Saint John, KS Or St. John, KS?

It seems the people of the small city of St. John, KS has won a minor victory with the USPS ... it's name in the USPS database is being changed from "Saint John" to "St John" (no period after "ST") and this news article suggests the change has already been made ... but has it?

http://www.hayspost.com/2014/06/27/...tal-service/

If you search the USPS website for SAINT JOHN, KS it doesn't come up; but it does come up if you search ST JOHN, KS ... but ... the reference once you find it still reads SAINT JOHN, KS. Hmmm...

https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocator...=20&&&&&&&&&

Maybe the corrections will take time to be made?

In any case, it seems the town is right that St. John should be its name, as it was named after John Pierce St. John, 8th Governor of Kansas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S...r_of_Kansas)

I wonder if their local postmark will change?

Perhaps it will be similar to the Canada postal conventions of French Canadian town names.

Saint Joseph, named after a male saint, can be ST-JOSEPH on a cancel, and towns or localities named after female saints can be Sainte Therese = STE-THERESE at times. They are both correct but the full name is more official.

But then there is St. John, NB nd St. John's, NL also? Hmmm.

Some towns are named Saint so-and-so, and some are named St So-and-so (with or without a period). The postal service use should agree with the "official" name of the town...but a database search should find it no matter which term is entered. On a technical level that is not rocket science to do.

For the record (and this is an on-going battle fought over many years with just about everyone in Toronto - apologies to my good friend Puzzler :) ), St. John, N.B. is "Saint John" with the "Saint" spelled out. Not so for the river which runs through the City into the Bay of Fundy. The river is "St. John River". The "Saint" is to differentiate the City from its sister city, St. John's, Newfoundland. It is also not supposed to be translatable, which, I assume, is to avoid confusion with St-Jean, Quebec. Over the years, as I may have mentioned before, there are a few confused business travellers or tourists who every year, disembark their planes in Saint John wondering why they aren't in Newfoundland. They are then faced with a tedious two-stop 1,000 mile flight to their intended destination.

Before the spelling convention change took place many years ago, postal cancellations did say "St. John, N.B.", so please don't throw out your stamps and covers with this cancellation assuming them to be fakes. You can send them to me if in doubt.