The "Geographical Data of Joseon", aka "Joseon Jijijaryo", is presumed to have been published between October 1910 and December 1911. The motivation behind the publishing of "Joseon Jijijaryo" is not clear, as well as its publisher, publishing date and location of publishing. In addition, its 54 hand-transcribed copies vary in their fidelity to the original and have a lot of missing data. However, producing such a large volume of copies in a short span of time seemed to have come from a major transcription project that was undertaken simultaneously, nationwide. It could be assumed that the reason for its lack of uniformity in the method of entry and order was due to the lack of production standards as well as the shortness of production time. This essay examines the name "Dang" to refer to a place of ritual, and other related names of places with emphasis on folklore-related names as well as names related to Jangseung(Korean traditional totem poles) and Guksadang(national shrine). Compared to the total number of place names, there are very few place names that are folklore-related, and which have a lot of variables in listing those names in Chinese characters. This phenomenon probably occurred because the language users that time were conscious of the data collection process. For example, "Dang"(堂) was also listed sometimes as Dang(棠, 唐, 塘), but all of these variants are pronounced "Dang". These variations show that "Dang" could not have been listed as "Dang". The usage of Chinese characters along with Korean letters was mainly for phonetic representation, which directly relates to the conscious decision made by a person who wrote the names.
Conclusions : A listing of the names of the same places using Korean and Chinese characters do not always correspond to each other. In addition, when Chinese characters were used to list a place, a set of variations was used, which shows that listing was done not to emphasize the meaning of a name but to transfer sound.
It is possible to have a glimpse of how people lived in that certain period of time by studying the names of places related to folklore. For example, the dual usage of the names Seonangdang and Seonghwangdang for the same place reveals the actual sounds used in that period that can evidence the differences between those variations. This data is very important, considering the fact that the sound is from one hundred years ago.
A third conclusion is that clues for understanding folk religions could be inferred from the names of places related to folklore. For example, describing Dodang(都堂) or Dodangje as a ceremony that was seemingly identical with "Dodang"(禱堂, 陶唐, 道堂) has significance. Surprisingly, "Dodang", which is the present way of listing "Dodang" was not used.
Also we can conclude that from the religious point of view, one can read the differences of Buldang, Mireukdang, Dodang, Seonangdang, Seonghwangdang and Dang from their names alone. It is noteworthy that the Chinese character listing of all these places has a set of variations except for Buldang, and this fact highlights the distinctive qualities of Buddhism and folk religion.
Lastly, it is quite evident that a sacred place and object played a central role in coordinating a natural scenery for folklores one hundred years ago. This proves that ancient people highly regarded folk religion and accepted it as the core of the culture.
As this essay presents the aforementioned conclusions, there is a need to conduct further analysis on the names of places using a historical approach in the future.