GEOnet Names Server
- This page is part of a series under the NBER Patent Data Project
- This page is a sub-page of Geocoding Inventor Locations
The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) is available from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's and provides longitude, latitude and other information for an extensive list of place names around the world. To our knowledge it is the most comprehensive source available for free academic use. Individual country files and a zip of all country files are provided. Note that the GNS does not use the ISO3166 standard two-character country abbreviations - see below.
Licensing
The NGA site states: "There are no licensing requirements or restrictions in place for the use of the GNS data. Toponymic information is based on the Geographic Names Data Base, containing official standard names approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names and maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency."
Country Codes
The GNS uses its own two character country codes (GNS-CountryCodes.txt), which are generally different from the ISO3166 country codes (ISO3166-CountryCodes.txt). A translation files is available (GNS-ISO3166Codes.txt) from the repository; all currently assigned and used ISO3166 code are translated except for largely unpopulated places (e.g. Antartica), and U.S. dependencies that GNS does not cover (e.g. Puerto Rico). Codes that are reserved (e.g. CZ - Czechoslavkia) or no longer assigned (e.g. SU - Soviet Union, DD - Democratic Republic of Germany) are not translated.
Other Sources
Geonames.org, a third-party website based in Switzerland, provides location name data under the creative commons attribution license. However, this data is drawn from the GNS for all locations except the US and Canada, where data is drawn from the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System and www.geobase.ca respectively. Thus we recommend that users take advantage of the original sources and respect the original licenses if applicable.
Key Variables and Details
- Place names are recorded in Romanized form
- Country (and province/territory) names, as well as their assigned codes, are recorded using FIPS Standard #10. Users should note that there are differences between the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) country names and the UN Country Names.
- The GNS output format contains various custom codes. Of particular interest are:
- UNI - Unique Name Idenfier (a numeric value - often negative)
- LAT and LONG - Latitude and Longitude (Decimal - also available as DMS)
- NT - Name Type - Mostly only N (BGN Standard name) or V (Variant) present in the data
- FC - Feature Classification (Only A,P and L are of use in matching to addresses)
- A = Administrative region type feature
- P = Populated place type feature
- V = Vegetation type feature
- L = Locality or area type feature
- U = Undersea type feature
- R = Streets, highways, roads, or railroad type feature
- T = Hypsographic type feature
- H = Hydrographic type feature
- S = Spot type feature
- DSG - Feature Designation Code (DSG provides a refinement of NT, details are in GNS-DesignationCodes.txt
- SHORT_FORM - a Short Form of the name that is commonly used
- FULL_NAME - the Long Form of the name
- FULL_NAME_ND - the Long Form of the name without diacritics
