Automated edits/abrax5

Mechanical edit of Finnish island/islet names

This page documents a planned mechanical edit by abrax5: adding names to unnamed sea islets in Finland from the National Land Survey's place names (MML Maastokartta / Geographic Names).

Who

abrax5 (Dominik, d@rtsh.es)

Why

Thousands of archipelago islets are drawn in OSM but have no name, though MML names them. Only tags change, never geometry.

Scope

21.25–25.30°E, 59.68–60.32°N (Utö–Helsinki). About 1,250 islets, mostly in Kemiönsaari, Parainen, Hanko and Raasepori.

Selection

An islet gets a name only when:

• it is a closed natural=coastline way, or a rock/islet way on the water side of the coastline,
• exactly one MML island name point lies inside it,
• it has no name tag of any kind, and
• no OSM object of that name lies within 300 m.

Lake islands, shared features (reserves, military areas, relations) and doubtful spellings are left out. Each way is re-fetched from the API just before upload; anything changed since is skipped.

Tags added

• name=*, name:fi=*/name:sv=* as spelled in MML
• place=islet only if no place tag exists
• source:name=MML Maastokartta

Example: way/25724656 gets the name Gallören.

Licence

MML data is CC BY 4.0, which MML considers compatible with OSM; see Contributors#National Land Survey of Finland.

Execution

• Each batch is reviewed in JOSM before upload.
• One changeset per municipality, tagged mechanical=yes, source=MML Maastokartta, with a description=* linking this page.

Discussion

• Community forum (Suomi)

Open questions

• Should named island groups get place=archipelago nodes, or be left out?

Result

Status: done. Uploaded on 29 October and 4 November 2026 in 43 changesets with 1,348 edits, each one reviewed in the review tool before upload.

Edits	Count
Unnamed islet outline gets name, name:fi/name:sv and place	1,320
Named islet gets its missing second-language name	20
New place=archipelago node for an island group	8

By municipality: Kemiönsaari 489, Parainen 455, Hanko 162, Raasepori 138, Inkoo 41, Kirkkonummi 24, Helsinki 15, Sipoo 8, Salo 7, Espoo 4, Naantali 3, Siuntio 1, Sauvo 1.

Where MML gives the same Swedish name with and without a space (Ljusskärs grundet / Ljusskärsgrundet), the spelling without the space was used.

Island groups are otherwise not part of this edit. MML gives only a point for a group, so they are better mapped by hand as place=archipelago multipolygon relations.

Changesets: 191207763, 191208729, 191209317, 191209336, 191209413, 191209428, 191482774, 191483293, 191483332, 191483343, 191483357, 191483386, 191483408, 191483649, 191483853, 191483940, 191484052, 191484053, 191484137, 191484138, 191484139, 191484140, 191484142, 191486358, 191486359, 191486360, 191486361, 191486362, 191486363, 191486364, 191486365, 191486373, 191486380, 191486702, 191486703, 191486704, 191486705, 191486802, 191486803, 191486804, 191486805, 191486806, 191486807

Problems or wrong names: reply in the forum topic or message abrax5. Any changeset can be reverted on request.