[gerdesj]

Email is just like physical mail and thankfully just as endearingly human (sometimes).

Once upon a time (1970/80s) I lived on and off in a mystic land called West Germany. Our postal addresses ended with incantations such as BFPO 40.

Around 1985ish my granny send a Christmas card to us. I should note that she was at this time nearly seventy and sadly suffering from Parkinsons. She addressed the card, in rather crabbed but legible handwriting, to:

Graham and Heath BFPO 40

My mum's name is abbreviated - her daughter. At that time Rheindahlen (nr Moenchengladbach) had a pretty large contingent of Brits in it - it was HQ (BAOR).

The card arrived well before Chrimbo and it took about a week judging by the post mark, which was petty normal in those days. She shoved it into a post box in Ipplepen, nr Newton Abbot, Devon and it found its way to an obscure address in another country. I seem to recall she also forgot the stamp but it still got through.

I'm sure mail like that becomes a point of honour to deliver and HM PO and BFPO did the job admirably.

That attitude is how email MTAs are generally designed to work. They cling on to the good old days and sadly the world is a bit shit. Case sensitivity ... lol!

[FinnKuhn]

When I was a child I sent a postcard to my grandparents. I forgot to put the house number and addressed the letter to "Oma und Opa" (Grandma and Grandpa). Logically it should not have been delivered successfully.

Thankfully though, the postal worker knew my grandparents had grandchildren and therefore just asked the potential recipients for the name of their grandchildren to determine, which grandparents the postcard was addressed to. To me it's still a miracle that it got delivered at all.

[pseudohadamard]

Up until at least the 1970s you could do this with smaller places in Germany. My mother has some old letters with addresses like "$surname, $village near $larger-village, West Germany". I assume it was routed to $larger-village, they passed it on to $village, and everyone there knows everyone else so the postie dropped it off the next day.

[cjs_ac]

Bill Bryson claimed to have received a letter addressed to ‘Bill Bryson, Writer, Yorkshire’.

I have some cousins who live in a small town in Australia where the houses have neither names nor numbers. You just address the envelope to ‘<name>, <street>, <town>’, and it’s the postie’s responsibility to know where everyone lives. (‘Postie’ is the official job title in Australia Post because it’s gender-neutral.)

[eythian]

I lived in mildly rural NZ back in the day and it was the same, addresses were "name, street, RD# (rural delivery route number), town" and your mailbox had your name on the side (and a flag you could put up if you wanted mail collected.)

Some time roughly mid-nineties we got numbers but originally they were just for emergency services, only later were they also for post, but I seem to recall the whole rural delivery system may have changed somehow around then too.

[gerdesj]

It works for Wal and Cooch!

(I am a Brit and a massive fan of Footrot Flats)

[pseudohadamard]

RD addresses are still the same. Downside is you have to pay extra for rural delivery because the posties get danger money for avoiding the sheep-eating wetas.

[KurSix]

I love these examples because they show that addressing has never really been as formal as we like to pretend

[mitxela]

Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

[throw0101c]

And various discussions:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mjt.me.uk

[wang_li]

Until 2025 Carmel-by-the-Sea in California had no street addresses. The houses have names or you just have to know who lives in which building. They also didn't have postal delivery, they all had to go to the town post office and pick up their mail.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

New rule: when emailing someone, you need to include their name. If you do that, the email delivery gods will correct typos in your email address.