I've started labeling the county roads in Telfair and Wheeler. It needs to be done; it should be done. That's what led me to OSM in the first place. However, as T.S. Eliot penned about cats, the naming of roads is a difficult matter and isn't just a holiday game. And it seems that the roads in these two counties must have three or more names as well.

The problem is that until a short time ago the roads were not names at all, other than informal names that could vary from one end of the road to the other. For instance, there were two roads called Firetower in Telfair, and which you meant depended on which side of the county you were in. As with many counties in Georgia, the roads received an offical name only with the advent of a 911 system. And that should be the end of that, right?

Wrong. First of all, the 911 road name may or may not agree with the signs - where signs exist. The sign name sometimes doesn't agree with the name the US Postal Service says is the correct 911 name. And, to top it off, the Georgia Deparment of Transportation seems to have a different set, as evidenced by their signs preceding the intersections. That's the current set, by the way: The road use maps for both counties show pre-911 system names. Quite a bit of "fun."

However, there is one common denominator. Reguardless of the name, the county road number remains the same. Sometimes this is still posted on the back of the stop signs; sometimes it's posted in tiny characters on the official road signs. But it's the only consistant point.

With that in mind, here's my approach to editing the roads:

1. Go with the road sign name, where available.
2. Add or edit the name_1 tag so that it contains the correct county road number.

That way, even if there's confusion over the official name, anyone who checks can be certain of the road by checking its county number.