[Tagging] "No abbreviations in names" edge case

[Paul Johnson]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 1:54 AM, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> Expanding abbreviations grates a bit with the "on the ground rule".
> Navigation applications as well as visual maps need to be able to reproduce
> what the human will see on the ground - often in a language they don't
> know. Sometimes the abbreviated version is more recognisable. There should
> IMHO be an explicit tag to hold the version "as displayed on the signs" for
> any case where the "abbreviator" could be confused.
>
Well, in this case, mapping highway=traffic_sign and the appropriate
ancillary tagging (name=*, etc) makes sense.  Abbreviating the name for the
way is obviously bad, especially since which signs abbreviate and which
don't are frequently wildly different.  And there's places where signs just
aren't updated in any timely fashion to reflect the correct names.  For
example, OK 51 through Broken Arrow is signposted for the route as the
"41st(?) Rainbow Division Memorial Highway", for the motorway segment
within Broken Arrow city limits as "Disabled American Veterans Memorial
Expressway" and for the motorway segment within Tulsa County east of the
Paul Harvey Expressway as "Broken Arrow Expressway".  Once you get east of
the BA city line, much of the signage at ramps still incorrectly identifies
it as "BA Expy", "Broken Arrow Expy" or, even dumber, "Expy East/West".
 The signage doesn't actually reflect the real, spoken name on most cases
through Broken Arrow.  Granted, OklaDOT and it's completely inconsistent
and outright often standards noncompliant (it's common to see Oklahoma
state highways signed with the generic state route shield 20 years after we
developed our own, or the wrong state's route shield entirely (usually a
Texas route shield in this case)), if not flat out wrong (I've actually
seen an Oregon state highway route shield used for a US highway in
Oklahoma!) signage.  Mapping the "ground truth" based on signage alone
would mean some routes change networks 8-12 times per mile...

> Maybe we should distinguish between types of words:
>
> "road types" such as Avenue, Street --> limited set: these can probably be
> expanded reversibly
>
They demonstrably can't.

> "personal titles" such as General, King --> limited set: these can mostly
> be expanded reversibly; in Dutch, "Ingenieur" has two possible
> abbreviations Ir. and Ing. depending on the granting University. Expanding
> them both to Ingenieur loses the distinction, and the "abbreviator" cannot
> make the right decision without having a list of names.
>
I've personally strayed away from this, as exemplified in the Governor
Joseph Turner Turnpike here.

> "personal names" such as "Winston Churchill" --> infinite set: these are
> often (but not always) abbreviated - how far do you go with the expansion?
> Should "W. Churchillstraat" be expanded to "Winston Leonard Spencer
> Churchillstraat"? Perhaps we should leave personal names as they are on the
> signs.
>
I'd go with Winston Churchillstraat, personally.  I tend to expand full
names in Oklahoma mostly because full names are the norm for honorific
locale names here.  One extreme example:  "Officer Larry W. Cantrell and
Mister Charles L. Cantrell Memorial Highway", for which the only reason
middle initials even play into question is because I can't find the
expansions for those, but they appear on the signage (though midpoint
signage still incorrectly lists, alternatively, "New Sapulpa Road,"
"Sapulpa Road" or "US Highway 66"), "Sapulpa Road" was never accurate for
this way, as Frankoma Road was formerly Sapulpa Road, and is presently
signed, in roughly equal frequency, "Frankoma Road," "Old Sapulpa Road,"
"Sapulpa Road," and "US Highway 66."
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