On 18/09/2025 17:29, Paul Berry wrote:
> He's citing this wiki page.
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Abbreviations
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Abbreviations>
That's as may be but that page is also wrong; in the opening
paragraph: "(/St./ could be /Street/ or /Saint/)" - could be but never
is. Context matters and is easily coded for by any renderer. Expanding
"St" to "Saint" in the UK is, then, not only tagging for the renderer
but also not ground truth either!
I agree. Abbreviating road name suffixes (eg, 'street' to 'st', 'road'
to 'rd' and 'avenue' to 'ave') seems to be a particularly US thing; it's
not done in the UK and nor is it done in other languages (in Germany,
for example, 'strasse' is always spelled out in full). Canonical sources
of British street name data, both open (OS OpenNames) and closed (NSG)
always spell out suffixes in full. As do the street nameplates themselves.
But, on the other hand, those same canonical sources do typically use
'St' for 'Saint', where the word is part of the name of a specific
actual saint (eg, St Mary or St Mungo[1]). It isn't abbreviated where
the word is used in a more generic sense (eg, All Saints Close or Saint
Street), and there are some exceptions where it is written out in full
even where it could be abbreviated. But this is uncommon. There are just
over a hundred street names in OS OpenNames that use the word in full,
as opposed to more than 12,000 where it's abbreviated.
So in the UK, the use of 'St' in a street name isn't ambiguous, it's
always only ever an abbreviation. And where it does appear in a street
name on OSM, that's almost always the correct, canonical form. It's
possible that an inexperienced mapper might, possibly, abbreviate one of
the few instances where OS and NSG don't, but these can only be resolved
by checking the canonical form or observing the street name sign. It
certainly isn't appropriate to expand the abbreviation without first
carrying out those checks.
[1] I do find it slightly disappointing that the church has never
canonised anyone called Midge.
Mark
_______________________________________________
Talk-GB mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
