Abstract. The aim of the paper is to discuss the balance between the useful and the useless in
the actual lifelong learning, in a conceptual scheme that goes beyond purely economical or
technical evaluations. The authors chose an exemplary field starting from last year’s paper
on the exploration of nets. In order to delimitate the research field, the official city toponymy
has been considered, both in the structure of hypernyms and in the choices of proper names.
The analysis considers Italian city hypernyms, with some regional or local varieties,
explaining the underlying historical and contact phenomena. The grouping of similar proper
names is then analyzed, finding out segmentations and some strange aversions. The non
correspondence between the conceptual hierarchy and the perceptual geographical hierarchy
is highlighted. Useful practical reference systems are compared with official ones.
Keywords: city toponimy, geographical hypernyms, landmark systems, network
representation, useful vs useless
