ABSTRACT
A beginning in earnest came in the amply satisfying seminar on geography and place names that John Leighly gave at Berkeley. The contrast between an open and dynamic conceptualization of space and a closed, static one seems to fit with other semantic contrasts that distinguish English, especially, from the Romance languages and also with intuitive perceptions of two broadly defined regions of Europe: the northern and the Mediterranean. The inappropriateness of the egocentric viewpoint in place names often leads to their replacement as the locally dominant orientation shifts. In China, toponymic practice is in accord with the cosmic diagram that seems to underlie the traditional Confucian ordering of space. Integration of the cardinal points in a cosmology, including the ascription of sanctity to sets of lakes and mountains assigned to the cardinal directions, need not, the Pueblo case suggests, lead to wide use of the directions in the naming of places.
