the.com/mapmaking

means The craft of representing geographic features of the earth on a chart or map, deciding what to include, what to omit, and how to project a curved world onto a flat surface.

from A straightforward compound: 'map' (from medieval Latin 'mappa mundi,' literally 'cloth of the world,' since early maps were drawn on cloth) plus 'making.' 'Mappa' itself meant a napkin or cloth in Latin, possibly of Punic origin, before it got pressed into service for the sheets cartographers drew on — so the word's root is less about the earth and more about the fabric it was first sketched upon.