The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal government of the United States.

[2] As such, on January 8, 1890, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, superintendent of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Office, wrote to 10 noted geographers "to suggest the organization of a Board made up of representatives from the different Government services interested, to which may be referred any disputed question of geographical orthography.

"[3] President Benjamin Harrison signed executive order 28[4] on September 4, 1890, establishing the Board on Geographical Names.

In 1906, the board's powers were expanded by President Theodore Roosevelt from establishing consistency to being responsible for standardizing geographic names for use across the federal government.

[2][9] The Board was assigned notable provisions of the 2025 executive order Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness during the second presidency of Donald Trump.

The BGN has members from six federal departments as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Government Publishing Office, the Library of Congress, and the US Postal Service.

The BGN rules on hundreds of naming decisions annually and stores over two million geographical records in its databases at geonames.usgs.gov.

[3] The BGN does not recognize the use of the possessive apostrophe and has only granted an exception five times during its history, including one for Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Volunteers in the Earth Science Corps are used to assist the US Geological Survey in collecting names of geographic features.