<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">The word is definitely Saint. St is a contraction and neither proper English or French. It has the same Latin roots as sanctification and similar words. <div><br></div><div>Similarly Av is a contraction for Avenue and not a word. <br><br><br><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation</a><br><br><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Mar 15, 2019, at 12:42, Jarek Piórkowski <<a href="mailto:jarek@piorkowski.ca">jarek@piorkowski.ca</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span>Hi all,</span><br><span></span><br><span>A couple of months back we established a consensus [1] that "St." in</span><br><span>Canadian English city names should not be expanded.</span><br><span></span><br><span>I have been thinking of having the same for street names, and would</span><br><span>like to ask people's opinions.</span><br><span></span><br><span>My main motivation is St. Clair Avenue in Toronto. Every city source I</span><br><span>could find and every street sign I saw in Mapillary says "St. Clair"</span><br><span>or "St Clair". The TTC stations and routes are consistently "St</span><br><span>Clair". The City uses "St. Clair Avenue West" in official documents</span><br><span>like [2]. Geobase in Toronto has "St Clair Avenue West" , "St Clarens</span><br><span>Avenue", and "St Helens Avenue". Currently most of the street is named</span><br><span>"Saint Clair Avenue West/East" in OpenStreetMap, but this is changed</span><br><span>for some parts of the road every now and then.</span><br><span></span><br><span>As a local mapper I would say that "St. Clair Avenue West" is the full</span><br><span>name. Unlike with "Av", "Ave", "W", the "St" in "St Clair" is IMO not</span><br><span>an abbreviation.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Across the Golden Horseshoe names starting with "St. " or "St " seem</span><br><span>to be a bit more common [3] than "Saint" [4], I gather the</span><br><span>acronym-expanders have not looked as much outside of Toronto.</span><br><span></span><br><span>Would we have Ontario community consensus for a statement along the lines of:</span><br><span>"Where "St." or "St" is normally used in the full street name, it</span><br><span>should not be expanded to "Saint" even if pronounced so"?</span><br><span></span><br><span>(I don't know what the naming conventions are in other provinces, so I</span><br><span>focus on Ontario for now. Apologies for being Ontario-centric, but I</span><br><span>don't know of a better venue that is Ontario-specific. I'll post links</span><br><span>to this message in wiki talk pages for Ontario, WikiProject_Canada,</span><br><span>and Canadian_tagging_guidelines.)</span><br><span></span><br><span>As part of my checks I also looked at London UK, which I gather might</span><br><span>be the most-intensively-mapped English-speaking city. (Recommendations</span><br><span>for better-mapped English-speaking cities welcome). Searching for</span><br><span>"St." in road names [5], it has street names for bigger streets like</span><br><span>"St. John Street" and "St. Pancras Way"; [6] has name="St. Paul's</span><br><span>Road" + not:name="Saint Paul's Road" and has had so for 5 years.</span><br><span>Compare with searching for "Saint" [7] which also has some hits,</span><br><span>suggesting that both can be valid depending on what is signed and</span><br><span>used. (Or maybe it's just inconsistent.)</span><br><span></span><br><span>[1] <a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canadian_tagging_guidelines#Municipality_Names">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canadian_tagging_guidelines#Municipality_Names</a></span><br><span>[2] <a href="https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ey/bgrd/backgroundfile-92339.pdf">https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2016/ey/bgrd/backgroundfile-92339.pdf</a></span><br><span>[3] <a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/H1M">https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/H1M</a></span><br><span>[4] <a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/H1P">https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/H1P</a></span><br><span>[5] <a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/GPh">https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/GPh</a></span><br><span>[6] <a href="https://osm.org/way/230843467">https://osm.org/way/230843467</a></span><br><span>[7] <a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/GPi">https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/GPi</a></span><br><span></span><br><span>Thanks,</span><br><span>--Jarek</span><br><span></span><br><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>Talk-ca mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org">Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org</a></span><br><span><a href="https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca">https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div></body></html>