[Tagging] name of river/admin area

David ``Smith'' vidthekid at gmail.com
Mon Sep 3 23:51:34 BST 2012


In my part of the US, nearly every river is of the form "the X River" and I
would expect to see it that way on maps, leaving out the "the" which is
used in forming sentences but not generally considered part of the name.
In Michigan there's the River Raisin for some reason, and I would expect to
see those two words in that order on maps.  Then there are rivers so large
and famous they are almost geographical features apart from mere rivers:
The Amazon, The Nile, The Thames, The Hudson, The Mississippi… the next
that comes to mind for me is The Potomac, but now we've probably crossed
that blurry line where the Potomac River sounds more appropriate.

We also hace waterways that would be called rivers in other parts of the
world, and should be tagged as rivers in OSM per the wiki, but are called
locally "the Y Creek".  It's essentially the same situation as "the X
River" described above.

Incorporated municipalities in my part of the US almost always have an
official name like "the City/Town/Village Of Z".  The choice between the
words City, Town, and Village is arbitrary, made based on the
self-perceived character of the place, represents no legal distinction,
does not correlate well to a place's size or importance, and is typically
only known to the municipality's residents and employees.  When referring
to the place and not its government, just Z is normally used.  Z may
include the word City, but that's a fixed part of the name; for example,
Grove City.  (I don't know if it's Village Of or Town Of or City Of Grove
City, but the latter sounds just as valid to me as an official name as the
others.)

Unincorporated towns may unofficially have titles like Village Of Z or Town
Of Z, but there's no legal entity to record that choice.  They also don't
have defined borders.  The Census Bureau may have defined a CDP around it
for statistical purposes, but this should not be treated as a real
administrative boundary.

For incorporated cities, I would support putting the full official name in
a tag other than name=*.  The value of place=* should be determined
entirely by population, not how the city's (possibly deluded) government
would like to characterize it in the official name.  Just because a place
is legally a city doesn't mean it shouldn't be tagged place=hamlet if the
population is low enough.

Regarding rivers, I think the form "X River" or "River X" should be the
norm for the name tag; the bigger ones can optionally have name=The X, with
the other version that includes River but excludes The going in alt_name=*.
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