It was created by Fiontar, Dublin City University in collaboration with the Placenames Branch of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

The website is a public resource primarily aimed at journalists and translators, students and teachers, historians and researchers in genealogy.

[1][2] Although both the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State and the current constitution adopted in 1937 recognised Irish as the national language, the law in regard to placenames was carried over from the 19th-century UK statutes which established the Ordnance Survey and Griffith's Valuation, under which only an English-language name had official status.

[4] The names chosen were on the advice of the Placenames Branch; some differed from those adopted in previous decades, in some cases causing controversy.

[1] The database website, www.logainm.ie, won the European Language Label in 2010[8] and was category winner at the 2011[citation needed] and 2016[9] Irish eGovernment Awards.