The Permanent Committee on Geographical Names

for British Official Use

Disclaimer: PCGN is not responsible for the content or reliability of the linked websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed therein. Listing should not be taken as endorsement of any kind. We do not guarantee that these links will always work.

Place names of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom Toponymic Guidelines for Map and Other Editors (Revised and Enlarged Edition, 2009) are available to download as a pdf file here.

In general, PCGN deals with geographical names outside of the United Kingdom. The links below will take you to web pages relating to place names within the United Kingdom.

For information on Great Britain, please refer to Ordnance Survey, the official body responsible for the mapping of Great Britain. There is also information available on the origins of place names in Britain which can be found on Ordnance Survey's place names page.

For places names in Northern Ireland, please refer to Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland.

For information on geographical names in England, in particular the etymology of names, consult the Key to English Place-Names .

For information on geographical names in Scotland, contact the Scottish Place-Name Society.

To search for geographical names in Scotland, please consult the Gazetteer for Scotland.

The Welsh Language Board's Place-names Advisory Service offers advice on the standard forms of Welsh place names in Wales. For further information, click here (English-language pages) or here (Welsh-language pages)

The British Online Historical Gazetteer contains historical place names from the 1911 census.

Last modified May 2009