INTRODUCTION 



U.S. interests in Antarctica 



America's long involvement with the antarctic region has fur- 

 nished a legacy of named places on the continent and nearby 

 islands. The most prominent features, named long ago, com- 

 memorate historic discoveries and achievements. They appear 

 on widely published maps and have achieved universal accep- 

 tance in the United States and abroad. 



But large, first-order features are just a few of thousands of 

 named antarctic places. The remaining features to which names 

 have been assigned are no less vital to orderly exploration, 

 scientific research, logistics operations, and map making, which 

 continue with vigor. 



Thorough understanding of Antarctica is a recent achievement 

 and by no means completed. As late as 1956 more than half 

 of Antarctica still had not been seen. Four-fifths of the region's 

 scientific literature has been published since 1960. Place-nam- 

 ing also is recent. The United States began to catalog place 

 names systematically in 1943, yet a gazetteer issued in 1956 

 contained only 3,400 names. By 1981, with publication of the 

 most recent comprehensive gazetteer, the number had climbed 

 to 1 1 ,604. 



Antarctica is entering a new and challenging age. The number 

 of nations adhering to the Antarctic Treaty, which provides 

 the international management structure for antarctic activities, 

 has grown from 12 in 1961 to 39 in 1989. The research-oriented 

 United States Antarctic Program, managed by the National 

 Science Foundation, for more than three decades has provided 

 a permanent National presence in Antarctica designed to sup- 

 port the range of U.S. antarctic interests. This program, con- 

 sisting of scientific research supported by year-round stations 

 and a logistics infrastructure, continues as our Nation's prin- 

 cipal expression of interest in the region; knowledge of Ant- 

 arctica's natural processes is vital to an understanding of regional 

 and global change and is the focus of the research effort. Other 

 issues also have emerged; they include environmental preser- 

 vation, resource management, and issues raised by the increase 

 in tourism and other nongovernmental expeditions. 



Naming authority 



This gazetteer lists antarctic names approved by the United 

 States Board on Geographic Names and by the Secretary of 

 the Interior. The Board is the interagency body created by law 

 to standardize and promulgate geographic names for official 

 purposes. As the official standard for names in Antarctica, the 

 gazetteer assures accuracy and uniformity for the specialist and 

 the general user alike. Unlike the last (1981) edition, now out 

 of print, the book contains neither historical notes nor textual 

 descriptions of features. 



Name coverage 



The gazetteer contains names of features in Antarctica and the 

 area extending northward to the Antarctic Convergence that 



have been approved by the Board as recently as mid- 1 989. It 

 supersedes previous Board gazetteers for the area. For each 

 geographic feature, the book contains the name, cross refer- 

 ences if any, and latitude and longitude. Coverage corresponds 

 to that of maps at the scale of 1;250,000 or larger for islands, 

 coastal Antarctica, and mountains and ranges of the continent. 

 Much of the interior of Antarctica, an ice plateau, has been 

 mapped at a smaller scale and is nearly devoid of features and 

 toponyms. All of the names are for natural features; scientific 

 stations are not listed. For the names of submarine features, 

 reference should be made to the Gazetteer of Undersea Fea- 

 tures, U.S. Board on Geographic Names (1981). 



Approved names and variant names 



Entries include 12,362 approved names, of which 758 have 

 been approved since publication of the last gazetteer in 1981 . 

 Also listed are 2,546 unapproved variant names. Variant names 

 are indented under the approved names, and they are cross- 

 referenced to the approved names by the word "see." The 

 variant names are forms the Board does not recommend for 

 use. These forms include misspellings, linguistically correct 

 foreign spellings, such as "Hval Bukta" for Bay of Whales, 

 and names incorrectly applied. As a rule, cross-references are 

 not given for forms that differ only in a foreign generic term, 

 e.g., "Beardmore Gletscher" for Beardmore Glacier, or for 

 forms that differ from the approved name only in capitalization, 

 spacing, hyphenation, diacritical marks, or a plural generic. 

 Only the nonindented main entries are approved for use. 



Locational information 



The geographic coordinates, with longitude based on Green- 

 wich, are generally given to the nearest minute and are for 

 finding purposes only. The coordinates locate the summits of 

 peaks and hills, the extremities of capes and points, the mouths 

 or lower ends of glaciers and meltwater streams, and the centers 

 or midpoints of other features. 



Romanization 



Names spelled originally in a nonroman alphabet, such as Rus- 

 sian or Japanese, are converted to roman spellings by a system 

 approved by the Board. 



Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names 



The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names is the body of 

 U.S. Government specialists responsible for conducting re- 

 search on antarctic names. The committee, which is advisory 

 to the Board on Geographic Names, meets as required and 

 recommends names for Board approval. From its inception in 

 1947 (succeeding the Special Committee on Antarctic Names, 

 1943-47) the Committee has remained a small working group, 

 rarely exceeding three or four persons at any time. The mem- 



