Re:Show HN: Give 7 billion people a physical address
by abirkill on Thursday September 04, 2014 @02:04PM
(#8269720)
Not all houses in the UK have numbers, especially in rural areas. If you don't live in a village or larger, it's pretty common to have a house name, and no number. (Edit: I just checked the village I grew up in, and was surprised to find that out of 48 houses covered by the postcode, 41 of them only have a house name, no number -- I'd have guessed closer to a 50/50 ratio).
Even in cities, it's not particularly unusual to have houses that don't have numbers, especially older houses -- in my parents' postcode, two of the houses only have a name.
House names are fully supported by correctly implemented postcode lookup systems -- for example, in the common online use-case where you enter your postcode and a list of houses is brought up, the list will include the houses that only have name identifiers.
Even in cities, it's not particularly unusual to have houses that don't have numbers, especially older houses -- in my parents' postcode, two of the houses only have a name.
House names are fully supported by correctly implemented postcode lookup systems -- for example, in the common online use-case where you enter your postcode and a list of houses is brought up, the list will include the houses that only have name identifiers.