[Talk-us] Alt_names on counties

[Greg Troxel]

Tod Fitch <tod at fitchfamily.org> writes:

> 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”).

This seems bogus and feels like tagging for the search engine.

I think the root of the problem is that from some point of view, the
name of Foo County is Foo, just like the name of Town of Bar is Bar.


> 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.

Definitely ask them about it, and if they aren't local, and the locals
don't like it, fix it.   (Is there a talk-us-califoria list?)