Why are descriptive terms sometimes missing in object names?

General talk
, , , , ,
41

The calling of the “-station” in Taiwan suffix is based on the context: The Taipei station, while it is called “Taipei Main Station” in the context of metro lines, the station called “Taipei” in the context of railway lines:

This is applied to high-speed rails as well:

Definitely not the case in CJK world, since there are many words for “river” in English: 河 (he, ho4, が, かわ, 하), 川 (chuān, cyun1, せん, かわ, 천),江 (jiāng, gong1, こう, え, 강), 水 (shuǐ, seoi2, 수), 溪 (xī, kai1, 계), and so on:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/river/translations#Noun

Sometimes the characters combined, such as 淡水河, 濁水溪, 江戸川(えどがわ), 청계천(淸溪川) – And it doesn’t help that many rivers named after the place it flows through, i.e. 花蓮溪 (Hualien) and 石狩川 (Ishikari).

Therefore, we CJK users must attach a suffix for every river to ensure that you are referring to the river, not something else.

As mentioned above, you can’t refer 黃河 (Yellow River) as 黃 (name=黃, name:en=Yellow ?); 江戸川 (Edo River) as 江戸 (name=江戸, name:en=Edo ?), or 한강 (Han River) as 한 (name=한, name:en=Han ?) – It doesn’t make sense in CJK world. I believe that’s why the rule on the wiki confused CJK users here.

Okay, the wiki described station names, but the issue still existed – should I call Taipei Main station “Taipei Main Station” or “Taipei”? It depends on the context mentioned above, but I am confused when reading the wiki as well.

2 Likes
42

The Yellow River is unusual, in English it is rarely or never called “the Yellow”, I suppose because Yellow is an actual English adjective that just sounds odd on its own.

Whereas foreign rivers with names that are not English words are often referred to simply as “the Nile” or “the Amazon”.

1 Like
43

That’s true of English as well. There is stream (the general term), rapids (fast flowing), creek (if small), brook (ditto) and many more.

Neither can you in English. For example, the “sea” in “Red Sea” and “Black Sea” are both part of the name and can’t be just removed either thanks to being named after a colour. Countries too: Persians love to name places with a “-stan” which is why Central Asia is full of them (e.g. Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Hindustan aka India) while -“land” is used by Germanic language to name some countries (e.g. England, Ireland, Netherlands, Greenland for English examples) and neither of these suffixes can be dropped either.
I assume it’s a matter of genericity because unless it’s a common word (like the aforementioned colours), you don’t need to specify it’s a river or something (think of adressing someone with a rare first name vs. using one’s full name because one is named John, Maria, Li or Mohammed).

Small off-topic

In contrast, it’s more common to see places after a nearby river or any other notable locality like a mountain around the settlement in Europe like mountains (see also King of Prussia for when an Inn named a town) and they usually adopt the name with no modification, though exceptions might exist.
Of course, the less localised these places are, the more likely they carry other modifications but still, usually the town and a nearby hill, brook or w/e share the same name and it doesn’t matter because they lead to the same place.

That being said, streets are the most likely to fall under this because they rarely have a notable locality alongside being so common so if you don’t want to assign them e.g. a number, you can use the name of a famous person, for example, and it’ll be named “X-Street” but never “X” to my knowledge (the exceptions prove the rule).

4 Likes
44

In almost all cases, we, people in East Asia, must specify it’s a river, even if the name is unusual (or unique?) – it is because the “part of the name” practices in all rivers in East Asia, I guess?

Here are lists of rivers in East Asia:

  • Taiwan, with the suffix “-河”, “-溪”.
  • China, with the suffix “-河”, “-水”, “-江”, “-溪”.
  • Japan, with the suffix “-川”.
  • The Koreas, with the suffix “-강”.

This applies to all rivers in the world in our native language as well. For example, “the Seine” is called “塞納河” in Chinese, “the Nile” is called “ナイル川” in Japanese, and “the Amazon” is called “아마존강” in Korean.

And, hmm, addressing someone’s first name and last name is another issue in CJK world – I think I will discuss them in another thread.

1 Like
45

@iigmir’s point is not simply that there are many words that indicate water flow, but that the expression indicating water flow is necessarily part of the river name.
In ‘黃河’(Yellow River), ‘黃’(yellow) alone simply indicates color, and there is no other element that refers to that river. Therefore, both letters must be present to identify that river.
But I have never heard of river names like ‘A Stream’ or ‘B Rapids’(because it is a proper noun, the first letter must be capitalized.) in English-speaking countries. :sweat_smile:

46

And as described in the second paragraph I made, this is true of English as well like the Saint Lawrance River, given that this river is named after said saint and 黃河 is no different (hence the comparison with the Black and Red Sea for other bodies of water which are named after colours).
It just doesn’t apply to every river unlike in the Sinosphere.

Let’s see…

Only “Rapid” is in no river’s name (by an Overpass query), though Rapid River is used by some American rivers.

(I also take back that rivers don’t tend to be named after settlements as much in Europe as they’re more common than I thought.)

The point I’m making is that it’s a cultural thing, it simply is not deemed necessary by us compared to you, hence the lack of need to add in disambiguations for places and stations named after a locality.
And chosing bad examples (that being 黃河 for the reasons above) doesn’t aid your argument either.

1 Like
47

Use the name:

  • as it appears on the local signs (or on buildings)
  • in your language: as it is customary or possibly prescribed in your language and culture
  • if there are several options, you must choose one or use additional variants such as official_name, alt_name, loc_name or others
  • if in doubt, ask the local community

But:
beware of entering or changing the name in a foreign language whose linguistic conventions, culture and history you do not know well enough. Leave this to the native speakers.

5 Likes
48

I agree with what you said. :pray:
And as you said, what I’m curious about is ‘how did such cultural differences arise?’
In which cultures do people feel comfortable distinguishing between “Otta” and “Otta” in “Otta”? :sweat_smile:
(Of course, when it’s necessary to distinguish, they’ll use the appropriate method…)
Screenshot 2024-07-18 at 13-43-50 오픈스트리트맵

49

Well, I am sorry for that and start regrating of using it – I only know the three major rivers in China: 黃河、長江、珠江. Their English names, however, were “the Yellow River”, “the Yangtze”, and “the Pearl River”. Neither three of them are suitable examples when discussing, it seems. Maybe I should focus on proper examples such as 한강… :sweat_smile:

50

That is no problem in German, seldom for rivers - but I found one: Ruwer
ruwer

but very often for streams, “Bach” in German and part of many, many names of towns or villages and of course part of many streams. Here is one with a town, a train station and a stream:

bexbach

We do not see any problem with that naming.

4 Likes
51

In contrast, here are the results of “Tamsui” (淡水) in Taiwan:

There, Tamsui is something with a district, a metro station, and a river. But basically, there are completely different things for us:

So merely the name “淡水” (“Tamsui”) is not clear enough for us and must be distinguished by different words or contexts. Things get more complicated if there are places that share the same name like Daan (大安)…

I hope this won’t cause confusion again.

52

No. 1 and 2 is the node of Tamsui township and No. 3 is the admin boundary relation for this township. That should not cause any confusion.

No. 4 is the subway station in this township. I do not know what the common name of this station is - if it is just “Tamsui” you should leave it as it is, but if the common name is “Tamsui station” then use this name.

No. 5 is the Tamsui river. I do not know what the common name of this river is - if it is just “Tamsui” you should leave it as it is, but if the common name is “Tamsui river” then use this name.

All of these object are easily distinguisable because of their nature. So what is the problem in these different objects bearing the same name?

2 Likes
53

English can get positively tautological with some UK place names. For example there are several River Avons in England. Aka River River. There’s also Hill Hill Hill, aka Bredon Hill.

54

For those who are reading this thread late and those who have difficulty translating into English, let me summarize a little…
This was a question that arose from the (incorrect) rule that “do not add ‘-역’ to station names”, but I posted the question because I was curious about the cultural and emotional reasons for not adding ‘- Station’, ‘- River’(Since it is a proper noun, it must start with a capital letter.), etc. to station names or river names.(This is a common phenomenon not only in OSM but also in Google Maps, etc.)
After listening to everyone’s opinions, I became convinced that the rule of “do not add ‘-역’(- Station) to station names” was not agreed upon, but was due to someone’s misdescription.(I have now changed the content to a conditional restriction.)
Therefore, you can add ‘-역’(-驛, -駅, -站, -Station, etc.) or not according to local custom.
However, the cultural and emotional reasons for not adding ‘-역’(-Station) or ‘-강’(-River) in map notation are not yet clearly understood, but I don’t think this is a big problem. In any case, I think that through this discussion, the confusion that has been experienced in cultural spheres where it has been customary to almost always add ‘-역’(-驛, -駅, -站, -Station, etc.) to station names will be resolved to some extent.

I couldn’t comment on each and every one of them, but your various opinions have been a great help to me in understanding other cultures.
Thank you.

5 Likes
55

… and the conclusion, according to me, is that local customs vary a lot, no internationally valid guidelines can be given, and the wiki text should be adapted to reflect this.

8 Likes
56

This is a perfect example about why not do add descriptive names to POIs though. Because here, even inside one country, you will have a mix of “IES” and “Institución de Educación Secundaria”. And then in other countries you might have “Sekundarschule”, “Ecole sécondaire” etc.

If someone wants to make a query to list all secondary schools he’d have to look up the respective local names from 200 different language wikis, make a huge Overpass query out of it, and hope it works with no misspellings or localized alternative spellings.

But if people would tag them correctly, he’d just have to use the isced:level=2 or 3 key in the query.

1 Like
57

I think such a query could not, and should not, rely on the name tag.

1 Like
58

I think no absolute rules can be given. Guidelines could say how to go about tagging names, without hard rules and without prescribing the outcome in all situations.

1 Like
59

Adding this tagging is in no way blocked by name tag editing.

1 Like
60

Right, and in practice this tagging is used, so that type of query is entirely possible.

Also: not all secondary schools have IES in the name, some just use the word Colegio, some schools are both primary and secondary, there may be different conventions between fully public / partly publicly funded / fully private, and so on. You can’t reliably construct the name from the tags, so the IES part of the name needs to be tagged explicitly somewhere - if not in name=, then in one of the _name variants.

If we tried to take such a strict attitude to descriptive names, how would we identify something like “Hospital Regional Universitario de Málaga”.

1 Like