[Phanx]

Probably instead of a name string, you'd want to store the achievemement and critera IDs, and then use GetAchievementCriteriaInfoByID to get the localized name. This would also give you the "completed" states for hiding the icons for already-visited areas. Wowhead doesn't list criteria IDs as far as I can see, but it's easy enough to pull them out of the game. The API will also give you an "asset ID" for each criteria... maybe you can map that to something in the DBC data?

This will give you a nice list of all the exploration achievement criteria:

local categories = {
	14777, -- Eastern Kingdoms
	14778, -- Kalimdor
	14779, -- Outland
	14780, -- Northrend
	15069, -- Cataclysm
	15113, -- Pandaria
}

local data = { { "achivementID", "achievementName", "criteriaID", "criteriaName", "assetID" } }
YOUR_SAVED_VAR_HERE = data

for i = 1, #categories do
	local categoryID = categories[i]
	for j = 1, GetCategoryNumAchievements(categoryID) do
		local achievementID, achievementName = GetAchievementInfo(categoryID, j)
		for k = 1, GetAchievementNumCriteria(achievementID) do
			local criteriaName,criteriaType,_,_,_,_,_,assetID,_,criteriaID = GetAchievementCriteriaInfo(achievementID, k)
			if criteriaType == 43 then
				tinsert(data, { achievementID, achievementName, criteriaID, criteriaName, assetID })
			end
		end
	end
end