A multilingual-oriented semantic similarity calculation method for general place names, and the application thereof. The method comprises: determining the language of a place name according to language coding intervals, and normalizing the place name to a romanized place name according to document information; acquiring, from a place name information library, category attribute information of two place names, and calculating a place name category similarity according to a place name classification system and a place name category similarity model; calculating, according to a place name character string similarity model, a character string similarity of the romanized place name; acquiring, from the place name information library, the longitude and latitude for each of the two place names, and then calculating spatial proximity according to a place name spatial proximity model; and determining a place name semantic similarity according to the place name category similarity, the character string similarity, and the spatial proximity. Compared with place name similarity calculation methods which only take place name character strings or spatial geometric features into consideration, the method can significantly improve the accuracy of place name similarity calculation, and can better satisfy application requirements, such as querying, matching and sharing services for multilingual place names, in a big data environment.