There is no simple answer to this question because there is more than just 1 reason for it.
It is already a part of the spoken and written language in many countries to include the descriptive term in a name given to a certain object. For some objects it is very much common, for instance bridges and tunnels nearly always include the term “bridge” and “tunnel” in their name.
Other object sometimes do that, but not always, for instance rivers or islands. Sometimes “river” and “island” is part of the usual name, sometime it isn’t. The same applies for buildings, restaurants, bars, clubs and the like. The descriptive term sometimes is part of the name given to the object by the creator or owner, and sometimes is not. And that also appies to railway stations. Sometimes “station” is part of the name and sometime it is not.
The handling of this name conventions differ from country to country so there would be no way to establish a universal rule for it.
Objects often have different names attached to it. In general there is a commonly known name which is the one we usually tag in OSM. Often this name is identically to the official name (given by the authorities in charge), but not always. The official name may include the descriptive term (i.e. “station”) whereas the commonly used name does not.
(And to make things even a bit more complicated, sometimes there is more than just 1 official name …)
There is no stringent rule in OSM about the tagging of these descriptive terms. On some wiki pages you may find a convention like
but on wiki pages for other objects you wouldn’t find anything like this, which results in mappers tagging names according to their own understanding.
Putting this together will most probably lead to the insight that one cannot pinpoint a single reason and find a solution for it. I am afraid you will just have to accept that the handling of this issue does vary from country to country and there will be no stringent universal rule for it.
Just to give an idea of how inconsistent this is, even among native speakers, I had a look at how train station names in Ireland are capitalised on the internet. It is common to find both “Rathdrum railway station” and “Rathdrum Railway Station”. The former suggests to me that the writer thinks of “railway station” as descriptive, while the second suggests the writer thinks of the whole phrase as a name.
I think the lower case version is more commonly used. It appears to be used for all article headings for Irish train stations on Wikipedia - but sometimes followed by the upper case version in the first line of the article!
Thank you for your neat explanation.
It’s relatively easy to translate and understand.
Also, the content seems to be enough to clear up my doubts.
From what I’ve found and checked, the problem was caused by the change from the conditional restriction “if it is not part of the name printed on signs at the station” to the unconditional restriction “Do not add the words ‘railway station’”.
I feel that the editing of the OSM wiki needs a little more attention and research.
Well, if I say “Sevilla”, people might think of the city of that name, including local people. But there is also a province of that name, covering a larger area than the city, and the difference is sometimes important. So I might have to say things like “Provincia de Sevilla” or “Sevilla Capital” to provide a unique identifier. But these are not names: both entities are called Sevilla, in the real world and in OSM.
To be clear, I’m not saying anything about station names in Korea as I know nothing about the topic. It may well be the case that it makes sense to include “Station” in Korean names. I’m just saying that the concept of a name is not always clearly defined or logically applied in the real world.
(There was a very long thread recently about the name tag page on the wiki that ran into some similar issues, partly by trying to refer to concepts such as “uniqueness” that in reality depend on context).
That’s a fair point, also the “Station Newton” example is strange and perhaps inspired by a language with different word order - in English it would be Newton Station if anything.
As it happens, the content of the railway=station wiki page is being discussed in this thread.. There are only 209 posts so far, so if anyone wants to bring up this point as post number 210, go ahead…
While not critical to the discussion, I add that there is a similar case with river names.
‘Otta’ station and ‘Otta’ river in the town of ‘Otta’, Norway.
For street names, the case is pretty much settled to include the descriptive terms. Otherwise School Street would have no name tag: it’s obviously a street, and it leads to the school.
Town names: my home town has the descriptive name Nieuwerkerk aan de IJssel (Newer church at the IJssel), in contrast to Ouderkerk aan de IJssel (Older church at the IJssel). The river IJssel is never called “River IJssel”, it’s called The IJssel in speech, but the name label is IJssel without the article. Not to mention “Broek in Waterland”, which is a “broek” (water caching area) in a land soaked in water (to the point where all pieces of land are islands in a grassy bathtub, way below sealevel.)
Which just goes to illustrate that the hard rule “no descriptive terms in names” can’t work everywhere, all the time. It’s a mapper’s decision, we’ll be lucky to get local community consensus on some object categories, and even then the decision will be challenged all the time by mappers who don’t agree and feel very strongly about it.
PS Also, you can’t correct messy naming with OSM.
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Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
28
Thanks for pointing this out. I think this change should be reverted. The older version was better and more correct.
Sometimes stations should include the word “station” in the name tag.
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Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
30
that’s why you should leave out ‘Station’, otherwise it would have to be called ‘Battersea Power Station Station’
There are several small islands in northern Germany with the names ‘Werder’, ‘Öhe’ or ‘Oie’. It would be very strange to add an ‘island’ to these names (Werder island, Öhe island or Oie island), because Werder/Öhe/Oie are typical North German terms and mean nothing other than a small island
Fun fact: In Poland we do skip the word “ulica” (Street) from street names. It’s because it’s very rarely used in common language. But words like “droga” (Road), “aleja” (Alley) etc. are commonly used so they are also used in osm.
I see " * Don’t arbitrarily attach the word “station” to the name=* tag if it’s not part of the printed station name, i.e. avoid name=Newton Station." now
Same in Serbia – “ulica” is the default word, usually omitted from addresses, and it would just clutter the map. Additionally, ulica can come before or after its proper name, so the user do not have to know the language syntax when searching.
For some reason, they decided to keep ulica in Croatia. I don’t like it, since it just clutters the map. Compare two towns at the border.
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Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
34
I had overlooked the fact that @adreamy had already changed this yesterday. Now the wiki is back the way it should be.
Spain takes a similar approach to Croatia - “Calle” is the default, but is always included in street names in OSM. (Or the equivalent in other languages for the relevant regions). This matches how street names are usually signed on the ground.
Let’s be clear about one thing.
I’m not arguing in this discussion that “stations should always be labeled with ‘-station’”.
There are cases where the absence of ‘-station’ is sufficiently discriminating, and where the local way of referring to a station without ‘-station’ is acceptable.
But it’s often about how to write when a station or river is named after the town where it is located, and if local custom still doesn’t attach the expression ‘-station’ to the station, then that’s probably fine too.
However, there is confusion because of the previous misstatement that stations should not be labeled with ‘-station’, even in places where it is customary to label stations with ‘-station’.
For example, if the station at ‘AA’ is named ‘BB’, then there is no problem, but if the station at ‘AA’ is named ‘AA’ and the river there is also named ‘AA’, then I would remind you that the discussion is about whether the station should be called ‘AA Station’ or the river should be called ‘AA River’.
Basically, we don’t care unless the distinction does matter.
To go with the theme of stations, it’s common in Germany for stations inside city districts to use the city’s name followed by the station itself (e.g. Hamburg-Harburg).[1]
That being said, the name can be dropped under circumstances. The older S-Bahns in Germany (i.e. Berlin and Hamburg but also e.g. Munich) prefer to use no prefix for S-Bahn stops, even on the signage which IMO stengthens the locality of the systems[2] (there also are mixed systems like Rhein-Main where signage is usually fully written out but announcements usually drop the prefix) whereas newer systems and regional railways typically spell out the full name.[3]
But even some regional stops do that like Heidesheim which is officially part of Ingelheim but easier to see as its settlement which the station name reflects on this (this is actually kind of like using place=town/village/hamlet instead of place=suburb when city districts aren’t physically connected to each other).
The punchline is that all of these names use the OTG naming scheme i.e. that’s their official name, what is written on the signs even though the description is commonly dropped by most people.
In contrast, bus and tram stops tends to include “<settlement name> station” or “station <settlement name>” because a single settlement typically has multiple bus/tram stops (each using a certain landmark) but only one railway station (which may or may not be active so the inclusion of “station” for a bus stop is two-fold). Cities like Berlin and Hamburg even use S and U as prefix for bus and tram stops if the station is served by the S- and U-Bahn respectively but just the station name if on the S-/U-Bahn.
Once again, these are their official names, especially because some PT operators prefer “station” as a suffix and some as a prefix, they aren’t just added willy nilly.
Special mentions go to Mainz-Kastel, Mainz-Gustavsburg and Mainz-Bischofsheim, the former which is part of Wiesbaden, the middle which is part of the dual township Ginsheim-Gustavsburg and latter which is an independent town, neither are part of Mainz and the latter two in particular have their prefix for historical reasons. ↩︎
case in point: the aforementioned Hamburg-Harburg station is known as just Harburg on the S-Bahn ↩︎
It should be noted that stations still can have a hidden prefix in their official name. For example, the underground stations of Frankfurt are officially “Frankfurt-<station name>” and occasionally found station announcements but both signage and train announcements use “<station name>” only. ↩︎
It would be very strange to add an ‘island’ to these names (Werder island, Öhe island or Oie island), because Werder/Öhe/Oie are typical North German terms and mean nothing other than a small island
I want to circle back to this, you mean its an issue you’re not able to search for e.g., Seoul train station?
That would indeed be an issue, and it can be solved by including it in the name (because everyone would use the descriptive term alongside it), or fix the search algorithm
E.g., in the example of Otta, I’m able to search for “Otta train” in Organic Maps, and have it show up as hit number 1. However “Otta station” fails to list it (unless I were to zoom into Otta), so the search is not perfect.
(OM does not seem to have a Norwegian localization, so I had to search in English)
