Oslo airport currently has a name of ‘Oslo lufthavn, Gardermoen’. As it is rather unusual to have a comma in a name I did a bit of research and it looks like this is a Norwegian peculiarity. Out of the 74 airports with a comma, 38 concern Norwegian Airports. For comparison, there are around 40k airports worldwide without a comma in the name.
I can’t find much support for these names with comma being used as the actual names. English (but not Norwegian) Wikipedia for Oslo has it as the title but doesn’t refer to it with comma later in the text. Hausgesund lufthavn Karmøy seems to at least use the location name on its website but completely omits the comma. Avinor only uses the form <town name> lufthavn on its website.
All in all, I wonder if this is a local habit of adding a location modifier to airport names that is reflected in the name tag in OSM in form of a comma-separated tag. And if that is the case, I wonder what you think about switching to the official airport names for the name tag to be more consistent with international use and use alt_name for the various alternative spellings like Oslo Gardermoen Airport or just Gardermoen.
It would certainly help to have a clear distinction between name and location of the airport. The meaning of a comma in a name tag is unfortunately hard to interpret.
youll find that there is no consensus to be found anywhere, but it is common to add the site-name to the airport name, and i suppose it is proper form to then put a comma there. but these are not the official names of the airports. the site name is just… commonly used terms
Other naming schemes in Europe seem to use a hyphen in case the location is added in the name (e.g., Stockholm - Arlanda, Milano - Linate). In some countries, hyphens are not used (e.g., London Gatwick Airport). Many airports are these days also named after persons, for which different ways of naming would apply. In Norway, the hyphen looks a little strange to me to add a location? And in OSM, clearly different schemes are used in different places?
The question in the end is: what’s the actual name of the airport. Is that location suffix really part of the name or just an address suffix as in “London, Ontario”. The luftfartstilsynet’s list at least explains where the current names in OSM come from but it doesn’t really clarify that question.
For Oslo, the German Wikipedia claims that the official name was “Oslo-Gardermoen” until 2013 when it was renamed to “Oslo Lufthavn”. There is no citation source for that sadly.
Entur also has it as name=Oslo lufthavn + alt_name=Gardermoen (Incidentally this is where this research started from. Finding the airport both as “Oslo Lufthavn” and “Gardermoen” didn’t work well, so I was curious what OSM is doing. And it turns out that the current naming really messes up search because there is a train station called “Oslo lufthavn” and a dozen other things but no airport with that exact name. Same for Bergen.)
As far as I know, the location suffix is part of the official name of the airport. The Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, Luftfartstilsynet, knows for sure.
I’ve asked them once. Everyone does it differently.
IATA code is official…
is official…
+ lufthavn is official…
+ Lufthavn is official (sometimes)…
+ lufthavn + is official…
+ lufthavn +, is official…
+ lufthavn + - is official…
…depending on where you look and who you ask.
The best way imho is to make a united OSM way, and follow that pattern. I mean, Norway cant even have a single official spelling method… it cant even have two. So how can you expect it know when there is a space, comma or hyphen
The name we have in Entur is the result of that one time I asked. The most official name was + lufthavn. But, because so many people talk about the airports in the term, we needed to include them.
Thats my experience with this diffuse and confounding topic.
I think I also have seen:
‘+ lufthaven (location)’
on bus or train but that could have been shortly after some changes happened to the stop names. As a user, I’d like to have the airport name in a version that locally makes sense. (Unless there is a technical issue with the comma)? To me it seems the comma does make sense in Norwegian. After all, oral announcements (here) often refer e.g. to “Trondheim lufthavn Værnes” where you could argue we should ask Språkrådet if we should interpret such terms with comma or anything else. I’d support @Wulfmorn with the view that if OSM decided for a general consensus on how to present airport names, Norway should follow this consensus. So far, however, the more authoritive sources seem to support the comma.
Having comma in the name sounds and looks weird to me, Oslo Airport Gardermoen should suffice? Having the comma in the official stedsnavn seems like a listing of two alternative names? A dash would look better for that, if you insist having both names in the name field
I just call it Gardermoen, and I can’t recall hearing anyone calling it Oslo lufthavn here in Oslo. Of visitors they would call it just “Oslo Airport”
It was really annoying when I had to search “oslo lufthavn” in Ruter/Entur before they added Gardermoen to the name :P
The placenames are never the official names. It’s just what people say because they are used to it. What I’m trying to say here, this discussion can never end up in a final state. The most official names you’ll find are the ones listed here https://www.avinor.no/, and then you have to “stick” the placenames on somehow. Dash, space, comma, separate field. Whatever you do, someone will always be able to put forward a new opinion. How about Oslo Lufthavn, or Oslo lufthavn (Gardermoen). And then what do you do with Sandefjord?
Oslo lufthavn Torp?
Torp lufthavn?
Sandefjord lufthavn Torp?
Sandefjord lufthavn?
@lonvia If you have a common naming scheme for airports internationally, I would be happy to fit Norway into that scheme. The important rules for Norway are:
- what town they belong to. I think this will be a 1:1 match, with only Sandefjord airport being counted as Oslo’s budget airport.
Lufthavn - just means airport and should always be present. Fits on all functional public airports except for Værøy, which is a helicopter airport.
- very commonly used, but not always, and rarely it carries any weight, because each town only has one airport. But people are very used to these names, so we can’t live without them, apparently.
Maybe my choice of words when saying “official” name wasn’t very good, especially when the situation is as vague as with Oslo Airport. The list of alternative names in wikidata is truely impressive.
There is no specific naming conventions for airports to follow, just the usual conventions for names in OSM. “name” should have whatever is used on the ground, i.e. either what is mainly used at the airport directly or what is used by the majority of Norwegians. And then, if there is a lot of variants, you should absolutely make use of all the other variations of the name tag. alt_name=Gardemoen is imo a must because everybody uses that. old_name=Oslo-Gardemoen might not be out of place either, seen how often I found that referenced. And the current name with comma might be well suited for official_name when you decide to rename.
As for the question why a comma is difficult: all use of punctuation in names is somewhat of a challenge. When making maps, it often looks out of place and makes the renderer add line breaks in the oddest way. For search, it is unclear how to interpret the punctuation. A comma may indicate that part of the name is optional, just like in “Oslo Airport, Gardemoen”. You’d want to get a search hit when searching for “Oslo Airport”, “Gardemoen” and “Oslo Airport, Gardemoen”. The comma might also indicate that only the second part is optional. With “Washington, D.C”, you might want to search by “Washington” or “Washington D.C.” but usually not “D.C”. Or the comma has no meaning and only the full name is relevant, like in High School for Construction Trade, Engineering and Architechture. It is impossible to distinguish these cases automatically but if you handle them wrong, then search will notably degrade, like in the case of Oslo Airport.
That said, if the consensus is that the place name is indispensable in the name, then that is fine to leave as is. Commas in names are not unheard of, just uncommon. I’d just might want to add an alt_name here and there to make life a bit easier for search. That shouldn’t be an issue either, I guess.
La oss ikke rote det til her. Når det mange meninger om hva noe skal hete i et samarbeidsprosjekt som OSM er det nyttig å bruke en felles autorativ kilde. Jeg mener vi bør bruke de offisielle navnene som er gitt av Luftfartsmyndigheten selv her: Godkjente lufthavner og flyplasser . Det er disse navnene flyselskapene bruker ved billettbestilling o.l.
På denne måten får vi navn som reflekterer at flyplassen kalles både Bergen og Flesland, både Trondheim og Værnes, både Oslo og Gardermoen osv.
Vi kan i tillegg legge inn short_name=* basert på de kortere navnene her: Avinor. Avinor sier selv at dette ikke er offisielle navn, men er bare kortnavn som brukes av plasshensyn på skilt og på web (Avinor til Bergens Tidende, 25/11/2014). Avinor er forøvrig ikke forvaltningsmyndighet lenger, de bare eier og drifter mange flyplasser.
For min del kan vi gjerne fjerne komma i navnet, om det skaper problemer i søk.
