Instructions and Help

  1. Enter a geographical name
  2. Choose feature type(s) [one or more, default is all]
  3. Choose type of query
  4. Choose a province or territory [default is Canada-wide]
  5. Choose a sort order
  6. Click on "Submit Query" or hit Enter.
  7. Once a list of features is returned, click on the "INFO" button for the name you're interested in for more details or options (i.e. latitude, longitude, radius search, point-to-point distance)

1. Enter a geographical name

  • Enter a geographical name, either in upper-case letters or lower-case letters, with or without spaces between words.
  • You may enter accented characters in their non-accented form, e.g., "quebec" or "QUEBEC" will return "Québec"
  • You may ignore punctuation, e.g., apostrophe ('), comma (,), period (.), hyphen (-), etc.
  • Wildcards (*) can be used. There is a wildcard added at the end of your query text, unless you check the box "Exact Match". A wildcard replaces a string of characters if you are uncertain of the spelling of a name. Fred* will retreive records for Freda Lake, Lac Frédérick, and Fredericton. s*t*john will retrieve Saint John, St. John, St. Johns and St. John's.
  • Names beginning with an article (e.g., The, Le, La, etc.) or a generic (e.g., Mount, Lake, etc.) are stored exactly as they are said (e.g., Mount Pleasant, Lake Ontario, The Bluff, Les Escoumins, etc.). If uncertain about the article, use wildcards, e.g., *escoum will retourne Les Escoumins.
Some examples:
 
Actual Spelling Search for
Freda lake fred*
Île de l'Écho iledelecho
Kuujjuaq ku*ua
Les Escoumins *escoum
No. 1 Island n*1 island
Number 10 Island n*10island
St. John's s*t johns
Saint John s*t john
Sault Ste. Marie sault s*te marie
Sainte Marie s*te marie

Note: Uppercases, spaces, special characters and accents do not influence the search of names.

2. Choose feature type(s)

  • Select a feature type to narrow search results (default setting is "all")
  • To select more than one feature type, hold the Shift and Ctrl keys down while clicking the desired feature types.

3. Choose type of Geonames query

  • You can narrow down your search by selecting current names, former names, or one of the specific list of names (default setting is "current official names").

4. Canada-wide search, or selection by region(s)

  • Default search is Canada-wide
  • To limit your search choose the desired region(s) from the list. Hold the Shift and Ctrl keys down to select multiple regions.
  • Once a region has been selected, it will remain in effect for subsequent searches, until it is changed or erased

5. Sort Order

Default sorting is alphabetical, by Geographical Name.

If the chosen sort order is by Feature Type. This will force selected records to be grouped according to their categories. These groups of records will be arranged in the following sequence:

Feature Type

  • Populated Places / Administrative Areas
  • Unincorporated Places
  • Geographic Area
  • Indian Reserves
  • Parks
  • Water Features
  • Terrain Features
  • Ice and Snow Features
  • Features Associated with Vegetation
  • Underground Features
  • Volcanic Features
  • Artificial Features and Military Areas

If the chosen sort order is by Region, returned records will be grouped according to the Province or Territory in which they are found, and sequenced as follows:

Region

  • Newfoundland and Labrador
  • Prince Edward Island
  • Nova Scotia
  • New Brunswick
  • Quebec
  • Ontario
  • Manitoba
  • Saskatchewan
  • Alberta
  • British Columbia
  • Yukon
  • Northwest Territories
  • Nunavut

6. Output Options

Geographical names data provided here uses the 2 bytes character encoding called Unicode UTF-8. The UTF-8 encoding allows to represent the majority of the written languages in the world. Here it is used to display all characters used in French language, in other European languages, the special aboriginal characters, as well as the aboriginal names written in syllabics. Our web pages are coded such that the proper display of all characters is obtained with the user having no fonts to download.

Aboriginal Fonts Download: Note however that if a user request our special output formats: csv, html table, xml, gml or kml, and if these contains some of the special characters, and they don't display into your application (e.g., Notepad, Wordpad, MSword, MSExcel, GIS, other web pages, etc.) one has to either choose one of the Unicode fonts if the application offers it, otherwise download and install fonts onto the PC. For the syllabic fonts, the pigiarniq fonts may be downloaded. For the other special aboriginal characters, the Aboriginal without Serif fonts or with Serif fonts should be downloaded.

Where to obtain more information

Please contact CGNDB Technical Services for further information about the GeoNames Web Site.