Confusion of Canton (State) and City Names in Switzerland

In two-thirds of Switzerland's 26 cantons (states), there is a potential for confusion between the names of the states and cities, which may have the same or similar names.

Same Canton and City Names:
Zürich, Bern, Luzern, Schwyz, Glarus, Zug, Freiburg, Solothurn, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Neuenburg, Genf.

In the cantons of:
Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft (Basel),
Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Appenzell Innerrhoden (Appenzell)
and Aargau (Aarau),
there is a risk of confusion.

I would therefore suggest that the canton names be replaced by their abbreviations. These abbreviations are already in use, as they are part of vehicle registration plates, used in postal communications (where necessary), and in many other official contexts.

An overview of the valid ISO codes can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:CH

This is probably not relevant for most LT users.

However, it occurs, at least in a similar form, in most countries.

What does the community think of this proposal?

I think using the abbreviations is going to be more confusing for more people. Most likely, if there is no canton specified, the entry refers to the city. More people know and are familiar with Zürich (city) than Zürich (canton), frankly.

Are the cantons coterminus with the cities, or do they include villages that aren't the cities? Or, as with Stockholm, are any cities located in multiple cantons?

Note, 'Genf' is properly Genève. Or use the English - Geneva. The German name should certainly not be used as the stamdard form except on the German site.

I think using abreviations that are not commonly known both in and outside of the country would only create confusion.

You also assume that the person entering the information would
a) know this convention
b) know which his/her source was refering to
c) know wher to find the abbreviation.

In practice, most of us copy what we find on a reliable website, just the way we find it.

Okay, so it becomes like New York City:

Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.

How does this create a problem?

>1 birder4106: In which fields?

CK ones (Such as birth place for example), tags, Publication fields, all of the above?

As someone who does not know much about Switzerland - ISO codes are great in structured moderated data but not very practical in LT - people WILL add whatever they want and unless you plan to spend the rest of your life editing and updating, there is no way to enforce a rule like that.

On a more practical note - adding cantons to all Switzerland cities is not what most people English speaking people expect to see when they see a city in the country (i.e. Zurich, Switzerland is how most sources in English show the city). If someone wants to add a canton, they can. If someone wants to specify that it is the canton, they usually will do Zurich Canton, Switzerland or Zurich (canton), Switzerland it something like that.

When it comes to Sweden, technically it is of course "Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden" (contemporary) or "Stockholm, Södermanland, Sverige" or "Stockholm, Uppland, Sverige" historically, but the middle administrative unit is only used in church records. Swedes do NOT think of a city as being "Malmö, Skåne" the same way as an American thinks of "Chicago, Illinois", so the whole concept of three administrative units is basically, at least to my eyes, an Americanism.

Austria uses the 'Länder' a lot. Except Vienna city and Vienna land are almost the same boundaries, and nobody would ever write Wien, Wien as an address. Salzburg (the city) is only a small part of Salzburger Land, which is specified if needed. But most towns are not listed as Deutsch Wagram, Niederöstereich. The land would only be included if there was a possibility of confusing two towns. And usually there are other ways of keeping them straight.

I suspect the USA uses state names so much because there are so many towns that can be confused. I know Vienna, Maine, but there are lots of other Viennas in the USA. Also most USA states are the size of countries elsewhere.

>7 MarthaJeanne:
As made famous by its overt ambiguation in The Simpsons, "Springfield" is positively ubiquitous.

>7 MarthaJeanne: There are a few Swiss towns that are always mentioned with the canton name to avoid ambiguity, e.g. “Buchs (SG)”, but the other places of the same name in different cantons tend to be too insignificant for any outsider to need the disambiguation.

Similarly in the Netherlands — I lived in Rijswijk (ZH) for a long time, a large suburb of The Hague everyone knows about, but if anyone ever sent me a letter without including the province or postcode the Post Office would be sure to send it first to either the tiny Rijswijk in Noord Brabant or the equally obscure one in Gelderland…

And come to that, there’s a Zurich (with no Umlaut) in Friesland, where they occasionally get mail intended for Switzerland…

>6 anglemark: I wholeheartedly disagree with you on the division of Sweden not being used/though of. It’s incredibly helpful to specify landskap (which I prefer over län since they have a stronger connection to the people living in them), especially since there are quite a few places with the same name. I also don’t know anyone except people in Lappland using the län to describe where they’re from - it’s always landskap. Personally I’d be quite insulted if someone said I was a Västernorrlänning (I’m an Ångermanlänning and loathe the connection to the southern part of the län).

While it’s not on the same level as in the US, it’s still important.

>7 MarthaJeanne: We have the same issue in the UK although it's mostly rivers with the same name - 9 River Avons (River River if you get the Celtic joke on ignorant foreigners - what do you call this then? Afon, you fool...) Similarly, there's 5 River Stours which is based on the Anglo-Saxon equivalent. We have towns with the same name too - there's 4 different Newports. I live in another that shares the same name as another town elsewhere. It's best practice to mention the county to avoid confusion (especially in speech).

Everyone in the US knows that Salem is in Massachusetts, unless you're actually in Massachusetts, in which case Salem, New Hampshire is just north of the border and is a common shopping destination (since NH has no sales tax.)

>12 prosfilaes: Except there's also a Salem, New York; Salem, Maryland; and I think a Salem, Ohio.
Also there's a Maryland, New York.
And a Baltimore, Ohio and a Miami, Ohio...

>13 gilroy: And a Portland, everywhere; and a Columbia, everywhere, and a lot of Washingtons and Lincolns and....

I think the real lesson here is that users need more help than just a few examples.

>13 gilroy: I know, but I think Salem is unique in that everybody knows about Salem, Massachusetts, but unlike Las Vegas or Baltimore, people in its state need disambiguation between the one in New Hampshire and the one in Massachusetts.

I'd note https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(geographic_names)#Un... ; Baltimore and Las Vegas get exactly that name, because in practice they don't need disambiguation, and in some case, like Elgin, South Carolina, that is ambiguous between two small unincorporated cities; Wikipedia has to include the counties to name them. Canada and Australia also predominately have City, Province naming, like the US. Germany is weird; it suggests distinguishing "In brackets after the name, based on the local district, river, settlement, region or state. The brackets are often an official part of the name and appear on road signs. Examples: Velden (Pegnitz) (after the River Pegnitz), Kempten (Allgäu) (after the Allgäu region)."

>10 PawsforThought: Interesting. If anyone sent me a letter addressed to "Johan Anglemark, Lingonvägen 10, Storvreta, Uppsala län" or "Johan Anglemark, Lingonvägen 10, Storvreta, Uppland" I would assume it was sent by a non-Swede. I don't think it has ever happened except on parcels sent as a result of filling in a web form that had the middle level as mandatory.

>16 anglemark: In other words, trying to impose a certain format to addresses from around the world doesn't really work.

Just another example: US addresses are usually written
15 Sumac Street. An address in Vienna would be
Eichen Allee 58/2/5/9. Yes, if the address has 4 numbers, you need all of them.

>16 anglemark: Obviously no one (in Sweden) uses it for sending letters. There's no need since we have postal (zip) numbers. Just as people in the UK don't write counties on their letters.
I was not referring to mail in my comment, but more everyday conversation (especially spoken ones).

>18 PawsforThought: That, too will vary. If I tell a neighbour that I bought plants in Gänserndorf-Süd yesterday, I will not add on the Land, or even Bezirk Gänserndorf, but rather 'out in Marchfeld', which is not an administrative area, but a geographic area of flat farmland near the March river.

>19 MarthaJeanne: I'm talking specifically about Sweden - not trying to claim anything about other countries (except the UK, where I've also lived).

That's my point. These things vary so much from place to place that no set way of entering a place name is going to work fir every place, even if it were possible to find the information. That information is often rather vague, but we have to enter what we can find. If somebody else later can get better data, then great, but until Trump takes over the rest of the world and standardizes things, we are stuck with what we can get.

>18 PawsforThought: I was going to write that nobody would ever talk about the place where I live or a town somewhere else and casually mention that it is located in Uppland or Halland, except when faced with ignorance and an explicit need to specify, which is quite different from always having to specify it, but then it struck me this might also be a town vs countryside or South vs North thing.

>22 anglemark: I didn't mean (and don't think I wrote) that it's something I or others "always" have to do, but it is common enough that it's something I think about. But then I live in the north and am faced with ignorance from southerners fairly regularly. Sadly, even in this day and age, Norrland is still lumped together by people from Sörland (as I like to call it) who have no idea just how large and diverse it is.

>23 PawsforThought: even in this day and age, Norrland is still lumped together by people from Sörland

Absolutely true. My "always" was in reference to putting it into the CK field, by the way.

>24 anglemark: Well, I think it's more important with smaller places. Obviously, no one is going to think Malmö is any other place that the city in Skåne, but there are plenty of smaller places with the same name and having that level of differentiation would be handy for those instances (examples from my relatively local area: there are at least four places in Kramfors kommun called "Nyland", which obviously wouldn't be helped by stating either landskap or län, and there's a Täfteå in both Örnsköldsviks kommun and Umeå kommun (delivery companies get it wrong all the time, even when the post code is clearly stated)).
And being able to generally locate a place on a mental map is incredibly helpful. I happen to know someone who lives in Storvreta, otherwise I'd be a living question mark if I heard someone mention it. But "Storvreta in Uppland" I can understand.

Thank you for the lively discussion of my question and post.

The use of abbreviations is discouraged. That's fine.
At least as names for Swiss cantons. They are absolutely necessary for distinguishing places. For example, there are 8 towns/villages named "Oberwil" in 4 cantons in Switzerland. There are also 5 hamlets with the same name in 3 cantons.

>2 keristars:
There is no canton that is identical to a city.

>2 keristars:, >4 gilroy:
The canton of Zurich is the largest Swiss canton in terms of population. It consists of 160 politically (mostly autonomous) municipalities.

And that's just one example using the largest and best-known city.

The canton of Geneva, with 109.1 square miles, is one of the smallest cantons. It consists of 45 municipalities.

And it is quite important to know whether an author comes from the city or "only" from the canton.

>2 keristars:
I'm aware that these subtle distinctions are irrelevant to most LT users. For Swiss people, they might point to differences in culture and religion, or shed light on the tension between urban and rural areas.

But I'm sure this is the same in other countries.

>26 birder4106: Thank you for further details. And >25 PawsforThought: for info about places with the same names.

I really wasn't sure if other countries have a Springfield example, but it sounds like that's just a feature of human-named places. :)

This is starting to remind me of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

I suppose the best thing to do will be give the location with the least ambiguity according to what information is available, and sometimes that means using a canton or county, but not always. I don't know. Because then I think of the problem of Strasbourg/Straßburg and i get a headache.

(Should people living there now be from Strasbourg, Alsace, France or Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France, or.)

>27 keristars: It’s definitely a thing in lots of places. Especially with place names that are fairly simple in meaning. My example of “Nyland” very much being a case in point - it means “new land” and was a name given to dozens of places when the north was initially being exploited for timber and new villages started popping up all over.
Nature themes are incredibly common in place names here (as well as in many other places) and there are really only so many ways you can combine “stream”, “hill”, “copse” and every type of tree imaginable. (Not forgetting the many words meaning some version of “place someone lives”.)

>27 keristars: https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/

https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14891185

>29 Maddz: At least they have stopped believing that you can shorten country names to 3 letters. I used to get so fristrated that my magazines went to Australia instead of Austria. I would finally get it straigtened out, and it would be time to extend my subscription - resulting in the whole thing starting over. I gave up on some magazines I would have liked to read.

>29 Maddz: Oh gosh, those were fun to read. Well, "fun". The address one, especially, reminded me of doing data cleanup on an alumni database... (Nearly every example was one i had encountered)

>31 keristars: I work with a social care database and some of the old addresses (migrated from a previous database) are a serious mess. Allowing social workers to manually input data is fraught...

>32 Maddz: hahaha... a good portion of ours were from the graduating students themselves. and then also from the little black books and spreadsheets the development staff used. Luckily only 40 years of alumni and donors, i can't imagine what older schools' records are like.

If youraddress information is over 40 years old, most of it is no longer valid anywat.

>34 MarthaJeanne: Yeah, that's another part of the problem, related to getting alumni addresses just before graduation when they may be living in student housing. But a separate problem from the one about formatting and whether the address even has all the necessary pieces.

>35 keristars: I do not believe that any of the schools I attended have my contact information. Good. I have not gotten any spam from any of them in a very long time. People who want those mailings will make sure they are on the list properly. Those whose addresses don't work would probably rather not be on the list.

The real problem is 'clever' programmers who want every address world wide to match their idea of how a 'proper' address is supposed to work.

>36 MarthaJeanne: You must have gone to schools and colleges that are properly funded by the government. The ones that rely on alumni to top up their funding tend to be more tenacious than even the tax office in tracking you down…!

>37 thorold: Not tenacious enough tp find me.

>36 MarthaJeanne: "Why didn't my magazine arrive?" Because you didn't include a country in the address/you wrote Eiré, which nobody at the USPS understood/you wrote Aus, thinking it would go to Australia/you wrote Aus, thinking it would go to Austria.

"We sent a complementary copy to Heywood Jablome and it bounced, and it's obvious it's not a real address! Why didn't you filter this?"

"I want to know every subscriber in Texas so we can send them a complimentary copy of our new "Texas Live!" magazine."

"We need to send a special edition of our magazine to China, since the "Winnie-the-Pooh" issue is likely to get stopped at customs."

"Why are our IT costs so high? Does every field in our database have to be unbounded strings and every address have to get sent to ChatGPT for checking?"

Filtering out erroneous data and parsing out selected groups is a key part of any programmer's job, and anything mailed costs real money, making the first more important. There's always a point on these lists where I stop going "yeah, thinking that is being a bit parochial" and "gee, you don't have a name/you want to keep your computer date set to the 1970s? That seems like a you problem."

>39 prosfilaes: I did not write AUS. I wrote Austria, but the stupid magazine publisher only used AUS. They repeated this mistake when I renewed, changing the functioning address back to the nonfunctioning one. That cost them money, first in higher mail charges, then in having to fix the address again, and then in losing a customer.

That USPS workers can be very stupid about geography is another matter. My sister once had a long arguement at the post office because the person at the counter wanted to charge the Australia rate and not the much lower European rate. Luckily, Austria was right there on the Europe list once she got him to look.

I can't tell you how often I,ve had an online form insist on my entering a zip code. Our postal code is 4 digits and goes before the city name. So I sigh and enter 00000 which is usually accepted. But it makes you feel like the company either doesn't know that there are non-USA parts if the world, or at leasr isn't in people outside the USA as customers.

Of course, there was also the bookseller who matched my new order to a previous order in their records. (I had not mentioned that I was a repeat customer.) They sent my order to the old address. A few years old and a different country. I did not get my book, and never ordered from them again. Actually, I did get a notice from the Swiss post office that they had a package for me that I could pick up in person... which is how I know what happened to my order.

BTW any company that starts sending me spam is going to lose me as a customer.

>40 MarthaJeanne: Yes, I’ve had plenty of frustration with that. Lots of US-based websites tell you “not a valid zipcode” and “not a valid phone number” if you try to introduce anything non-US.