The colony's name was a tribute paid to General Antônio Ernesto Gomes Carneiro, who died on the front of the battle, on February 10, 1894, as commander of the legal forces, besieged in the city of Lapa (January 15 to 11 February 1894), State of Paraná, during the Federalist Revolution.

Being in a valley relief, favorable to the accumulation of cold air, General Carneiro is one of the coldest municipalities in Paraná, and since April 30, 2008, when the INMET meteorological station was installed, it has been recording the lowest temperatures in that state.

According to the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET), the lowest temperature recorded in General Carneiro was −7.9 °C on July 20, 2021, and the highest reached 35.1 °C on October 2, 2020, during a strong heat wave.

The municipality of General Carneiro belongs to the Association of Municipalities of Southern Paraná (AMSULPAR), together with the cities of Antônio Olinto, Bituruna, Cruz Machado, Mallet, Paula Freitas, Paulo Frontin, Porto Vitória and União da Vitória.

With a very rugged relief, undulating to mountainous, as in approximately 80% of the municipality, the area serves almost only for the cultivation of pine.

In general, the soils in the municipality are good, deep and with accentuated acidity and medium fertility, of difficult mechanization due to a typical topography of the beginning of the Third Plateau of Paraná, which is characterized by its rugged aspect.

The average altitude of the headquarters is around 981 m, reaching almost 1,300 m in the locality of Iratim, which favors the vegetation predominantly of Araucaria in its original formation.