United Nations and Geographical Names

The consistent use of accurate place names is an essential element of effective communication worldwide and supports socio-economic development, conservation and national infrastructure.

The United Nations established the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) in 1959 to promote the standardization of accurate spellings of geographical names worldwide, as many problems connected with inconsistent spellings had been encountered by the UN. The UN Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC) passed a Resolution on 23 April 1959 and the Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) was set up in pursuance of this Resolution.

UNGEGN prepares material to be presented to the UN Conferences on the Standardization of Geographical Names, held every five years. These Conferences are held to discuss and direct UNGEGN’s work and pass relevant Resolutions.

The United Nations is not a naming body.  Through UNGEGN, it discusses problems encountered with national standardization of names, and prepares draft recommendations for procedures to be followed by individual countries (eg treatment of names in multi-lingual areas).  It also addresses the technical aspects of names standardization.

UNGEGN is composed of a number of geographical/linguistic divisions, comprising experts from relevant countries.

Working Groups are established by UNGEGN to deal with specific tasks, such as training courses in toponymy, toponymic datafiles and gazetteers, terminology, pronunciation, country names, exonyms, evaluation and implementation, promotion of minority group and indigenous geographical names, publicity and funding, and romanization systems.

The Secretariat of UNGEGN is provided by the United Nations Statistics Division.
 

UNGEGN Aims/Programmes

To encourage the establishment of national names standardization authorities;

To provide training to countries setting up such bodies and/or creating data bases;

To promote nationally standardized names on maps and in documents;

To encourage the dissemination of standardized names (eg gazetteers)

To promote the development of national automated data processing capabilities and international digital data exchange;

To encourage collaboration between countries on trans-boundary feature names;

To promote the use of standardized terminology;

To promote single romanization systems for treatment of names in non-Roman scripts.

Further information on the work of the United Nations with regard to the standardization of geographical names can be found on the geographical names web pages of the United Nations Statistics Division.