GeoNames Forum

I am probably missing something simple. But I am trying to find the actual City name, in Canada, rather than smaller parts of a city.

For example, using Lat/Long for a point in Niagara Falls, ON, CANADA, I receive only 3 relevant placename entries:

Niagara Falls Southeast
Niagara Falls Central
Niagara Falls West

What I really need is just the city itself Niagara Falls. This seems to hold true for other cities, like Toronto (which is actually even a bit worse for me).

My current query:
http://api.geonames.org/findNearbyPostalCodesJSON?formatted=true&lat=43.0842229&lng=-79.0915813&maxRows=20&radius=20&username=xxxxxxx

Is there something else I can do to get the result(s) I need? The additional processing I will do will not handle the "sub areas"

Thank you.

PS: Sorry if I do not use the terminology yet for this forum. I'm new

I think I am having a similar problem, but with the "findNearbyPlaceNameJSON" API endpoint. The results are often "too precise" for my needs. For example, a query for lat=33.7739155&lng=-84.3277991 returns "Druid Hills" as the toponymName, but Druid Hills is just a neighborhood within the city of Atlanta and what I really want in this case is the city name. Similarly lat=37.4513166&lng=-79.2018377 returns "Peakland" as the toponymName, whereas I am looking for the enclosing city (Lynchburg).

Is there any way I can get at that information?

Many thanks!

I'm having the same difficulty, not with the API, but with the geonames dumps. It's too exact, and often results are not a city, but a street or just some spot....confused as well!