[OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[SomeoneElse]

On 28/05/2015 16:38, Andrew Guertin wrote:
>
> A quick internet search shows plenty of results for Абергавенни, 
> including Wikipedia, hotel booking sites, and Harry Potter websites, 
> and by looking at Google's book results, you can see that it's been in 
> use since at least the 1800s. And with just a few minutes' look, I 
> found someone from the next city over using the name[1]. I understand 
> this was just an example, but it seems to show the opposite of what 
> you wanted. The town with the English name Abergavenny also has a 
> Russian name Абергавенни, which is in use by locals, and has been 
> established for hundreds of years.

No, it does not.  Abergavenny / Y Fenni has actual names that people 
from there use to describe the place (and appears on signs) in two 
languages; "Абергавенни" is merely a translation of one of them. It's 
not verifiable on the ground.

There is a fundamental difference between "an actual name for a place" 
and "a translation of one of those names" - it's that distinction that 
we would lose by populating name:ru, name:xx or whatever alongside 
name:cy and name:en.  The russian-language link talking about 
Abergavenny Food Festival does indeed use the word "Абергавенни"- and 
that's a translation of "Abergavenny" in that message (they even put 
"Abergavenny" in brackets afterwards to make it clear that that's what 
it is - it's clearly not guaranteed to be understood on its own).

If "Абергавенни" is added as name:ru for Abergavenny, how would we tell 
the real names (the ones that people have historically used locally to 
refer to the place) from the tranlations?

Cheers,

Andy