Abstract: This article describes the criteria for classification of geographical names of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. The author carefully examines the scientific significance of classification of geographical names, criteria for their classification, and various classifications of geographical objects. The question on classification of geographical names is not only the most topical and complicated problem of onomastics, but also plays an important role in studying the comparative-historical, typological and comparative linguistics. Application of the descriptive and comparative methods allow examining the classification of geographical names of Russia and China. The main result consist in the achievement of concrete results pertaining to the differences and similarities of geographical names of Russia and China through comparison of the classification of toponyms in accordance with the semantic meaning in the form of a table.