Cheryl, The purpose of the place authority is to define correctness. Note the word "authority." You seen concerned that creating one is too difficult to be possible. That's fine. My points are based on the possibility that one can be built. (I use the word gazetteer simply to represent the "database" of information that the place authority refers to.) If Virginia were a stand-alone political entity in 1616 the place authority's gazetteer would know that. It is the purpose of the name authority to know that stuff. The Virginia example is a very interesting one. You seem to see it as some kind of an argument against a place authority, whereas I see it as one of the main reasons we require one. Thinking that a place authority would have to decide whether Greenland is Greenland or Denmark wholly misses the point. Greenland is Greenland. Geographically it is part of North America. Politically it is a nation state within the Kingdom of Denmark (just as England and Scotland are nation states within the United Kingdom). There is no concept of rightness or wrongness here. There is simply what is (and was), and the place authority would know both of these things. Tom