[OSM-talk] alt_name tag

[Liz]

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Valent Turkovic wrote:
> Hi, I have edited wiki page:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:alt_name
>
> should this first go through some suggestion process?

Just to make this somewhat clearer for others
In the Balkans there are numerous examples of government and language change, 
together with complete alteration in the social order.

So the street or place might be known locally by an old communist-era name 
(say Tito Street) but have been officially renamed after some other 
international dignitary (say Mother Teresa). So while I might say "you'll find 
me in Tito Street", when I'd put my address on an envelope it would have to be 
"Mother Teresa Street".

This is in addition to the Croatian examples where the abbreviations of the 
street name are in common use.

A place like Kosovo has streets named in the Serbian language with communist-
era labels, then those streets named in Serbian with newer names, and the same 
streets named in Albanian which are different again. Then these names may be 
in roman or cyrillic script for Serbian, and Albanian script could be roman or 
roman with added Turkish letters


http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/help.htm
gives a large variety (eleven) of name types