Since this topic touches upon several concepts that interest me—specifically the omission of generic terms and the transformation of original names into different writing systems or languages—I cannot help but dive into a slightly more detailed analysis. This analysis might lack professional expertise, but I will give it a try. Let’s look at the names of the city and administrative unit provided by the user @higashimado.
We begin with the primary Chinese names—the endonyms. It appears that both names are commonly used in their full form, including the generic term 市 (Shì): 本溪市 (Běnxī Shì). As far as I know, this is quite common in other countries as well, where the name of a specific place and the administrative unit of which it is the center are identical. Interestingly, in Ukraine—where I am from—this is not the case, which I personally find quite helpful. The name of one of our cities (the administrative center) is Cherkasy, while the administrative unit is Cherkaska oblast. Of course, it is not our fault that objects of different natures often share the same name, but as mappers, we still have to deal with it.
I might be mistaken here, but it seems that all foreign-language names for the Běnxī Shì are derived from the Chinese original, and many of them underwent ellipsis during this transformation—dropping the generic term 市 (Shì):
Place: Běnxī Shì
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
name:ar |
بنشي |
name:cs |
Pen-si |
name:de |
Benxi |
name:en |
Benxi |
name:et |
Benxi |
name:fr |
Benxi |
name:hr |
Benxi |
name:pt |
Benxi |
name:ru |
Бэньси |
name:sv |
Benxi |
name:vi |
Bản Khê |
alt_name:en |
Benxi City |
The primary English exonym is the shortened version, with the full name listed as an alternative. Conversely, the following languages use the full form as the primary name, with shortened versions in short_name:
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
name:ja |
本渓市 |
name:ko |
번시시 |
alt_name:ko |
본계시 |
short_name:ja |
本渓 |
short_name:ko |
번시;본계 |
Now, let’s look at the names assigned not to the place, but to the relation boundary=administrative.
Administrative unit: Běnxī Shì
Languages where the shortened name is primary:
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
name:uk |
Беньсі |
name:ru |
Бэньси |
name:ar |
بنشي |
name:cs |
Pen-si |
Languages where the full name is primary (including English):
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
name:ja |
本渓市 |
name:ko |
번시시 |
name:en |
Benxi City |
short_name:en |
Benxi |
As for the values listed in alt_name separated by semicolons for this object, my brief research suggests the following: Benxi Shi is Hanyu Pinyin without diacritics, and Benxi City is a hybrid of Hanyu Pinyin and a translated generic term. There are also two more historic variants: Pen-ch’i Shih and Pen-hsi Shih (both Wade–Giles?).
What can I say after this analysis? Not much, really. It shows that no matter how much we mappers pretend to be dispassionate—merely documenting the most common names—reality is more complex. By choosing a name, we are making a choice among many variants, often based not on objective criteria, but on linguistic habit: deciding whether to translate terms, add them, or cut them off. Removing hyphens, changing capitalization, or dropping diacritics.
If this practice becomes better documented in our Wiki, and we use more specific tags for different variants—such as -Latn or even the -t- tags—our data could become more structured. This would likely make it easier to validate and more versatile to use.
The omission of generic terms is currently being discussed in this thread; if you’re interested, you’re welcome to join!