[Talk-us] Alt_names on counties

[Tod Fitch]

I’ve noticed that a number of counties in California and Arizona have what seems to be unneeded alt_name tags in their boundary relations. For example Pima County, Arizona has name=“Pima County” and alt_name=“Pima”. Same for Pinal County in Arizona and Riverside, Orange, Kern and Ventura counties in California. But this does not seem universal as the few counties I looked at in Washington state have only a name=* tag (e.g. name=“Columbia County”).

I don’t see a wiki page for the standard for this in the United States. Is there one I’ve missed?

Assuming there is not standard for this, should there be? And what should it be? (My preference is to remove an alt_name that is simply the name without “County”.)

For what it is worth, it looks like the alt_names for counties in Arizona and California were added in 2014 by the user “revent” who is still actively mapping borders around the world.

Thanks!
Tod

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