[OSM-talk] shortened names

[John F. Eldredge]

Ed Loach <ed at loach.me.uk> wrote:

> > > i've been told it's st albans, not saint albans as i 'corrected'
> it to
> > 
> > I think it is actually written "St Albans" as stated above.
> 
> Yes, it is called Saint Albans, written St Albans, except where some
> websites seem to have expanded it. 
> 
> e.g.
> http://www.meteoprog.co.uk/en/weather/SaintAlbans/
> http://www.gomapper.com/travel/map-of/saint-albans.html
> etc...
> http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=%22saint+albans%22
> 
> I personally would be tempted to store the name tag in expanded form
> so it is clear what the St abbreviation applies to (I've seen things
> like S St N on Google where they've abbreviated South Street North,
> for example, which just looks silly). This seems to agree with
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:name#Notes
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
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It makes sense to me to store the fully-spelled-out version of the name, and then have a local-language-based way of looking up abbreviations.  This would lead to less ambiguity than having a program try to guess which terms are abbreviations, and what they are abbreviations for, since there may sometimes be more than one possible expanded form.

-- 
John F. Eldredge -- john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria