Place Names - Help and FAQ

What is Place Names?

Place Names .com is a global gazetter, a way to find out where places are. At present only the data for the USA is online. Place names for all other countries will be added in the coming weeks, starting with Canada. The data comes from various sources.

Co-ordinates and Elevations

The locations and elevations shown for populated places are generally the place regarded as the center, often the post office. For area features, such as lakes, it is normally the center. For long features, such as rivers, it could be the source, or where it crosses a boundary. For these reasons, and the varying sources of the information, do not use the co-ordinates for navigation. The US features are to the NAD 27 Datum.

Known Problems

(updated 2007-Mar-16)

Accented characters are not shown properly (or at all) for some places in the US, especially in Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico. This also means searches in those states and territories don't work fully yet.

Subdivisions of US states and territories are shown as "counties" currently. It will be modified to the correct names (such as Parishes in Louisiana, Census Areas/Boroughs in Alaska, etc) in the next version.

Who created Place Names?

Place Names has been created by Robert Hoare. You can contact me with the Contact Form. I'd love to hear what you think of it (so far) and what features you think should be in coming versions.

Other sites: White Pages - Word Games

Some random places: Foam Creek   Poarch   IB Mine   Aowa Creek   Obney Run