Entering in the thread after it is overdebatted... I tried to build a database with old places in France. For your information, France was divided in provinces on the basis of formation (i.e. province of Britain was acquired as a whole at some time) or regionalism, in generalites for tax purposes, in government for military control, in religious dioceses, etc. Then, in 1790, everything was structured into departements. Moreover, the borders of the entities were changed. At some time, there were 14 generalites, later 15, 16, etc. Some religious dioceses were created from parts of 2 or more existing dioceses. And you have many places with the same name and located in the same area. So, I tried to do something with that. I got something like : - modern name of town "commune" - modern code for towns (INSEE) - previous name(s) of the same or of a part - diocese, encoded with dates, i.e. Langres>1731>Dijon to mean this place was moved to another diocese in 1731 - arcdeaconry - deanery - source of that information - parishes in that town - no. of departement - no. and name of arrondissement - no. and name of canton (township) etc. I think when you build some kind of gazeeters, you will get a lot of possible structures, with time frames, name changes, etc. Subdivisions of generalites depend on the area (i.e. can be election, civil dioceses, vigueries, etc.), so even the name of area can be different. The time frames can be fuzzy. We know that in a source from 1635, that place was in that diocese, but in 1725, it is in another, perhaps because the sources are wrong, or the bishops made some land exchanges. My conclusion would be it is not possible to get a universal model. Even if limited to one country, this is not possible. Denis -- Denis Beauregard - généalogiste émérite (FQSG) Les Français d'Amérique du Nord - www.francogene.com/genealogie--quebec/ French in North America before 1722 - www.francogene.com/quebec--genealogy/ Sur cédérom à 1780 - On CD-ROM to 1780