I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of Natural Earth version 4.1! See the CHANGELOG for full details. Here’s a quick summary:

Expands the name localization added in v4.0 to 21 languages (up from 7) and several dozen themes expanding from populated places to include all admin-0, admin-1, rivers, lakes, playas, geographic lines, physical labels, parks, airports, ports, and more. As part of this work a new unique and stable “ne_id” has been added for any feature with a name translation &/or a Wikidata ID concordance. The full list of languages is: name_ar*, name_bn*, name_de, name_en, name_es, name_fr, name_el*, name_hi*, name_hu*, name_id*, name_it*, name_ja*, name_ko*, name_nl*, name_pl*, name_pt, name_ru, name_sv*, name_tr*, name_vi*, and name_zh. (Names with * indicate new language in v4.1 series.) A 2-character language code decoder ring. Props to Wikidata for their CC0 license. Want to see more name translations in the next Natural Earth release? Go edit Wikidata! Fixes admin-0 polygons for for Bosnia & Herzegovina to restore the Republic Srpska and the Brcko District condominium. Renames admin-0 Swaziland features to eSwatini to keep up with current events. Fixes physical label polygons to restore full geometries. Switches to MapShaper for topology building and joining of attributes for all administrative themes and 10m land and ocean themes. Some shapes were adjusted to fit new snapping tolerances.

Contributors

Many thanks to @imresamu for name translations and Wikidata concordances, @mattbloch for MapShaper feature development, and hat tips to @planemad for Wikidata concordances, Mapbox generally for leading the way with Wikidata name translations, and @thisisaaronland for ne_id work with Brooklyn Integers. Also to @randymeech and @bcamper at Mapzen (RIP) for sponsoring this work as a parting gift to the geo family.

Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso 2018 May 23