We do lots of personalized jewelllery engraved with co-ordinates, the latitude and longitude of a destination on the globe.

We get a lot of questions about how to find your co-ordinates and it's not always easy to do so these are our top tips on how to find your co-ordinates for one of our personalised Saint Christophers, engraved signet rings or silver ring bands.

Why do some co-ordinates have degrees and some don't?

There are different ways to use latitude and longitude co-ordinates.  One is decimal, and one is DMS which stands for degrees, minutes and seconds.

• sexagesimal degree: degrees, minutes, and seconds : 40° 26′ 46″ N 79° 58′ 56″ W
• degrees and decimal minutes: 40° 26.767′ N 79° 58.933′ W
• decimal degrees: -40.446 +79.982

These examples above are all of the same location, just displayed in a different way, so if you want to find your co-ordinates how do you go about it?

How do I find my co-ordinates?

If you know your postcode the quickest way is to use google maps and type in your address or the address of the place you want to get the co-ordinates of. 

Example screenshots below of looking for the co-ordinates of Brighton Pier

Once you find it, right click in the map of the place you're looking for, you'll see the decimal co-ordinates appear and if you click on them they are copied to your clipboard.

If you are happy with decimal degrees for your engraving then you can use these for your personalisation, but bear in mind they are long and should be rounded down to around 10-12 characters so for the clipboard of the palace pier we get:

50.81721812746453, -0.13621228883507486

It's better to round it down to:

50.817219, -0.136212 

Then save these to a notepad or something if you want to convert them to DMS co-ordinates if you would prefer your engraving to have degrees and NESW.  To do this I use a website called latlong.net you can find the page here: Lat Long to DMS Converter (Decimal to Degrees Minutes Seconds)

Simply enter the latitude & longitude and you will convert it to:

50° 49' 1.9884'' N, 0° 8' 10.3632'' W

It's up to you which of these styles you use, we can engrave either option for you, but hopefully this is a useful guide to help you get the destination perfect for your bespoke destination gift.