[Talk-us] Alt_names on counties

[Greg Morgan]

Please don't remove the alt_name tags.  They are useful and not that much
of a distraction or an error  For example, a new freeway was just renamed
for a congress person that helped with many AZ transportation projects.  I
added the alt_name tag so that the South Mountain Freeway can still be
found in a search.  The new name is months old while the old alt_name has
been used for decade.  Not everyone calls Pima County by its full name.
That's why I think that the mapper added the alt_name so that
searches would be successful.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/78850121

On Wed, Dec 25, 2019 at 6:26 PM Tod Fitch <tod at fitchfamily.org> wrote:

> 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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