There are many names which come from other languages such as “el camino”, “la riviera”, and “d’Angelo”. Is there convention for capitalization?
[color=#000055]Summary of discussion:
Street names should be title case with the first letter of the name capitalized except in any rare instance where the official name of the street begins with a lowercase letter.
Any word in a name after the first word and before the last word need not be capitalized if it is ordinarily not capitalized (e.g., of, at, on, over, and similar words in other languages).[/color]
I think Waze should use the same case as what is official for the street. I know most street signs are in all caps, but you may be able to find official documentation that shows the correct capitalization. If no such documentation exists, I’d opt for what would be correct based on the language. I don’t think we have to make the first letter capital “just because.”
First letter capitalization is a “feature” in the editor - we didn’t used to have it and it was added. I asked for an escape character to intentionally defeat the forced capital, but never heard back.
Well, many names are adopted from other languages. But most highway signs are in English. We are putting the English version into Waze maps for the USA.
I’m not really sure what “in English” means when we are talking about a name. I certainly follow the street signs. The question becomes what to do when the street signs are in all capital letters. I thought the question was how to handle signs that say “EL CAMINO Ave,” “LA RIVIERA St” or “D’ANGELO Rd.” I just don’t see how saying those signs are “in English” helps solve the problem.
If we were making a Spanish language map, then we would enter the names in Spanish. If they aren’t English already, then they should be translated into English. Given that these are the names that English speakers use and read, they are obviously English.
There are MANY foreign language words used on street signs in the US. US citizens don’t just “translate” the official street name into English. They use the official name. If the name is EL CAMINO, then that’s what they call the street. They don’t call it “The Way.” The question is how to write EL CAMINO. The signs will be in all caps, so you can’t go by the signs. If this was in Spanish, it could be written as el Camino. There isn’t an English way to write the Spanish words because they are not English words and you aren’t going to translate it into “The Way.” So… do you use the real way of writing that based on the language it comes from or do you always capitalize the first letter no matter what? This has nothing to do with translating anything or in what it would be in English because it’s not in English. It’s in Spanish or French or some other language even though it’s in the US. Personally, I think that if this would be written as “el Camino” in Spain, it should be written the same here. We should have a standard way of writing names for the entire world and not have the same name written in different ways depending on where you are. After all, it is the same name regardless of whether you’re in Spain or the US.
The official names with the city are capitalized. Writing them as done in Mexico or another foreign country is too complex. Once “el camino” is loaned into English, it becomes English. Accent marks and other punctuation are commonly discarded. Furthermore, there are names for which the derivation cannot be determined. Most people pronounce Sutter to rhyme with butter. Juneau rhymes with canoe.
We don’t use the foreign pronunciation. I see no reason to use some foreign spelling or capitalization. This is the USA, not Belgium.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, IF there is a verifiable official capitalization available, we should use that. If there is not any official capitalization that can be found (street signs are all capital, so those don’t help), then I see no reason not to use the language’s capitalization. Do we know that every single road in the US is officially capitalized on the first letter? If so, then that’s fine. But I’d imagine there are roads in the US that the official spelling uses a lowercase letter at the beginning. This would be most likely in states near to Mexico or Quebec. I personally do not know one way or another, which is why I said that we should use the official capitalization if available or the language’s capitalization if there isn’t any available official capitalization present. And in neither case should we use a blanket statement that every road must be capitalized unless there is proof that no roads anywhere in the US are lowercase for the first letter.
Not quite. The ending of Juneau pronounced with a long “o” rather than a long “u” – [joo-noh] vs. [kuh-noo]. At least that’s the pronunciation in Alaska and the dictionary. Maybe Pennsylvania says it differently. But pronunciation isn’t really the topic. After all, words are pronounced differently all over, even within the same state. Capitalization on the other hand is the same for any individual road no matter who writes it down (for that specific road and not necessarily for similarly named roads).
I wouldn’t say this is universal. It all depends on where you are.
But what is “English” capitalization? Take the town of Havre de Grace, Maryland. The pronunication is about as anglicized as you can get. The “a” in Havre like the “a” in map. The “a” in Grace a long “a” like in day. But no one capitalizes the “de.”
I agree that if there is official capitalization available it should be used. However, this all gets murky. There is a road near me that is signed “LARUE RD.” On the county road list it is listed as “La Rue Rd.” It is entered in waze as “Larue Rd.” So should the name in waze be changed?
We dropped the French pronunciation more than a century ago. So it is ridiculous to say that it is a French name and should use French rules. Pennsylvania is not Alaska.
This is much as in English: we do not capitalize “of” (unless it is the first word in the name).
So there is no reason under English rules to capitalize the first letter of every word, but we do capitalize the first letter of the first word in most cases.
Yes. If “la Rue” is French, then “la Rue Rd” is redundant.
I suspect that LaRue is correct. But with old computer data systems, we often put a space ahead of any letter that needs to be capitalized. This could explain why the county list has the apparently extraneous space. It indicates “LaRue”.
For what it’s worth, New Orleans does not use all caps on its street signs. As far as I know, all start with a capital, even “D’Hemecourt”, “La Salle”, and “DeSaix Blvd”. (Suffixes are unsigned for “Streets”.)
Detroit also does not use all caps on its street signs and has French origins (although not quite as much continuing French history as New Orleans), so maybe there are also some similarly-named streets there that can be used for guidance.
In these cases, of course we should match signage. In other cases, it may be useful to consult other official documentation for capitalization, but either way I don’t think it’s a terrible loss if we can’t put in an initial lowercase.
…Unless it happens on ramps. Lowercase “to” is absolutely crucial.
According to Snopes’s analysis, the replacement deadline was for signs that don’t meet the new retroreflectivity standards; all-caps signs don’t have to be replaced by title case signs until the end of their useful life.
I’m glad, though. I find the Title Case signs in New Orleans and Detroit a lot easier to read than the ALL CAPS signs in many suburbs of either city.