Georeferencing Historical Place Names in Biological Specimen Records

A recent study published on arXiv (2608.06884) tackles the issue of georeferencing non-gazetteer place names (NGPs) found in biological specimen records. Researchers utilized digitized data from New Zealand's Allan Herbarium to pinpoint place names in locality descriptions that are not listed in existing gazetteers. These NGPs often consist of historical, colloquial, or vernacular names that served as landmarks during the collection period. By analyzing the repeated use of the same place name across various specimen records with differing locations and spatial relations, the study extracts and reverses these relations to georeference the NGPs. This methodology aims to reveal the temporal geographic insights embedded within natural history collections, which document biodiversity across different periods. The results are significant for fields such as biodiversity research, historical geography, and digital humanities, providing a means to recover obscure or forgotten place names from archival resources.