[OSM-talk] street names on several languages

[Dave Stubbs]

On 30/09/2007, Arieh Skliarouk <skliarieh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to edit map of my city, namely to add names of streets for
> already existing GPS traces.
>
> I understand that to add name on english, I should add attribute "name". Is
> that correct?
>
> What attribute should I use for names on different languages?
>
> Will I be able to find the street from search bar using either of the names
> I put in?
>

You should use "name" for the default language of the place you are
mapping. So if the street is in England it will probably be English,
but in Germany it would be in German. If you want to put in names in
another language as well then you can add it as
"name:<2-letter-language-code>".
For an example go see the node for London
(http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.4/node/107775)
It has:
name=London   (the default English)
name:fr=Londres   (French)
name:cy=Llundain   (Welsh)

All of these are searchable from the front page.

There's a list of 2-letter language codes on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes