Name finder:Abbreviations

This is a list of abbreviations. Please help by adding to the list so we can broaden it to more languages.

The list is in alphabetical order (in the native tongue) and by alphabetical order by word. If there is more than one abbreviation for a word, please use a separate entry for it.

Abbreviations work both ways: so if someone has tagged a street Saint Johns St, then users can also expect a match for St Johns St, St Johns Street and Saint Johns Street (and also, incidentally, St John's St or St John St etc.), and vice-versa.

(*) Concatenated? means the abbreviation is used as part of a larger word, e.g. "…straat" is concatenated in words street names like "Koningsstraat" which might be abbreviated to "Koningsstr.". Separable? means: if the abbreviation is concatenated, can it ever be separated as well.

Use the column Prefix/Suffix to indicate if the abbreviated word normally appears in front of the name (prefix, e.g. Saint) or at the end (suffix, e.g Street).

This data may be useful for people working with names, data here will be used in one of future Nominatim versions.

বাংলা - Bangla

Български език - Bulgarian

All of these things appear before the name itself. Also names of people can be abreviated to first vocal letter (excluding the vocal) or first syllable.

Català - Catalan

Near completed. Working in progress…

Besides the preposition de, another usual construct is to use el, lo, la, l', es, sa, s' els, los, les,or ses (all translate to the) just after de. Note that "de el", "de lo", "de es", "de los" and "de els" contracts theirself to "del", "del", "des", "dels", and "dels" in most cases.

Cesky - Czech

Dansk - Danish

Deutsch - German

They're not abbreviations, but possibly worth mentioning are the many "Im Blah", "In der Blah", "Am Blah", "An der Blah", "Zum Blah" names. When working on weighting algorithms, you definitely don't want to weight things as similar just because they have "In der" or whatever in common.

German streetnames are built using '-' instead of a space for two and more word namings, i.e. 'St.-Hubertus-Straße' (grammatically not correct but sometimes seen are 'St. Hubertus Straße' or 'Sankt Hubertus Straße').

There are also the very common prefixes 'Alt-', 'Neu-', 'Nieder-', 'Unter-', 'Ober-', 'Groß-', 'Klein-', that are mostly concatenated, but not always (in the case of Alt at least). They mostly come in pairs with the "base name" not existing (e.g., there is "Unterschöbling" and "Oberschöbling", but no "Schöbling").

In German, ß can become "ss", äöü become "ae", "oe" and "ue" respectively.

There is a language rule that if a place/streetname ends on -er it will be written seperately, so "Berliner Straße" is correct, but "Berlinerstraße" is not. It would be great if for the name finder "Berliner Str." equals "Berlinerstr." and "Berliner Straße".

Eesti - Estonian

A lot of legal information about Estonian place names, writing rules etc can be found from homepage of Place Names Board of Estonia

Ελληνικά - Greek

Euskara - Basque

Not full list. Working in progress…

English

Nearly all of the U.S. TIGER data uses the standard USPS abbreviations in street names.

Español - Spanish

Most of these abbreviations are the official classification of road types, according to the  National Statistical Institute (INE) of Spain. Many of these types of ways (and their abbreviations) are not commonly used or their use is rare, but they are part of the official list.

We have added some abbreviations from Royal Spanish Academy's compilation, and some common abbreviations for schools.

Note: As a general rule the point (.) is always written behind the abbreviations, except in those cases where the point is replaced by a slash (i.e. C/).

It is ungrammatical to omit the preposition de (Spanish for "of") in names of ways and squares ("Calle de Espronceda", "Plaza de Colón", "Avenida de América", "Paseo de Gracia"). Nevertheless, de is commonly skipped when immediately after the street type, being considered in Spanish as a specifying apposition (Calle (de) Alcalá).

This preposition cannot occur if the name is an adjective, like "Calle Real" (Royal Street) or "Plaza Nueva" (New Square). In these cases, including it is ungrammatical.

The word de is commonly followed by either of el, la, los or las (all translate to the): Carretera de El Pardo, Calle de los Caídos de la División Azul, Calle de las Descalzas. Note that "de el" is contracted to "del" unless "el" is part of a proper name (like El Pardo).

Any of de, del, de la, de los, de las is commonly skipped after the street type, e.g.: Calle de los Caídos de la División Azul → C/ de los Caídos de la División Azul → C/ los Caídos de la División Azul → C/ Caídos de la División Azul. Skipping small words in the middle of the name (following the previous example, "C/ Caídos División Azul") is considered wrong, but it would be acceptable in very extreme cases.