Earth, TX, TX

[Andrew Dalke]

Looking through cities1000.txt I found

5520687 Earth, TX Earth, TX 34.2331373
-102.4107493
P PPL US TX 279
1081 1126
1124 America/Chicago 2009-01-12

This town named "Earth, TX, TX" is at almost the same location as
"Earth, TX", based on the Wikipedia entry for the latter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth,_Texas

Wikipedia coordinates are: 34°14′4″N 102°24′19″W
which is 34.2333, -102.4000

There's even a picture so you can see you are not in "Earth, TX"

This is the only town in the US part of the data set with a "," in the
name. Though there are some labeled (historical) that I'm curious
about.

-- Andrew Dalke <da...@dalkescientific.com>

[Marc Wick]

Hi Andrew

If I understand you correctly then you take umbrage at the 'TX' that
somebody has added to indicate it is a city in Texas and not to be
confused with the planet.
I have added an alternate name 'Earth', with the flags 'preferred' and
'short'. I hope this makes everybody happy.

Best

Marc

[Andrew Dalke]

On Oct 31, 10:35 am, Marc Wick <m...@geonames.org> wrote:
> If I understand you correctly then you take umbrage at the 'TX' that
> somebody has added to indicate it is a city in Texas and not to be
> confused with the planet.

Yes. The name of the place is "Earth" and not "Earth, TX". And I think
the logic is suspect because "Mars", in Pennsylvania , is not written
as "Mars, PA" and "Jupiter" in Florida is not written as "Jupiter,
FL".

> I have added an alternate name 'Earth', with the flags 'preferred' and
> 'short'. I hope this makes everybody happy.

I don't yet have enough experience with this data set to know enough
to be be happy or sad, but I'm not going to complain. ;)

Cheers!

-- Andrew Dalke <da...@dalkescientific.com>

[Even Scharning]

I think commas in names should be avoided. It causes trouble when trying
to identify the different parts of a string like "Earth, Texas, United
States". Each of the parts separated by comma should have a separate entry
in the database. And in the case of "Earth, TX", when automatically adding
the admin1 name, you get "Earth, TX, Texas". Texas is the admininistrative
division, so it doesn't belong in the name field.

In the database there are 18,604 names containing a comma, and most of
these (if not all) should have been rewritten in my opinion. Take for
instance "Armstrong, Mount", "Argyle, City of", "Annaburg, Stadt" and
"Barkell, Lake". These should be "Mount Armstrong", "City of Argyle",
"Annaburg" and "Lake Barkell". Sometimes it is also a good solution to put
what is behind the comma in parenthesis instead.

In my implementation of Geonames, I simply filter out all names that
contain a comma. :)

--
Best regards,
Even Scharning
Netburn Web Solutions
Time.is - exact time for any time zone and any location in the world
(except those with a comma in their name)