Vernacular geography

Vernacular geography is the sense of place that is revealed in ordinary people's language.^[1][2] Current research by the Ordnance Survey is attempting to understand the landmarks, streets, open spaces, water bodies, landforms, fields, woods, and many other topological features. These commonly used descriptive terms do not necessarily use the official or current names for features; and often these concepts of places don't have clear, rigid boundaries. For example, sometimes the same name may refer to more than one feature, and sometimes people in a locality use more than one name for the same feature. When people refer to geographical regions in a vernacular form they are commonly referred to as imprecise regions. Regions can include large areas of a country such as the American Midwest, the British Midlands, the Swiss Alps, the south east of England and southern California; or smaller areas such as Silicon Valley in northern California. Commonly used descriptions of areas of cities such as a city's downtown district, New York's Upper East Side, London's square mile or the Latin Quarter of Paris can also be viewed as imprecise regions.