Dialectal name forms in official names - a view from Austria

The article highlights at first the system of place-name standardization at the global, national and subnational levels with all its benefits and problems and a focus on respecting standard language versus dialect names, where preferring dialect forms would mean standardizing to the benefit of the local or regional, not the national or global community. It then plunges into the Austrian situation with its federal, subsidiary political system and its prevailing bottom-up place-name standardization procedures. There it reveals that dialect forms are rather exceptionally standardized and elevated to the rank of official names, but that situations vary regionally as well as by feature category and the proprial and generic part of a name, and tries to explore the reasons for this situation.