Standardize on not including “River” in the `name` tag for rivers?

Communities Ireland
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Many rivers in Ireland include the term “River” in the name tag. (e.g. name=River Shannon). Some don’t (e.g. name=Avonmore). Some include it as a suffix (e.g. name=Owenbeg River).

I personally don’t like having “RIver” in the name tag, it feels like including a description in the name. Since people refer to rivers without the word “River”, I don’t think it’s part of the name. “This bridge goes across the Liffey” is a normal sentence and shows that “river” is not part of the name.

I’d like to remove “River” from name/name:en tags of rivers in Ireland. What do yous think?

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Certainly seems to be what OSI does based on the 1:250k open data.

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Not in Ireland but I offer the New River as a counter-example. I mean I don’t think you’d want to name it as “New” on the map :wink:

Yes that one technically isn’t a river but it’s also not a canal which is what we have it as - it’s really more of an aqueduct. A quick search finds plenty of other instances of New River that are rivers though.

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I agree! :slightly_smiling_face: I’m not suggesting a mechanical find-and-replace.

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Two others to go with New River: Duke of Northumberland’s River, and Longford River (seems to lack a relation). Tagging of both of these might be harmonised with that of the New River.

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I’m struggling to think of an Irish exception, but “Dutch River” (which OSM has as “River Don (Dutch River)”, complete with brackets) is another in England.

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I think one thing to take into account is whether the name is shared with some other object. If I search for “Shannon” (the town), it might be useful to be able to clearly know that it isn’t the “River Shannon”. Given the number of re-used names in Ireland, this could be an issue.

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Some rivers/streams/torrents have the specific inclusion in the name signs here what they are, mostly at bridges with a wavy water symbol below and e.g. 'Fiume Sangro". Quite a few of these signs revealed mistaggings of streams as rivers too and vice versa, barely a brook and tagged as river, some barely a brook yet officially qualified as river, but they look like it during storm rains.

That said, the actual official names are mostly without the qualification, it’s just only used in speech, like no one says River Rhine, it’s respectfully ‘The Rhine’.

Removing the ‘qualifiers’ in any form of automation would be wrong though, for who feels like it, manual checking which what I’ve done when one name appears in a mapping area moved into.

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That sounds like a job for the geocoder