OSM follows the on the ground principle, which means that street names and other proper names are generally entered as they appear on signs, even if those names deviate from the general spelling rules.
Which sounds like we should spell without correcting (METRO, SIXT).
But then it continues:
Possible exceptions are described in some of the following sections.
And also:
Names are adapted to the local capitalisation rules
So, which one is it then? Metro or METRO?
Not having a clear stance on this question makes some edit wars, both here and in Name Suggestion Index. You can find multiple tickets asking to change METRO to Metro and vice-versa. And they don’t know how to address them. Sometimes they just close them, sometimes they change it. In one particular issue they wrote this:
We’ve gone back and forth on Metro/Penny/Rewe so many times I’ve lost count.
OSM’s traditional stance has been “Metro” not “METRO”, but I think this is one of those rules that has been implicit for so long it’s never been written down.
From day one we were mapping streets in the UK as “High Street” rather than “HIGH STREET” even though street signs here are almost always upper-case - in this case, as in most others, it’s not so much orthography as typography.
All-caps gets turned into title case (“SAFEWAY” becomes “Safeway”) unless it’s an acronym (“BECU” stays “BECU” because it stands for “Boeing Employees’ Credit Union”, but they never use the full name outside of legal documents).
All lower-case gets turned into title case.
Non-traditional mixed case stays as-is (“TuneTech” remains “TuneTech”).
There’s a natural tension between use cases. Map labels tolerate quite creative spelling at times, but the same names appear in other contexts, such as search results, inline in sentences, and in navigation guidance instructions (both visually and spoken aloud). I suspect very few of us are totally consistent. Making matters worse are names that pretend to be acronyms but don’t stand for anything. This is a very frequent source of discontent over in the Name Suggestion Index. We can’t please everyone. I fear the only durable solution is to make up our own unambiguously cased names for these brands.
Mine: almost never use all-caps. It’s more a style than upper case/lower case. So yes, abbreviations (not only acronyms) can be an exception (possibly not everywhere).
In small caps, would you use or ?
It should depend on specific case. In other words, what is its actual name?
Is it just CAPITAL CASE being used on sign? How it is capitalized in text on their website or marketing materials. How it it capitalized when mentioned in text by other people? Or written in newspapers etc.
Note that we do not include Ⓡ or ™ either even when persistently used in marketing materials.
What is on sign is important but does not trump everything else.
But it is not always title case, for in my area for example name=IKEA is used and for reasons unclear to me it feels right (note: it does not matter whether it is acronym or fake acronym, though acronyms tend more often to be capitalized).
Not sure whether it was ever written down somewhere? Feel free to do so based on research from this thread, preferably share it so it can be reviewed (or propose some text here first).
I assume some languages’ language authorities have ruled on the issue. But at least in English, it’s purely a matter of style. Many style guides defer to the trademark within reason. (I remember a lot of grumbling about the i- prefix that Apple helped popularize. To this day, it still requires special cases in lots of software.) We take a similar stance regarding abbreviations, allowing “JoS. A. Bank” as a middle ground between “Joseph Alfred Bank” and “JᵒS. A. Bank”.
On the other hand, some influential house styles take a harder line. Famously, The New York Times takes the stance that, if it’s a true acronym, or if periods between each of the letters of the initialism get too unwieldy, then spell it like a normal word. Thus O.S.M. and G.I.S. but Nasa, Unesco, and yes, Ikea and Aldi.
The real fun comes when we consider Japanese brands. Japan has a very strong convention of casting all romaji brand names in all caps, so UNIQLO and LAWSON (even when the brand gets reimported back into the U.S. where it originated).
Similar situation with '. A website I saw yesterday had Kingsley, Kingsleys & Kingsley’s all showing, so which should it be? They had their icon at the top of the page as Kingsley’s so I went with that.
I research as well, mostly to understand is it acronym or not.
I typically see two cases:
Big(ish) business branding: they force their brand heavily, and use uppercase everywhere: on the sign, on their website in marketing materials. When mentioned in news, if news outlet is half-decent, they will correct it to Title case.
Small business, no website, no mention in news. The only info I have is on the sign.
Not altering the brand/trademark maybe make some sense when companies don’t fight to stand out, to get more customer attention.
But if company that writes their name in uppercase stand out in between others that write it in title case, then more and more of them have the initative to use uppercase names.
At the end of the day, OSM is a database, not an ad-platform. We should not care if someone wants to stand out. On contrary, we should care that everyone gets the same treatment, and same chance.
People mention fake acronyms. I don’t think that it is so often, but again, if acronyms are abused to stand out, or their original acronym meaning is long time forgotten (e.g. IKEA), then we can also decide to just use title case.
It’s true, there is a race to the bottom, not only with case. Is the brokerage firm called “E*TRADE”, “E*Trade”, or just “E-Trade”? Is the public television station “ThinkTV” or “ThinkTV”? “Hamilton!” has been hoping for decades that the city’s official exclamation mark would attract investment and good publicity, not the ire of grammarians. Some brands try to stand out in the opposite direction. Is the auction site “eBay” or “ebay”?
In the end, I think we just have to remember that name=* is preferably a common-sense name. We may bend the rules somewhat for trademarked names, but if a brand gets a little too creative, it’s unlikely that the average user would call them by that name anyways. Plus, we aren’t signmakers, so we don’t need to replicate the appearance of a logo or wordmark, even if they try to in the prose on their website.
or 
?
They had their icon at the top of the page as Kingsley’s so I went with that.