An interesting experiment: On the query page, for "feature name" enter the
word "ni**er." (in this message I have replaced the letter g with stars to
prevent automatic email filtering.) Select state: Mississippi. No results
returned, although there are many features in Mississippi that used to have
this word as part of their traditional names. Recently there has been a
movement to remove this word from geographic place names in the USA, and it
must have been scrubbed from the current data set. Now enter the feature
name "negro" and run the query for Mississippi. Several results appear,
including "Dead Negro Slough." Apparently the name changes are pretty
cursory in some instances. Now try the same experiment with "ni**er" and
select state: Alabama. "Ni**er" returns four results, all with the
offending term automatically translated to "negro" (including the "Negro
Heel Bar"). However, querying "negro" for Alabama retrieves considerably
more records. This seems to indicate that the data sets include a "former
name" field which Alabama populates and which Mississippi does not. The
search engine queries this field but it does not appear in the results.
At 02:54 AM 9/8/2005, [email protected] wrote:
This is a USGS website of name lists of geographic locations throughout
the U.S. It's an alphabetical list organized by state & contains the
geographic name, county & coordinates.
<http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/index.html>http://geonames.usgs.gov/stategaz/index.html
John
