It seems so, though I guess at meaning of “dialectal word”
I meant that its meaning might be known only among the locals
In more recent times, California City, the third-largest city in California, is mostly a grid of empty streets in the desert thanks to poor urban planning by a land speculator with grandiose ambitions.
Sometimes things go in the opposite direction. In the 1970s, Indian Hill grew to a population that automatically transformed it from “The Village of Indian Hill” to “The City of Indian Hill” under state law. But the well-to-do bedroom community preferred the quaint reputation of a village, so they hacked their name to avoid the connotations of big city life. Now the official legal name is “The City of The Village of Indian Hill”, so that maps produced by less careful cartographers all label it as “The Village of Indian Hill”, even though none of the surrounding cities and villages have such unwieldy labels.
(No, there’s no hill named Indian Hill.)
This mirrors Germany where municipalities often times consist of multiple villages (mostly as a result of an administrative merger in the 1970s) and villages end up being boroughs/municipal districts of a larger municipality (Gemeinde) which may or may not be legally a “city”. In common parlance, most people refer to the place name itself and rarely refer to the municipality as a whole (e.g. public transport announcements tend to use the physical location and not the municipal boundary). Even the issue on how they’re documented on Wikimedia is the same since eponymous places use one article for both administration and place even when the other districts get their own articles and Commons likewise also tend to lack a dedicated category for the core city.
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no, it is no longer used or understood at all - except ones who read history info - or listened to tour guides.
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The direction shouldn’t be completely dropped in Spokane, as 212 North Division Street is not quite close to 211 South Division Street.
Sure, if someone’s giving the official address, they’ll use the full name. But in everyday conversation, there’s no confusion between “Division and Main” and “Division and Second”.
In Ireland, it is practically mandatory to use the full name, as there is a habit of reusing names, e.g. Seabury, Lissadell and Castle here: OpenStreetMap
There is a problem however, that while all of these are in one neighbourhood:
- Merrion Close
- Merrion Court
- Merrion Place
- Merrion Row
- Merrion Square
- Merrion Street Lower
- Merrion Street Upper
These are in a completely different neighbourhood a few km away:
- Merrion Court (different place to the one above)
- Merrion Gates
- Merrion Mews
- Merrion Road
- Merrion Strand
- Merrion View Avenue
- Merrion Village
Of course, the neighbourhood Mount Merrion (and all its suffixs) is yet again a few km away from the above.
It does however mean that if you give someone an urban street address that it will usually somewhere very close to your destination.
Casually, people may shorten names in conversation, e.g. they would say “I am going to Merrion Street” not “I am going to Merrion Street Lower” nor “I am going to Merrion”.
The flip side is that postcodes (EirCode) will bring you to precisely the right building.
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@VictorIE, thank you for the details regarding names in Ireland.
I’ve started drafting an article about elliptical names, which I hope to post on the wiki.
The main idea is to explain the phenomenon and suggest a spectrum of approaches depending on the context of the name. For instance, if a name has undergone a long history of transformations, including ellipsis, and is currently established and used in that form — it should be entered into the name tag exactly as it is used today. However, if the full form is clearly known, sounds natural, and is in common modern usage, preference should be given to the full name.
I would appreciate it if we could work together on refining these formulations.
I am confused why elipticness or elipticless would be relevant at all for selecting which name value is preferred.
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Suppose there is a name that could be tagged in either an elliptical or a full form, given that both are modern (the full form is not archaic). If the full name consists of two words, it carries at least twice as much context. I believe you’ll agree that tags in OpenStreetMap are not equivalent to generic terms and cannot replace them.
Often, elliptical names are syntactically incomplete—for instance, a possessive adjective agreeing with an ‘empty’ noun. Whether this is a flaw or not is a matter of debate, but I personally consider it one.
then more common name would be used, no matter their elipticness
The ‘common name’ is the baseline of our project. I am proposing that we ‘zoom in’ on the nature of these names in more detail
Here is a draft wiki article based on our discussion, open for feedback.
Elliptical Toponyms
Elliptical toponyms are geographical names in which a word or words have been “lost” or intentionally omitted during common usage. Ellipsis is a form of linguistic simplification. When people use a name very frequently, they begin to drop certain components. One of the most common methods of toponymic ellipsis is the omission of the generic term—such as the words lake, village, or mountain—that usually accompanies the specific proper name. This phenomenon is observed across many languages and toponymic traditions.
Historical and traditional truncation of names
Real ellipsis
Many toponyms were originally formed by combining coordinated specific and generic components. Throughout historical development, driven by the tendency toward linguistic economy, generic terms were often dropped as the specific component began to perform the identification function independently. Such truncation, documented in the historical dynamics of a name’s existence, is classified as real ellipsis[1]. Examples of historical ellipsis in Northern European toponymy include:
| Primary Form | Ellipsed Form | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Spanggroben | Spanget | Ellipsis from a fuller form with the omission of the generic component -groben (ditch, trench). |
| Sankt Peters Kirche | Sankt Peter | St. Peter’s Church; the second element Kirche is omitted, leaving only the saint as the basis of the place name. |
| Tartu linn | Tartu | Historically, the name Tartu linn was often used in documents (linn — city), but only the specificator remained in real usage. |
| Kihnu saar | Kihnu | The island is so large and significant that its name became synonymous with the geographic feature itself. |
| Aakre küla | Aakre | A typical case of generic term ellipsis in settlement names. |
Ideal ellipsis
In some cases, unlike real ellipsis resulting from historical truncation, the elliptical form is not a consequence of losing components but was inherent in the name from the beginning. This occurs because certain word-formation models and suffixes became so entrenched in linguistic tradition that new toponyms were created immediately without an explicit generic term, even though its meaning remained implicit. These names did not go through a “full form” stage in live usage but functioned as “truncated” from the moment of their inception. This phenomenon is defined as ideal ellipsis[2]. Examples of ideal ellipsis include the names of certain settlements with adjectival and possessive suffixes in Ukraine and Serbia:
| Village Name | Translation | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Vilne |
Free |
An adjectival form functioning without a generic term, although selo (village) is the official settlement type in Ukraine. |
| Stare |
Old |
Like the previous name, it is complete without the generic term; selo is merely implicit. |
| Čelarevo |
Chelar’s |
An elliptical form that was shaped as self-sufficient from the start; the possessive suffix is a tradition. |
| Ratkovo |
Ratko’s |
Like the previous name, it is self-sufficient without the generic term. |
| Savino Selo | Sava’s Village | Counterexample: the generic term is part of the official name; ellipsis is absent. |
Toponymic ellipsis is a natural result of evolution and is perceived as the norm in many linguistic environments. Historical full forms, if they truly existed but have fallen out of use, can be tagged with the old_name key.
Risks of mechanical truncation of names
While ellipsis is a natural linguistic process, the question arises regarding the appropriateness of truncating modern full forms. Using exclusively truncated forms can lead to the loss of semantic completeness and the context embedded in the full name.
Loss of identification uniqueness
In Irish toponymy—for example, names like Merrion or Seabury—generic terms such as Street, Road, Close, Court are critically important because the same proper name may be repeated within the same district for different categories of thoroughfares. Removing the generic term in such cases makes identifying the object impossible.
In Greece and Germany, ignoring the official titles of administrative units (e.g., Municipality of…) in favor of only the central settlement’s name leads to confusion between the settlement as a physical object and the administrative territory, which may encompass dozens of other villages.
Loss of semantic completeness, cultural, and historical layers
From the perspective of cultural heritage preservation, a full name often contains a unique ethnic or historical layer that is neutralized when the generic term is removed.
In the Vietnamese language, as a result of simplifying a name to a single word—for example, Vàng instead of Sóc Vàng—the toponym effectively becomes the common adjective “yellow” and loses its ability to be perceived as a settlement name.
In Ukraine, many ancient names retain generic terms in their composition that have already fallen out of official use (such as khutir [farmstead] or sloboda [free settlement]). Toponyms like Veselyi Khutir or Kozatska Sloboda are syntactically integral: in these cases, the archaic status of the settlement has become an inseparable part of the proper name. The loss of these components through ellipsis would mean the disappearance of an entire historical layer indicating the method of foundation or the special status of the settlement in the past.
Choosing between full and elliptical forms
A comparison of all the provided examples shows that toponymic ellipsis is not a uniform phenomenon: in some cases, it is historically justified and anchored in linguistic norms, while in others, it can lead to the loss of semantic distinctions or the distortion of the name’s primary structure. Thus, ellipsis itself is neither a positive nor a negative phenomenon—its appropriateness depends on the linguistic context, the degree of stability, and the functional load of the full form.
In OpenStreetMap practice, the question of choosing between full and elliptical forms sometimes arises when filling the name tag. If the full form is widely used within the language environment and is perceived as natural rather than redundant, and it is as common as the elliptical form, then it may be preferred as the default name instead of the elliptical one.
A database, unlike spoken language, is not limited by the need for instantaneous linguistic economy and can serve as a repository for the full primary form of a name as long as it remains in use within the linguistic environment.
Dalberg, Vibeke. Ellipsis in place-names. In: Fellows-Jensen, G., Gammeltoft, P., Jørgensen, B., & Sandnes, B. (Eds.), Ten essays on the dynamics of place-names. Copenhagen: Department of Scandinavian Research, Name Research Section, University of Copenhagen, 2008, p. 23. ISBN 978-87-992447-1-3. URL. (Access date: 2026-02-27). ↩︎
Dalberg, Vibeke. Ellipsis in place-names. In: Fellows-Jensen, G., Gammeltoft, P., Jørgensen, B., & Sandnes, B. (Eds.), Ten essays on the dynamics of place-names. Copenhagen: Department of Scandinavian Research, Name Research Section, University of Copenhagen, 2008, p. 22. ISBN 978-87-992447-1-3. URL. (Access date: 2026-02-27). ↩︎
Just to be clear, are you proposing a wiki page or also proposing a tagging convention, where perhaps there hasn’t been a consistent cross-cultural guideline in the past?
Yes, the bold sentences are possible tagging conventions. I added them to get feedback on whether they are useful or appropriate. Whether they stay in the final version depends on how people in the discussion react.
In general, my idea was to write an article like Abbreviations, describing how different communities treat ellipsis in names.
I would start with the “In OpenStreetMap practice…” paragraph so readers immediately understand why what you write is relevant for OSM and will continue to read it. The text is a bit academic so many mappers might not see why they should read it, so if you could reduce linguistic jargon where possible, that would help.
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Overall that is a lot of text to change nothing.
If multiple names are as common then each of them may be preferred as the default name already.
So this change nothing.
Unless you mean that elliptical form should be preferred in such case.
Yes, it doesn’t change the rule about the common default name, but it clarifies situations where you are choosing between equally common names, one of which is a ellipsed form and the other the full form. That is, the choice between these two options will fall on the more complete forms:
| Ellipsed | Full |
|---|---|
| Marusenków | Staw Marusenków |
| Chwinenków | Błoto Chwinenków |
| Gorile | Jezioro Gorile |
| Niemiecki | Niemiecki Zakątek |
| Kondratów | Zakątek Kondratów |
| Bajdyne | Miejsce Bajdyne |
| Ostatnia | Dolina Ostatnia |
| Szemeszkowa | Studnia Szemeszkowa |
| Wysokie | Miejsce Wysokie |
| Kowalowskie | Miejsce Kowalowskie |
I entirely reject considering elipticness at all as a factor in choosing more popular one.