Key:ref:gnbc

Unique ID as per the Geographical Names Board of Canada (GNBC). They can be found in the Canadian Geographical Names Database (CGNDB).

Note that things that have names noted in both English and French will have two GNBC IDs ("features") for the same thing, for example Welland Canal (key FDBYB) and Canal Welland (key FHEOQ). One of these features is marked in the database as "Status: Official" and the other as "Status: Alternate". It is recommended to use the key of the one that has status "Official".

Per CGNDB website, the following features have GNBC keys:

• Administrative Area
• Constructed Feature
• Feature Associated with Vegetation
• Ice and Snow Feature
• Populated Place
• Terrain Feature
• Underground Feature
• Undersea and Maritime Feature
• Water Feature

Actual use

As of late 2025, there are about 200 values for this tag that have multiple uses in OSM. Since the ID is supposed to identify a feature, if One feature, one OSM element is followed, multiple uses of an ID should be rare, and many of these might be errors. Some might not be, so don't clean up blindly!

In particular, this tag is used on administrative boundary ways in Nova Scotia, e.g. 842000351 842000351. The codes used there seem to have an extra G prepended, for example 842000351 842000351 is tagged ref:gnbc=GCATEM which seems to actually refer to CATEM. The tagging is anyway wrong since the boundary way is now used by boundary relations of both Laconia CATEM 9236301 9236301 as well as Lapland CATKW 9208393 9208393. This should probably be cleaned up but hasn't yet.

The boundary relations like 9236301 9236301 are also tagged like ref:gnbc=GCATEM. It's not yet known if the extra G has significance or if it's an error.