This is the data about populated places (cities, towns, villages, etc.) in Taiwan as recorded in Geonames (genonames.org). This is a spatial representation of data points, not a representation of formal state entities. The package includes:
- The Taiwan_Geonames gpkg (QGIS) files (zipped archive): the 95,277 data points for Taiwan.
- The Countries_Natural Earth files (zipped archive): shape file for all countries on the globe (current situation)
- Oceans files (zipped archive): shape file for all sea surface on the globe
- Taiwan_GeonamesP: this is our reference spreadsheet file of the the populated places in Taiwan.
The original Geonames data file includes 19 unlabelled columns. We did not retain all the columns, but we can provide the original data file upon request. The Geonames data is organized in several features classes (column V7 in the original).
A: country, state, region,...
H: stream, lake, ...
L: parks,area, ...
P: city, village,...
R: road, railroad
S: spot, building, farm
T: mountain,hill,rock,...
U: undersea
V: forest,heath,...
In the case of Taiwan, only categories A-T were available.
The Taiwan_Geonames file corresponds to the data filtered by the “P” code in the orignal Geonames file. This designates populated places (see below). We processed the file to extract the Chinese names and place them in a distinct column.
The current file contains 95,277 unique entries, but locations may be duplicated when they appear in the Name_Transl_Geo column under various denominations.
The attribute table of Taiwan_Geonames gpkg package contains the following columns:
- Loc_ID: Geonames unique ID
for the location
- Name_ZhT: name of the location in traditional Chinese script.
- Name_Py: name of the location in pinyin. This did not exist in the orignal data as a separate information.
- Name_Transl_Geo: name of the location in transliteration or English as provided by Geonames
- Type2: sub-level of Geonames typology for Populated places
- Name_ZhS: name of the location in simplified Chinese character. This was added to the original provided only in traditional Chinese characters.
- LAT: Latitude
- LONG: Longitude
- Google_Earth: comined Lat, LONG values for use in Google Maps/Google Earth
- Population: population of the location
Table 1. Distribution of locations by code (see table 2)
Code |
Number |
PPL |
92161 |
PPLX |
2483 |
PPLA2 |
490 |
PPLC |
61 |
PPLA |
38 |
PPLA3 |
36 |
PPLL |
6 |
NA |
1 |
Grand Total |
95276 |
Table 2. Coding system of Geonames for Populated places
Code |
Definition |
Definition 2 |
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PPL |
populated place |
a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work |
PPLA |
seat of a first-order administrative division |
seat of a first-order administrative division (PPLC takes precedence over PPLA) |
PPLA2 |
seat of a second-order administrative division |
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PPLA3 |
seat of a third-order administrative division |
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PPLA4 |
seat of a fourth-order administrative division |
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PPLA5 |
seat of a fifth-order administrative division |
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PPLC |
capital of a political entity |
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PPLCH |
historical capital of a political entity |
a former capital of a political entity |
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PPLF |
farm village |
a populated place where the population is largely engaged in agricultural activities |
PPLG |
seat of government of a political entity |
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PPLH |
historical populated place |
a populated place that no longer exists |
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PPLL |
populated locality |
an area similar to a locality but with a small group of dwellings or other buildings |
PPLQ |
abandoned populated place |
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PPLR |
religious populated place |
a populated place whose population is largely engaged in religious occupations |
PPLS |
populated places |
cities, towns, villages, or other agglomerations of buildings where people live and work |
PPLW |
destroyed populated place |
a village, town or city destroyed by a natural disaster, or by war |
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PPLX |
section of populated place |
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