The Vertebrate Gene Nomenclature Committee (VGNC) was established in 2016 as a sister project to the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, to approve gene nomenclature in vertebrate species without an existing dedicated nomenclature committee. The VGNC aims to harmonize gene nomenclature across selected vertebrate species in line with human gene nomenclature, with orthologs assigned the same nomenclature where possible. This article presents an overview of the VGNC project and discussion of key findings resulting from this work to date. VGNC-approved nomenclature is accessible athttps://vertebrate.genenames.organd is additionally displayed by the NCBI, Ensembl, and UniProt databases.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13059-023-02957-2.