Geographic Names - Cultural Places Program
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Bear Rock, or  , near Tulita, is sacred throughout Denendeh. Photo: G. MacKay/GNWT |
The mandate of the Geographic Names Program is to gather, preserve and disseminate information on the traditional, current and historic names for geographic features and populated places throughout the Northwest Territories.
Information is gathered through a combination of field, archives and library research. Names are preserved in the NWT Geographic Names Data Base, the records of the Geographic Names Program and through the official approval process.
There are over 4000 geographic names in the Northwest Territories. If you are interested in information about specific NWT Geographic Place Names please consult the links below.
NEW! Gazetteer of the Northwest Territories (PDF, 6.4mb):
The gazetteer is the list of all the Official Geographic place names in the Northwest Territories. It provides official spelling, location and origin information for each name.
NEW! A Place of Honour: War Casualties Commemorated in NWT Place Names
NEW! Download NWT Geographic Names files:
- Keyhole Markup Language (KML) – (GoogleEarth, ArcGIS Explorer) [.zip file]
- ESRI Shapefile – Geographic (ArcGIS Desktop) [.zip file]
- ESRI Shapefile – LCC (ArcGIS Desktop) [.zip file]
- Tabular format – (.xls) [.zip file]
(Data Source: GeoBase/Government of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Earth Sciences Sector, Centre for Topographic Information, Geographical Names Section) (Links: Online Metadata, Unrestricted License Agreement).
Download a PDF version of our community place names map (Adobe PDF, 102kb)
The History of the Name of the Northwest Territories and Maps of its Changing Boundaries
Natural Resources Canada's Geographical Name Search Service (GNSS)
If you have any comments or questions, please e-mail us.
