[Tagging] Relationship between place=* and name=*

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 26 January 2021, Michael Montani wrote:
>
> The wiki definition of
> place=*<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place> states:
>
> "Used to indicate that a particular location is known by a particular
> name, to indicate what sort of "place" it is. A place tag should
> exist for every significant human settlements (city, town, suburb,
> etc.) and also for notable unpopulated, named places."
>
> which in my opinion is like saying human settlements cannot exist if
> they don't have a name.

Human settlements are not universally tied to the populated places as we 
map them in OSM.  Not every house where humans live necessarily belongs 
to a place=city/town/village/hamlet/isolated_dwelling.  Mapping of 
buildings as well as urban landuses 
(landuse=residential/commercial/retail/industrial) is independent of 
mapping of named populated places.

The question you should ask yourself is this:  What does a place=village 
without a name (that is one that definitely has no name, not one where 
the name is so far unmapped) indicate semantically in terms of 
geographic information?  

If the established classification system 
place=city/town/village/hamlet/isolated_dwelling can be applied to all 
parts of the world or if there are names populated places are referred 
to with in some regions that do not fit into this scheme is a different 
matter.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
https://www.imagico.de/