Place-names are an unwritten archive of springs and ancient sites.

Automatic classification of the names of Jordan's 7,819 cadastral basins by their leading generic term: water (wadi, ain, bir), ruins (khirbet, rujm, tell), relief, farming, religious, kunya forms (umm/abu) and settlement.

In short

Names of 7,819 cadastral basins classified; 28.4% begin with a generic geographic term.

Kunya forms (umm/abu) are the largest group: 827 basins, then settlement 391, water 385, ruins 247, farming 195, relief 115 and religious 58.

Most frequent leading terms: umm (512), al-balad (375), abu (303), wadi (162), khirbet (81), rujm (73), ain (71).

Meanings of cadastral basin names in Jordan: water, ruins and relief in 7,819 names — Reduced-resolution preview with a watermark; the full-resolution map (PNG) is in the package.

Who it is for

Historical geography, archaeology and toponymy research; site surveys; traditional water studies.

Method: what we add to the raw data

Letter normalisation, then matching the first word (or the word after 'al-') against a dictionary of ~80 generic terms in seven categories; each basin is joined to its governorate spatially.

Product details

What you get	1 spatial layer in GeoPackage, 3 CSV tables, lyrx symbology for ArcGIS Pro, a PNG map at 220 dpi, and an Arabic and English guide
Formats	GPKG, CSV, lyrx, PNG
Projection	ED50 / Jordan TM (EPSG:3066)
Licence	Commercial use allowed for you and the organisation you buy for; no resale or redistribution
Delivery	A private download link valid for 24 hours, within 6 hours of payment confirmation
Package size	ZIP 22.8 MB
Personal data	The product contains no personal data

Spatial layers

basins_toponymy — polygons, 7,819: Cadastral basins with toponymic root, category and governorate

Tables

J01_categories.csv — 8 rows: Basins and area per name category
J01_roots.csv — 59 rows: Basins per toponymic root
J01_by_governorate.csv — 11 rows: Name categories by governorate

Limitations

First-word matching only; about 72% of names are proper names and stay 'other'. Kunya forms (umm/abu) do not indicate a feature type.

FAQ

How long does delivery take?: Up to 6 hours after payment is confirmed.
How long does the download link last?: 24 hours, and it is renewed free on request.
Can I get a refund?: Digital products are not refundable once downloaded — unless the file is defective or does not match the description, in which case it is replaced or fully refunded.
What does the licence allow?: Commercial use is allowed; resale or redistribution is not.

Meanings of cadastral basin names in Jordan: water, ruins and relief in 7,819 names