FR
Skip to content
All tutorials

Show and search Inuktitut place names

Iqaluit is also ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ. A map of Nunavut that only knows the English name is wrong in a way its readers notice at once. This tutorial covers the three places an Inuktitut name turns up: the map's labels, the search box, and the result you get back. It ends with what the data does not carry yet, because that part decides whether this works for the communities you care about.

live result
the code that produced it
import { Unmap, maplibregl } from "@unmap/sdk";

const unmap = new Unmap({
  key: "um_live_...",
  container: "map",
  center: [-68.5145, 63.7467],
  zoom: 12,
});

const [place] = await unmap.geocoder.search("ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ", { limit: 1 });

new maplibregl.Marker({ color: "#FF3E9A" })
  .setLngLat([place.lng, place.lat])
  .setPopup(new maplibregl.Popup().setText(place.name))
  .addTo(unmap.map!);

The code is plain TypeScript. For the React, Next.js, Vue or Nuxt wiring, start from the framework recipes.

The map already draws them

There is nothing to enable. The basemap carries Indigenous names on the feature itself, so Iqaluit is drawn as Iqaluit with ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ beneath it, whichever label language you asked for. Where the syllabic name is the primary one, it is drawn first and the English one second. The fonts that draw syllabics ship with every style.

const unmap = new Unmap({ key, container: "map", center: [-68.5145, 63.7467], zoom: 12 });

Do not set lang: "iu" on the map. Inuktitut is not a label language in the tiles, and an unsupported code falls back to English, which is the opposite of what you meant. Leave lang as the reader's interface language and the syllabic line comes along anyway.

Search in syllabics

Search matches names in whatever language the query is written in. A syllabic query finds the community, not a building that happens to share the name.

const [place] = await unmap.geocoder.search("ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ", { limit: 1 });
 
console.log(place?.name); // "Iqaluit"
console.log(place?.names?.iu); // "ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ"

Autocomplete matches a syllabic prefix as it is typed: ᐃᖃᓗ suggests Iqaluit and ᐸᖕᓂ suggests Pangnirtung. Former names are searchable too, so Frobisher Bay still finds Iqaluit.

Render the Inuktitut name

lang: "iu" on the geocoder returns the Inuktitut name as name when the record has one, and falls back to the default name when it does not.

const [here] = await unmap.geocoder.search("Iqaluit", { limit: 1, lang: "iu" });
console.log(here?.name); // "ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ"

If you show both names, read names.iu directly instead. Not every iu value is written in syllabics: some records carry a romanized Inuktitut name there, and a record whose iu value is syllabic may also carry the romanization under iu-Latn. Check the script before you style a string as syllabics.

import type { GeocodeResult } from "@unmap/sdk";
 
// Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, U+1400 to U+167F.
const SYLLABICS = /[᐀-ᙿ]/;
 
function syllabicName(place: GeocodeResult): string | undefined {
  const iu = place.names?.iu;
  return iu && SYLLABICS.test(iu) ? iu : undefined;
}

The same names map carries other Indigenous languages where the source publishes them, under their own codes, such as cr for Cree and oj for Ojibwe.

Where this gets the wrong answer

  • Coverage is thin, and it is a sourcing gap, not an engine one. Across the country the corpus carries an Inuktitut name for relatively few communities, and even in Nunavut some have none: Cambridge Bay and Arviat come back with an English name only. A syllabic query for a place with no iu name has nothing to match and returns no results. The search engine handles every language present; what is missing is the data.
  • The names come from open government sources. They are NRCan's Canadian Geographical Names Database and Who's On First. Community-stewarded names are not imported: under OCAP® that is a partnership, not a download. When a record gains an Inuktitut name in a source, the next corpus rebuild indexes it with no change on your side.
  • A syllabic query has to match the spelling on the record. A different spelling of the same name can return nothing. Offer the English name as a second way in.
  • The map and the search can disagree. The basemap's labels come from OpenStreetMap and search comes from the conflated corpus, so a label can show a syllabic name that search does not carry, or the other way round.