Toponyms that contain generic terms used before the name (like English Lake of Geneva, French Mer Adriatique, Spanish Península Ibérica or Arabic Jazīrat al-‘Arab) are usually recorded in the database in reversed order: the generic term is written after the name and is separated by comma. To find such names use e.g. queries Geneva Lake of, Adriatique Mer, Iberica Peninsula or al-Arab Jazirat (commas and other interpunctuation marks are actually not needed in query strings). It is also sufficient to write only part of the name as the search is performed on any string in the name.
As a rule, toponyms are spelled out in full in the database, without abbreviations. To search for names containing Saint(e), Sankt, etc., one should use the full form in the query form; if it is not certain, it would be recommended to query only the main part of the name. E.g. the name Great Saint Bernhard will not be found, if the searched name is St. Bernhard, instead, one should search for Bernhard.
In this form you can use only basic Latin or Cyrillic (Russian) characters. Do not use any accented characters, i.e. characters with dots and other diacritical marks. To find names like München write Munchen (also, MUNCHEN or munchen). The place name query is not case-sensitive, all others are.
For other instructions on place names spellings see a separate page. Help is available on other data elements when you click on a question mark in front of these elements.