United States Board on Geographic Names

Following the American Civil War, more and more American settlers began moving westward, prompting the U.S. federal government to pursue some sort of consistency for referencing landmarks on maps and in official documents. As such, on January 8, 1890, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Office, wrote to 10 noted geographers "to suggest the organization of a Board made up of representatives from the different Government services interested, to which may be referred any disputed question of geographical orthography." on September 4, 1890, establishing the Board on Geographical Names. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dissolved the board and transferred its responsibilities directly to the Department of the Interior. In 1963, the Advisory Committee on Undersea Features was started for standardization of names of undersea features. Its present form derives from a 1947 law, Public Law 80-242. In the 1960s and 1970s, the board pursued a policy to eliminate the use of derogatory terms related to Japanese and Black people. The Board was assigned notable provisions of the 2025 executive order Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness during the second presidency of Donald Trump. == Operation ==

The 1969 BGN publication Decisions on Geographic Names in the United States stated the agency's chief purpose as: The board has developed principles, policies, and procedures governing the use of domestic and foreign geographic names, including underseas. The BGN also deals with names of geographical features in Antarctica via its Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names. The Geographic Names Information System, developed by the BGN in cooperation with the US Geological Survey, includes topographic map names and bibliographic references. The names of books and historic maps which confirm the feature or place name are cited. Variant names, alternatives to official federal names for a feature, are also recorded. The BGN has members from six federal departments as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Government Publishing Office, the Library of Congress, and the US Postal Service. The BGN rules on hundreds of naming decisions annually and stores over two million geographical records in its databases at geonames.usgs.gov. State and local governments and private mapping organizations usually follow the BGN's decisions. The BGN has an executive committee and two permanent committees with full authority: the 10- to 15-member Domestic Names Committee and the 8- to 10-member Foreign Names Committee. Both comprise government employees only. Each maintains its own database. Special situations The BGN does not translate terms, but instead accurately uses foreign names in the Roman alphabet. For non-Roman languages, the BGN uses transliteration systems or creates them for less well-known languages. The BGN does not recognize the use of the possessive apostrophe and has only granted an exception five times during its history, including one for Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In federal mapping and names collection efforts, there is often a phase lag where a delay occurs in adoption of a locally used name. Sometimes the delay is several decades. Volunteers in the Earth Science Corps are used to assist the US Geological Survey in collecting names of geographic features. == Other authorities ==

• The United States Census Bureau defines census designated places, which are a subset of locations in the Geographic Names Information System. • The names of post offices have historically been used to back up claims about the name of a community. US Postal Service Publication 28 gives standards for addressing mail. In this publication, the Postal Service defines two-letter state abbreviations, street identifiers such as boulevard (BLVD) and street (ST), and secondary identifiers such as suite (STE). ==Publications==

The BGN currently publishes names on its website. In the past, the BGN issued its decisions in various publications under different titles at different intervals with various information included. For many years, the BGN published a quarterly report under the title Decisions on Geographic Names. ==See also==