many natural features in Scotland as a whole but particularly the Highlands and Inner Hebrides have Gaelic names, or Norse names that were filtered through Gaelic before anything else and that on OS maps are written as Gaelic with English spelling, i.e. transliterations of the (original) Gaelic name. OS is actually currently putting many of these names back into Gaelic spelling, for example the latest editions show what had been Loch Quoich as Loch Cuaich and what had been Loch na Keall as Loch nan Ceall - same name, accurate spelling.
I want to propose that at least for within the Highland Council, wherever the name is purely a case of âphonetic Gaelicâ, on OSM the name: tag should have the Gaelic orthography and the transliteration be reserved for name_en:. To be clear, thatâs not if itâs half-translated, half-transliterated like River Hope - Abhainn Hòb, because those are two different names, but Ben Hope - Beinn Hòb would be an example.
Sounds good to me, as long as the name tag only contains one language rather than the unfortunate âbilingualâ ones Iâve seen around (and reverted when I encounter them). name should only have one language I feel, whichever is the most common in the area.
As the Wiki points out for ânameâ âthis key is set to the primary name of the feature in the real worldâ (their highlighting) and, in the real world in the Highland Council area it isnât as simple as the OP suggests.
If there is a rule (such as it is) then in such instances the primary name of well known features tends to be the âphonetic Gaelicâ one. So for example Cairn Gorm (which comes from An CĂ rn Gorm) is pretty universally referred to as Cairn Gorm, and indeed the national park in which it lies is named after it. Changing the ânameâ tag to âAn CĂ rn Gormâ would be perverse. âname:gdâ would be the right tag for the Gaelic name.
To be fair I donât think thatâs what the OP is suggesting here if I follow their River Hope vs Abhainn Hòb comment correctly, but with the Ben Hope vs Beinn Hòb suggestion it sounds fine a first glance but to someone who doesnât know how to pronounce Gaelic it would then read as âBen Hobâ and no one climbs Ben Hob, they climb Ben Hope as thatâs a well known feature, like Cairn Gorm.
However there are situations where the OPâs suggestion makes a lot of sense and the Ordnance Survey are clearly taking a balanced approach, treating each case on its merits. I think thatâs the right approach for us to be taking too rather than saying weâll always prefer the pure Gaelic, especially as most areas of Highland are now not primarily Gaelic speaking and in some cases, in Caithness and the Flow Country in particular, never were as it was a Norse speaking area.
So to my mind anyone proposing to make such changes should ideally have local knowledge and review current publications before going down this route.
+1 to that. There are certainly examples where the name that is most commonly in use is the Scots Gaelic name. This hill on Arran has only ever had a Scots Gaelic name in OSM, and OS OpenData shows the same Scots Gaelic name. Elsewhere there are places where English names are used. Changing all the ânameâ tags in an area from one language to another willy nilly will only cause problems.
Except where there are genuine geopolitical reasons to do it (e.g. Derry/Londonderry or Brussels) I personally think that thereâs thereâs no need to shoehorn two names into the name tag - we have perfectly valid name:en and name:gd tags for names in specific languages. This example, originally name=River Clyde (but with âAbhainn Chluaidhâ in name:gd) was recently changed by @jSeke to name=Abhainn Chluaidh / River Clyde and then back to âRiver Clydeâ by @SuborbitalPigeon. I used to drive pretty regularly between Abington and the capital and a hotbed of Scots Gaelic that area is not, so âRiver Clydeâ is surely correct here.
If anyone wants to see a map in a given language they can - plenty of maps have language switchers that use either names in OSM or translations elsewhere. As an example, for maps of GB Iâve always tried to avoid the name tag in case people shove multiple values in it, and instead display based on location - Scots Gaelic based on location, A selection of Welsh and English dependent on location, everything that is Irish shown in Irish, etc., etc.
ânot worrying about the name tag at allâ has surely got to be the way forward.
No to multiple languages in the name tag. Thatâs pushing a rendering issue onto the dataset⌠One key=value avoids confusion: which one first, whatâs the separator, etc.
Iâm also against any wholesale change of spellings for much of the reasons that paulatthehug points out above. Ben Hope is well known, Beinn Hòb is not and has no place in the âcurrent common usageâ tag.
I think it would be useful to have some transparency from you, who you are and your motivations, because to me it looks like you are trying to push Gaelic everywhere regardless of current usage as in the River Clyde example above.
I canât speak for Scotland (Iâm Welsh and speak Welsh) but I strongly disagree with having more than one language in the name tag unless both names are used by locals without any clear preference (usually this is in cases with a Welsh speaking local population + tourists)
On a slight tangent, iâve noticed that quite a few place names in Scotland have GĂ idhlig names as name:cy - this is pretty weird because we wouldnât use these. I did clean some up but thereâs too many.
Yes, Iâm sorry that in the past I have abused the name: tag but thatâs not what Iâm proposing at all here. I think @paulatthehug has it right here that each case should be taken on its merits, according to the number of Gaelic speakers in an area, OS maps and the verifyability of a Gaelic name.
In Gaelic I think most people would use the Welsh word, at least for Caergybi and Caerdydd (which to be fair are probably the only relevant places for the Gaelic world) and as you can see the whole of Wales is in Welsh if you look at OpenStreetMap in Gaelic.
no, I appreciate the link Wynndale sent to the Irish conversation which explained exactly why itâs bad, and Iâve learnt the error of my ways. I was in fact removing the double tags from that area, and genuinely missed that one relation. if you look at the rest of that changeset you can see I was removing bad data. WTF indeed.
I would respectfully point out that the words from âaccording the number of Gaelic speakers in an areaâ are yours not mine and theyâre not what I was saying at all.
Moreover if you pursue that route youâre damaging your own case. You referred in your original post to Ordnance Survey renaming Loch Quoich as Loch Cuaich, which you applauded, however it doesnât lie in a strongly Gaelic speaking area (which is, largely, the north west parts of Skye and the Western Isles). Certainly I donât believe Invergarry, which is the nearest community and where from access is available, is not a strong Gaelic area.
Iâd also suggest that even in strong Gaelic speaking areas there are some English names which are in such common use that even a Gaelic speaker would routinely use that name in conversation, rather than the historic Gaelic name, as it would be a âborrow wordâ, just like in any language in real world use.
I go back to what the Wiki says âthis key is set to the primary name of the feature in the real worldâ and I canât disagree with their highlighting. Now this is not without its perils as it is a subjective judgement that we have to make but to my mind itâs better than trying to apply blanket rules, for the reasons I point out above.
Although I can see the rational for the renderer of ânot worrying about the name tag at allâ, especially if youâre using vector rendering, I do think it has its purpose. Certainly in Scotland where we are going through a period of Gaelic rediscovery I would hope OSM would offer me the mapperâs best judgement of the âprimary name of the feature in the real worldâ because, as a map user I donât want to having to keep toggling language when map browsing.
And of course for raster map renderers having this sort of hinting in the name tag saves considerable resources so Iâd certainly hate to see if fall into disuse.
Itâs absolutely possible to have âarea-specific language namesâ in raster map tiles - thatâs how Tobermory appears using name:gd of mine here. Someone (the person making the map) needs to define the areas.
Somewhat related, there are links to a couple of blog posts here by the main OSM Carto developer. The second of those suggests (I think**) something similar to what Iâve been doing for a while. I read it as suggesting needing âa list of language areasâ; another reader suggests something based on existing OSM tagging.
** I canât be sure because the prose there is so impenetrable that itâs really difficult to understand.
Near as I can tell, their current proposal is designed to be entirely data-driven, relying on boundary relations to determine which name:*=* subkeys to use and in what order. It would intentionally ignore any case-by-case judgment of âthe primary nameâ in favor of something more consistent across a region. That said, it seems no respondent so far has successfully figured out the level of abstraction at which the proposal is intended to be evaluated and discussed, so I could be wrong in my interpretation of it.
If you are visiting a foreign country (even if just on the map), and you donât speak the local language, then displaying ânativeâ names by default isnât that helpful IMHO. For example (easier one) if you see all the cities and streets in Greece using the Greek alphabet, Itâs a bit hard to read those. Somewhat harder would be Arabia, China, or Japan. You get the idea. But maybe itâs just a bad customization of the map display.
Once I had been to Ireland, and the map bought at the airport had a town named âDroghedaâ (all from my fainting memory, so the spelling may be not quite correct). When driving with the car some road sign said âNewbridgeâ, and finally I saw the sign of a town named âDrochead nuaâ. Well, AFAIK the latter means ânew bridgeâ in Irish, the middle one is the English transliteration, and the former is the English translation. I think there really is a point of having (and displaying) multiple names, at least as far as those are used. Non-latin alphabets may be an additional problem for non-natives.
Thatâs what the new(ish) âSelect Languageâ button is for, and using one of the vector layers. Tagging for the renderer is frowned upon in OSM, OSM is primarily a dataset which has a nice map on the website for the purposes of making it useful for people.
