City names incorrect

Hi,

what to do about incorrect city or village names affecting the correct search?

I.guess rename all ?

For example:

In the map is Muang San Sib

Correct is Muang Sam Sip

Like this you never find the correct location in the search box is you type the name correctly.

Greets
Andy

Hi Andy,

Could you post the lat/long of the city? It is not hard to change, if you are sure of your information.

PM me at tombloom99@hotmail.com with any questions or corrections you want to make and I will help any way I can. Cheers!

Hi Tom,
thanks for your reply.

Here are the data. It is north of Ubon Ratchathani.

Latitude: 15.5130700°
Longitude: 104.7256500°

I go there tomorrow, that’s why today I confused about the search results.

I can send additional informations if necessary tomorrow.

Greetz Andy

That’s node
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2406947854#map=15/15.5196/104.7215
The “n” in “San” looks like a typo, since the Thai version says “สาม”. As for the “b” at the end, well, the Thai spelling actually uses “บ” (“b”) though it is pronounced as a (non-aspirated, voice-less) “p”.
Try to take some photos there showing the name both in Thai and Latin alphabet - if they use one spelling only, that issue can be resolved easily.

But Thai romanization is sometimes weird - e.g. Chandi - Jundee (and also Chandee):
https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5398030104#map=15/8.3770/99.5419

How to post an image from the mobile phone gallery?

Is there a Thailand Telegram?

Hello Andy,

the correct content for the “name” tag is the official (full) name in Thai scrip, no abbreviations.

in name:en we put the RTGS version of the name so foreigners have a chance to see it, even in software not capable of doing proper RTGS (most SW uses libicu and fails horribly)

I worked together with Sven of the German community to have an automated RTGS for Thai names on openstreetmap.de which uses a much better library.
There had been bugs, but I had been in contact with Khun Wirote Arunmanakun from Chulalongkorn University and the bugs had been quickly resolved.

In your case, the Thai name “บ้านม่วงสามสิบ” should be in RTGS name:en “Ban Muang Sam Sip”, which is also what is used in wikipedia
https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B3%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A0%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%87%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%9A

Here is an online version to romanize Thai names (please report bugs to improve the software):
http://161.200.50.2/th2roman

Please go ahead and fix the broken name you found.

Often we also add a name:th tag repeating the name in Thai script. This allows to produce maps rendering Thai script only, without the guesswork of what is a Thai name and what not. Not horribly important as there are heuristics to do without, but it also should not harm.

It might be that some signs suffer from transliteration problems and do not conform to RTGS as mandated by the government. In such cases you can use for example alt_name:en to put in an alternative wrong spelling found on some signs. This ensure nominatim for example finds it. Use such alternative names with a sense of what is appropriate. Not every wrong spelling you found somewhere on a brochure of in the internet should end up in OpenStreetMap. Widespread use of a non-standard romanization would justify to add it as an alternative.

Stephan

edit: added section about alt_name

Stephen Wrote —

That is certainly the case as often as not. Thai transliteration varies all over the place and when the English name on a street sign disagrees with the RTGS version, I add it as an alt_name:en. The version on the sign should stand as the value in the name tag even if it is incorrect using the RTGS standard because that is the name “on the ground”. It will be the name a traveler sees rather than the more correct RTGS version.

Dave

@Stephen - I was not aware of the online edition of the transliteration program. That is a very handy thing to know. Thanks.

for change the city name, it is not road by road, right?

It is the center pin (or how it is called?) in the city?!

Greets
Andy

Exactly. Find that node (often not so easy to see, but with Muang Sam Sip, you can look at my link above), and change it there.
By the way, you may ask such “common” questions also in e.g. https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=64961 , there are more users available for answering questions (here in the Thai subforum it’s just a few people mapping in Thailand).

Very interesting this online Roman check, it works fabulous, even if some results are surprising.
I will proceed to check my excel sheet with all 150 or so villages I named (and also check versus photographic evidence, some street signs are incredible).

A question, I always name a village by defining an approximate village area and naming this area. Is this ok, or a bad practice?
And I guess I should remove all spaces from the Thai names, the online checker finds them hard to swallow.

Hi … most Thai mappers show the name of a Village using a single node, (and tag as place=village, name= xxx).
It would appear that OSM prefers this method too. Read the page https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:place#Mapping_populated_places_as_areas

You will find some villages tagged as areas in Thailand, but I would urge you to follow the majority of the Thai OSM community and map as a single node and tag as place=xxx in the rough centre of the village. Of course its very good to draw the area of the village and tag as landuse=residential, but do not add the name to this.

I would add that village names originally added by myself (especially if I have used the tag source=sign), is taken from the spelling on the actual street sign. Therefore I would ask you not to change it, just because a program might give you a different result. Take a look at the history of the node first and contact the original mapper if in doubt. Of course, for any new villages you add, an online translation is fine, and certainly better than nothing.

Hope this helps.

Dear Russ
Thanks for the advice. The link did not work, but I think I found the page you indicate, and the first option is indeed a node. I will do my best to not ruin your village names, I always take photographs of the name signs I survey. It concerns villages in the area around Non Ta Then, 75 km north-east of Nakhon Ratchasima along AH12, roughly between Bua Yai, Prathai and Phimai.

I must say I have very little faith in the english on Thai name and direction signs, it is really astonishing what texts appear sometimes. If you see 5 signs to the same Wat, you may have 5 different spellings in english. So I would always prefer the RTGS version over what is written on a name sign along the road.