[OSM-talk] Bilingual street names

[Simon Hewison]

Barnett, Phillip wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> But doesn't that give the English version the default prominence, as it
> were? I know some people who'd be a mite touchy about that :-) - perhaps
> use name:en and name:cym rather than just name? And do the renderers
> deal with that OK? 

I've been using name and nat_name
where nat_name is the national language name of the place.

Of course, in Wales, the national language, is Welsh. It just so happens 
that these days more people in Wales speak English fluently than Welsh.

If you're going to use name:language=placename, then I'd suggest that 
within Wales, you use name:cy=placename.

cy is the two letter ISO639-1 language code for the Welsh language.

There are some places in Wales where nobody uses an English placenames, 
or there is no English placename, eg. Ystrad Mynach.

There are also some places in Wales where there are no commonly used 
Welsh placenames, and Welsh speakers tend to use the English language 
place name, eg. Crosskeys.

There are also some places in Wales where the signposted welsh language 
placenames are wrong, and were made up by well-meaning but non-Welsh 
speaking civil servants after 1971 when protesters had been defacing or 
destroying English language only signs, and road signs in Wales were 
supposed to include the national language of Wales. An example of this 
was Aberdaugleddau, known to English speakers as Milford Haven. There 
are some signs about that incorrectly signposted it as Milffordd, though 
last time I was there, they had been amended with stickers with the 
correct spelling. This example must have been a guess at transliterating 
place names, since Haverfordwest was Hwlffordd.

Finally, some places in Wales have English language names that are an 
attempted anglicisation of the Welsh placename, so that it's not a 
translation, but something easier for non-Welsh speakers to pronounce 
and spell. For instance, Caerphilly (English) should actually be spelt 
Caerffili (Welsh). In many cases, early English mapmakers attempted to 
spell Welsh words using phonetic English and English grammar. The result 
is that these forms of names appear all over Wales.

Much of this information comes from 
http://www.caerphilly.gov.uk/pdf/equalities/welsh-language-scheme-05-08.pdf

As such, I reckon that you should set the name tag to the Welsh name in 
areas where the Welsh language has a high concentration of native 
speakers, and use name:en for the English name in such situations.

Ditto for street names. Many street names are signposted in Welsh only, 
yet they do have official English translations, eg. Stryd-y-Capel 
becomes Chapel Street, but it's never signposted as Chapel Street, and 
most English speakers refer to it as Stryd-y-Capel in their address. In 
which case, set the name tag to be the Welsh language.

There really is no substitute for local knowledge when doing place names 
in mapping. Since Wales has very little decent Yahoo maps coverage, 
we're stuck with visiting with a GPS and old maps like New Popular 
Edition (which regularly mis-spelt place names in Wales). If as an 
English speaker you want to map Wales, go and visit the place. It's a 
marvellous place. Speak to the locals, there's mostly friendly, 
especially the members of Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) 
if you show an interest in getting Welsh language placenames on maps 
with the correct spelling.

--
Simon Hewison