Geo-Names provides free geo-data such as geographical names and postal codes. The database contains over 6 million entries for geographical names and the whereof 2.2 million cities and villages worldwide. The service can be accessed through an webservice API or you can download and use their data to host on your own database server. I have listed tools and databases to give you Geo-data like this before but this is the first time I’ve run across a geographical database that is worldwide that can be downloaded at no charge.
Whether or you have an idea currently for an application that would need a nearly endless source of worldwide place names or not, I would recommend bookmarking this resource in case you do have a use for it at some point in the future.
