User:AlephNull/NZ names draft

This page describes how to tag various names in New Zealand, for generalities about names in OpenStreetMap see Names. New Zealand has three official languages: English (de facto, ISO 639-1 en and en-NZ), Māori (de jure, ISO 639-1 mi, also known as te reo), and New Zealand Sign Language (de jure, ISO 639-3 nzs). Consequently, many map features have names in English (name:en=*) and/or Māori (name:mi=*).

This hill has a rather long name.

Both an English and a Māori name of the library are given.

Māori

The macron (te reo Māori: tohutō) is a diacritic commonly used to indicate long vowels. Macrons are also used in other orthographies/romanizations, such as Latin, Japanese (Rōmaji), Latvian, and various other Polynesian languages besides Māori.

Since the South Island dialects of Māori merge the consonant ng [ŋ] into k, a k corresponding to an ng is sometimes underlined (ḵ) to indicate the correspondence. The South Island dialects are extinct but still occur in names. However, ḵ seems to not be used in names. For example, the highest mountain is written as Aoraki, instead of Aoraḵi as it could have been written to indicate the correspondence to the non-merged variant Aorangi. Instead of using ḵ one can add the alternative Māori spelling of the name with alt_name=*.

See Help:Macrons and Keyboard setup for macrons (kupu.maori.nz) for tips on how to enter macrons.

Official or otherwise gazetted names

Many settlements and significant natural features have an official name in the New Zealand Gazetteer. Current community consensus (see talk page and this NZ-Talk thread) is to prefer official spellings of names over signposted spelling variants. For example, if the official spelling of a name includes macrons, then the name in OSM should include those macrons, even if not all or none of the local signage includes them (yet). Variants of the gazetted name or other alternative names can still be tagged, using appropriate name keys such as loc_name=*, old_name=*, or alt_name=*. When using the Gazetteer as the source for the name, indicate the source by entering the appropriate gazetteer.linz.govt.nz URL in source:name=* (see also the examples in this article). There is no need to double-tag gazetted names using official_name=*, but official_name=* can be useful to tag names where the official name includes additional words, e.g. one could have name=XYZ and official_name=XYZ Town.

Dual names

Some features have dual names, which are to be tagged as the main name using name=*. The established name separator is a forward slash / surrounded by spaces. The individual name parts are tagged as name:en=* and name:mi=*, respectively. Consider the following examples of official dual names:

natural=peak
name=Aoraki / Mount Cook  
name:en=Mount Cook
name:mi=Aoraki
alt_name=Aorangi
source:name=https://gazetteer.linz.govt.nz/place/7297

place=town
name=Riverton / Aparima
name:en=Riverton
name:mi=Aparima
source:name=https://gazetteer.linz.govt.nz/place/7427

Note that having both an English and Māori name is not the same thing as having a dual name: in some cases it is more suitable to only tag one of the names as the main name=*. When mapping features with two names based on signage, consider following this rule of thumb:

• If the names are written with a slash or a dash, then map them as a dual name using a slash as discussed above.
• If the names are written in the same size, then consider mapping them as dual names.
• If one name is written in a larger size, then consider not using a dual name and mapping the larger name as the sole name=* value.

The practice of tagging the individual parts of dual names with name:en=* and name:mi=* may not be ideal. In many cases the full dual name is used in English writing so the name:en=* should also be the full dual name. Maybe we can consider using something like name:part(s) or name:languages (list of language codes as value) or similar tags to tag parts of dual names. Also there are dual names where both names are from the same language.

How should we handle dual names that are usually written without separators? For example, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is usually written without a separator in running text. On signage the name is spread out over four lines, with each language getting two lines. Should we add a slash to the name in OpenStreetMap for consistency with other dual names?

Non-dual names

Do not use name:en=* just for a macron-less version of a Māori name (unless such a variant is official). A non-dual name may be explicitly double-tagged with name:mi=* or name:en=* respectively, to indicate in which language it is.

place=town
name=Kaikōura
name:mi=Kaikōura
source:name=https://gazetteer.linz.govt.nz/place/24119

place=city
name=Christchurch
name:en=Christchurch
name:mi=Ōtautahi
name:etymology=Christ Church, Oxford
name:etymology:wikidata=Q745967
wikidata=Q79990
...

But things can get quite complicated, as can be seen with Mount Taranaki.

natural=volcano
name=Mount Taranaki (or name=Taranaki or name=Taranaki Maunga)
old_name=Mount Egmont
name:en=Mount Taranaki
name:mi=Taranaki Maunga (might also become the official name soon?)
short_name=Taranaki (redundant if already the name of the feature)
official_name=Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont (current value in the Gazetteer)
source:name=https://gazetteer.linz.govt.nz/place/3830

Quality assurance

Updating imported data

Some imported place names are tagged as place=locality even though they are inhabited. Those should be updated to place=isolated_dwelling, place=hamlet, or place=village.

Imported names may use abbreviations where full names are preferred in OpenStreetMap. Common words are Mt (Mount) and St (Saint or Street).

List of dual place names

Wikipedia has a List of dual place names in New Zealand.

Gazetteer data as CSV files

The Gazetteer data is available as a CSV file on the New Zealand Gazetteer website. There is also a separate CSV file containing all names with macrons.

Osmose

As of December 2021, Osmose will create false positives on dual names (the dual name does not match any individual English or Māori name. These warnings should be marked as false positives.

Potential projects

Etymology : the Gazetteer describes the etymology of many places. This information could be captured with name:etymology=*.

See also

• Names
• Key:name#Localization
• Multilingual names
• Extra info on etymology: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/tereo-100words#place

Sizes of populated places

A fair amount of work and decisions about matching NZ's ideas of what these are versus OSM's global conventions on what to call these has already been worked out as part of the LINZ data import & set up in Rob C's LINZ2OSM web app. TODO: summarize+copy that here so that everyone is working from the same page, and not trying to reinvent a wheel which already exists.