This short essay examines the use of conceptual ‘maps’ in the discourse of private international law. By helping us to conceptualize the choices we are faced with, as well as by providing us with a version of the history of private international law, which is supposed to validate that conceptualization, these ‘maps’ have had a – mostly unacknowledged –normative effect on the very identity and operation they purport to describe. Existing maps have been inaccurate in their portrayal of the PIL field and its development, as a more sophisticated historical overview easily shows. The essay concludes by proposing some new conceptual 'maps'.