GeoNames Forum

In today's (2008-22-01) alternateNamesModifications and alternateNamesDeletes files, there are several duplicate records.

Each record appears four times in this file. There are just three unique records.
alternateNamesModifications-2008-22-01.txt:
2322127 1805186 Jiu Hua SHan
2322127 1805186 Jiu Hua SHan
2322128 1805186 Jiuhuashan
2322128 1805186 Jiuhuashan
2322127 1805186 Jiu Hua SHan
2322127 1805186 Jiu Hua SHan
2322128 1805186 Jiuhuashan
2322128 1805186 Jiuhuashan
1614284 5128581 en New York 1 1
1614284 5128581 en New York 1 1
1614284 5128581 en New York 1 1
1614284 5128581 en New York 1 1

In the deletes file there four unique records but each record appears two times in alternateNamesDeletes-2008-22-01:
2310011 4036777 Wordie Caldera
2322125 1805186 Jiu Hua Shan
1550888 4036777 Wordie Caldera
2322126 1805186 Jiuhuashan
2310011 4036777 Wordie Caldera
2322125 1805186 Jiu Hua Shan
1550888 4036777 Wordie Caldera
2322126 1805186 Jiuhuashan

Regards,

Dan

Are the first level (Admin1) codes for the countries, mentioned in your posting, the ISO 3166-2 codes or are they mostly the FIPS codes?

Thank you.

Dan

Is there a table available that lists for all countries:

Country Code, ISO 3166-2 Code, FIPS Code, Name of Administrative Divsion

I realize I can go to an individual country, like Canada, http://www.geonames.org/CA/administrative-division-canada.html
and get this data for one country. I was just looking for finding this data all in one location.

Thank you.

Dan

When I visit this link, http://www.geonames.org/countries/ and click on a country name, an information page is displayed showing various facts about the country. One of the items is the country neighbors. There is a typo in the label for the neighbors. It appears as "neigbours". I'm OK with the British spelling of "neighbours" but the label being shown needs an 'h'.

Thanks for providing this great site.

Dan

The country names listed in the file countryInfo.txt aren't ISO 3166-1 (official short names in English). Are these names coming from some other standard? I find 27 differences: (the left hand column comes from countryInfo.txt and the right hand column comes from the ISO website, http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma)

Aland Islands | Åland Islands
Brunei | Brunei Darussalam
Congo (Kinshasa) | Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (Brazzaville) | Congo
Ivory Coast | Côte d'Ivoire
Falkland Islands | Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Micronesia | Micronesia, Federated States of
Hong Kong S.A.R., China | Hong Kong
Iran | Iran, Islamic Republic of
North Korea | Korea, Democratic People's Republic of
South Korea | Korea, Republic of
Laos | Lao People's Democratic Republic
Libya | Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Moldova | Moldova, Republic of
Macedonia | Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macao S.A.R., China | Macao
Palestinian Territory | Palestinian Territory, Occupied
Reunion | Réunion
Russia | Russian Federation
Syria | Syrian Arab Republic
East Timor | Timor-Leste
Taiwan | Taiwan, Province of China
Tanzania | Tanzania, United Republic of
Vatican | Holy See (Vatican City State)
British Virgin Islands | Virgin Islands, British
U.S. Virgin Islands | Virgin Islands, U.S.
Vietnam | Viet Nam

Thank you for considering this matter.

Regards,

Dan

Marc,

Can you update the helpful instructions you've provided for creating the alternatenames table and the copy command for loading the alternate names file into Postgres?

alternateNameId : the id of this alternate name, int
geonameid : geonameId referring to id in table 'geoname', int
isolanguage : iso 693 language code 2- or 3-characters, varchar(3)
alternate name : alternate name or name variant, varchar(200)
isOfficialName : '1', if this alternate name is an official/preferred name

Thank you.

Dan

For US locations, the admin1_code is the two character state code. So for Los Angeles, California, use 'CA' for the admin1_code.

If you search the geonames database for name='Los Angeles' and admin1_code = '06', you'll get
Los Angeles, Columbia

Marc,

Thank you for fixing the server problem.

Cheers,

Dan

Marc,

The placename_equals is now matching exactly. Thank you for fixing this.

I've come across another problem with placename_equals. It doesn't take names with "spaces". I want to return the postal code for Pleasant Valley, NY.

I've tried

http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?placename_equals=pleasant+valley&maxRows=10&country=US&adminCode1=NY

and

http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?placename_equals=pleasant%20valley&maxRows=10&country=US&adminCode1=NY

I thought that "+" or "%20" are the proper url_encodings for a "space".

Am I encoding this wrong?

Thank you for your help.

Dan

The following query returns two locations:

http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?placename_equals=bathurst&maxRows=10&country=CA

The first is what I expected; the second location has Bathurst in its placename, but the placename isn't exactly Bathurst. So does placename_equals match exactly or look for the string in the placename? I'd like to be able to specify an exact match.

Thank you.

Dan

Marc,

Thank you for the quick response and enhancements. The addition of the adminCode1 and placename_equals works great.

In the link you provided with your reply, the "h" is missing from the "http". Can you correct that for future visitors to this thread?

Thanks for your help.

Dan

Can adminCode1 be included in the webservice postal code search? For example:

http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?placename=Albany&maxRows=10&country=US&adminCode1=NY&formatted=tr&style=LONG

doesn't limit the search to NY. I notice on the www.geonames.org postal code search page that I can enter "Albany, NY" and get back postal codes limited to NY, so perhaps there is some backend processing going on to filter the results of the query.

Also, for the geonames search webservice I can specify "name_equals". Is there something equivalent for postal searches?

Thank you.

Dan

Thanks Marc. I think that subdivision parenthetical remark has gone away in the updated GNIS data (I am glad to see that go away).

This record from GNIS indicating that Staten Island is a populated place doesn't show up in geonames when I search for Staten Island:

1802959 Staten Island Populated Place NY 36 Richmond 085 403500N 0740859W 40.5834379 -74.1495875 49 Arthur Kill

Dan

If I enter "Buffalo, NY" into geomanes, I get
----------------------------
Buffalo Bufalo,Buffalo,Бафало,バッファロー,水牛城 United States, New York park
population 279,557 N 42° 53' 11'' W 78° 52' 43''

------------------------------

I looked this record up, geonameid=5110629, and could see that the Feature Class is L and the Feature Code is Park. I was surprised that there isn't a record for Buffalo with a Feature Class of P (ie. some populated place). I assume that most of the US data is coming from from the US GNIS references. I looked up in GNIS and found this record for Buffalo, NY (in GNIS):

973345 Buffalo Populated Place NY 36 Erie 029 425311N 0785242W 42.8864468 -78.8783689 183 Buffalo NW

I imagine it was quite of bit of work mapping GNIS (US) data into the geonames data model, which is more closely related to the NGA data (world-wide), and you had to apply some heuristics in dealing with the feature designations. (I never really understood how my US tax dollars produced these very useful but incompatible data models, GNIS and NGA.)

Can you explain what is happening with this Buffalo example? I've come across some other cities in the US where I was surprised with the representation in geonames. For example, Staten Island comes up as an Island. However, there is a GNIS record for a populated place.

I've been tinkering with GNIS and NGA data for some time and recently come across geonames. org. You've done an incredible job in putting together geonames. Thank you for the great resource.

Dan

Is there a plan to put the Admin2 column into the country dumps? I'd like to have the county information in the US data. I've seen that the county is returned from a US postal code query, but not from a geoname query.

Thank you.