[Talk-ca] French street names in Ottawa

[Jonathan Crowe]

I just did a quick check. On OSM, Rue/Chemin/Boulevard/etc. are capitalized in Montréal, Québec, Paris, Marseille, Besançon, Lille — and Gatineau. Ottawa is the *only* place I’m aware of where capitalizing Rue etc. is even a question.

I mean, Quebec highway exit signs capitalize Rue, Boulevard, Chemin and so forth. Drive any autoroute.

Which is to say that to me the evidence of existing usage elsewhere in the francophone world is pretty overwhelming. (For the record, I have been capitalizing Rue etc. in my edits.)

This is the second time this month that anglophones (generally) have been discussing how to deal with names in other languages (see also the Nunavut place names thread). I think we need to be *very* careful about that: there’s an excellent chance that we don’t know what we’re talking about.

Also, I have a hard time believing that search is so case-sensitive that capitalizing/not capitalizing Rue etc. would break it. (It’s broken in other ways: searching “boulevard cite des jeunes” does not yield Gatineau’s Boulevard de la Cité-des-Jeunes. But that’s another issue.)


Jonathan Crowe
The Map Room
http://www.maproomblog.com



> On Sep 26, 2016, at 11:51 AM, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was under the impression that the City of Ottawa named the streets, they use lower case for rue.   I assumed since they named the streets they were the authority. 
> 
> The entries were confirmed with a Francophone School teacher before being added.
> 
> Originally about 97% of the highways in Ottawa had the French name added following the Ottawa by-law.  These were all done in lower case.  There were one or two street names that had odd names that were not covered by the by-law and these did not have the French added.  
> 
> Now we have a mixture as people have changed the entry to upper case in roughly 20% of the cases which is unfortunate as it impacts searching the French street name entry by name.  We also have had a number of highways added as Ottawa has grown which may or may not have had the French name added.
> 
> Reality is most users use the English version of the street name and most rendering is done in English.  This is similar to many francophones in Ottawa prefer to use English versions of software as they feel they are less likely to have undocumented features.
> 
> I only know of two renderers that use the French name and they are a custom set of rules I made for Maperitive and also they can be shown in OSMand with the right settings.
> 
> Cheerio John
> 
> 
> 
> On 26 September 2016 at 10:55, Loïc Haméon <hameonl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please note the correct French name for rue Sparks is "rue Sparks" and not "Rue Sparks"
> The first word is not capitalised.
> This was carefully verified before the names were added.
> Thanks John
> 
> 
> Hi John,
> 
> It's true that in French the generic element of place names (rue, avenue, chemin, etc.) are normally not capitalized as part of a text or address (http://www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/redac-srch?lang=fra&srchtxt=rue&cur=9&nmbr=14&lettr=3&info0=3.3.8#zz3).
> 
> However, in maps, where the street name is usually shown independent of anything else and this generic name is the first element of the "sentence", it is usual for it to be capitalized. This is how they are entered in OSM in Quebec (http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/165217842#map=17/46.82211/-71.28523&layers=D) and also in other French maps, whether in Quebec (http://carte.ville.quebec.qc.ca/carteinteractive/) or France (https://www.viamichelin.fr/web/Cartes-plans/Carte_plan-Nantes-44000-Loire_Atlantique-France?strLocid=31NDJqejUxMGNORGN1TWpFM09EUT1jTFRFdU5UVTNNVFE9).
> 
> As the "rue" part is not considered a proper name, it is subject to typographical change depending on the context of its use. Regardless of how it appears on Ottawa street signs, given there is an overwhelming norm for capitalization in maps, I would recommend you do the same in Ottawa. 
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Loïc