Country Files (GNS)

Complete Files of Geographic Names for Geopolitical Areas from GNS (ISO/IEC 10646 [Unicode UTF-8] Compliant as of 18 July 2002)

Database most recent update - January 23, 2012

Database next estimated update - February 13, 2012

We provide complete files of geographic names information covering countries or geopolitical areas. The files are not in customary gazetteer format, but are in a special format amenable to input into geographic information systems, databases, and spreadsheets, giving end users powerful capabilities for data analysis, manipulation, and display. They are offered with both names formats provided within each of the files: Reading Order format (Mount Everest) that works well with mapping applications, and Reverse Generics format (Everest, Mount) that works well with gazetteer listings. Follow the links below to learn more and to begin downloading files.

Download Names Files for Countries and Territories (FTP)

Description of Names Files for Countries and Territories Format

Click here to Download a single compressed zip file that contains the entire country files dataset (Approximately 349MB compressed/1.59GB uncompressed)

Note:
The GEONet Names Server (GNS) does not contain any data for the United States of America or its Dependent areas. To obtain U.S. data, please access the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database of names.

Foreign geographic names data is freely available. A suitable citation note is: "Toponymic information is based on the Geographic Names Database, containing official standard names approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names and maintained by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. More information is available at the Maps and Geodata link at www.nga.mil. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency name, initials, and seal are protected by 10 United States Code Section §445."

NGA/Office of GEOINT Sciences provides a free coordinate conversion tool (GEOTRANS).