text: Names
  To provide details of the name for a feature included in OpenStreetMap.
  Key Variations
  This table is a wiki template with a default description in English. Editable here.
  Notes
  Abbreviation (don't do it)
  If the name can be spelled without an abbreviation, then don't abbreviate it. Computers can easily shorten words, but not the other way (St. could be Street or Saint). If the signs have abbreviated words and you don't know what the full word is, then use it temporarily until someone else completes it. Using short forms is a decision of software, i.e., the underlying data should have the full street name. This will allow a renderer, a router or a location finder to introduce abbreviations as necessary. See, for instance, the list of abbreviations used by Name Finder and Nominatim.
  If the name is incorrect when spelled in full, however, do not falsely expand it. (For example: Wilts & Berks Canal, British placenames beginning with "St", invalid abbreviation expansion.)
  The name "Cedar St" on a sign, which is abbreviated to save space, should be completed to Cedar Street, but the name John F. Kennedy Boulevard is not expanded to John Fitzgerald Kennedy Boulevard in English speaking countries, since the shorter version is the common spelling and pronunciation. With some (academic) titles in names the abbreviated version is also the most commonly spelled version.
  Apart from following the above rules, you should always enter the full name as it appears on the street name signs but be aware that street signs may contain errors.
  This guidance about abbreviations applies not only to street names but also street addresses in addr:street=*, which should generally match the names of the corresponding streets. (This example Sophox query shows how to find street addresses that incorrectly contain abbreviations in a specific language and geography.)
  Uppercase characters
  General recommendation is to use mixed case with the first letter of each word capitalised, e.g., Church Street, not Church street but regional rules have preference over general rules. For example, in Flemish, capitalisation of last names gives a hint about the nobility status of the person. Street or company names derived from those last names should copy the same capitalisation. In non-Latin based languages, it's often not even possible to capitalise a name.
  Watch out for apostrophes
  If the street sign has an apostrophe, the OSM data should have an apostrophe. There is no obvious consistency; the London Underground station Barons Court is adjacent to Earl's Court, one with an apostrophe, one without.
  Name is the name only
  The names should be restricted to the name of the item in question only and should not include additional information not contained in the official name such as categories, types, descriptions, addresses, refs,:
  - "Multipolygon Baldo Forest" : do not include the object type or other OSM terminology, if it does not apply outside of OSM
  - "The Royal Albert Hall, London" : do not otherwise include the location London as part of the name, even if there are multiple objects of the same name
  - "closed pub (due for demolition)" : do not describe the object in lieu of a name. Consider the description tag and also adding an old_name tag
  - "no name" : (see #No name, below)
  - "Interstate 5 southbound lanes" : do not separately name parts of the same object where they are separate in OSM, but not outside of OSM.
  - "Interstate 5" : When a name would only be duplicating the information in the ref=* tag, then the ref and noname=yes is almost always more appropriate.
  - "Wildwood Boardwalk (seasonal)" : Do not include time-related access restrictions in the name. Instead, use conditional restrictions tags (or opening_hours=* for non-highways). example: access:conditional=no @ (Nov-Apr)
  - "Manchester City" : (for a city named Manchester, do not add a descriptive City; however note that New York City may be correct as the common name for The City of New York)
  - "Foobar Mountain, 8000 ft" : tag height in a separate tag (like ele=* or ele:ft=*), not as part of the name
  - "Lower Hell Hole 1030-002 Dam" : do not embed a reference number in a name just because a source (here USGS GNIS) does so; use a separate ref=* tag, for example, name=Lower Hell Hole Dam and ref:gnis=1030-002
  - "Union Pacific Railroad" : a name=* which was assigned during the USA's 2007-8 TIGER import (of roads and rail); the correct value is the name of the Subdivision/Branch/Line and this railroad name is properly the value of operator=* and/or owner=* (there are many other incorrect values besides Union Pacific). It is OK to precede a railroad name with an operator when two or more otherwise-identically named lines in close proximity would create serious confusion. For example, naming "CN Joliet Subdivision" and "UP Joliet Subdivision" or "BNSF Fort Worth Subdivision" and "UP Fort Worth Subdivision" is sensible. (For now. Even this convention may disappear in the future as operator=* and owner=* become more widespread and avoid such ambiguities).
  - "alternate summit trail" describing role of part of hiking route. For signed routes, you can use roles for recreational route relations
  It is certainly wrong for a mapper to invent a name for an airstrip; however most names were invented at some point in history, so if someone invents a name and it catches on and a sizeable group of people refer to the thing by that name, then it's ok to be mapped[1].
  No name
  Streets which have no name are tagged noname=yes by most mappers. The idea is to clearly indicate that the street genuinely doesn't have a name.:
  note: different left-and-right names doesn't exclude the existence of multilingual names (which also happens more often on country borders). So tags like name:left:fr=* are possible..
  Localization
  By now the majority of rendering systems can deal with unicode characters, so you can use the local script for the default name tag. There is no need to use the Latin script.
  See also Multilingual names
  For adding localized names in different languages, add additional name:code=* tags with a suffix on the name key, where code is a language's ISO 639-1 alpha-2 code (in the second column), or ISO 639-2/T (alpha-3) code (technical/terminologic codes, including possibly codes for macrolanguages, but excepting codes allocated to group of languages, do not use bibliographic codes) if an ISO 639-1 code doesn't exist, or ISO 639-3 (alpha-3) codes (for isolated languages or macrolanguages) otherwise; do not use ISO 639-5 codes allocated for language families.
  For example, name:fr=* for the name in French and name:en=* for the name in English. The default name (occupying the 'name' tag without suffix) should be the name in whatever language is used locally.
  Here is an example of the usage. All these tags might appear on the same element :
  name=Irgendwas (the default name, used locally) name:en=Something (the name in English) name:el=Κάτι (the name in Greek) name:de=Irgendwas (the name in German) name:pl=Coś (the name in Polish) name:fr=Quelque chose (the name in French) name:es=Algo (the name in Spanish) name:it=Qualcosa (the name in Italian) name:ja=何か (the name in Japanese) name:ko=뭔가 (the name in Korean) name:ko-Latn=Mweonga (the name in Romanised Korean) (conforming to BCP 47 standard. Deprecated:
  ko_rm)-Latn Romanised Korean (conforming to BCP 47 standard. Deprecated:
  ko_rm)
  A short discussion on this language suffixes can be found on the discussion page.
  Renderer support: There are a few experimental rendering systems displaying these localised names. See Map Internationalization
  Import: using osm2pgsql allows users to define new .style files which can include other language's name columns and bring them into the database. In order to render from these columns it is necessary to set up PostGIS views which present these columns as 'name' instead of 'name:languagecode'. An easier alternative might be to use a lua style file to move "name:XX" if it exists to "name". An example is seen in this diary.
  Editor support: JOSM builds 1044 and newer support the display of local names. It detects the current system locale and tries to display names in this language first. You can change the order JOSM looks for names in the JOSM expert settings. Example: To display names written in Thai first, even if the current locale is 'en' set the following property:
  mappaint.nameOrder=name:th;name:en;int_name;name
  Avoid transliteration
  Transliteration is the process of taking a name in one language, and simply changing letters from one script to another. In general we should avoid doing this with tags in the OpenStreetMap database. Everything with a name could have auto-generated transliterations, so not just city names, but every road, and every cafe! This kind of automatic augmenting with data is best left for data users. For example, Sven Geggus has demonstrated the principle of rendering with auto-generated transliterations., bordering "Lac Léman" in French (name also used in France that also borders the lake) or "Genfersee" in German. will fail to match the actual translations of names like these, hence this is useful data to add.
  But for smaller towns or villages, there's no asserted translation and entering transliterations won't really be helpful. There are several transliteration methods and data users may have different needs..
  In addition, many transliterated names frequently have been imported as is from Wikipedia (or Wikidata) for naming their articles, but the names may have been chosen quite arbitrarily on these wikis. Importing these transliterated names into OSM is not necessary. We can just link to a single Wikidata entry or a single Wikipedia article in a single language, preferably the main language used locally, in order to find the other articles. (For example, this Sophox query returns the Chinese name of every regional capital city worldwide, regardless of whether a Chinese name is tagged in OSM. A more frivolous example is this table of place names in emoji, which aren't tagged at all in OSM.)
  On the other hand, some countries which use latter, which should be based on a wellknown international standard, e.g. IATA for airport names, otherwise use a geographic international transliteration standard scheme).
  loc_name
  loc_name=* is for the name of a feature as it is known locally, but only where this is deemed to be too much of a slang name or otherwise unofficial-sounding. Ordinarily though, the name which local people use is the name we set in the name=* tag! Examples where we have used loc_name=*:
  - There is a bridge in Glasgow known as the Squinty Bridge, but its official name is the Clyde Arc. I have never heard anyone calling it that, so the bridge is tagged loc_name=Squinty Bridge name=Clyde Arc.
  - In Reading there's Union Street, but it's been known for decades as Smelly Alley on account of the fishmongers that lined it. The loc_name=* is ideal.
  alt_name
  Apply when an alternative name exists, e.g., a street name has different syntax, sometimes even on street signs, although it is not only for street names.
  Don't use it for abbreviations and only when one of the other name types don't apply, e.g., reg_name=* or name:lg_code=* for regional translations.
  These alternative names are usually not rendered, but can be used by applications like Nominatim.
  sorting_name
  sorting_name=* is a proposed approach to supply an alternate name which systems can use for the purpose of sorting alphabetically. This would be useful for street names in some languages/countries, particularly Russian, where words like "Street" are frequently used as a prefix. This is problematic if you simply sort on the main name=* tag.
  Date namespace suffix for historical names
  The date namespace suffix can be used for historical names, e.g., name:1953-1990=Ernst-Thälmann-Straße.
  Repeating name with language specific tag
  name=* contains "The common default name". name:lang_code=* contains name in specified language, for example name:ru=Москва contains name in Russsian language (it has language code ru) and name:en=Moscow contains name in English (language code en).
  Moscow is also tagged with name=Москва, with the same value as name:ru=Москва. It is correct and useful, names in specific languages must not be deleted just because their value is the same as one in name=*. On the other hand, do not tag names that do not exist. An unremarkable village somewhere in Poland might have only one name (recorded in name=*, may be repeated in name:pl=*). In all other languages, this village would be called by its Polish name, because it has no other name. Just because all other languages use the Polish name, you should not add name:lang_code=* tags for all other languages containing the Polish name!
  Names are not for descriptions
  For example it is completely sufficient to tag building=house, it is wrong to add also name=house. Or name=Mosque to amenity=place_of_worship + religion=muslim. Validators may detect and propose to remove the most obvious and common descriptive names, but also other undetected ones are incorrect.
  The suffixed tags name_1=* and alt_name_1=* should no longer be used for tagging. They are the result of old imports that were not defined very well.
  Notes
  See also
  External links
  - United States Postal Service Official Abbreviations, e.g., street-type abbreviations.
  - Falsehoods programmers believe about geography