[Talk-ca] Formatting of Municipality Names (Jarek Piórkowski)

Jarek Piórkowski jarek at piorkowski.ca
Mon Feb 19 22:08:22 UTC 2018


Steve -

"St. Catharines" is the the official name, _and_ the local name. One can
invent a full name, but it would be an invention.

Have you passed by talk-gb? They have a fair amount of "St" names and some
authority as to how to do things in OSM.

--Jarek


On Feb 19, 2018 22:49, "OSM Volunteer stevea" <steveaOSM at softworkers.com>
wrote:

I continue to assert that our (OSM's) name=* wiki states these
abbreviations should be fully expanded and that official_name=* might hold
the abbreviation.  In short, "them's the rules" in OSM:  part of why I'm
pounding so hard on this is that I might get some recognition that OSM does
have rules to follow.  (Slavishly?  Well, perhaps yes, perhaps no, but
please analyze and fully understand the issues before taking exception to
them).  There are good reasons for this "no abbreviations" tenet which have
to do with software parsers being able to do sane things.

Jarek and I have exchanged opinions, though what he distilled for me from
his point of view is that "software parsing of names is fraught with
problems..." and so we should/must "fix these problems in the data."
Again, I respectfully disagree:  the data are to be full names without
abbreviations SO THAT software parsers have a consistent set of data to
use.  This is at least partly why official_name and loc_name exist.

I realize that as somebody from outside Canada, some may feel I clomp
clumsily here, as I don't want to get in the way of "how Canada does
things."  However, what we are talking about is "how Canada does things IN
OSM" and about that, I am not outside the tent, I am inside of it.  I
continue to respect good dialog while realizing that all of us, as we
display our passion in this forum, "wish to do the right things."

SteveA


> On Feb 19, 2018, at 1:32 PM, Kevin Farrugia <kevinfarrugia at gmail.com>
wrote:
> St. Catharines was founded by Loyalists, so they would have been English
speaking making comparing with Quebecois names isn't the greatest idea.
Ontario's place names generally have more in common with British convention
than with French/Quebecois historical conventions.  The city's corporate
name uses "St." as does all city and provincial spellings of their name.
In the end, the province has the authority to make a municipal name
"official" and their spelling is only ever found as "St." in any document.
>
> -Kevin Farrugia
> kevinfarrugia at gmail.com
>
> On 19 February 2018 at 15:31, Ga Delap <gadelap at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 23:56:20 +0100
> > From: Jarek Piórkowski <jarek at piorkowski.ca>
> > Cc: talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
> > Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Formatting of Municipality Names
> > Message-ID:
>         <CACV3h2kMEzPz15tvhfW=xFULLxiphmJe=0+qELtpT8PEYs_c8w at mail.
gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> > ... It is not clear to me that "Saint Catharines" is the
> > correct unabbreviated version of the city's name. In fact it looks
> > incorrect to me.
>
> > --Jarek
>
> Since St-Catharines is of french origin, why don't you look at what they
did on the other side of your language border?
>   Sainte-Catherine
>   Sainte-Catherine-de-Hatley
>   Sainte-Adèle
>   etc
>
> dega
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