The article contains preliminary considerations on the principles of the standardization of geographical names in Poland, in particular the names of physiographic objects. The notion of a country’s language policy has been referred to as one of its tools is the standardization of geographical names. The general objectives of the Polish language policy were listed as such: the assertion of legal status of the Polish language as the first language in Poland; the assertion of conditions for the development of national and ethnic minority languages in the country; the construction of a Polish- language national and state community. Legal acts concerning Polish language and geographical nomenclature were indicated. It was stated that the assumed effect of political and linguistic actions should be to develop a nomenclature in correct Polish, one which is pragmatically effective, rooted in tradition and, as a result of this study, one should expect to achieve an optimal course of the language communication process in each communicative community. Then, the criteria of the linguistic correctness of geographical names applied to date were discussed and similarities indicated in the standardization procedure with regards to geonyms and specialist terms. The rules of the detailed standardization procedure will be presented in the second part of the article

The main aim of this paper is to propose a terminological approach to the standardization of onomastic terminology. Attention is paid to the primary importance of conceptual systems and to the onomasiological approach typical of terminological work. Terminology is presented as a discipline devoted primarily to the study of concepts. Then the main concepts of terminology are discussed and the relations between a conceptual system and a terminological system are explained. An outline of the issue of conceptual systems of onomastics and of their internal structure is made. Then two important metatheoretical concepts are introduced and defined: 1) the concept of theoretical legitimacy of concepts and 2) the concept of economy of conceptual systems. In the final part of the article, several suggestions concerning the standardization of onomastic terminology are made: 1) terms referring to concepts belonging to separate conceptual series are not to be used interchangeably; 2) terms based on different roots (in the English onomastic terminology: -onym, -onymy, -onomastics, in the Polish terminology: -onim, -onimia, -onomastyka) are to be reserved respectively for the concept of a single (type of) proper name, for the concept of a set of proper names and for the concept of a specific onomastic discipline; 3) concepts used or newly introduced in a text are to be defined clearly in onomastic works, 4) onomasticians aiming for standardization of onomastic terminology should start their work by (re)constructing conceptual system(s) of onomastics and only then assign terms to concepts; 5) one completely unitary conceptual (and terminological) system of onomastics cannot be achieved due to the theoretical pluralism of the discipline; 6) the first goal of any conceptual and terminological standardization of onomastics is to define its range: should the standardization cover the concepts of philological or general onomastics? should it cover only empirical (descriptive) concepts or highly abstract theoretical concepts as well?

In the second part of the article, the history of standardization programmes concerning the names of physiographic objects is discussed. The basis of the standardization programme currently followed by the Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographic Objects is described. The paper also presents the criteria of linguistic correctness adopted by the previous standardization commissions as well as by the present one. Issues of linguistic correctness of geographical names with dialectal properties and of names borrowed from minority languages are discussed. Attention is paid to some structural discrepancies in the approaches to the issue of correctness taken by the Commission on Names of Localities and Physiographic Objects and by local authorities.

In the text, a polemic is undertaken against the model of the child expected in Polish institutions of early childhood education, and which appropriates the rationalities producing social practices. The source of this model is in the logic of standardization whose cognitive and effects on identity are criticized by the author. Identifying the sources of validation of the practices normalizing some children and stigmatizing others, who do not meet the requirements of the cognitively rigid and morally trivialized standards, the text points to developmental psychology as a discipline which potentially triggers this form of oppression. In conclusion, the author describes briefly a number of examples of educational solutions in which an attempt has been made to move beyond the discourse of standardized quality in child education.