Why? It would be interesting to hear your detailed thoughts on this.
Because name is for the more common/popular/used name - and elipticness is orthogonal to that.
What should be done when both names are equally common, popular, and used? OpenStreetMap contributors make such decisions every day—which of several variants to map—often unconsciously.
In such edge cases, people still have to make a choice. My idea was to document one possible pattern (not a rule): that sometimes the full form is preferred because it preserves more semantic context.
if both are actually indistinguishable in that then I would go with officially used one (sadly, in practice pressure to follow official ones often kicks in much earlier)
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Well, I have to disagree with you here. If I had such a choice, I would opt for the full version of the name. Its advantages have already been discussed above. If you want to discuss this further, I’m open to it, but I think we’ll remain on opposing sides :) Thank you for your responses.
The wiki article “Abbreviations” specifically is a long-held guideline (under “OSM best practices”), describing a practice that is generally observed across OSM, and documenting over a decade of community consensus.
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Given the casual use of an LLM for the proposed text, I’d hope the “Ellipsis” page would also recommend a proper “…” over a series of “. . .”. 
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The symbol … is indeed from AI, while the cumbersome wording remains mine 
I do use LLMs in working with text, but only out of necessity. My English is not good enough for this kind of discussion or for writing an wiki article. I hope this won’t have a negative impact 
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No worries. But I contend that the only ideal ellipsis is “…”. 
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I tried to reduce the length of the article and remove complex terminology. I also changed the title of the article to make it clearer what the article is about. From the recommendations, I kept two points: to add only historically attested full forms that are no longer in use to old_name, and not to invent or reconstruct full forms if they never existed. I also added a sentence about the tradition of street names without a generic term in some countries; it can be expanded if needed.
I would appreciate any suggestions and feedback.
Overall, I would still like us to discuss a general guideline, which would appear somewhere in the opening paragraphs.
Generic terms in names
In OpenStreetMap practice, when filling the name tag, there is sometimes a question of choosing between the full form of a name, with a generic term, and a shortened one—without it. A shortened form of a name, where a word or words have been “lost” in use or deliberately omitted, is also called an elliptical name.
Traditional omission of the generic term
When people use a name very often, they begin to drop some of its components. In many cases, it is the generic word that disappears—the one that used to accompany the proper name, for example: lake, village, or mountain. This pattern is observed in many languages and naming traditions and is natural in the historical evolution of names.
If such a shortened name is common and default, it should be used in name (see Names). The old full form of this name, if it really existed but has fallen out of use, can be recorded with the old_name key.
| old_name | name | ommited generic |
|---|---|---|
| Spanggroben | Spanget | groben |
| Sankt Peters Kirche | Sankt Peter | Kirche |
| Tartu linn | Tartu | linn |
| Kihnu saar | Kihnu | saar |
| Aakre küla | Aakre | küla |
Sometimes names arise in a shortened form from the very beginning. This happens because the language already has familiar ways of forming names, and new ones are created right away without a generic term; its meaning is only implied. This is the case for many settlement names in Ukraine and Serbia. If a full form of the name never existed, it should not be invented or reconstructed: Vilne selo, Stare selo, Čelarevo selo, Ratkovo selo, but — Savino Selo.
In Greece, Poland, Serbia, and some other countries, omitting the generic term “street” is common in their language environment and is an accepted tagging practice.
Risks of mechanical shortening of names
Although omitting words in names is a natural linguistic process, when it comes to modern full names the question arises whether it is always appropriate. Using only the shortened form can lead to a loss of part of the meaning and context embedded in the full name.
Loss of unambiguous identification
In Irish names with specific components like Merrion or Seabury, generic terms such as Street, Road, Close, Court are critically important, because the same specific may be repeated within one area for different types of roads. Removing the generic term in such cases makes it impossible to identify the object.
In Greece and Germany, dropping official titles of administrative units (for example, municipality of …) in favor of only the name of the central settlement leads to confusion between a settlement as a physical object and an administrative area, which may include dozens of other villages.
Loss of meaning, cultural and historical layer
From the point of view of preserving cultural heritage, the full name often contains a unique ethnic or historical layer that is lost when the generic term is removed.
In Vietnamese, simplifying a name to a single word—for example, Vàng instead of Sóc Vàng—effectively turns the place name into the ordinary adjective yellow and it loses its ability to be perceived as the name of a settlement.
In Ukraine, many old names retain generic terms that are no longer used officially (such as khutir or sloboda). Names like Veselyi Khutir or Kozatska Sloboda are integral: the old type of settlement remains an inseparable part of the name. If these words are removed, the names lose the historical layer that tells about the origin or special status of the settlement in the past.
Note that it should not be added to OSM Wiki as recommendation/rule/suggestion without it being clearly supported by OSM community.
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Actually, I would like the participants in the discussion to share their personal opinions, whether positive or negative, so that I can understand if I should continue.
I understood your opinion, although it seems to me that it wasn’t explained in much detail.
I wonder if there is a more recognisable English term for “elliptical toponym”. The only references I have been able to find by searching are to this discussion. It may not help discoverability of a guideline if the page title is something that few English speakers will recognise.
It’s not clear to me if you are proposing that mappers in some countries change established tagging practice. Of the examples given I am only familiar with Irish street names where everyone includes the generic part already, in OSM and in real life.
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I took this term from the essay Ellipsis in place-names. Vibeke Dalberg — Name and place. Ten essays on the dynamics of place-names. The term itself is linguistic and applies not only to names but to any kind of omission. Considering that the discussion here was mostly about the omission of generics, I simplified the terminology following rhhs’s advice, so the article could be titled Generic terms in names.
By the way, in the new draft, I only use the term “elliptical” once, with a reference to Wikipedia.
@alan_gr, I suggest that we at least start documenting the tagging practices of different communities. Ideally, we could go further and develop a shared global recommendation—similarly to how abbreviations are handled.
I don’t think that this is possible, see the topic Why are descriptive terms sometimes missing in object names? already linked by @Minh_Nguyen (with you as last contributor currently) and the simple case of the naming of rivers: with the generic term for river in some languages like Korean and without that in some others like French (with article) or German (without article), see Why are descriptive terms sometimes missing in object names? - #7 by Vinzenz_Mai.
There is simply no rule that fits all. So let us not try to create one that fits some and doesn’t fit others.
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And you have official_name, alt_name: name and old_name are not the only possibilities.
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Thank you for your messages. @Vinzenz_Mai, I was already familiar with this topic; it contains many excellent examples.
I believe that reaching a consensus is possible. If it doesn’t happen in this discussion, that’s perfectly fine 
It will be difficult for each of us, for example, to understand one another if we argue about how names are “perceived” differently, because we speak different languages. However, there are objective properties that can be discussed. The OpenStreetMap community has handled concepts such as how common a name is, whether it is the default, whether it is current, and whether it is official quite well. (By the way, these could also be described as orthogonal.)
I suggest discussing properties of a name such as whether it is primary and complete, or secondary and incomplete. Are these characteristics as objective as those mentioned above? Which form of the data is of higher quality and more useful? What matters more—the official name in the name tag, or an unofficial but more complete name, and in which cases?
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Whenever the world is unavoidably inconsistent, we can focus on applying consistent principles, delegating the details to local communities. The principle of reserving name=* for the “primary name” of a feature is widely accepted – whatever that means in the context of a particular geography, culture, or theme.
What a wiki page could do is raise awareness of the linguistic process of ellipsis, which is something that ordinary people experience all the time but don’t have a word for. It could highlight the terms generic and specific that are so useful in toponymy but hardly familiar to mappers. To help local communities decide on their own detailed criteria, it could offer examples of how a wide variety of data consumers expose names to end users, without overly focusing on a particular renderer or geocoder.
This is what I hoped to enable by splitting the longstanding guidance on abbreviations from the “Good practice” page into a separate “Abbreviations” article. Newcomers kept questioning the guidance as an unnecessary inconvenience or even as a departure from reality, so explaining why became as important as explaining how.
Conceptual articles are important for evolving our tagging conventions deliberately. “Homonymous keys” and “Skunked tags” articles have turned previously obscure linguistic terms into useful catchphrases in the OSM community. Parts of the community have always recognized the problems associated with these practices, but now there’s greater awareness and less chance of mishaps that we discover way too late.
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@Minh_Nguyen, thank you for supporting my idea and for outlining the framework.
To everyone — sorry for the frequent messages
Third draft:
Ellipsis of generic terms in names
Place names are often made up of two parts:
- a generic term—a word that tells what kind of object it is (River, Street, Mount);
- a specific element—the part that makes the name unique (Yellow, Collins, Everest).
For example, in Mount Everest, Mount is the generic term, and Everest is the specific element. In everyday language, people don’t always use both parts. When the meaning is already clear, one part—often the generic term—is sometimes omitted. For instance, the Estonian island Kihnu saar is often called just Kihnu, leaving out the word saar (“island”).
This is common in many languages, although how often it happens can vary between them. In linguistics, this kind of shortening is called Ellipsis. In simpler terms, it is just omission—when part of a name is dropped in use.
Examples
Some names have naturally shortened over time by dropping a part of the original form. The table below shows the longer form, the shorter form, and the part that has fallen out of use.
| Original form | Modern form | Omitted part |
|---|---|---|
| Spanggroben | Spanget | -groben |
| Sankt Peters Kirche | Sankt Peter | Kirche |
| Tartu linn | Tartu | linn |
| Kihnu saar | Kihnu | saar |
| Aakre küla | Aakre | küla |
There are also names that were created in a short form from the very beginning, without any explicit generic term. In other cases, both the full and the short forms still exist today: sometimes only the short form is commonly used, sometimes only the full form, and sometimes both are modern and acceptable.
Language and regional variation
Languages and naming traditions handle this differently. In some places, leaving out the generic term is very common and feels natural. In others, it is usually kept as part of the name. Even within one country or language, the pattern may vary depending on what is being named—a settlement, a street, a river, or an administrative area.
Ukraine (only an example)
In Ukrainian toponymy, names of settlements, rivers, and mountains are typically ellipsed (the generic term is omitted), such as Lviv, Desna, or Hoverla.
For most other compound names, the generic term should be used and written in lowercase. The standard rule is to use direct syntactic order: the generic term comes first, followed by the specific name acting as an apposition or a genitive modifier (e.g., vulytsia Polivka, park Zakhysnykiv). In cases of apposition, ellipsis is possible, since the first term is perceived more as a clarification than as an integral part of the name.
However, if the specific part is an agreed attribute (usually an adjective), the order is reversed. In this case, the adjective comes first and the generic term follows it (e.g., Sadova vulytsia, Darnytskyi raion).