World Place Names & Locations

NGA: GNS; GEOnet Names Server

Perhaps the most comprehensive and up-to-date list of place names and locations (points: latitude/longitude) throughout the world (excluding United States and Antarctica). Includes a single download for the entire world.

All downloads appear to be delimited text files, formatted for easy import into Excel, database or other.

"The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names' (US BGN) database of foreign geographic feature names. The database is the official repository of foreign place-name decisions approved by the US BGN. Approximately 20,000 of the database's features are updated monthly."