Re: CHAT: postcodes

John Cowan wrote:

> Stephen Mulraney scripsit:
> >         Name
> >         Village
> >         Postal Town
> >         Co. <county name>
> >         Ireland
>
> One thing I've always wondered: does the postal town actually specify how
> the post is routed, or is it mainly to disambiguate the village name?

Well, I was agreeing with your general observation, not so much the
details: there isn't really a system of canonical addresses, so
addresses may or may not appear in the form you've indicated, and this
form is probably not particularly favoured.

In practice it's pretty common for for either the form "Village/Co. X"
or the form "Village/Major town" to appear. Irish townland names are
fairly unique: all but a few common forms identify the place exactly.
So the issue is usually not one of ambiguity, but efficency: if your
mailpiece is being sorted manually (say, if it's of a nonmachinable
form factor), and the sorter doesn't know where the address refers to,
they'll put it in a mystery box, awaiting the coming of the geniuses
who know every townland name in Ireland, in both languages (quote:
"Rathnalurney? Sure that's on Tory Island in county Donegal!"). So it
may miss that day's dispatches.

People haven't really caught on to the idea of a "postal" versus
"geographical" address; and you'll sometimes see compromises like

Clonee,
Co. Meath,
via Dublin 15.

[You'll also see "Clonee, Dublin 15".]

In short, usually to disambiguate, but it's not so clear-cut.



> > A few weeks ago I saw what's probably one of the shortest meaningful
> > non-box-number addresses:
> >
> > Scribes,
> > Dingle.
>
> Is "Scribes" a house name, a family name, or something else?
A shop, methinks. IIRC, it's a bookshop on Green St. ;)

> John Cowan
--
Stephen Mulraney    <ataltane at oceanfree.net>
In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.

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