Indigenymy – BC Indigenous Place Names Map

Welcome to the (Indige)nymy Hypermap, a first-of-its-kind project to present toponyms in Indigenous languages together on a single map. In October 2025, Squirrel Ridge's executive director Jay Gerbrandt began mapping names aggregated from over 80 sources across 20 languages (and counting). As of January 26, 2026, this map includes 5,839 toponym instances.

This map demonstrates the wide range of ways Indigenous peoples have made use of their territorial lands and waters since time immemorial. Squirrel Ridge will continue updating this map with more names, sources, and languages as time goes on. Future upgrades include additional meanings from existing sources, elder attribution, IPA phonetics, and more.

Tap or click on any name or dot to see a dropdown with more information. Each colour you see represents a distinct Indigenous language, as indicated in the legend.

Squirrel Ridge is proud to use Felt as our mapping software. By tapping on the legend (hovering at top left), you can show or hide certain languages or layers. Felt works great on touchscreens and computers, and this map is best viewed on a larger display.

FAQs

How did you find these toponyms? Have you engaged with Indigenous communities directly? All of the toponyms on the map have been sourced from publicly available documents, usually identified via search engines or library searches. In this phase of the project, Squirrel Ridge has not engaged with specific Indigenous communities. However, wherever available, the place names shown have been sourced from publications released by an Indigenous community. The remaining names come from academic work, research performed due to some kind of development threat, or have been found as strays in various archival prose sources.

What future steps are planned to engage communities? Once publicly available sources have been exhausted for a given language or community, we intend to formally engage the Indigenous keepers of the toponyms. We will work together to vet the names shown and ensure any sensitive names are redacted, as well as to identify and add any additional names or details, pending the resources and time of Indigenous partners. In the meantime, our focus is on reproducing these names as accurately as possible from the available literature.

How does Squirrel Ridge process a source? First, we vet the source to gauge whether it contains toponyms and of what language and quality. Second, using Felt, we map the toponyms as points. (If the source is a map, we take an image of the map and superimpose it over the Felt map, then add points where names are marked. If the source is prose, we analyze the locational information in the source to determine where the toponyms are, and map them in Felt.) Third, we export the mapped toponyms as a GeoJSON. Fourth, we double-check for accuracy and detail while we take the coordinates and toponyms and transcribe them in a secure SQL database. Fifth, we export a CSV of all the recorded names, which we upload to Felt to override the previous version of the map.

What are the three layers on the map? In order from top to bottom: Toponyms by Language includes colour-coded toponyms, which are deemed to be of high written accuracy. Awayonyms includes high-accuracy toponyms outside of their core language areas. Sleeping Toponyms includes old, soundalike transcriptions of toponyms, which are deemed to be of low written accuracy (they cannot be consistently mapped to an orthography, and generally pre-date modern orthographic conventions).

What information is shown when I click on a place name? Each toponym popup includes the name's meaning (if available), the endonym (Indigenous name) for the language, the ISO 639-3 code, the source publication year, title, and a link to the source. Links to Glottolog pages provide additional linguistic context about each language. This enriched metadata helps demystify the codes and makes the linguistic and bibliographic information more accessible.

How do I say these toponyms out loud? Unlike English, with lots of confusing and inconsistent rules which disconnect spelling from pronunciation, all of the toponyms here use consistent letter-to-sound systems. These differ between languages. Most of the orthographies (writing systems) shown are derived from either the North American phonetic alphabet, a derivative of the BC Indian Languages Project practical orthography, or a unique community-developed orthography like SENĆOŦEN. The best source to help read language-specific writing is FirstVoices, with a range of modern, Indigenous-led language resources.

Why don't you have an IPA form for each name? In a future version of this map, Squirrel Ridge intends to add an IPA transcription for each name. As part of this, we are building a toolkit to automatically convert a given orthography to IPA and back again. This toolkit will also allow for conversion from one orthography to another via IPA. It's a work in progress!

Why isn't there a meaning listed for (toponym)? Not every source provides a meaning for every toponym. To avoid duplication, we do not include locational referencing in the meaning field (seeing that a name means "colonial name" is not helpful, when you can just see that on the map). Some of our sources do, however, include meanings which are not yet uploaded; our focus has been on quantity over depth, and by preserving the source records we can add these missing pieces of information later.

Who, exactly, is behind this map? Jay Gerbrandt, the executive director of Squirrel Ridge, is a settler Canadian with a cartography obsession and an interest in Indigenous linguistics. This project began in earnest in late 2023, when he was trying to figure out the local place names in his area on Vancouver Island. For more about Jay, visit his website.

I have a question that isn't listed above! That's cool. Try emailing us at [tools] at [squirrelridge] dot [org]. We're friendly, but can't guarantee a response or a timely reply. If you're a representative of an Indigenous community, please make that clear in the subject line, and we will prioritize your questions.