[Tagging] Fuzzy areas again: should we have them or not?

[stevea]

On Dec 23, 2020, at 6:34 PM, Graeme Fitzpatrick <graemefitz1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> In our area, we have one suburb "Coombabah". My Mum lived in this general area for over 80 years, & she always referred to it as "Coompabah", & was adamant that was how it was originally pronounced. I then found an official map of the area dated 1967, that showed that suburb as Coompabah, but current maps today show Coombabah.
> 
> Which is right?

Peking became Beijing.  (This is linguistic / social, perhaps not as overtly political as Saigon becoming Ho Chi Minh City, which are not "sound-alike").  I am likely mangling spelling for the sake of pronunciation, but I've heard Nairobi become Nay-ro-bi though it seems it's back to Nairobi (for now?)  Cities in South Africa seem to change, but I am far away and largely unaware, I'd be interested to know how the slight breeze I get about that is described as happening (off-list, please, if you care to talk to me about it).  Sometimes these changes are political and/or deliberate, but what Graeme talks about seems a bit linguistic or "sound-alike."  But then who is to say that one person (his Mum) pronouncing it one way isn't asserting "something political" (or "as it was, or still is, in/at a certain time...") in contrast to a slightly different pronunciation?  These are complex social questions.  So is a good deal of OSM, really.  (At "this level" perhaps).

Who said an open source data project can't get philosophical?

SteveA