[Talk-us] Alt_names on counties

[stevea]

On December 25, 2019 at 11:46:47 PM PST Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  new freeway was just renamed for a congress person 
> 
> In this case “official_name=“ with the whole congresspersons name would be good, keeping the commonly-used name in “name=“.

Minh and I earlier this year were discussing how a highway near me I had "renamed" (with its name=* tag) for a slain state highway patrol officer was causing the text-to-speech code of a navigation device to pour forth a very lengthy "take this exit" burst of speech that was difficult to follow.  We agreed that official_name=* was an appropriate key for the value of this signed-on-the-ground name for the highway, although I have seen alt_name tagged in the map for this purpose (and I might have "corrected" it to official_name, I can't recall exactly).

Also, I find that "alt_name" works well for abbreviated county names, as in California in certain contexts, the name of a county without the word "county" appended unambiguously communicates a geography to someone.  (As in "From this part of Amador (county), you'll have to skirt the edge of El Dorado to get to Alpine").  Greg (M.) seems to indicate this happens in (Pima) Arizona, as well.

SteveA
California