Remapping the Livonian Coast: A Multilingual Gazetteer of the Settlements of Northern Kurzeme

Abstract

This paper presents a multilingual, semantically linked gazetteer of historical and contemporary settlements along the Livonian coast of Northern Kurzeme, Latvia. Designed for use in digital humanities research, the gazetteer aligns place names across Livonian, Latvian, Russian, German, and Finnish sources, linking each settlement to structured records in the Finno-Ugric Data Sharing Space. Each entry is enriched with stable identifiers and cross-references to GeoNames, VIAF, and Wikidata, enabling integration with global knowledge graphs and library discovery systems. The dataset addresses challenges posed by shifting subnational boundaries and naming conventions over two centuries, and offers a foundation for geographically grounded research on endangered languages, textile provenance, and regional cultural heritage. The publication is intended as a reproducible model for creating historically sensitive gazetteers in minority-language and multi-ethnic contexts.