 Joerg as the lower end of a "major valley depression" along the coast.It was first seen from the ground by Finn Ronne and Carl R. Eklund of the United States Antarctic Service, 1939–41, which also obtained air photos.The ice piedmont was surveyed by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in December 1958, and was named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee after Flemish mathematician and geographer Gerardus Mercator, the originator, in 1568, of the map projection which bears his name.