Are abbreviated place names the standard to be used?

Question

I don't understand all the abbreviations people use.  If one is born in Palermo (PA) and dies in Pittsburg (PA), it doesn't indicate this person immigrated from Italy to the United States.  Plus, for the most part, I find the abbreviations to be USA specific.  When the time comes for other countries to link onto the Wikitree, it will be obvious abbreviations lead to mistakes.  In the news this week is a good lesson British Airways is going to learn in court why abbreviations are a No-No.  Here's a link http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/british-airways-sued-for-flying-couple-to-grenada-instead-of-granada-1.2687396.  Also, the way other nationalities abbreviate is generally language and/or nation specific.

Answer 1

Here's the Location Fields standards page:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Location_Fields

Answer 2

You're correct that abbreviations can be confusing. Proper grammatic usage would demand that we spell out those place names, state included, especially in the bio section.

I'm as guilty as the next person of using abbreviations (especially for states) and we're going to have to change the name of this country to something shorter. United States of America is way to long to type in the statistic sections. But I think everyone knows what USA stands for. Although KY might be petroleum jelly, and PA might be my father and Miss is a young lady.

Comments

USA I agree is one that everyone in the world recognizes

Answer 3

In the UK, we use the Chapman (County) Code, although I would rather use the full county name so as not to confuse fellow WikiTree members. Yes it is time consuming, but that is what I  prefer.

If you wish to use the abbreviated version of any UK county and are not sure what the 3 letter abbreviation is the following link is really helpful, https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Chapman_Code

Answer 4

I agree that anything smaller than a country (state, province, county, district, parish) should be spelled out if for not other reason than it can be confusing for someone not familiar with that country. For example, "St Geo Han" (which I encountered in a census record recently) should be spelled out as "St. George Hanover Square" to prevent confusion.

To achieve a degree of brevity I think, for currently existing countries, it is an acceptable option to use the International Standards Organization alpha codes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-3; names of countries that no longer exist, for example Prussia (the Kingdom of), should be spelled out, as it was known in a/the native language of that country. I am not very familiar with the region or laguages but I believe in the case of Prussia it would be Preußen.

Comments

I wouldn't even recognise those country codes for most countries. Even as a Canadian I would find it weird if Canada were replaced with CAN.

The only ones I think are pretty clear as abbreviations are ones like USA and UK, ie. multi-word names that are often abbreviated to their initials even in speech.

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Confusing huh, I'm not sure you can say the UK is a country(at least not in a room full of Scottish and Welsh people),

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Well, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are certainly countries. But since the UK is a sovereign state, I would also call that a country.