GeoNames Forum

I understand that originally Darwin (city of Australia) was called Palmerston, but how come a search query still returns "Palmerston" as the PPLA result today?

I'm calling http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=Darwin&country=Australia and getting the first result, listed as PPLA, of "Palmerston". There is no geoname in the results which refers specifically to "Darwin", as in the populated city.

I need a service which provides the place name that is commonly known to the public. Am I missing something? Should I be supplying a parameter which requests "common name"?

Any help appreciated. I like this service and don't want to go hunting for another one.

Regards,
Peter.

Thanks for fixing!

Very much appreciated

Pete.

Hi Pete

I have created a new geoname for Palmerston and I have deleted some alternate names 'Palmerston' for Darwin. For the remaining alternate name 'Palmerston' I have set a flag 'isFormerName'.

I have also corrected the coordinates in Wikipedia for Palmerston. Wikipedia had the coordinates for Darwin in the article for Palmerston, which was one reason for this confusion.

Marc