v.in.geonames(1)

📦
version 8.4.2 · 8 versions
, in fedora 44

💖 v.in.geonames — the GRASS GIS manual, but make it bestie 💖

okay so you found the v.in.geonames(1) page in the GRASS GIS User's Manual and honestly? slay. this lil icon imports geonames.org country files into a vector points map and it is so much easier than it sounds. let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

v.in.geonames — bestie, it imports geonames.org country files into a vector points map. that's the whole job. iconic behaviour only 👑

🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

vector, import, gazetteer — iykyk 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

v.in.geonames
v.in.geonames --help
v.in.geonames input=name output=name  [--overwrite]  [--help]
[--verbose]  [--quiet]  [--ui]

⭐ Flags ⭐

  • --overwrite — lets your output files just overwrite whatever's already there. no cap, it will absolutely replace existing files, so vibe check your directory first 💀
  • --help — prints the usage summary, for when you need a lil refresher 🫶
  • --verbose — verbose module output, aka it tells you everything it's doing. main character energy
  • --quiet — quiet module output. shhh 🤫
  • --ui — forces the GUI dialog to launch, if you're feeling clicky ✨

💜 Parameters 💜

  • input=name [required] — the name of your uncompressed geonames file (with .txt extension). unzip it first, bestie, i'm begging 😭
  • output=name [required] — the name for your output vector map. pick something cute 🌈

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so v.in.geonames imports Geonames.org country files (that's Gazetteer data, fancy) into a GRASS vector points map. you can download the country files from the GeoNames Data Dump Server — go get 'em.

⚠️ only original files can be processed, so unzip the compressed file first. fr fr, don't skip this step.

these Geonames files are encoded in UTF-8, and that encoding is maintained in the GRASS database. no encoding drama, we love to see it 💖

💅 NOTES 💅

v.in.geonames calls v.in.ascii to import data into GRASS. teamwork makes the dream work 🫶

the current DB connection is what gets used to write the database table (peep db.connect). and here's the tea: if you're importing into a DBF database, the original column names that are longer than 10 characters get shortened to 10 characters to meet the DBF column name restrictions. if that's a problem for you, consider choosing another database driver with db.connect (eg. to SQLite driver). periodt. 💅

the main 'geoname' table has these fields, and i'm listing every single one because we don't gatekeep:

geonameid         : integer id of record in geonames database
name              : name of geographical point (utf8) varchar(200)
asciiname         : name of geographical point in plain ascii characters, varchar(200)
alternatenames    : alternatenames, comma separated varchar(4000)
latitude          : latitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
longitude         : longitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
feature class     : see https://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, char(1)
feature code      : see https://www.geonames.org/export/codes.html, varchar(10)
country code      : ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 2 characters
cc2               : alternate country codes, comma separated, ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 60 characters
admin1 code       : fipscode (subject to change to iso code), isocode for the us and ch, see file admin1Codes.txt for display names of this code; varchar(20)
admin2 code       : code for the second administrative division, a county in the US, see file admin2Codes.txt; varchar(80)
admin3 code       : code for third level administrative division, varchar(20)
admin4 code       : code for fourth level administrative division, varchar(20)
population        : integer
elevation         : in meters, integer
gtopo30           : average elevation of 30’x30’ (ca 900mx900m) area in meters, integer
timezone          : the timezone id (see file https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/timeZones.txt)
modification date : date of last modification in yyyy-MM-dd format

look at all those fields. obsessed. 👑

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

download and import geonames for Czech Republic. literally three lines, we love a low-effort slay:

wget https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/CZ.zip
unzip CZ.zip
v.in.geonames input=CZ.txt output=geonames_cz

🍓 REFERENCES 🍓

  • GeoNames Web site
  • GeoNames Data Dump Server

💖 SEE ALSO 💖

db.connect, v.in.ascii, v.select — go read those next, bestie, they're the friend group 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Markus Neteler — thank you for your service, legend 💜

⭐ SOURCE CODE ⭐

available at: v.in.geonames source code (history)

accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:41:53 2026

main index | vector index | topics index | keywords index | graphical index | full index

okay that's the whole page, you're officially a v.in.geonames girlie now 💅 this was the GRASS 8.4.2 Reference Manual, © 2003-2025 GRASS Development Team, and yeah we're living in the GRASS 8.4.2 era. go import some points, you got this 🦋✨

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