Second Life® is divided into regions called sims, regions, or islands (in this sense, even if the land is not bordered by water anywhere, the region is sometimes called an island). A region is about 16 acres large, or 65,535 square meters. A region is owned and managed by someone, and they can set the parameters for that region: things like the terrian features and limits, damage enabled or not, and other factors.

Each region has a unique name. These are the names you see come up in the Map window in SL. You can search in the Map for region names and find things, but the Map doesn't know about the names of places inside a region or sim. For example, the Map knows about the region name "Cosy Home", but it does not know the name "Brigadoon", a village built in the Cosy Home sim. To find places by name, you'll need to use the Search window and select the Places tab.

Each region is numbered with coordinates: from 0 to 255 on the X and Y axis, and from 0 to 750 (or more) on the Z axis. The Z axis is altitude (height). You can specify any spot in any sim by stating the name of the sim and the coordinates of the place you want. For example:

Cosy Home (197, 66, 24)

Here is what those coordinates would look like in the SL Map:

There is a web site called SLURL (for Second Life URL) that will take an SL location, show you a map of it, and allow you to click to teleport there (if you have Second Life open and you are signed in). To convert a locaiton to slurl, use the following format:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/region_name/X/Y/Z

So, our example above would SLURL to:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cosy%20Home/197/66/24/