Latest news release from Ordnance Survey - Location Lingo project
seeks to create an 'alternative gazetteer' of Great Britain

*Location Lingo project seeks to create an ‘alternative gazetteer’ of
Great Britain*

*Look at a map and you’ll find the official names for places throughout
the country. But that’s not necessarily what those places are called in
everyday life. ***

Take, for example, ‘The Nam’ (for Tottenham), ‘Spaghetti Junction’ (the
motorway crossover near Birmingham) or the ‘Wobbly Bridge’ (the
Millennium Bridge). **

That’s why this year, as part of English Language Day (Wednesday 13
October), Ordnance Survey has partnered with the English Project to
collect the peoples’ pet names.

“We are throwing a very wide net in this national trawl for what we call
Location Lingo,” says Bill Lucas of the English Project.

“Everyone knows the big national nicknames like Pompey for Portsmouth or
Auld Reekie for Edinburgh, but we are also interested in the names that
are not so well known and might be used only by a neighbourhood, a
village community, a workplace, or even by an extended family or group
of friends.”

However, there is a serious purpose to this project. As emergency
service control rooms become centralised, there is a risk they will lose
local knowledge and could be confused by callers who use “location
lingo” when phoning in with reports of incidents.

That is why Ordnance Survey is investigating the building of an
“alternative gazetteer”/ /that/ /references many of these nicknames and
pet names, which could include, for example, a popular name for a road
junction or bridge.

“With the huge variety of place nicknames that exist, we could never
hope to capture them all ourselves,” says Glen Hart, Ordnance Survey’s
Head of Research. “Technically, this research goes by the name of
vernacular geography, which is looking into which names should be
recorded and how best to discover them.

“Projects like Location Lingo can provide us with useful research data
to help answer these questions. Organisations like the emergency
services rely on our information when responding to 999 calls, so by
having the most complete set of ‘unofficial’ names we could help the
emergency services quickly locate the right place, and maybe even save
lives.

“Such knowledge can also help improve Internet searches as well as to
recognise the importance that such names have to local communities.”

Anyone wishing to submit their own Location Lingo is invited to visit
the project’s website – www.locationlingo.net
<http://www.locationlingo.net/> – where they can add their contribution
directly onto an interactive Ordnance Survey map built using the OS
OpenSpace API.

Alternatively, people can follow the English Project on Twitter at
@TheEnglishProj <http://twitter.com/TheEnglishProj> and tag their tweet
with #localing.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

1. Ordnance Survey is Great Britain’s national mapping agency, providing
the most accurate and up-to-date geographic data, relied on by
government, business and individuals.

2. To download this news release visit www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/media.
There you can also subscribe to our RSS feed.

3. Ordnance Survey, the OS Symbol and OS OpenSpace are registered
trademarks. Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter, Inc.

For more information from Ordnance Survey, please contact:

*Rob Andrews* – Head of Corporate Communications on 023 8079 2265 or
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*Paul Beauchamp* – Senior Communications Officer on 023 8079 2568 or
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