Atlasregister: Struktur, Systematik und Namensammlung (am Beispiel des Nationalatlas Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

Summary

This paper examines the index volume of the *National Atlas of Germany* from the perspectives of semiotics and onomastics. Published in 2007 as the concluding part of a 13-volume atlas project, this volume provides access to over 600 thematic essays, maps, and diagrams. The analysis treats the index volume as an information modular/ontological structure related to the table of contents, as well as a systematic compilation of names. Its structure is divided into auxiliary and foundational blocks; the foundational blocks include a regional index with index maps, a systematic thematic index, an alphabetical thematic index, and a list of authors, accounting for approximately 95% of the volume. Among the five semiotic modules of information, text constitutes 90.4%, followed by maps, title pages, legends, and pictograms. The regional index contains 710 landscape names; the systematic thematic index, comprising about half of the volume, categorizes approximately 5,500 entries into eight thematic groups, reflecting the ontological classification of the atlas's content. The alphabetical thematic index includes roughly 6,669 common nouns and 48 personal names; the author list contains 596 names, with a male-to-female ratio of about 4:1, and 97.3% of authors hail from Germany, with Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, as well as Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig making notable contributions. The study concludes that the atlas's index volume is not merely a retrieval tool but a semiotically constructed collection of names, which can be regarded as a "name portrait" of authors reflecting the spatial distribution of cartographic scientific labor.