[Talk-ca] Abbreviations

[fbax at execulink.com]

In the case of your example (way 119789042); name = St. Paul's Cathedral


There seems to be an exception to the OSM guidelines mentioned
previously.
If a church has a wikidata tag (as this church does); then OSM 'name'
tag cannot be changed from St. to Saint.
It seems wikidata uses the 'official name' which is copied to OSM name
tag but does not confirm to OSM guidelines. 

On 2023-07-05 13:01, Pierre-Léo Bourbonnais wrote:

> I'm still confused why we don't use short_name and official_name/full_name more often for these cases: 
> 
> Example for St Paul's Cathedral: 
> 
> name = Saint-Paul's Cathedral 
> official_name or full_name = Whatever is written in front of the building 
> short_name = St-Paul's Cathedral 
> 
> I don't see any controversy in this naming scheme. It follows OSM wiki guidelines for the name tag, it uses the correct tag for abbreviated Saint to St (short_name) and it includes the official name/full name as written on the building or street name itself. 
> 
> But again, I may be a bit naive here! 
> 
>> On Jul 5, 2023, at 9:57 AM, Jarek Piórkowski <jarek at piorkowski.ca> wrote: 
>> 
>>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Abbreviations 
>>> ==> If the name can be spelled without an abbreviation, then don't 
>>> abbreviate it. 
>>> 
>>> I notice that for *many* churches in London, ON; "Saint" has been 
>>> changed to "St". For example: 
>> 
>> It also does say "If the name is incorrect when spelled in full, however, do not falsely expand it" so one of the questions will be: is it incorrect when expanded? That's likely not to have a blanket answer for all churches. 
>> 
>> Be also aware that there are many exceptions to this "best practice" in OSM. 
>> 
>> OSM originated in Britain and many of OSM practices and standards are based on British mapping and naming, so let's take for example London, England. (London is actually _relatively_ poorly mapped these days, but it's still something.) There is no consistency: 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/369161987 name "St Paul's Cathedral" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/26638075 name "St Pancras Old Church" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/4969133 name "Saint Mary's Church" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32912540 name "Saint Mark's Kennington" 
>> as you pan around, you will see churches named with both formats 
>> 
>> OK, so surely the pedantic and orderly Germans have figured it out? Ah, no: 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/51688847 name "St.-Thomas-Kirche" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/8436062 few hundred metres away, name "Sankt Michael" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/51069986 name "St. Nikolaus" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/58608090 name "St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale Berlin" 
>> - https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/11776713 name "Sankt Rita" 
>> if anything, from panning around it appears church names with "St." are a bit more common 
>> 
>>> But the general rule of thumb was to trust local mappers first instead of expanding things based on external preference 
>> 
>> Yes, this will be my foremost recommendation. Local mappers and local usage. 
>> 
>> My second-most recommendation is not to change long-standing existing tagging without good reasons. I do note that the renamings of churches in London seem to have gone against this. 
>> 
>> The church's own usage, including signs on the church and their written communications, would also play into it for me. 
>> 
>> BTW, for https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/118730476/history it appears "Lutheran" has been misspelled in OSM since 2012. 
>> 
>>> FWIW, the "don't un-abbreviate names" exception is only documented as applying to municipality and street names:  
>> 
>> Yep. I was one of the people pushing for those exceptions, so to add for context: 
>> 
>> - in city names, this prevents incorrectly unabbreviating cities like St. John's or St. Catharines (the latter I had to fix once) 
>> - in street names, this prevents incorrectly unabbreviating streets named after people whose names were never spelled with Saint (for example "St. Clair Avenue") and where it's not clear whether the name actually refers to a specific saint (for example "St. Andrews Road" or "St. Clarens Avenue") 
>> 
>> --Jarek
> 
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