Abstract: The Atlas of Chenghai District,Shantou is an important content of the transformation of the second national toponymic census results. To find out the best symbolic visualization strategy,this paper organized the whole map symbol library using tree model,and then a symbolic visual hierarchy is built which contains three levels including theme and scale,geometric feature,classification set. Visual variables are organically composed to achieve the best map visual perception. As the conclusion,the tree structure of the symbol library and the visual hierarchy can be effectively applied for the symbolization of the geographic name map.

Key words: toponymic census, atlas of district, map symbol, visual hierarchy, tree model