(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Lauren Drakopulos, University of Washington and Shefali Juneja Lakhina, University of Wollongong

(THE CONVERSATION) Maps are an important part of our everyday lives.

We use them for driving directions, to look up restaurants or stores and parse election data. We can even use smartphone maps to locate friends when they’re out on the town.

What digital mapping tools like Google Maps or Citymapper generally don’t tell us is how a certain street got its name, or what issues are of crit...