St. Stephen, New Brunswick - or Saint Stephen?

Hello,

The town of St. Stephen in New Brunswick (St. Stephen, New Brunswick - Wikipedia) was somewhat recently renamed to Saint Stephen in OpenStreetMap. Is this correct, or is “St.” always used in practice?

Background: earliest point I could find in OSM is the place node Node History: ‪Saint Stephen‬ (‪204489936‬) | OpenStreetMap which was created in 2008 as “St. Stephen”. The boundary relation Relation: ‪Saint Stephen‬ (‪5499964‬) | OpenStreetMap was created in 2015 also as “St. Stephen”, although with name:fr=St. Stephen while French Wikipedia uses “Saint-Stephen”. The name of the relation was changed in 2022 in Changeset: 122432387 | OpenStreetMap by a mapper who seems to mostly edit in New Hampshire, while the name of the node was changed in 2024 in Changeset: 149179472 | OpenStreetMap by a now-deleted account (user id 20607473) with note “Fixed Saint spelling”.

There is a general OSM policy to expand abbreviations which that changeset might have been referring to. However, this policy does not apply in cases where the “expanded” name is considered incorrect, for example St Ives or St Andrews in Britain. This has applied to some names in Ontario, for example it is not correct to expand St. Thomas and St. Catharines.

I don’t know the local usage in New Brunswick. Is “St. Stephen” always used? Would “Saint Stephen” be considered incorrect in English? And is the correct French name “Saint-Stephen” - perhaps in provincial documents in French?

(I do know that Saint John, NB is always “Saint John”.)

Is it pronounced “ess tee” or “Saint”?

Either way, I think it should probably be “Saint”.

How is St Ives pronounced?

It depends on how the locals say the name. Are they ˈseɪnt or is it more ˈsɨnt or ˈsənt ? If it’s the former, then St is a contraction and should be expanded to Saint. If it’s the later, then St is the name and not a contraction.

That is why I made this post in the Canadian forum acknowledging I don’t know about local New Brunswick usage and asking about it

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If you’ll excuse another foreigner butting in, this post piqued my curiosity because I’ve been trying to uphold a similar distinction for “St.” in Arthur St. Clair, whose name is all over the Midwest.

I dug around and found that the Municipal District of St. Stephen is named after the Town of St. Stephen, which was named after a St. Stephen Parish, spelled thus in the 1786 act of establishment:

The said county called Charlotte County shall be divided into seven towns or parishes, as follows, viz. the first town or parish to be called, known and distinguish’d by the name of St. Stephen, beginning at the southerly bounds of lot number one hundred and thirteen, on the west side of Oak Point Bay, thence bounded northerly and easterly by the southerly line of the said lot, and of lot number one in the back location, the easterly lines of the grant to Nehemiah Marks and others to the most northly angle of said grant, and by the continuation of the northerly line of said grant to the river St. Croix, thence westerly and southerly by the bank or shore of said river, and the westerly shore of Oak Point Bay, to the first bounds[…].

Unfortunately, this act alternates freely between Saint and St.:

And whereas by like letters patent in like manner since passed, another tract or district of land lying within this province, on both sides the river Saint John, bounded on the south by the county of Saint John, on the west by Charlotte county, on the east by the counties of Westmorland and Northumberland, and on the north by a line running south-west and north-east from the south point of Spoon Island, lying in Saint John’s river, was also erected into one distinct and separate county, to be called and known by the name of King’s County.

And whereas by like letters patent in like manner since passed, another tract or district of land lying within this province, on both sides the river St. John, bounded on the south-east by King’s county, on the south-west by Charlotte county, on the north-east by the county of Northumberland, and on the north-west by the south boundary line of Burton township, and by a continuation of the said line to the north-east and south-west until it meets the counties of Northumberland and Charlotte respectively; was also erected into one distinct and separate county to be called and known by the name of Queen’s County.

[…]

The said county called the County of Saint John, exclusive of the city of Saint John, shall be divided into three towns or parishes as follows, viz. the first town or parish to be called, known and distinguish’d by the name of Portland, bounded on the south by the Bay of Fundy, the eastern shore of the harbour of St. John, and the several northern bounds and limits of the said city of St. John[…].

Unless the S[ain]t John River changes its name midcourse and the the County of Saint John has both a City of Saint John and a City of St. John, it’s probably safe to say this was a stylistic convention, a contraction. Just to be sure, the act incorporating the Town of S[ain]t Stephen, as amended in 1884, consistently spells it Saint:

An Act to amend and consolidate the Act 34th Victoria, Chapter 20, incorporating the Town of Saint Stephen, and the several Acts in amendment thereof.

And yet, in 2023, the town was renamed to the Municipal District of St. Stephen, never acknowledging the longer spelling:

The Town of St. Stephen, which is renamed Municipal District of St. Stephen, is continued.

This is reflected in the Canadian Geographical Names Database, which lists a St. Stephen town inside a Saint Stephen parish.

Something for everyone to like.

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Isn’t that a case of not misspelling someone’s name?

Anyways, turns out you can find out how the locals say it Life in St. Stephen, New Brunswick | It's hard for our residents to hide how much they love living in the Town of St. Stephen! ♥ #middleofeverywhere | By Future St. Stephen | Facebook

After a bit of research it looks like the more common style rule is to not contract or expand the St/Saint but to treat them as the correct spelling. Based on that then St. Stephen would be the correct option.

PS: How did a town of 3000 people need 90 stores, but could get away with only one suspenders factory? https://archives.gnb.ca/Exhibits/Communities/Details.aspx?culture=en-CA&community=3589

Yep, that’s the argument I’ve been making. It’s quite counterintuitive here. Unlike other anglophones, Americans don’t consider “St” or “St.” to be anything other than an abbreviation. Of course, personal names don’t have to be real words at all; someone could legitimately call themselves Osmus A. Mappy III. But “St.” as part of a surname is quite rare, so most people see it and intuitively think it should be expanded along with any other occurrence of “St.”, even though we routinely leave it abbreviated in writing.

It’s been fascinating to see that Canadian English speakers consider “St.” versus “Saint” to be a meaningful idiosyncrasy even when it refers to a saint (not a st.). I’ve certainly been guilty of expanding “St.” in Canada without realizing this in the past. I guess it used to be more fluid and only started to matter after the Americans went their own way with Webster’s reforms. As long as end users care about this distinction case by case, we should try not to lose this information, just like we can strive to preserve other writing mechanics like capitalization, punctuation, and even en dashes, so data consumers don’t have to guess.

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For completeness, the surrounding parish has been called Saint Stephen this whole time, and that spelling appears to be supported by both federal and provincial authorities. However, the revision history shows some debate about whether the parishes are still administrative subdivisions of the county. :see_no_evil:

“Steeves”. How else would it be pronounced?

Like in that old rhyming riddle:

As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven weaves

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Anyway, it’s St. Stephen, as opposed to Saint Andrews about 20 minutes’ drive to the southeast. [1][2]

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Very interesting analogy to the nearby Saint Andrews, which as far as I can tell has been mapped as Saint Andrews since 2017, and the same mapper edited St. Stephen in 2019 without changing the spelling. I commented on the 2019 changeset asking for their input and pointing to this thread.