NamesOfTheLand uses citizen-created maps to put regional and endangered languages back upon their territories. We therefore showcast the traditional names of the land, questioning the visitor and the comunity on their current naming usage of their territories.

This project has been initiated by Gascon, a subgroup of the Occitan people. A lively language family with about 15 millions speakers around 1900, this practice was mostly disapeared following sustained monolingualist French policies. Today, rare elders and few younger people support its conservation and modest revitalisation. We want to remember, hear, pronunce the native names of our villages, our mountains, our plains, rivers and modest lakes. We wish to share these calls, voices, whistles with our gone grand parents. We these ancient sounds waves of our land, we connect back with generations and generations of our ancestors living accross these landscapes they knew and cared for for centuries.

├── index.html : interactive multimedia map
├── list.html : interactive multimedia list
├── about.html : about and credit page
├── img/ : images used by the webpages
├── doc/ : documentations and copyrighted images from media coverages
├── css/ : styles (not used yet)
└── js/ : behaviors (no used yet)

• Hugo Lopez, URFIST Occitanie, Université de Toulouse (UT) : project management, training, SPARQL, conception, coding.
• Delphine Montagne, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA) : data alignement, communication.
• Philippe Biu, professor of Occitan whistled : recordings, exhibition. See also ./about.html

• Lingualibre.org

• Siffler le gascon, histoire d’une renaissance
• Shiular lo gascon
• Wikimedia Commons Occitan Whistle
• Hugo Pierre Lopez, Delphine Montagne. Adiu ! Quand l'union des communs fait la force du patrimoine immatériel. State of the Map France 2024, OpenStreetMap France, Jun 2024, Lyon, France. ⟨hal-04628915⟩ ⟨pretalx⟩

Skills :

• Wikidata / SPARQL (basic)
• Lingualibre recording
• Text editing for the words
• URL editing, for parameters

Variables :

• iso2local: filter label via ISO_639-2 language code, ex: oc.
• iso2macro: filter label via ISO_639-2 language code, ex: fr.
• languageQid: Wikidata Qid of your language (ex: Occitan whistled from Aas (Q117707514))
  • Helps create the Wikimedia Commons prefix for your language (ex: LL-Q117707514)
• areaQid: Wikidata Qid of your target administrative area (ex: Pyrénées-Atlantiques (Q12703))
• lat: Latitude of OSM map view's center (ex: 44.2)
• lon: Longitude of OSM map view's center (ex: -0.3)
• zoom: Zoom altitude of OSM map view (ex: 9)

1. Open Wikidata Query service, input the following SPARQL

• replace oc by your language ISO.
• replace Q12703 by your administrative area of interest.

#title: List of commune names within Pyrénnées Atlantic, simplest query for LinguaLibre recording phase
SELECT ?id ?label
WHERE {
  ?id wdt:P31 wd:Q484170;  # item is `commune de france` (Q484170)
      wdt:P131 wd:Q12703.  # item is `located in administrative entity` (P131) of `pyrennées atlantiques` (Q12703)
  ?id rdfs:label ?label.   # fetch labels
  FILTER(lang(?label) = "oc") # keep Occitan labels
}

#defaultView:Map
#title: List of commune names within Pyrénnées Atlantic, richest query with geocoordinates and population for the dataviz
SELECT DISTINCT ?id ?label ?label_fr ?coord ?population
WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],oc,fr,en". }
  VALUES ?humanSettlementTypes {
    wd:Q515        # city
    wd:Q3957       # town 
    # wd:Q484170   # French communes
    wd:Q486972     # human settlement
    wd:Q618123     # geographic feature
    wd:Q3257686    # locality
    wd:Q123964505  # populated item
  }
  VALUES ?administrativeArea {
    wd:Q12703 # Pyrennees-Atlantic
  }
  ?id (wdt:P31/(wdt:P279*)) ?humanSettlementTypes ; 
    wdt:P131 ?administrativeArea .
  ?id rdfs:label ?label . FILTER(LANG(?label) = "oc")
  ?id rdfs:label ?label_fr . FILTER(LANG(?label_fr) = "fr")
  ?id wdt:P625 ?coord . # geo coordinates
  OPTIONAL { ?id wdt:P1082 ?population . }
}

2. Run query : results appears > Click "Link" > Right-click on "SPARQL endpoint" : copy link address
3. Open Lingualibre studio > Step 3 : click "External tools" > paste the link adress.
4. Record these labels, publish them to Wikimedia Commons.

Within a week or two, these toponyms recordings will be added to their Wikidata concepts.

1. Ensure you recorded your toponyms via Lingua Libre. (Check your audios in Wikimedia Commons LinguaLibre's categories)
2. Wait 2~3 weeks so the audios spread on wikidata items
3. Open index.html
4. Update the parameters to fit your case

• MIT Licence for code
• CC-BY-SA-4.0 for contents
• /doc/* contains copyrighted materials