Place naming strategies in Inuit-Yupik and Dene languages in Alaska
Citation: Holton, Gary. 2022. Place naming strategies in Inuit-Yupik and Dene languages in Alaska. In Kenneth L. Pratt & Scott Heyes (eds.), Memory and Landscape: Indigenous Responses to a Changing North, 276–296. Athabasca: Athabasca University Press. holton-2022-place_naming.pdf
Indigenous place names in Alaska—and the place-naming strategies that underlie them— provide insight into Indigenous conceptualizations of the landscape. Inuit-Yupik place naming is grounded in human affordance; names are assigned based on people’s relationship to the land. In contrast, Dene place naming is highly deterministic, based on a generative geographic directional system.
Central Alaskan Yup’ik coastal orientation 
Koyukon (Dene) riverine orientation 