Abstract: The Jarud Banner is located in the fringe of the Hinggan Mountains to the north of Liaohe Plain, and it crosses the second and third steps of the Chinese terrain. Due to the limitation of various natural conditions, the southern region is the farming area, the northern region is the pastoral area, while the central region is the farming- pastoral ecotone. This paper takes 3 349 place names in Jarud Banner, Inner Mongolia, China as the investigation object. It applies methods of kernel density estimation, geographic concentration index, cold and hot spot analysis, etc. to analyze the spatial distribution rules and characteristics of the toponymy landscapes. Research results reveal that: (1) In the study regions, the natural landscape place names are mainly concentrated in the west, north hills, middle, and small mountains regions. Landform place names are concentrated in terrain transition zone, namely areas with great fluctuation landform. Hydrological place names are mainly distributed in relatively low altitude region and have no obvious relationship with the size of rivers. They evenly distribute from south to north and show the place names distribution of arid and semi-arid region with water shortage. (2) The human landscape place names are mostly distributed in midland and south region. In terms of the distribution characteristics, human settlements place names have the closest relationship with natural hydrological place name. They show zonal distribution in the midland with reverse and depend on water resources because of the agriculture. Moreover, the rule of surface water and groundwater are concentrated in low altitude region and riverside region. These are also the characteristics of the settlement distribution in farming- pastoral region. (3) The human place name has gone through the process of random distribution from the early Qing Dynasty to modern centralized distribution. Most human place names are formed in the last 100 a. The settlements place names begun to take shape from the small settlements in the early Qing Dynasty to the land liberated in the late Qing Dynasty. They then develop to the current centralized distribution of scale. The place names of economy, transportation, and architecture have been gradually gathered with industrialization and urbanization since the 1980s. (4) In terms of the overall distribution of the study regions, the natural place name distribution is more affected by factors such as climate, terrain, rivers, place names recognition, and etc. However, in additional to the natural factors, the human place name distribution is related to politics, population activities, urbanization, and degree of economic development.

Key words: GIS, place name, kernel density estimation, cold and hot spot analysis, Jarud Banner