# City Name

Key: `geography.location.city`

Name of a city, town, or municipality. Locale-specific due to city name representation in different languages.

Page: <https://meridian.online/docs/projects/finetype/types/geography/location/city>

Samples: `New York`, `San Francisco`, `London`, `Tokyo`, `Paris`

## Background

### Origin

FineType defines geography.location.city itself, as the name of a city, town or municipality.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_geography.yaml) FineType marks the type as locale-specific because city names are represented differently in different languages.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_geography.yaml) FineType lists municipality and town as aliases of the type.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_geography.yaml)

One international register of place names used in trade is UN/LOCODE, the United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations, developed and maintained by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE) The first issue of UN/LOCODE in 1981 contained codes for 8,000 locations.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE) The 2011 version of UN/LOCODE contained codes for about 82,000 locations.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE)

GeoNames, a user-editable geographical database, was founded in late 2005.[[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoNames)

### Use

USPS Publication 28 places the city name in the last line of the address.[[4]](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_006.htm) USPS Publication 28 strongly recommends that addresses use only approved Last Line (city) names as described in the Postal Service City State file.[[4]](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_006.htm) USPS Publication 28 says city names should be spelled in their entirety.[[5]](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_008.htm) When labelling constraints force an abbreviation, USPS Publication 28 allows only the approved 13-character abbreviations from the City State file.[[5]](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_008.htm)

The US Census Bureau says an incorporated place usually is a city, town, village, or borough, but can have other legal descriptions.[[6]](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html) The US Census Bureau delineates Census Designated Places for settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name but are not legally incorporated.[[6]](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html)

GeoNames records alternate names with ISO 639 language codes.[[7]](https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt) GeoNames flags historic alternate names, giving Bombay for Mumbai as its example.[[7]](https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt) GeoNames flags colloquial alternate names, giving Big Apple for New York as its example.[[7]](https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt) The Unicode CLDR date specification says that when no localised exemplar city exists for a time zone, the last field of the time zone ID is used with the prefix stripped and underscores turned into spaces, so America/Los\_Angeles becomes Los Angeles.[[8]](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html)

UN/LOCODE uses the same three letters, PAR, for Paris in France (FR PAR) and for Par in Cornwall (GB PAR).[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE)

## Sources

1. [finetype/labels/definitions\_geography.yaml at main · meridian-online/finetype](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_geography.yaml) — FineType
2. [UN/LOCODE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN/LOCODE) — secondary source
3. [GeoNames](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoNames) — secondary source
4. [22 Last Line of the Address \| Postal Explorer](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_006.htm) — documentation
5. [223 Spelling of City Names \| Postal Explorer](https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_008.htm) — documentation
6. [Geography Program Glossary](https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/about/glossary.html) — documentation
7. [Readme for GeoNames Gazetteer extract files](https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt) — dataset
8. [Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML) Part 4: Dates](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html) — standard