[Talk-in] Multilingual name tagging convention in India

[Arun Ganesh]

Bringing this up since there are recent edits adding multilingual labels to
the `name` tag [1][2].

The current convention that has been followed is to use `name` for the
local name in latin script. The reasoning if I remember was two fold:
- English being one of the official languages, latin script is widely used
in cities and in public signages in smaller towns. Only in villages it is
uncommon.
- Keeping the tagging convention simple[3], that could be used throughout
the country in a standard way

Keeping just one name in each tag, we have been able to avoid issues like
the first mapper rule[4] that could cause unnecessary regional conflicts
over ordering of scripts like in Belgium (and they have just two languages).

Since we can add the regional names in their own name:lang tag, no data is
ultimately lost, and it is upto the data consumer to choose which language
to support for the user.

Would be great to hear positives and negatives of this approach and how it
benefits the public Is it time to revise this convention to be more
regional rather than national?


[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/40472998
[2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/40479683
[3]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_India#Naming_in_different_scripts_and_languages

-- 
Arun Ganesh
@planemad
<http://j.mp/ArunGanesh>
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