[Tagging] International and UN names

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 16:43 2022-03-15, Frederik Ramm đã viết:
> Coming full circle to the original discussion - please feel free to 
> invent something like "name:fr-UN" or something but please populate that 
> field only where an UN name differs from what is commonly used in 
> French. If I catch anyone duplicating the name:fr tag into name:fr-UN 
> for anything that has a name:fr tag then I will be *really* mad.

Rest assured, a specific name:fr-UN=* key would only be applicable where 
the "UN dialect" of French differs from other dialects, requiring an 
override. A data consumer that wants the full set of UN names can fall 
back to name:fr=* when name:fr-UN=* is absent.

This minimalism is a best practice when working with IETF language tags. 
Otherwise, all the name:de=* in Switzerland would be supplemented with 
name:de-CH-1996=*, which would be needlessly specific (indicating 
adherence to a spelling reform now taken for granted). [1]

Why doesn't the bare name=* key work the same way? If a data consumer 
falls back to name=* as a last resort, then it would have no idea what 
language it has fallen back to. An English TTS voice might be fed a 
Turkish name that it mangles, or a renderer could choose the wrong font 
for a Bengali name. If the language code is provided as context, the 
data consumer can switch to the appropriate voice or font automatically.

In theory, a data consumer could look up the default_language=* tag on 
the surrounding administrative boundary. However, this approach isn't 
foolproof. For example, Singapore has four official languages; most 
street names are signposted in English, but some neighborhoods have 
street names posted in Chinese or Malaysian instead, resulting in a 
name=* that can contain any one of these languages. Before, when [2] and 
[3] were only tagged name=* and name:zh=*, a data consumer had to guess 
that "The Helix Bridge" and "Jalan Rama Rama" are English and Malaysian, 
respectively.

Even in a country with a single official language, POIs in an ethnic 
enclave or tourist destination can still be in a different local 
language, which may not correspond to an administrative boundary that 
can be tagged with default_language=*.

[1] RFC 5646, p. 54
[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/164881537/history
[3] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/258869365/history

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us