[OSM-talk] Relevance of the “name” tag in places where there is no obvious associated language

[Martin Constantino–Bodin]

Interesting. I sent a message two days ago with a very similar topic, 
but it hasn’t yet found a moderator to accept it (or reject it). I’m 
sending it again here, maybe it can help with the discussion.

Regards,
Martin.

Hi,

Some context first.  So there has been this changeset that triggered 
some discussions: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/77845837 
Changeset comments in not a great place for discussion, so I suggest 
that we continue here.  (Thanks @SomeoneElse for the link! ☺)

First, here is what is not an issue:  the language-specific “name” tags 
(“name:en”, “name:de”, etc.), and the “name” tags where there is a clear 
default language (because the place uses a particular language, because 
it is in a place using this particular language, etc.).

The issue comes in places where there is not a particular language, like 
oceans, most seas, or places like Antartica.  In most of these places, 
the “name” tag is actually using the English name.

The issue is that English, despite being a de facto internal language, 
is felt by some communities as a non-neutral choice, given all the 
inequalities it yields among people in the world, given its complexity, 
etc.  The Esperanto community is particularly criticising the choice of 
the English language as an international language.  I don’t think that 
anyone wants to fight about whether English is neutral here: this is not 
my question. I’m writing this message in English as the title of this 
mailing list displays in English, but I’m willing to rephrase the 
question in Esperanto.

The question I would like to ask is about the relevance of having a 
“name” tag in places where there is no default language—knowing that all 
the “name:en”, “name:eo”, etc. are already there.  I can imagine that 
some renderers might expect to always be a tag “name”, and I wonder how 
fixable this is (especially in the cases where there is a localised 
name).  If you have any argumented pointer about this, I would be 
interested.

As far as I know, the wiki doesn’t state anything about English being 
the default language for the name tag: 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names It thus doesn’t feel like this 
question has already been discussed.  However, I never participated in 
the main OSM mailing list and thus missed any such discussions if they 
already took place.  If so, please give me an argumented link.

I tried to formulate the question to avoid having to fight over English 
vs Esperanto or any debate like that.  Please do not fight because of 
this message: I know how harmful such debates can be ☹

Regards,
Martin.

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