This paper was given at the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland (SNSBI) Spring conference in April 2022. The talk reported on work completed as part of ‘Envisaging Landscapes and Naming Places: the Lake District before the Map’. This project has taken an important first step towards the complete digitisation of the OS Name Books for Cumberland and Westmorland by completing a proof-of-concept case study focused on the Name Books for the parish of Grasmere. In the talk, I explained how this case study was conceived and conducted, and I considered the extent to which Victorian developments and priorities (as well as errors in the OS’s cataloguing process) influenced the maps through which people have experienced the Lake District for more than 150 years. I also discussed the choice of authorities for the names listed in the OS Name Books, and I assessed what those choices reveal about Victorian society in and around Grasmere.