Guidelines for names outside Canada for official Canadian use

In 1982, the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, now the Geographical Names Board of Canada, approved the following guidelines for the treatment of names of countries, populated places, and political, cultured and natural features outside Canada for official use on Canadian maps and charts:

  1. Names of sovereign states
    • to be rendered in English and French forms as provided by Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to the Secretariat of the Geographical Names Board of Canada.
  2. Populated places in countries outside Canada
    • to be rendered according to decisions in published gazetteers of the names authority in each state as published in romanized form;
    • if no national gazetteer exists, to be determined through consultation of recent atlases and maps produced by each state;
    • if no recent gazetteers, atlases or maps are available, to be determined by the GNBC Secretariat through consultation of other sources deemed to reflect forms acceptable to each national authority concerned;
    • to have their traditional English and/or French exonyms indicated in brackets in text after the national form, or in smaller type in brackets on maps, as an option, if the names are deemed to be necessary to identify the places (e.g. Vienna to accompany Wien).
  3. Names of other features within sovereign states
    • to be rendered according to decisions in published gazetteers of the names authority in each state as published in romanized form;
    • if no national gazetteer exists, to be determined through consultation of recent atlases and maps produced by each state;
    • if no recent national gazetteers, atlases or maps are available, to be determined by the GNBC Secretariat through consultation of other sources deemed to reflect forms acceptable to each national authority concerned.
  4. Names of features adjacent or common to two or more sovereign states
    • to be rendered in both English and French if the map or document is designed for both English and French audiences (e.g. English Channel and La Manche);
    • to be rendered in English only if the map or document is designed for English readers only (e.g. Red Sea only);
    • to be rendered in French only if the map or document is designed for French readers only (e.g. Mer Rouge).