This is the online manual of GRCTools, personal name and address management software.  Click here for details.

Place names - standardise

Purpose: to standardize place names, replacing foreign or minority language forms of a town name, names incorrectly spelt or including typos, transcribed letters, incorrect diacritical marks and so on with the standardized local language equivalents.

Example: Londres becomes London (United Kingdom); Den Haag and The Hague become 's-Gravenhage (The Netherlands).

The lookup tables used by GRC Tools^TMfor this process are very large. GRC Tools^TMmay appear to hang for some time at 0% and 100% during processing. This is normal - avoid interrupting the program at these points.

Information required: For each field chosen, GRC Tools^TMneeds to know the case that it is in so that the replacement is written in the correct case.

This process will only work for each town within the postal code area defined within the lookup table. This prevents settlements with similar names being incorrectly re-named in different parts of the same country. For this reason the process requires knowing in which field the postal code is situated. The postal code should be in its correct format without punctuation or other codes such as country sorting codes (e.g. GB-).

Ireland, having no postal codes, is treated separately - instead of a check being made on postal code, it is made on county. This makes the process less efficient but retains the accuracy. If Ireland is chosen, you need to specify the field containing the county in Ireland, and the case in which it is stored.

Most lookup tables are shipped with GRC Tools^TMstructured to change foreign words for town names into the local- language equivalent only. However, for countries where a number of languages exists, the rules used for the lookup tables are as follows.

• Belgium: language areas are fixed by law - the names are altered to the local-language name as defined by law. In mixed language areas, the majority language name is used. Brussels, which is purely bilingual, is excluded from this process.

• Finland: the town name assigned (Finnish or Swedish) is that of the majority of speakers in the town concerned.

• France: in all cases, the French name is assigned.

• Greenland: the Greenlandic rather than the Danish name is assigned.

• Ireland: in An Ghaeltacht (Irish-speaking areas) the Irish name is assigned. In all other cases, the English name is assigned.

• Italy: the Italian name is assigned in all cases.

• Malta: the Maltese name is assigned in all cases.

• The Netherlands: the Dutch names are assigned in all cases. Den Haag is changed to ‘s-Gravenhage; Den Bosch is changed to ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

• Spain: Catalan/Valencian names are assigned for towns within the provinces of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia. Basque names are assigned for towns within the province of País-Vasco. Galician names are assigned for towns within the province of Galicia. In Navarra, town names are assigned (Basque or Spanish) on the basis of the majority language within each town. In all other cases, Spanish is assigned.

• Switzerland: Town names are assigned on the basis of majority language within each town. The bilingual town of Biel/Bienne becomes in all cases Biel/Bienne.