Index of Place Names

The Index of Place Names (IPN) in Great Britain is published by the Office for National Statistics.

The IPN is a list of "places" in Great Britain. For each "place" included, the IPN lists which areas that place is located within, for each of a set of administrative geographies. The latest edition of the IPN (published July 2016) contains 87,338 entries.^[1]

An Index of Place Names was first produced for the 1831 Census. The last Index to be produced as a separate Census volume was published in 1985. Since then the IPN has been available in electronic format, initially as a CD, and, more recently, as a download. The most recent version can be downloaded for free as a CSV file through the ONS Open Geography Portal. A searchable online version of the IPN is also available on the ONS Open Geography Portal.^[2]

All place names are assigned to the appropriate administrative areas existing as at 31 December 2015. The Index gives some alternative names for places, as well as Welsh-language names where appropriate. The 2016 edition of the IPN is the first to also feature Scottish place names.