TDWG was founded in 1985 as the Taxonomic Databases Working Group; the first meeting took place on September 28–30, 1985, at the Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the City of Geneva in Switzerland.
[1] The organisation was formed as an international collaboration to promote the wider and more effective dissemination of information about biological organisms.
Its name was changed to Taxonomic Databases Working Group for Plant Sciences in 1986.
The name changed to International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences in 1988.
[1] In 2006 the group decided to change their name to emphasise their focus was on standards for sharing biodiversity data, rather than on taxonomy or the databases themselves.