Digital historical gazetteers are crucial for researchers since they them help researchers identifying historical places that appear in historical documents, therefore greatly facilitating the mapping of those locations and enabling an analysis of the spatial distribution of these entries. Researchers now finally have the means to explore the spatial dimension of the phenomena they are studying.
They are also crucial for GLAM institutions, since they offer the possibility to link a great variety of documents to precisely located and dated places, therefore offering possibilities to explore collections differently.
However, this is not all that a historical gazetteer can contribute to research. Possible scientific outputs of the Belgian Historical Gazetteer are indeed numerous and very diverse. Several main avenues are presented here, but the list is not closed.
Toponymic studies
The Belgian Historical Gazetteer is, first and foremost, a database of historical place names drawn from a variety of sources. The existence of this database opens up new avenues of research in the field of toponymy, as it enables us, in particular, to trace the evolution of (micro)toponyms over the long term in Belgium: what are the patterns of change in the spelling of these place names? How do they shift in space? How are toponyms transmitted from one feature of the landscape to another? What is specific to Belgium or specific Belgian provinces?
focusing on the provincies of East-Flanders and Antwerp have been showcased at the DHBenelux 2025 conference and will be shortly more precisely described in an article to come.
Landscape studies
In the database of the Belgian Historical Gazetteer, toponyms are not only recorded, but also described. The type of landscape feature referred to by the place name is included in the recorded data. Since a place name is likely to have had several versions over time, this also means that the BHG indirectly allows us to track changes in the landscape through these place names. We therefore suggest that the BHG can be used to trace the major trends in the evolution of wetlands or forests – for example, in Belgium – over the long term (specific examples will be presented shortly).
History of maps
The Belgian Historical Gazetteer collects toponyms both from maps and toponymic dictionaries. The information contained on maps depends heavily on the map’s purpose, its cartographer(s) and the context in which it was produced. Whilst the first of these factors is well known for the maps used by the BHG, the influence of the other two is less well documented.
The BHG dataset makes it possible to analyse the distribution and density of place names across each map, revealing the cartographers' practices, priorities, and the methodological choices that shaped their work, while extending previous studies on that topic to an unprecedented scale and enabling comparisons between maps.
Representation of space/relation to space
The Belgian Historical Gazetteer makes it possible to track the long-term evolution of place names: which place names change very little? Which ones are emerging? Which ones are disappearing? In doing so, it also enables us to explore how societies orient themselves in space, and how this might have evolved through time: what features helped a landlord's manager to locate the fields to be taxed in the Middle Ages? What landmarks were thought to be useful to a soldier on the march in the early 19th century? Which feature of the landscape has become superfluous for 21st-century maps?
This is why, if we consider that maps shape our relationship with space, the BHG can also help us explore how societies’ relationships with their environments have evolved over time.