On 13/08/2020 13:34, I wrote:
The TOIDs in those datasets can then be cross-referenced against OS OpenNames to give the OS name for the linked USRNs. Although this isn't, always, the same as the official USRN name of the street, which can be confusing. But that's because OS (like OSM) maps what is visible, rather than necessarily what is documented, and if a street has a name by which it is commonly referred to then that's what goes on the OS maps even if it has a different name in the USRN.
Just as an aside to that, there are just over 92,000 USRNs in the Open USRN database that are linked to both a named road in OpenNames (via the TOIDS LID) and have a name in the NSG, but those two names are not the same.
In a lot of cases that's a simple translation difference - OpenNames is English-only, but the NSG uses local names (eg, in Welsh) where different to English. Others are relatively minor disagreements over spelling (eg, Aaron's Hill v Aarons Hill or Abbey Fields v Abbeyfields). The NSG also differentiates, in some cases, between different carriageways of dual carriageways, so it has, for example, both Abbey Hill Westbound and Abbey Hill Eastbound where OpenNames only has Abbey Hill. But, even after excluding these, there are still a significant number of streets where the OpenNames name and the NSG name are completely different.
I haven't dug particularly deeply into this, as the NSG list of street names, although readily available, isn't open data so it's not a lot of practical use for my purposes (or, for that matter, OSM). But it is an illustration of how even the "official" name of something is not necessarily the "correct" name. The naming of roads is a difficult matter, it isn't just one of your armchair map games :-)
Mark _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
