Wikidata facts
- Part of
- Semantic Web
- Official name
- Geographic Names Information System
- Country
- United States
- Official website
- www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-system-gnis
- Image
- Usgs-headquarters.jpeg
Show 6 more facts
- topic has template
- Template:GNIS 3
- title
- Geographic Names Information System
- language of work or name
- English language
- copyright status
- public domain
- state of use
- online
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The logo of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and location information about more than two million physical and cultural features, encompassing the United States; the associated states of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, and Antarctica. It is a type of gazetteer. It was developed by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to promote the standardization of feature names.
Data were collected in two phases. A third phase was considered, which would have handled name changes where local usages differed from maps, it was never begun.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Geographic Names Information System” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.