NGA GEOnet Names Server (GNS)

The Geographic Names Server is the official repository of standard spellings of all foreign place names, sanctioned by the United States Board on Geographic Names. The database also contains variant spellings (cross-references), which are useful for finding purposes. We are starting to hold the native script spellings of these names. All the geographic features in the database contain information about location, administrative division, and quality. The database can be used for a variety of purposes, including establishing official spellings of foreign place names, cartography, GIS, GEOINT, and finding places.

About GNS
* GNS Has been in service since 1992
* GNS database contains approximately five million features
* GNS database contains approximately seven million feature names
* An average of 20,000 features are updated in the GNS database monthly
* GNS feature names data is stored and encoded in Unicode UTF-8
* GNS features coordinate system is WGS84 (GNS feature coordinates are approximate and are intended for finding purposes)
* GNS database is updated weekly
* GNS does not contain any coverage data for the United States of America or its Dependent areas. To obtain U.S. coverage data, please access the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database of names.