Namesake villages in same country

Hello,
I asked the question already on both the swiss mailing list and the swiss forum, in both german and french languages, but nobody answered to me. I am desesperate for any answer so I’m trying to ask in poor english here.

There is many name sake villages in switzerland. There is usually a suffix which is added to village names in order to distinguish namesake villages from each other. Currently, the OSM data usually always contain those suffix in the “name=” tag of such localities.

I usually strictly follow the guidelines from the wiki, however I cannot find any information on how the name sake localities should be handeld on name tag wiki, exept the following :

Does this mean it would be good practice to remove the suffix to namesake villages, and tag them differently ? If so, how ?

They should all have the same name. The distinction should ideally be made by their being contained within different administrative areas. However, if you can only use a place, for which no precise boundary is known you should use is_in tags.

The reason why the names in OSM do not show Brienz (BE) and Brienz (GR) etc. is that, as hadw says, in a geographic database it is no longer necessary to provide the disambiguation which is typical of paper map products. Each named place is properly located within its own commune, kreis, region and canton & thus can be retrieved with all these properties.

Equally it is possible to use the database to determine duplicate village names and append the traditional disambiguation terms (for Brienz the cantonal code). However most maps generated from OSM avoid the type of post-processing needed.

In any case you SHOULD NOT add the disambiguation suffixes to names. They are not part of the name, and when such things are added make fairly ordinary activities such as searches much less useful.

Thanks. The question was not whether I should add disambiguation suffixes, but whether I should remove the existing ones (and there’s a lot of them). So it looks like the answer is yes (according to the 2 answer so far - thank you very much guys). I think this make sense, since local people do typically not refer those places with the suffix in ordinary spoken language, although they might in formal, written language.

How do I map the name with the disambiguation suffix ? administrative_name=, local_name=, national_name=, official_name= ?

It would be, in my opinion, necessary to add this info to the wiki in all languages for future reference.

Where does the name with the suffix appear? Generally, what gets mapped is what appears on the signs as you enter the place.

Even if there is an official list of names with suffixes, you can only use that list if it there is a an agreement between OSM and its maintainers that the list can be used under the OSM licensing terms.

NB. Do not use Google Street View to look at signs, as mapping from GSV is against the GSV terms of use.

This is a complicated question. They appears on some signs (without any consistency), (but is lacking on most signs), n some maps, and on most official documents, for example something I do not know how to name in english, but there is a panel in a village centre where official information is displayed, and the name of the municipality appears, with the suffix.

Note taken, I won’t do that anymore.

There is no such list as far as I know, and there is no need for such a list. It is obvious by looking at the name if it has a suffix.

I do not know who is responsible to add info relative to this to the wiki, but I’d like to see them added, so that I can have a reliable reference for the changes I’m wishing to make to OSM. That is remove most suffix names from “name=” tags and add them to another tag instead.

I do not consider my opinion to be any important - I just want to apply the wiki rules as stricly as possible to my country, and for that, there needs to be a wiki rule in the first place.

You need to find the mailing list, or possibly forum, for your country, and get consensus there.

I already did, and I was ignored. The problem of namesake places is not just a Swiss problem, but a global problem, it needs a global solution I believe.

The specifically Swiss problem is that some official name signs include the qualification. The standard rule would be that those define the name tag, and any shortened form would have to be local_name. Generally words written “on the ground” win over hearsay.

Anyone can change the wiki, but you need to have consensus before you change it to avoid edit wars or its being ignored.

Although I personally believe that obeying the wiki should normally be considered a defence for any suggestion of an inappropriate edit, there are a lot of people who take the attitude that the wiki is maintained by people who do not properly reflect the mappers.

But there is absolutely no cohenrency on sign on the ground. For example it is perfectly possible for a sign to say “Corsier-sur-Vevey” and for another sign just 100m ahead to say just “Corsier”. Dependning on whether they had room, when the sign was made, and other random factors. I think a coordinated solution for the country is better.

OK, I think what I’ll do is do a proposal and post it on both the Swiss forum and the Swiss mailing list and both in French and German. If nobody makes any serious objection, I’ll apply the proposal, else I’ll revise the proposal until there’s a consensus.

My 1st proposal beta is probably the following :

*) All names with a suffix in “name=” tags will see their suffix removed
*) When the suffix is a canton name or district name in parenthesis there is no compensation, as the “is_in” tag is sufficient
*) When the suffix is a reference to another nearby locality, the full name with suffix will be present under “national_name=” tag, or, if there is discontent, “alt_name=” tag.

Which would be best betwen “national_name” and “alt_name” ? I am not even sure what “national_name” is supposed to be, but as the oposite of “local_name” it could make sense in this case.

I really would not step in make lots of changes which have survived for a number of years. The principal maintainer of Nominatim, the search component of the main OSM site, lived in Zurich for a number of years. The former Chair of the OSM Foundation lives just outside Zurich.

I’m not sure how widespread the issue is: the first commune I find is Bargen (SH).

Note that your proposed approach does not really meet the mechanical edit routine. I.e., it’s not enough to post to a mailing list & say if I get no responses I’ll go ahead.

Naturally this discussion, insofar that it concerns Switzerland should be taking place on the Swiss mailing list, where the majority of the Swiss community could participate.

The situation is slightly complicated and we need to be careful what we are talking about.

Administratively Switzerland is divided in to municipalities at the lowest level (ignoring some divisions which only exist in the largest cities), the names of these are formally published by the BfS (the federal statistics office). The official municipality names can contain a canton suffix in the form of (XX) when disambiguation is needed. Example: Bargen (BE) vs. Bargen (SH).

Each municipality will contain at least one or more places (well except some special cases), a village, city and so one. Most of the time there is at least a place that carries the name of the municipality. In such cases that place will typically have “city limit” signs indicating the full official name. In typical colloquial use however the names are used without the suffix except when they actually need to be disambiguated.

Current mapping practice in Switzerland is to use the official name on the (imported) municipality border, and add the place node as admin_centre with name set to the name without suffix and official_name with the suffix. In colloquial use most of the time we are referring to the place, not the administrative entity, so this makes sense.

The same applies for official municipality names that do not contain a canton suffix but a different disambiguation, examples “Muri bei Bern” vs “Muri”, “Oetwil an der Limmat” vs. “Oetwil am See”. It should be noted that in some cases the colloquial use in itself is not unambiguous with the use of the long variant not being uncommon. For example “Oetwil an der Limmat” (that I can see looking out of the window here) is very often used in the full form. I would suggest setting short_name to the abbreviated form in such cases.

Simon

PS: the short version of the above: don’t muck around with the names on the municipalities, feel free to do what makes sense on the place nodes.

So, because something has been wrong some number of years it means it has to stay wrong ?! The current status of Switzerland on OSM is extremely uneaven, some places are perfectly mapped and some other places are missing out entierely, or contains errors that are awfully wrong, and so for years. I’m just trying to standardize how the country is mapped.

This makes absolutely, 100% perfect sense. I’ll emit this proposal to the swiss mailing list in french and in german, and if nobody objects then I’ll apply this rule.