This is annoying for data consumers, because the convention is that named things reliably have at least name, and optionally a bunch of name:*. When a data consumer sets a preference for a certain language too, name is useful as the ultimate fallback option.
Avoiding English just to avoid English is a bad reason to maim the data. It also feels like something most people don’t even find troublesome. These areas are rare exceptions on OSM where the vast majority of named things lie within areas where the use of name is already well-established and documented.
In any case, anyone with really strong feelings about any other language that might go in name can already use name:*.
Hardly relevant with oceans. Like continents, these are truly global affairs. Anyone who speaks a language with more than 100,000 speakers or so is likely to be covered by name:*. This is about name. For a global feature like an ocean there is hardly anything more appropriate than the lingua franca of the world.
Sure, some people will get upset over the dominance of English, but are they in a majority compared to people who will find not assigning any name just silly?
In a recent change set discussion I had a friendly argument about which language to use and I checked out Wikipedia to see which languages are most spoken in this world.
According to the English Wikipedia it is, by a large margin, English (first + second language).
Using this reasoning I vote for the English name of these large waterbodies.
According to the English Wikipedia it is, by a large margin, English (first + second language).
Using this reasoning I vote for the English name of these large waterbodies.
I don’t think second languages should be relevant for this question, rather have a look at native language speakers, English is only on the third rank, if you trust Wikipedia and its sources:
The large number of people learning English as a second language is what makes it useful as an international language. On the other hand, a language having a large number of native speakers just means the region it comes from has a high population, not that it is useful around the world.
Even if English wasn’t spoken by anyone as a native language, yet still the most spoken language (exclusively as a second language then of course) it would be useful for this purpose.
I have to adjust it, when I wrote this the situation I had in mind were smaller objects, locally similar questions arise frequently, but for truly international objects like oceans second languages are indeed relevant.
We probably would need to extend this to features that are slightly less international than oceans too. Almost everything about the sea represented by node 303,209,363 is incredibly contentious. But at least labeling the sea in English is unsurprising, considering it’s also one of the International Hydrographic Organization’s official languages.
The alternatives would be far more controversial, potentially creating problems for both contributors and data consumers in the countries that would lose out:
Official language of the country that claims the most of the sea – this is the stuff wars are made of.
Official language of the most populous country on the sea – Simplified Chinese hands down; by analogy, the Mediterranean would be in Arabic and the Black and Baltic seas would be in Russian.
Official language of the country with the longest length of coastline – depends how you measure it.
Language most widely spoken among inhabitants of the Paracels and Spratlys – depends who you count as an inhabitant.
And nerd-sniping users as on the Baltic Sea would prove just as contentious, as we debate which country’s language goes first (repeat the list above).
The only issue with English is that the parties to this dispute naturally also disagree on what the English name should be. But this is a minor dispute by comparison. At least picking the name that the IHO uses gives us a leg to stand on, making it harder for observers to accuse us of having arbitrarily picked a side.
The vast majority of the oceans are High Seas and outside control of any nation. Looking at languages of coastal states thus makes little sense.
The official languages of the United Nations are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. That seems like a fair way to fill the name tag. Alternatively, look specifically for official languages of international maritime organisations.
But at least labeling the sea in English is unsurprising, considering it’s also one of the International Hydrographic Organization’s official languages.
if our mapping activity wasn’t forbidden in China and OpenStreetMap blocked, I would expect this node to have a Chinese “name”
That, combined with English being the modern global lingua franca, seems to make sense to default to English for oceans and seas. Of course, localisation makes complete sense using the name:XX tagging and it is up to renders to support this.
I’ve always resisted this argument because I don’t think that this project should special-case English names just because it started in England, or a lot of contributors are from English-speaking countries - I’m usually that person banging on about how changeset comments should try and be in a language that the editor will understand, etc.
However here it’s difficult to resist English as a fallback, for the reasons outline above.
A compromise is not necessarily loved by anyone. Would people in Indonesia, the Philippines, or Vietnam agree that Chinese is the most neutral possibility? What about other countries that don’t claim the sea as their own but rather insist that it’s international waters subject to freedom of navigation?
Are you proposing now we should split the ocean into international part and several national parts? For me it would be very strange to see whole Arabia labeled in Arabic, but the waters around are in English. Same for China, Japan, Russia, Spain…
If it should be English, due to lingua franca, then it definitely needs to be int_name. name should contain English for that reason.
