The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the

federal government of the United States The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...

History

On January 8, 1890, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, superintendent of the

US Coast and Geodetic Survey The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is a United States federal agency that defines and manages a national coordinate system, providing the foundation for transportation and communication; mapping and charting; and a large number of applications ...

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." President Benjamin Harrison signed

executive order In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of ...

28 on September 4, 1890, establishing the ''Board on Geographical Names''. "To this Board shall be referred all unsettled questions concerning geographic names. The decisions of the Board are to be accepted

y federal departments Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh ...

as the standard authority for such matters." The board was given authority to resolve all unsettled questions concerning geographic names. Decisions of the board were accepted as binding by all departments and agencies of the federal government. The board has since undergone several name changes.Topping, Mary, comp., ''Approved Place Names in Virginia: An Index to Virginia Names Approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names through 1969'' (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1971), v–vi. In 1934, it was transferred to the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the m ...

. The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names was established in 1943 as the Special Committee on Antarctic Names (SCAN). 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.

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."Advisory Committee on Undersea Features"
Accessed 2013-10-18 The BGN also deals with names of geographical features in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest co ...

via its Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names. The

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

, 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 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

, the

US Government Publishing Office The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO; formerly the United States Government Printing Office) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States Federal government. The office produces and distributes information ...

, the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

, 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. The BGN does not create place names but responds to proposals for names from federal agencies; state, local, and tribal governments; and the public. Any person or organization, public or private, may make inquiries or request the board to render formal decisions on proposed new names, proposed name changes, or names that are in conflict. Generally, the BGN defers federal name use to comply with local usage. There are a few exceptions. For example, in rare cases where a locally used name is very offensive, the BGN may decide against adoption of the local name for federal use.

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 A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...

apostrophe and has only granted an exception five times during its history, including one for

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the Northeastern United States, located south of Cape Cod in Dukes County, Massachusetts, known for being a popular, affluent summer colony. Martha's Vineyard includes the s ...

, 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 The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy An economy is an area of th ...

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 The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels Parcels are an Australian electropop five-piece formed in Byron Bay, Australia, in 2014. Today they are based in Berlin, Germany. The band's line-up ...

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. In 1933, the BGN published a significant consolidated report of all decisions from 1890 to 1932 in its ''Sixth Report of the United States Geographic Board 1890–1932''. For many years, the BGN published a quarterly report under the title ''Decisions on Geographic Names''.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

*U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, National Mapping Division, ''Digital Gazetteer: Users Manual'', (Reston, Virginia: U.S. Geological Survey, 1994). *Report: "Countries, Dependencies, Areas Of Special Sovereignty, And Their Principal Administrative Divisions", Federal Information Processing Standards, FIPS 10-4. *Report: "Principles, Policies, and Procedures: Domestic Geographic Names", U.S. Board of Geographic Names, 1997. *''U.S. Postal Service Publication 28'', November 2000.

External links

* {{Authority control Names of places in Antarctica Board on Geographic Names Board on Geographic Names Geocodes Geographical naming agencies Board on Geographic Names Board on Geographic Names 1890 establishments in the United States