Sir,

Unauthorized names of glaciers

The Editors of the Journal of Glaciology have shown me Professor Maxwell Reference Gage,Gage’s (1971) letter and have asked me to comment on it. I share Professor Gage’s views about the casual use of unofficial place-names in published reports. This has been a frequent problem for those who wish to refer to features in newly mapped regions, but it is no solution to put unauthorized place-names within quotation marks; this usually does not make them any easier to identify. So far as I can determine from published official records, “Fox Glacier” in Yukon Territory has not been approved by the Canadian Board on Geographical Names; nor does it appear in any official gazetteer or map and is consequently difficult to locate. There is already a well-known Fox Glacier in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia with which it can be confused.

There is really only one proper procedure in these cases and, if authors do not follow this, I think it is up to Editors to guide them with a firm hand. Reports should use only names that have been officially approved by the appropriate administrative authority for the region. If these names are inadequate for special purposes, anyone is free to propose new ones to the administrative authority (in this case the Canadian Board on Geographical Names). Authors should not expect to receive immediate official blessing for new names; place-name authorities have to solve many problems which are not always apparent to authors. If official sanction for a new name has not been received in time for the publication of some observation, the proposed new name should not be published. It is usually not difficult to substitute a suitable description of the locality which can then be re-identified later.