Local usage is the arbiter. If you run SV down a main street, and find the websites for a bunch of stores using a name, that's the local name. A single UR should make you want to look or ask more questions. If the responder makes a good case (in back and forth conversation) or there is other data to back up the position, then that's satisfactory.

USPS lookup can contribute, but shouldn't be the single arbiter either.

Even though this is a NJ discussion, I will use New York City as an example, because it is a very good illustration of what can go wrong if you rely entirely on city/town/village incorporated names. Note that there are no CDPs at all in NYC, just the borough or county names are used (which are always in conflict, except for the Bronx... and technically Queens, too, though it is irrelevant there for the ost part as we shall see).

In much of NYC, the borough name is the "city" name for all purposes. Brooklyn, Bronx (or The Bronx) are the incorporated county name, USPS name, and the name that locals call it. There's not much conflict for naming for those two boroughs, other than the funkiness of "The." Informally, "The" is always used, but it is recognizable either way, and when writing practically (including addresses), it is typically left off anyway. Locals may use a neighborhood for self-identification only (and sometimes those neighborhood names are in conflict, such as Flatbush/Midwood and a host of others). Brooklyn is technically Kings County, not Brooklyn County, but you own't find that on anything but some letterhead.

Manhattan has a bit of a dual identity. The county is "New York," while the borough is "Manhattan," and both are heavily used in different contexts. USPS has either "New York" or "Manhattan" as acceptable, but "New York" is preferred. Residents will also go both ways -- interestingly, outside Manhattan, NYC residents refer to Manhattan as "The City," almost universally, and residents will say so "The City" to locals, "New York" to out of towners if they don't think the person needs/cares about the exact location, or "Manhattan" if the out of towner needs more specific information. In Waze, we use "Manhattan" because "New York" is deemed too ambiguous. Drivers searching for an address will rarely use "Manhattan," so what we have is a mismatch for searches, a mismatch for official naming (even though that's the borough name), and not what you would find in an address for anyone in the area. Nevertheless, that's the choice we made, and it isn't changing.

The borough of Staten Island is officially Richmond County, but nobody uses that in addressing or searches. Even USPS uses Staten Island. So we use it too. It doesn't match the official incorporated name of the county, and the borough name to the best of my research is not "incorporated" because there is no functioning level of state-recognized government. (Historically, Henry Hudson named it Staten Island, and it developed several villages over the next hundred plus years; the village of Richmond was where the government offices were located at the time it became a county, and that's what the county was called. At the end of the 19th century, it became part of NYC, with the borough named Richmond, which didn't change until about 40 years ago.)

That leaves Queens. Oh boy. Queens' former villages still retain a strong identity today. Its major villages are still the primary names used for addressing by USPS, such as Flushing, and Forest Hills. There are local neighborhoods names that are not used this way -- for example, Flushing includes a whole bunch of large, well-known local neighborhoods whose names ("Kew Gardens Hills") are only used by residents for self-identification, but would never be used for addressing. Nevertheless, every place in Queens has a dual identity of "Queens" and "local village name." For simplicity, we have adopted Queens for the entire borough as the name.

I believe all the county names and the city name were included in state charters, which make them incorporated. When I checked, it looked like the boroughs are not separately incorporated. It creates a mess, because the notion of cities-within-counties is upside down in NYC, boroughs are coterminous with counties but rarely share a name, and village, borough, and county name are have dominance in some area or other. USPS is not consistent in the selection of name type for that reason -- whatever is the dominant usage in a place, that's what they use.

And that's the point. Whatever is dominant in local usage, we use in Waze, too. COnflicting street names? Go with local usage. Conflicting locality names? That's what we're discussing, and ditto.

Usually, there is not a dominant name conflict between local usage and incorporated municipality name in NJ (or NY either, for that matter). Unless we know of one, we can go with incorporated name.

(By the way, the dropping of "Township" is also fairly consistent with the dominant usage theory, even if we did it for other reasons.)

Sometimes, it doesn't pay to know a history buff

It should be noted that USPS does not necessarily screen for duplicate names within a state. I can't remember details offhand, but I recall reading about several conflicting localities in New York that the Post Office uses as primary names. Zip is crucial for those towns, and if you put the worng one in, better hope the street name is unique to one or the other.

Kobe is correct, there are no unincorporated places in NJ. Short Hills is not an incorporated municipality, but it is part of the incorporated municipality of Millburn.

However, for our purposes, yes, there are legitimate "city names" in NJ that are the names of unincorporated communities.

Note that some cities-within-cities are actually incorporated. For example, Metuchen is similar to Short Hills in that it is a smallish community within a larger city (Edison), but it is different form Short Hills in that it is separately incorporated, with its own elected government.

Kobe,

Yes, Metuchen is a separately-incorporated borough within the city of Edison.

I dont think i understand your point of adding CDP+County. Could you explain the goal?

I don't think any of this will be happening. If Waze had better search and didn't use Google, it might be worth the effort, but as it stands, what are we hoping to gain?

OK, Kobe, I see your point... for issues where we have a duplicate name that we need a better way to resolve, we definitely have options this way.

Where you can't add the "correct" name because it is "too far," there are several possibilities:

1) Waze decided to assign some incorrect city name to all the area between the segment you are changing and the closest like-named city. All those segments would need to be renamed, because they are wrong.

2) There is a duplicate city name, and the area you are editing "lost" and got named something a bit different. Follow the convention used for the surrounding area. If you think it is wrong, bring it up.

3) You made a mistake.

4) Not so likely in New Jersey, but in sparsely-developed areas, it is possible that a new set of roads will be added within a "city" limit that are far from any existing segments with that name. To resolve it, you can add a temporary segment or polygon at the edge of the existing defined area, then stretch it out to where you are. Waze will then see the city as extending to where you need it. I don't recall for sure whether the "stretch" has an immediate effect, or you have to wait for some sort of update, but I think I was able to do this fairly quickly when I tried it. Don't forget to delete your temp segment when you are done.

I don't see NJ adopting the countyname scheme.

I'd have to check, but I think we also have an exception for primary local usage. If the primary place name as used by locals is Chesterbrook, then we can allow that, and use the official name as an alt instead.

Primary local usage is based on a reliable local editor or interaction with multiple locals, or research of business listings.

Paragraph "2" is confusing. I think it could use clarification and an example.

Shared borders is too specific. Sometimes one is contained inside the other. When merging, do we need an exception if there si a road name shared between them, either discontiguous, or contiguous but with conflicting numbering?