (both used in southern Germany) or Flecken ('spot'; northern Germany e.g. in Lower Saxony ) designate

1365-1044: A letter to the CCP Propaganda Department on May 1, 1979, which urged for the revival of difangzhi . This proposal was sponsored by Hu Yaobang in June 1979 while Hu Qiaomu of the CCP Politburo lent his support for the idea in April 1980. The first issue of a modern national journal of difangzhi was issued by January 1981. In Korea , scholars based their gazetteers largely on the Chinese model. Like Chinese gazetteers, there were national, provincial, and local prefecture Korean gazetteers which featured geographic information, demographic data, locations of bridges, schools, temples, tombs, fortresses, pavilions, and other landmarks, cultural customs, local products, resident clan names, and short biographies on well-known people. In an example of

1470-653: A list of place-names together with their locations in latitude and longitude or other spatial referencing systems (e.g.,  British National Grid reference). Short-form gazetteers appear as a place–name index in the rear of major published atlases. Descriptive gazetteers may include lengthy textual descriptions of the places they contain, including explanation of industries , government , geography , together with historical perspectives, maps and/or photographs. Thematic gazetteers list places or geographical features by theme; for example fishing ports, nuclear power stations, or historic buildings. Their common element

1575-426: A municipality must have at least 3,000 inhabitants to have the right to request the town title. Market towns usually have between 500 and 4,000 inhabitants, with median and average both around 1,000. In Denmark, in many contexts no distinction is made between "city", "town" and "village"; all three translate as by . In more specific use, for small villages and hamlets the word landsby (meaning 'country town')

1680-622: A similar meaning in modern Norwegian. Old English tūn became a common place-name suffix in England and southeastern Scotland during the Anglo-Saxon settlement period. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots , the words ton , toun , etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings, partly picking up the Norse sense (as in the Scots word fermtoun ) at one end of

1785-488: A small city or large village; and occasionally even hamlets ). Sometimes, the word town is short for township . In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry, commerce , and public services rather than primary sector industries such as agriculture or related activities. A place's population size

1890-492: A small description for 369 different foreign countries known to Joseon Korea in the 15th century. In Japan , there were also local gazetteers in pre-modern times, called fudoki . Japanese gazetteers preserved historical and legendary accounts of various regions. For example, the Nara-period (710–794) provincial gazetteer Harima no kuni fūdoki of Harima Province provides a story of an alleged visit by Emperor Ōjin in

1995-533: A social and technical infrastructure, as well as a population of no fewer than 3500 people. For resort settlements the requirements are lower with the population needing to be no fewer than 1000 people but infrastructure requirements remain. The legal definition of a town in Canada varies by province or territory , as each has jurisdiction over defining and legislating towns, cities and other types of municipal organization within its own boundaries. The province of Quebec

2100-508: A specific focus, such as the gazetteer of the Swedish atlas "Das Bästas Bilbok" (1969), a road atlas and guide for Sweden , Norway , Finland , and Denmark . In Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) China , the Yuejue Shu (越絕書) written in 52 AD is considered by modern sinologists and historians to be the prototype of the gazetteer ( Chinese : difangzhi ), as it contained essays on

2205-489: A team of cartographers and scholars in 971 to initiate the compilation of a huge atlas and nationwide gazetteer that covered the whole of China proper , which comprised approximately 1,200 counties and 300 prefectures . This project was completed in 1010 by a team of scholars under Song Zhun, who presented it in 1,566 chapters to the throne of Emperor Zhenzong . This Sui dynasty process of infrequently collecting tujing or "map guides" continued, but it would be enhanced by

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2310-408: A town such as Parun , the capital of Nuristan Province , whose population is less 20,000 people. In Albania and Kosovo qytezë means 'town', which is very similar to the word for city ( qytet ), although there is no official use of the term for any settlement. In Albanian qytezë means 'small city' or 'new city', while in ancient times it referred to a small residential center within

2415-563: A town-like residential community between Gemeinde and Stadt with special importance to its outer conurbation area. Historically those had Marktrecht (market right) but not full town privileges; see Market town . The legal denomination of a specific settlement may differ from its common designation (e.g. Samtgemeinde – a legal term in Lower Saxony for a group of villages [ Dorf , pl. Dörfer ] with common local government created by combining municipalities [ Gemeinde , pl. Gemeinden ]). In ordinary speech, Greeks use

2520-519: A wide variety of subjects including changes in territorial division, the founding of cities, local products, and customs. However, the first gazetteer proper is considered to be the Chronicles of Huayang by Chang Qu 常璩. There are over 8,000 gazetteers of pre-modern China that have survived. Gazetteers became more common in the Song dynasty (960–1279), yet the bulk of surviving gazetteers were written during

2625-690: Is Stadt , as it is the case in many other languages that do not differentiate between these concepts. The word for a 'village', as a smaller settlement, is Dorf . However, the International Statistics Conference of 1887 defined different sizes of Stadt , based on their population size, as follows: Landstadt ('country town'; under 5,000), Kleinstadt ('small town'; 5,000 to 20,000), Mittelstadt ('middle town'; between 20,000 and 100,000) and Großstadt ("large town"; 100,000 to 1,000,000). The term Großstadt may be translated as 'city'. In addition, Germans may speak of

2730-467: Is a de facto statutory city. All the Czech municipalities with more than 40,000 inhabitants are cities. Town and market town are above all ceremonious honorary degrees, referring to population, history and regional significance of a municipality. As the statistics of Czech municipalities shows, towns usually have between 1,000 and 35,000 inhabitants, with median around 4,000 and average around 6,500. Nowadays

2835-498: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas . It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or continent. Content of a gazetteer can include a subject's location, dimensions of peaks and waterways, population , gross domestic product and literacy rate. This information

2940-422: Is commonly referred to as a city or as a town, no distinction and no objective legal criteria exist to make such a distinction under law. Ontario allows municipalities to select whichever administrative term they like with no legal distinction existing between towns, townships, cities, and villages. Instead all municipalities, with the exception of Toronto and Ottawa, fall into one of three legal categories under

3045-520: Is difficult to call the remaining provincial capitals "large towns" as, in general, they are less developed and have shrinking population, some with as few as 30,000 inhabitants. In Bulgaria the Council of Ministers defines what constitutes a settlement, while the President of Bulgaria grants each settlement its title. In 2005 the requirement that villages that wish to classify themselves as town must have

3150-622: Is generally divided into topics with entries listed in alphabetical order. Ancient Greek gazetteers are known to have existed since the Hellenistic era. The first known Chinese gazetteer was released by the first century, and with the age of print media in China by the ninth century , the Chinese gentry became invested in producing gazetteers for their local areas as a source of information as well as local pride. The geographer Stephanus of Byzantium wrote

3255-550: Is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns. The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated

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3360-420: Is partitioned into 2098 municipalities ( German : Gemeinden ) of fundamentally equal rank. Larger municipalities are designated as market towns ( German : Marktgemeinden ) or cities ( Städte ), but these distinctions are purely symbolic and do not confer additional legal responsibilities. There is a number of smaller communities that are labelled cities because they used to be regional population centers in

3465-574: Is that the geographical location is an important attribute of the features listed. Gazetteer editors gather facts and other information from official government reports, the census , chambers of commerce , together with numerous other sources, and organise these in digest form. In his journal article "Alexander and the Ganges" (1923), the 20th-century historian W.W. Tarn calls a list and description of satrapies of Alexander's Empire written between 324 and 323 BC as an ancient gazetteer. Tarn notes that

3570-464: Is unique in that it makes no distinction under law between towns and cities. There is no intermediate level in French between village and ville ( municipality is an administrative term usually applied to a legal, not geographical entity), so both are combined under the single legal status of ville . While an informal preference may exist among English speakers as to whether any individual ville

3675-488: Is used, while the Danish equivalent of English city is storby (meaning 'large town'). For formal purposes, urban areas having at least 200 inhabitants are considered by . Historically some towns held various privileges, the most important of which was the right to hold market. They were administered separately from the rural areas in both fiscal, military and legal matters. Such towns are known as købstad (roughly

3780-549: The American Revolutionary War , United States clergyman and historian Jeremy Belknap and Postmaster General Ebenezer Hazard intended to create the first post-revolutionary geographical works and gazetteers, but they were anticipated by the clergyman and geographer Jedidiah Morse with his Geography Made Easy in 1784. However, Morse was unable to finish the gazetteer in time for his 1784 geography and postponed it. Yet his delay to publish it lasted too long, as it

3885-554: The Deng era to replace the people's communes with traditional townships . The difangzhi effort under Mao yielded little results (only 10 of the 250 designated counties ended up publishing a gazetteer), while the writing of difangzhi was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), trumped by the village and family histories which were more appropriate for the theme of class struggle . A Li Baiyu of Shanxi forwarded

3990-609: The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Modern scholar Liu Weiyi notes that just under 400 gazetteers were compiled in the era between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 and the Tang dynasty (618–907). Gazetteers from this era focused on boundaries and territory, place names, mountains and rivers, ancient sites, local products, local myths and legends , customs, botany , topography , and locations of palaces, streets, temples, etc. By

4095-447: The Sui dynasty (581–618) united a politically divided China, Emperor Yang of Sui had all the empire's commanderies prepare gazetteers called ' maps and treatises ' (Chinese: tujing ) so that a vast amount of updated textual and visual information on local roads, rivers, canals, and landmarks could be utilized by the central government to maintain control and provide better security. Although

4200-530: The earliest extant Chinese maps date to the 4th century BC, and tujing since the Qin (221–206 BC) or Han dynasties, this was the first known instance in China when the textual information of tujing became the primary element over the drawn illustrations. This Sui dynasty process of providing maps and visual aids in written gazetteers—as well as the submitting of gazetteers with illustrative maps by local administrations to

4305-415: The fangzhi and the tujing was that the former was a product of "local initiative, not a central command" according to Peter K. Bol, and were usually ten, twenty, or even fifty chapters in length compared to the average four chapters for map guides. Furthermore, the fangzhi were almost always printed because they were intended for a large reading audience, whereas tujing were exclusive records read by

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4410-498: The woodblock print illustrations of Miao peoples in the Guizhou gazeteer, stating "the 1692 version of the Kangxi era gazetteer show a refinement in the quality of the illustrations by comparison to 1673". Historian Timothy Brook states that Ming dynasty gazetteers demonstrate a shift in the attitudes of Chinese gentry towards the traditionally lower merchant class . As time went on,

4515-593: The "Daqing Yitongzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Qing Empire'). This was provided with a preface in 1744 (more than a decade after Jiang's death), revised in 1764, and reprinted in 1849. The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci created the first comprehensive world map in the Chinese language in the early 17th century, while comprehensive world gazetteers were later translated into Chinese by Europeans. The Christian missionary William Muirhead (1822–1900), who lived in Shanghai during

4620-623: The "Sinch'an p'aldo" ('Newly Compiled Geographic Treatise on the Eight Circuits'). With additional material and correction of mistakes, the title of this gazetteer was revised in 1454 as the "Sejong Sillok chiriji" ('King Sejong's Treatise on Geography'), updated in 1531 under the title "Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam" ('Augmented Survey of the Geography of Korea'), and enlarged in 1612. The Joseon Koreans also created international gazetteers. The "Yojisongnam" gazetteer compiled from 1451 to 1500 provides

4725-675: The "Yuehaiguanzhi" ('Gazetteer of the Maritime Customs of Guangdong') published in 1839 (reprinted in 1935). The Chinese language gazetteer Haiguo Tuzhi ('Illustrated Gazetteer of the Sea Kingdoms') by Wei Yuan in 1844 (with material influenced by the "Sizhou zhi" of Lin Zexu ) was printed in Japan two decades later 1854. This work was popular in Japan not for its geographical knowledge, but for its analysis of potential defensive military strategy in

4830-545: The "very eminent person" written of by Echard was his colleague Edmund Bohun , and chose not to mention Bohun because he became associated with the Jacobite movement . Since the 18th century, the word "gazetteer" has been used interchangeably to define either its traditional meaning (i.e., a geographical dictionary or directory) or a daily newspaper , such as the London Gazetteer . Gazetteers are often categorized by

4935-484: The 1950s, to accommodate exponential population increase. The first new towns included Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong . In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns have been developed so far. Land use is carefully planned and development provides plenty of room for public housing projects. Rail transport is usually available at a later stage. The first towns are Sha Tin , Tsuen Wan , Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O . Tuen Mun

5040-533: The 21st century, merged most κοινότητες with the nearest δήμοι , dividing the whole country into 325 self-governing δήμοι . The former municipalities survive as administrative subdivisions ( δημοτικά διαμερίσματα , δημοτικές ενότητες ). Cyprus, including the Turkish-occupied areas, is also divided into 39 δήμοι (in principle, with at least 5,000 inhabitants, though there are exceptions) and 576 κοινότητες . Hong Kong started developing new towns in

5145-483: The 2nd century AD provided gazetteer information on geographical terms. Perhaps predating Greek gazetteers were those made in ancient Egypt . Although she does not specifically label the document as a gazetteer, Penelope Wilson (Department of Archaeology, Durham University ) describes an ancient Egyptian papyrus found at the site of Tanis, Egypt (a city founded during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt ), which provides

5250-537: The 3rd century while on an imperial hunting expedition. Local Japanese gazetteers could also be found in later periods such as the Edo period . Gazetteers were often composed by the request of wealthy patrons; for example, six scholars in the service of the daimyō of the Ikeda household published the Biyō kokushi gazetteer for several counties in 1737. World gazetteers were written by

5355-528: The 480s BC), saying "they did not write connected accounts but instead broke them up according to peoples and cities, treating each separately". Historian Truesdell S. Brown asserts that what Dionysius describes in this quote about the logographers should be categorized not as a true "history" but rather as a gazetteer. While discussing the Greek conception of the river delta in ancient Greek literature, Francis Celoria notes that both Ptolemy and Pausanias of

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5460-532: The Empire of Great Britaine published in 1611 provided gazetteers for counties throughout England, which included illustrative maps, short local histories, a list of administrative hundreds, an index of parishes , and the coordinates of longitude and latitude for county towns. Starting in 1662, the Hearth Tax Returns with attached maps of local areas were compiled by individual parishes throughout England while

5565-718: The Italian printer Aldus Manutius in his work of 1502. The Italian monk Phillippus Ferrarius (d. 1626) published his geographical dictionary "Epitome Geographicus in Quattuor Libros Divisum" in the Swiss city of Zürich in 1605. He divided this work into overhead topics of cities, rivers, mountains, and lakes and swamps. All placenames, given in Latin , were arranged in alphabetical order for each overhead division by geographic type;. A year after his death, his "Lexicon Geographicum"

5670-773: The Japanese in the 19th century, such as the Kon'yo zushiki ("Annotated Maps of the World") published by Mitsukuri Shōgo in 1845, the Hakkō tsūshi ("Comprehensive Gazetteer of the Entire World") by Mitsukuri Genpo in 1856, and the Bankoku zushi ("Illustrated Gazetteer of the Nations of the World"), which was written by an Englishman named Colton, translated by Sawa Ginjirō, and printed by Tezuka Ritsu in 1862. Despite

5775-647: The Minister of Internal Affairs selects candidates from a committee-screened list of applicants, whom the President of Republic usually affirms by issuing a bill of town's rank to them. Since being a town carries extra fiscal support from the government, many relatively small villages try to win the status of városi rang ('town rank') nowadays. Before the fall of communism in 1990, Hungarian villages with fewer than 10,000 residents were not allowed to become towns. Recently some settlements as small as 2,500 souls have received

5880-504: The Municipalities Act: Single-tier (I.e. towns that are located within a region or county but that are considered separate for municipal purposes such as Hamilton ), lower-tier (i.e. municipalities that are part of a region or county such as St. Catharines ), or upper-tier (i.e. regional municipalities such as Niagara ). Accordingly, many larger municipalities continue to use the title of town due to it better reflecting

5985-665: The National Statistics Institute (INE) as an urban entity with a population from 2001 to 5000 or an area with a population from 1001 to 2000 and an established economic activity. In Czechia , a municipality can obtain the title of a city ( Czech : statutární město ), town ( Czech : město ) or market town ( Czech : městys ). The title is granted by law. Statutory cities (in English usually called just "cities"), which are defined by law no. 128/2000 Coll., can define their own self-governing municipal districts. There are 26 such cities, in addition to Prague , which

6090-785: The Tang dynasty the gazetteer became much more geographically specific, with a broad amount of content arranged topically; for example, there would be individual sections devoted to local astronomy, schools, dikes, canals, post stations, altars, local deities, temples, tombs, etc. By the Song dynasty it became more common for gazetteers to provide biographies of local celebrities, accounts of elite local families, bibliographies, and literary anthologies of poems and essays dedicated to famous local spots. Song gazetteers also made lists and descriptions of city walls, gate names, wards and markets, districts, population size, and residences of former prefects . In 610 after

6195-466: The ambitious title, the work by Genpo only covered Yōroppa bu ("Section on Europe") while the planned section for Asia was not published. In 1979 the 50 volume gazeteer Nihon rekishi chimei taikei ("Japanese Historical Place Names") series was launched and it is currently also available online with "200,000 headings with detailed explanations of [each] place name". In pre-modern India , local gazetteers were written. For example, Muhnot Nainsi wrote

6300-412: The appurtenances of local government (e.g. a police force). In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". The existence of an unincorporated town may be legally set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities , the town exists legally in the form of covenants on

6405-469: The beginning of the root word (e.g. nagyváros ) have been normalized to differentiate between cities and towns (towns being smaller, therefore bearing the name kisváros .) In Hungary, a village can gain the status of város ('town'), if it meets a set of diverse conditions for quality of life and development of certain public services and utilities (e.g. having a local secondary school or installing full-area sewage collection pipe network). Every year

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6510-448: The central government—was continued in every subsequent Chinese dynasty . Historian James M. Hargett states that by the time of the Song dynasty, gazetteers became far more geared towards serving the current political, administrative, and military concerns than in gazetteers of previous eras, while there were many more gazetteers compiled on the local and national levels than in previous eras. Emperor Taizu of Song ordered Lu Duosun and

6615-399: The character of the municipality. For example, Oakville (2021 Population: 213,759) is the largest municipality to use the title of town to reflect its largely suburban character while other municipalities such as Richmond Hill (2021 Population: 202,022) have opted to change their status from "town" to "city" to encourage investment. In Chile , towns (Spanish: pueblos ) are defined by

6720-464: The consolidation of large estates during the Roman Empire , the town became the center of large farms. A distinction was created between rustic and urban settlements: In Afghanistan , a city and a town are both referred to as shār ( Dari : شهر ; Pashto : ښار ). The capital of each of its 34 provinces may include a major city such as Kabul whose population is over five million people or

6825-401: The criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. The word "town" shares an origin with the German word Zaun , the Dutch word tuin , and the Old Norse tún . The original Proto-Germanic word, * tūnan , is thought to be an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic * dūnom (cf. Old Irish dún , Welsh din ). The original sense of

6930-414: The definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities. Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town. Towns often exist as distinct governmental units, with legally defined borders and some or all of

7035-649: The direct result of castle construction and expansion. In 1316 the Nomina Villarum survey was initiated by Edward II of England ; it was essentially a list of all the administrative subdivisions throughout England which could be utilized by the state in order to assess how much military troops could be conscripted and summoned from each region. The Speculum Britanniae (1596) of the Tudor era English cartographer and topographer John Norden (1548–1625) had an alphabetical list of places throughout England with headings showing their administrative hundreds and referenced to attached maps. Englishman John Speed 's Theatre of

7140-559: The distant past. The city of Rattenberg for example has about 400 inhabitants. The city of Hardegg has about 1200 inhabitants. There are no unincorporated areas. Of the 201 cities in Austria, 15 are statutory cities ( Statutarstädte ). A statutory city is a city that is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the duties of a district administrative authority . The status does not come with any additional autonomy: district administrative authorities are essentially just service centers that citizens use to interact with

7245-439: The document is dated no later than June 323 BC, since it features Babylon as not yet partitioned by Alexander's generals. It was revised by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC. In the 1st century BC, Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentioned the chronicle -type format of the writing of the logographers in the age before the founder of the Greek historiographic tradition, Herodotus (i.e., before

7350-404: The face of European imperialism and the Qing's recent defeat in the First Opium War due to European artillery and gunboats. Continuing an old tradition of fangzhi , the Republic of China had gazetteers composed and created national standards for them in 1929, updating these in 1946. The printing of gazetteers was revived in 1956 under Mao Zedong and again in the 1980s, after the reforms of

7455-455: The first known Western geographical dictionary to geographer Stephanus of Byzantium (fl. 6th century) while also noting influence in his work from the Thesaurus Geographicus (1587) by the Belgian cartographer Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), but stated that Ortelius' work dealt largely with ancient geography and not up-to-date information. Only fragments of Stephanus' geographical work Ethnica (Εθνικά) have survived and were first examined by

7560-479: The following for each administrative area of Egypt at the time: ...the name of a nome capital, its sacred barque, its sacred tree, its cemetery, the date of its festival, the names of forbidden objects, the local god, land, and lake of the city. This interesting codification of data, probably made by a priest, is paralleled by very similar editions of data on the temple walls at Edfu, for example. The Domesday Book initiated by William I of England in 1086

7665-514: The gentry solicited funds from merchants to build and repair schools, print scholarly books, build Chinese pagodas on auspicious sites , and other things that were needed by the gentry and scholar-officials in order to succeed. Hence, the gentry figures composing the gazetteers in the latter half of the Ming period spoke favorably of merchants, whereas before they were rarely mentioned. Brook and other modern sinologist historians also examine and consult

7770-421: The historical importance, the existence of central functions (education, retail etc.) and the population density of an urban place might also be taken as characteristics of a Stadt . The modern local government organisation is subject to the laws of each state and refers to a Gemeinde ( municipality ), regardless of its historic title. While most Gemeinden form part of a Landkreis ( district ) on

7875-438: The late Ming dynasty officials who compiled the information on the ethnic groups of Guizhou offered scanty details about them in their gazetteers (perhaps due to their lack of contact with these peoples), the later Qing dynasty gazetteers often provided a much more comprehensive analysis. By 1673 the Guizhou gazetteers featured different written entries for the various Miao peoples of the region. Historian Laura Holsteter writes on

7980-576: The late Qing period, published the gazetteer "Dili quanzhi", which was reprinted in Japan in 1859. Divided into fifteen volumes, this work covered Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Ocean Archipelagos , and was sub-divided further into sections on geography, topography, water masses, atmosphere, biology, anthropology, and historical geography. Chinese maritime trade gazetteers mentioned a slew of different countries that came to trade in China, such as United States vessels docking at Canton in

8085-558: The latter, the 1530 edition of "Sinjŭng tongguk yŏji sŭngnam" ('New Edition of the Korean National Gazetteer') gave a brief statement about Pak Yŏn (1378–1458), noting his successful career in the civil service , his exceptional filiality, his brilliance in music theory , and his praisable efforts in systematizing ritual music for Sejong's court . King Sejong established the Joseon dynasty's first national gazetteer in 1432, called

8190-464: The local Ming gazetteers to compare population info with the contemporary central government records, which often provided dubious population figures that did not reflect the actually larger population size of China during the time. Although better known for his work on the Gujin Tushu Jicheng encyclopedia, the early-to-mid Qing scholar Jiang Tingxi aided other scholars in the compilation of

8295-477: The local histories and gazetteers of provinces such as Guizhou during the Ming and Qing dynasties. As the Qing dynasty pushed further with its troops and government authorities into areas of Guizhou that were uninhabited and not administered by the Qing government, the official gazetteers of the region would be revised to include the newly drawn-up districts and non-Han ethnic groups (mostly Miao peoples ) therein. While

8400-439: The local officials who drafted them and the central government officials who collected them. Although most Song gazetteers credited local officials as the authors, already in the Song there were bibliographers who noted that non-official literati were asked to compose these works or did so on their own behalf. By the 16th century—during the Ming dynasty—local gazetteers were commonly composed due to local decision-making rather than

8505-404: The matured literary genre of fangzhi or "treatise on a place" of the Song dynasty. Although Zheng Qiao of the 12th century did not notice the fangzhi while writing his encyclopedic Tongzhi including monographs to geography and cities, others such as the bibliographer Chen Zhensun of the 13th century were listing gazetteers instead of the map guides in their works. The main differences between

8610-542: The name of their respective seats, and if they were not municipal seats, they would have the category of village. Bulgarians do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. However, in everyday language and media the terms "large towns" and "small towns" are in use. "Large towns" usually refers to Sofia , Plovdiv , Varna and Burgas , which have population over 200,000. Ruse and Stara Zagora are often included as well due to presence of relatively developed infrastructure and population over 100,000 threshold. It

8715-418: The national government, for example to apply for driver licenses or passports. The national government generally uses the provinces to run these points of contact on its behalf; in the case of statutory cities, the municipality gets to step up. In Brazil, since 1938, it was defined that the seat of the municipalities would pass to the category of city and give it the name and the districts would be designated by

8820-481: The place was inconsequential". While working in the Department of Arms , the Tang dynasty cartographer Jia Dan (730–805) and his colleagues would acquire information from foreign envoys about their respective homelands, and from these interrogations would produce maps supplemented by textual information. Even within China, ethnographic information on ethnic minorities of non- Han peoples were often described in

8925-476: The properties within the town. The United States Census identifies many census-designated places (CDPs) by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them; however, those CDPs typically include rural and suburban areas and even surrounding villages and other towns. The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach: a city may strictly be an administrative entity which has been granted that designation by law, but in informal usage,

9030-417: The rank of town (e.g. Visegrád, Zalakaros or Gönc) and meeting the conditions of development is often disregarded to quickly elevate larger villages into towns. As of middle 2013, there are 346 towns in Hungary, encompassing some 69% of the entire population. Towns of more than 50,000 people are able to gain the status of megyei jogú város (town with the rights of a county ), which allows them to maintain

9135-557: The same meaning as borough albeit deriving from a different etymology) and they retain the exclusive right to the title even after the last vestiges of their privileges vanished through the reform of the local administration carried through in 1970. In Estonia , there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word linn is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs. There are 30 municipal towns ( omavalitsuslik linn ) in Estonia and

9240-404: The scale, to fortified municipalities. Other common Anglo-Saxon suffixes included ham 'home', stede 'stead', and burh 'bury, borough, burgh'. In toponymic terminology, names of individual towns and cities are called astyonyms or astionyms (from Ancient Greek ἄστυ 'town, city', and ὄνομα 'name'). In some cases, town is an alternative name for "city" or "village" (especially

9345-430: The smallest level of local authorities are all called communes . They can have anywhere from a handful to millions of inhabitants, and France has 36,000 of them. The French term for town is bourg but French laws generally do not distinguish between towns and cities which are all commonly called villes . However, some laws do treat these authorities differently based on the population and different rules apply to

9450-421: The term is also used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town, even though there are many officially designated cities that are much smaller than that. 193 countries have been involved in a common effort to agree on a common statistical definition of

9555-502: The text-based Gazetteer for Scotland , and the new (2008) National Gazetteer (for Scotland) , formerly known as the Definitive National Address – Scotland National Gazetteer. In addition to local or regional gazetteers, there have also been comprehensive world gazetteers published; an early example would be the 1912 world gazetteer published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins . There are also interregional gazetteers with

9660-607: The three big cities Paris , Lyon and Marseille . For historical reasons, six communes in the Meuse département exist as independent administrative entities despite having no inhabitants at all. For statistical purposes, the national statistical institute ( INSEE ) operates a distinction between urban areas with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants and bigger communes, the latter being called villes . Smaller settlements are usually called villages . Germans do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. The German word for both

9765-455: The three categories: cities, towns and rural areas. Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use . He identified five types of towns: Through different periods of recorded history, many towns have grown into sizeable settlements, with the development of properties, centres of culture, and specialized economies. Çatalhöyük , currently an archaeological site,

9870-537: The title "The Gazetteer's: or Newsman's Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index". Echard wrote that the title "Gazetteer's" was suggested to him by a "very eminent person" whose name he chose not to disclose. For Part II of this work published in 1704, Echard referred to the book simply as "the Gazeteer". This marked the introduction of the word "gazetteer" into the English language . Historian Robert C. White suggests that

9975-411: The type, and scope, of the information presented. World gazetteers usually consist of an alphabetical listing of countries, with pertinent statistics for each one, with some gazetteers listing information on individual cities , towns , villages , and other settlements of varying sizes. Short-form gazetteers , often used in conjunction with computer mapping and GIS systems, may simply contain

10080-675: The walls of a castle. In Australia, most rural and regional centres of population can be called towns; many small towns have populations of less than 200. The smallest may be described as townships. In addition, some local government entities are officially styled as towns in Queensland , South Australia , Western Australia and the Northern Territory , and formerly also (till the 1990s) in Victoria . The Austrian legal system does not distinguish between villages, towns, and cities. The country

10185-617: The word χωριό ('village') to refer to smaller settlements and the word πόλη or πολιτεία ('city') to refer to larger ones. Careful speakers may also use the word κωμόπολη to refer to towns with a population of 2,000–9,999. In Greek administrative law there used to be a distinction between δήμοι , i.e. municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants or considered important for some other geographical (county seats), historical or ecclesiastical (bishops' seats) reason, and κοινότητες, referring to smaller self-governing units, mostly villages. A sweeping reform, carried out in two stages early in

10290-442: The word in both Germanic and Celtic was that of a fortress or an enclosure. Cognates of town in many modern Germanic languages designate a fence or a hedge. In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed, and through which a track must run. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built

10395-512: The work in compiling it". Gazetteers became widely popular in Britain in the 19th century, with publishers such as Fullarton , Mackenzie , Chambers and W & A. K. Johnston , many of whom were Scottish , meeting public demand for information on an expanding Empire. This British tradition continues in the electronic age with innovations such as the National Land and Property Gazetteer ,

10500-470: Was "little more than medleys of politics, history and miscellaneous remarks on the manners, languages and arts of different nations, arranged in the order in which the territories stand on the map". Nevertheless, in 1802 Morse followed up his original work by co-publishing A New Gazetteer of the Eastern Continent with Rev. Elijah Parish, the latter of whom Ralph H. Brown asserts did the "lion's share of

10605-471: Was Joseph Scott in 1795 who published the first post-revolutionary American gazetteer, his Gazetteer of the United States . With the aid of Noah Webster and Rev. Samuel Austin, Morse finally published his gazetteer The American Universal Geography in 1797. However, Morse's gazetteer did not receive distinction by literary critics, as gazetteers were deemed as belonging to a lower literary class. The reviewer of Joseph Scott's 1795 gazetteer commented that it

10710-522: Was a government survey on all the administrative counties of England; it was used to assess the properties of farmsteads and landholders in order to tax them sufficiently. In the survey, numerous English castles were listed; scholars debate on exactly how many were actually referenced in the book. However, the Domesday Book does detail the fact that out of 3,558 registered houses destroyed in 112 different boroughs listed, 410 of these destroyed houses were

10815-498: Was considered to be the oldest inhabited town, or proto-city , that existed from around 7500 BC. Inscribed as a World Heritage Site , it remains a depopulated town with a complex of ruins. In Roman times , a villa was a rural settlement formed by a main residential building and another series of secondary buildings. It constituted the center from which an agricultural holding was administered. Subsequently, it lost its agricultural functions and reduced its activity to residential. With

10920-534: Was intended to be self-reliant, but was not successful and turned into a bedroom community like the other new towns. More recent developments are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau (Tung Chung-Tai Ho) . In Hungary there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Hungarian is város ). Nevertheless, the expressions formed by adding the adjectives kis ('small') and nagy ('large') to

11025-399: Was published, which contained more than 9,000 different entries for geographic places. This was an improvement over Ortelius' work, since it included modern placenames and places discovered since the time of Ortelius. Pierre Duval (1618–1683), a nephew of the French cartographer Nicolas Sanson , wrote various geographical dictionaries. These include a dictionary on the abbeys of France,

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