Making a Place Names Overlay in QGIS (Shallow Thoughts)

Making a Place Names Overlay in QGIS

Flipping through Craig Martin's old book

Los Alamos Place Names

, I noticed that in the maps at the beginning, he has a rough map of some of the topographic names for local canyons and mesas.

We were just talking about that on a hike last week — looking out at the canyons north of Rendija and trying to get the names straight. Most maps don't label canyons, mesas, or even watercourses, which is endlessly frustrating for hikers who like geography.

I wondered how hard it would be to make a place names layer in QGIS based on Craig's map (and, of course, other sources too) that I could export as an overlay for use in OsmAnd or PyTopo. And it's always good to learn a little more about how to use QGIS effectively.

First, make a new layer

There doesn't seem to be a way to create a raster layer directly. So create a new vector layer, as in this PDF.

Give the layer two attributes (at least): Name and Bearing (a Decimal Number).

Right-click on the new layer in the Layers List and Toggle Editing.

Add an initial feature

Click on Add Point Feature in the editing toolbar.

Click where you want to add your first feature, and in the Name column, give it a name. Click OK.

Right-click on the layer and choose Properties. In the dialog that pops up, choose Labels. Change No Labels to Single Labels, click Apply, and verify that you see the label you just added.

In the same dialog, you can change attributes like font face, size and color. Unfortunately, the font size is independent of zoom level, so it will be appropriate for some zoom levels and wildly wrong for others. Worse, that means that the placement and location of labels will only be right for some zoom levels; a label that lines up nicely with a canyon or stream when you're zoomed in may not even be on top of the feature when you zoom out. So you'll need to keep your target zoom level in mind when placing labels.

The Labels tab has its own sidebar, in which you'll find Placement. Under Data Defined, click on the icon between Rotation and degrees, click on Field type: int, double, string and that will give you a submenu where you can choose which field you want to use for rotation: in this case, bearing. That's what you'll use for rotating the labels.

Later, when you've added all the features and it's time to export the layer, if you're making place names for non-point features, you might also want to visit the Layer Properties Symbology tab and change it to No Symbols, so you'll see just the name labels, without all the dots where the actual points are located. But I recommend leaving the point symbols there initially, because you might find that you need to move features with the Move Feature tool, which is easier if you have a marker indicating the feature's location. You also need it if you ever decide you need to remove a point you've added.

Click OK.

How to rotate

Near the right side of the top toolbar is a button for Open Attribute Table. There, you can adjust the bearings for each of your labels. It's an incredibly tedious process, though; double-click on the Bearing number, edit it or use the up/down arrows, hit return, look at the resulting rotation, then if it's wrong, double-click again.

The Attribute Table is doubly frustrating to use because almost everything you do in QGIS will pop the main window up to where it covers the Attribute Table. So when using this dialog, I recommend moving it Table somewhere where at least part of it isn't covered by the main window, so you can get back to it after the main window pops to the front. Or you can use Dock Attribute Table, the rightmost icon in the Attribute Table's toolbar.

Fortunately, you don't have to rotate all your labels this way: there's an interactive label rotation tool. To get to it, you might have to click to expand the label toolbar, or make the QGIS window wider.

You can add new points, guess at the initial label rotation, then fine-tune the rotation with the tool.

The Move tool is a bit frustrating: click on the marker, then click where you want it to be (or you can click and drag, but there's no feedback — the marker and label don't move while you're dragging — so if they don't end up where you want them, try again until it looks right. The Rotate Label tool is a lot easier: click on the label, then move the mouse (button up) until the rotation is where you want it, then click again.

You'll probably get into a flow where you're clicking back and forth between Add Point Feature, Rotate a Label and Move Feature. If you need to delete anything, use Select Features by Area or Single Click, click on the marker, then hit Delete.

When finished, you can export it to an OsmAnd overlay, as I've written about several times before: Making OsmAnd Overlays with QGIS (2024 Edition).

Tags: mapping, GIS, qgis
[ 14:28 Dec 30, 2025    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]