Language use and spatial identity research are topics of interest in linguistics, geography, anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. Accordingly, there are numerous related terms that originated in one discipline but are also used in other disciplines, making them multi-disciplinary. Research on terminology in the field of language use has shown great diversity (linguistic geography, areal or spatial linguistics, linguistic geography, the geography of language, geolinguistics). The paper analyzes and defines the aforementioned concepts, their connection with individual disciplines, and discusses individual terminological shortcomings. The aim of this paper is to review the field of research regarding the use of language and spatial identity in a broader sense, and especially the position of and approaches to research within historical geography. The paper analyzes a sample of 124 articles (published mainly in Croatian and English) according to author(s), research objective, methodology, and period of publication. Based on this, three characteristic periods during which research developed and changed have been distinguished.