[OSM-talk] Geographic objects

[Lennard]

On 3-9-2010 19:37, Christian H. Bruhn wrote:

> I think it is very important to give geographic objects names and
> display them on a map. The map will look more complete and you can
> work the information e.g. if someone tells you that he went hiking in
> the Alpes and you don't know where they are, you take a look at OSM
> and you will find it.

What you are describing is a toponym[1]. A toponym is the name of a 
geographic feature, not only places, but also all the other examples you 
give, like forests, mountain ranges, etc.

Water names are called a hydronym, but as a subclass of the science 
toponymy and for the sake of tagging that could also count as a toponym.

We've been using toponyms in The Netherlands ever since we had data that 
described a geographic feature with dozens of smaller polygons. For 
example, whereas first we had a simple, generalised landuse=forest, we 
now have dozens of polygons in the same area. Adding a name=* for all of 
them sounded a bit out of whack. A single one of those polygons is not 
by itself the forest. Rather, all of them together form that forest.

So we retag the generic polygon, from landuse=forest to toponym=forest, 
keeping the name=* (and by current necessity, adding area=yes). A user 
of the data can parse the toponym, see what kind it is, and apply it to 
the entire area. For example, a renderer can see toponym=forest, 
recognize it as a forest, and render the label in the same style it 
would use for landuse=forest.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toponymy

-- 
Lennard