GeoNames Forum

Hi Jimmy

The 'userlevel' is actually not a problem as you call it, it is rather a feature to protect the database against vandalism (out of ignorance or worse).

I have increased your userlevel.

Best

Marc

I don't know anything about the two places, but what springs to the eyes is that google also has two places with the same name. I don't know whether there are really two names or whether a source that everybody is using lists the same name twice.

done.

Marc

Thanks, will be fixed.

Marc

No, because I don't know what they originally stood for. There have been several reorganisations in the country and I assume these codes refer to admin divisions that existed many many years ago.

It would be better to assign these toponyms with the current admin code.

Marc

Hi Abe

I am afraid there is no zip file with the images and it is not planned to create one.

Best

Marc

Thanks. They come from a a file with obsolete admin codes that is added to the file admin1Codes.txt . I have deleted the codes in the file and they will no longer be included with the next dump.

Best

Marc

Nicolas

Thanks for pointing this out. We have improved the automatic transliteration from foreign languages to ascii. The result of this transliteration is also included in the alteratenames list. This is the reason it was possible that the string was longer even though the toponym itself was not modified.
I have increased the size of the field in the doc to varchar(5000)

Best

Marc

Hi Russ

The same polygons used for the web service are also used for the cities. It would be too much work to determine the timezone individually for each city. The user interface for editing the cities does not even allow to enter the timezone as it is entirely based on an automatic assignment for the lat/lng.

Best

Marc

You are right, I have deleted one of the two Gulf of Panamas.

Marc

Sure, if you help assign the geonameid to the ocean names.

This is what we have so far, the second column is the geonameid, please add the missing ones:

Code:

 Adriatic Sea	3183462
 Aegean Sea	265695
 Alboran Sea	
 Anadyrskiy Gulf	4031773
 Andaman Or Burma Sea	
 Arabian Sea	1158455
 Arafura Sea	1818208
 Aral Sea	1526250
 Arctic Ocean	2960860
 Aru Sea	
 Baffin Bay	
 Balear Sea	2363257
 Bali Sea	1818207
 Baltic Sea	2633321
 Banda Sea	
 Barents Sea	630674
 Bass Strait	
 Bay Of Bengal	1281789
 Bay Of Biscay	2960858
 Bay Of Fundy	
 Beaufort Sea	
 Bering Sea	
 Bismarck Sea	2110018
 Black Sea	630673
 Bo Sea	
 Bristol Channel	
 Canarias Sea	
 Caribbean Sea	
 Caspian Sea	630671
 Celtic Sea	2960856
 Chukchi Sea	
 Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reefs	
 Coastal Waters Of Southeast Alaska And British Columbia	
 Coral Sea	2194166
 Davis Strait	3424931
 East China Sea	1676969
 East Siberian Sea	2127381
 English Channel	
 Flores Sea	1818200
 Georgian Bay	5960552
 Great Australian Bight	
 Green Bay	
 Greenland Sea	2960853
 Guantanamo Bay	
 Gulf Of Aden	80303
 Gulf Of Alaska	4031789
 Gulf Of Aqaba	
 Gulf Of Berau	
 Gulf Of Bone	
 Gulf Of Bothnia	630672
 Gulf Of California	4016118
 Gulf Of Carpentaria	2074837
 Gulf Of Finland	453749
 Gulf Of Guinea	2363255
 Gulf Of Mannar	1281787
 Gulf Of Mexico	3523271
 Gulf Of Oman	
 Gulf Of Panama	
 Gulf Of Riga	453746
 Gulf Of St Lawrence	
 Gulf Of Suez	235614
 Gulf Of Tartary	2120711
 Gulf Of Thailand	1818185
 Gulf Of Tomini	1818199
 Gulf Of Tonkin	1818184
 Halmahera Sea	1818198
 Hudson Bay	
 Hudson Strait	
 Iceland Sea	
 Indian Ocean	1545739
 Inner Seas Off The West Coast Of Scotland	
 Ionian Sea	2463713
 Irish Sea And St. George'S Channel	
 Japan Sea	2038684
 Jawa Sea	1818196
 Joseph Bonaparte Gulf	2068951
 Kara Sea	
 Labrador Sea	
 Lake Erie	
 Lake Huron	
 Lake Michigan	
 Lake Ontario	
 Lake Superior	
 Lakshadweep Sea	1237875
 Laptev Sea	2038683
 Liaodong Gulf	2036121
 Ligure Sea	3174724
 Lincoln Sea	
 Makasar Strait	
 Malacca Strait	
 Maluku Sea	1636628
 Mediterranean Sea, Eastern Basin	
 Mediterranean Sea, Western Basin	
 Mindanao Sea	
 Mozambique Channel	
 Natuna Sea	
 North Atlantic Ocean	3411923
 North Greenland Sea	
 North Pacific Ocean	4030875
 North Sea	2960860
 Northwestern Passages	3831547
 Norwegian Sea	2960847
 Palk Strait And Palk Bay	
 Persian Gulf	235616
 Philippine Sea	
 Red Sea	
 Rio De La Plata	
 Sawu Sea	1818189
 Sea Of Azov	713066
 Sea Of Marmara	630669
 Sea Of Okhotsk	2127380
 Seram Sea	1818202
 Seto Naikai	
 Singapore Strait	
 Skagerrak	2960845
 Solomon Sea	2086419
 South Atlantic Ocean	3358844
 South China Sea	
 South Pacific Ocean	5881215
 Strait Of Gilbraltar	
 Strait Of Sicilia	2523117
 Sulawesi Sea	1818203
 Sulu Sea	
 Sumba Strait	1626194
 Taiwan Strait	1668281
 Tasman Sea	2147286
 The Great Belt	
 The Little Belt	
 The Sound	
 Timor Sea	2078065
 Tirreno Sea	2522836
 Torres Strait	2132427
 Unk	
 White Sea	577742
 Yellow Sea	1818183

This for a change really looks like the same toponym. The toponym is referring to an area and there are a lot of markers covering the entire area. I could imagine that one of the input sources was aggregating small subsets (like maps) and the toponym was on each of the map once and ended up n-times. Please feel free to clean it up, be careful with automated scripts. There are a couple of threads of users complaining about duplicates, but usually it is absolutely not clear whether they really are duplicates, often they are clearly not duplicates. There is just no law that makes place names unique even though it would make life easier for application developers.

Best

Marc

Hi VJ

GeoNames does not support geocoding on address level.

Best

Marc

Thanks, I have removed the wrong name.

Best

Marc

Thanks, I have updated the db with these lat/lng.

Marc

Thanks, I have updated the db with these lat/lng.

Marc

try using the search function of this forum.

Marc

the documentation says:

Element:
timezoneId: name of the timezone (according to olson), this information is sufficient to work with the timezone and defines DST rules, consult the documentation of your development environment.
time: the local current time
rawOffset: the amount of time in hours to add to UTC to get standard time in this time zone.
gmtOffset: offset to GMT at 1. January (deprecated)
dstOffset: offset to GMT at 1. July (deprecated)

http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html#timezone

The timezoneId is the only information you really need, all other attributes are redundant.

It is called 'geocoding' a service not yet offered by GeoNames on address level. There are a couple of other providers that offer this service, just use the search engine of your choice to find them.

Marc

The reason is very simple. The UK government and administration does not release any geographical data for free. So we have to use other sources, among them the US army and as you can easily imagine the US army is more interested in other countries than the UK.
If you are from the UK and want to change this, then contact your political representatives and make them understand that it would only be beneficial to their country to release more geographical data. The government is having all the data but does not make it available. It is ridiculous that they don't release data like the location of villages and the boundary of admin divisions. Unfortunately the UK is not alone, most European countries are following the same policy.

Best

Marc