An address locator lets you convert textual descriptions of locations into geographic features. Address locators are stored and managed in a workspace you choose. The workspace can be a file folder, file geodatabase, personal geodatabase or SDE geodatabase.

When you create an address locator, you have the option to use alternate street names. When geocoding an address, the alternate street name table is also searched to find potential candidates, where streets have more than one name.

There are four main parts of the process of creating a new address locator with alternative names for streets. The first is to choose a locator style that uses an AltName. The second is to point the locator at the data that it will be used to match against. The third is to match the fields that the locator expects to see against the fields in the reference (street) data. The fourth is to identify the Join ID field, which is used to relate the alternate names of the street features in the reference street feature class.