Registrar of Geographic Names

Roles and Responsibilities
The role of the Registrar of Geographic Names is clearly defined in the Geographic Place Names Act (1998). The Registrar is responsible for maintaining the official Victorian Register of Geographic Names which contains the geographic names for features and roads in Victoria. According to Section 18 of the Act, the names contained in the Register are the official names for the purposes of ‘any Act, proclamation, Order in Council, local law, rule, regulation, official map, record, legal instrument or document’.

In the pursuit of maintaining the Register, the Registrar liaises with and obtains proposals from various naming authorities such as Municipal Councils (responsible for naming local parks, streets, suburbs/localities, waterways and other features of local significance), Government Departments (responsible for naming government infrastructure such as railway stations, schools and hospitals) and the Minister for Environment and Climate Change (who can direct the Registrar on name registration). With the devolved naming process in Victoria, the Registrar ensures that proposals from naming authorities conform with the principles outlined in the Guidelines for Geographic Names (2004), which are provided for under Section 5 of the Act. The Registrar disseminates information incorporated in the Register to interested stakeholders such as the general public, cartography companies (Melways, UBD, Whereis) and government bodies.

The Registrar is also responsible for convening select Committees formed from members of the Geographic Place Names Advisory Panel. These Committees are convened to consider issues of State naming significance (such as features which cross multiple municipal boundaries).

The Registrar deals with name registration concepts extending from maintaining data integrity, to auditing proposal compliance with the Guidelines. In essence, the Registrar’s office is the nexus between electronic data management for mapping, emergency response and addressing purposes, and community or stakeholder management for historical and cultural purposes.

Considering the breadth of areas covered by the Registrar’s office, it is ideally positioned as a unit within the Office of the Surveyor-General, a business unit of Land Victoria. More information about the Registrar can be found in the Guidelines for Geographic Names (October 2004) and the Register can be found at the VICNAMES website.


John E Tulloch
Registrar of Geographic Names
Surveyor-General of Victoria

Further information contact:

The Registrar of Geographic Names
Level 17, 570 Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
T +61 3 8636 2525
F +61 3 8636 2588
E geo.names@dse.vic.gov.au

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