One of the lovely things about OpenStreetMap is that, because we are entirely non-profit-making (sometimes aggressively so), we don’t have to submit to ridiculous edicts in fear of what it might do to our bottom line.
(psa: yes, this is exactly why you should support tools and agitators for independent services built on OSM, rather than just Mapbox, Overture and their ilk)
There’s quite a few people suggesting “name:en-us”/“name:en_us” but thinking from th standpoint of machine readability this is wrong. As it it implies that “Gulf of America” translates from another language/dialect such as “name:en”:“Gulf of Mexico”.
The country calls it “blah” not the language, not its dialect.
I perused the wiki and it doesn’t seem to have any regional country code sub key tags, just sub keys that are intended for translation/transliteration.
There may be another tag in use for regional names in use already, but none that I could find documented.
In the BCP 47 standard, en-US[1][2] would mean the name in English suitable for the United States, aka “American English”. name:*=* subkeys vary based on what speakers of the language or dialect would tend to use for whatever reason – usually for linguistic reasons, but not always. Very often the name:*=* tags of international features aren’t direct translations from one subkey to another.
Regardless, most of the discussion has centered around using subkeys of alt_name or official_name – recognizing that, even within a single dialect, a place can have multiple names for various reasons. The reason to avoid name:en-US=* is that a bare name=* is for the common or primary name as it appears in the real world, not necessarily the official name on paper, so any name:en-US=* should also reflect this on-the-ground reality. But an alt_name:en-US=* would have no such constraint, other than limiting it to notable names, as opposed to the mundane typos or idiosyncrasies of private eccentrics.[3]
There’s also a counterproposal to map a second gulf in the gulf. That would presumably entail sticking “Gulf of America” in name=*, which once again is for the primary name in the primary language(s). I’d expect that to quickly become mired in controversy.
Since around 2018, the convention in OSM has been BCP 47 codes for name:*=* subkeys. If you see anyone referring to en_US with an underscore, that syntax is from a different standard, ISO/IEC 15897. ↩︎
Apple operating systems mix the two syntaxes in some cases. For example, if the user sets the system language to “English (Australian)” and the system region to “Mexico”, iOS 18 will incorrectly report en-AU_MX as the current locale identifier, even if you specifically ask for a BCP 47 identifier. ↩︎
Like the one unnamed individual who for years has reportedly been pestering the Board on Geographic Names about renaming the gulf after America. No word on this person’s identity, but I guess they no longer need to do that anymore. ↩︎
The confusion is understandable since they originally were going with “Gulf of the Confederacy” until they realize they wanted to win this time.
To make my comment somewhat constructive. instead of binding which name is displayed based on the language which if i’m reading correct(i’m most likely not) makes it a translation issue, could it be dependent on if the user is using imperial or metric? I’m 100% sure there are a bunch of reasons that’s a stupid idea and won’t work, but well…I really wanted to make that gulf of the confederacy joke.
I understand the discussion is pointed that way in this thread, but it’s my opinion that it’s misdirected.
Whichever of the name/alt_name/official_name tags it specifies, the proposals are pushing to sweep it under the rug as a language based distinction. BCP 47 is still a definition for languages, no matter how you slice it.
Once it’s accepted officially by the relevant US government agencies, this name is applicable to the region of the US only (at this stage). Once it’s accurately conveyed as being the name for the region, it can have further distinctions of languages and dialects from there.
En-us isn’t the only language within the US that the citizens of the US will need to refer to the place by its new name.
What do you think about the definition “It can also be used to indicate that content is expressed in a way that is appropriate for use throughout a region, for instance, Spanish content tailored to be useful throughout Latin America.”? Is that about language only? BCP 47 has been extended to certainly much more than languages now, if you insist otherwise.
“The main difference among locales is in terms of language; there may also be some differences according to different countries or regions. However, the line between locales and languages, as commonly used in the industry, are rather fuzzy.” Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML)
" In practice, many people use [BCP47] codes to mean locale codes instead of strictly language codes. It is easy to see why this came about; because [BCP47] includes an explicit region (territory) code, for most people it was sufficient for use as a locale code as well. For example, when typical web software receives a [BCP47] code, it will use it as a locale code. Other typical software will do the same: in practice, language codes and locale codes are treated interchangeably." Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML)
Content for a certain country in that language, and content in that language of a certain country, are practically interchangable. This is further clarified by different *_name= in OSM. If you need an exact distinction, it should be a special case, and handled specially. There’s no need to use eg official_name:en-US:US= to mean content for US in English in US by default.
Regardless, for other languages in USA, you could ask about adding other official_name:*-US afterwards. Or perhaps more precisely if it is considered that there is no official US language, or there’s no official decision in other langauges, technically official_name:*-US-t-en-US= as I pointed towards?
Citizens don’t “need” to do anything. The executive order is only binding on the U.S. federal government. The Alaska state government continues to consider Denali the official name of the mountain, as it has for over half a century, and that’s only binding on the state government. The First Amendment protects our right to call these things what we please. (And this project’s official domicile in England and Wales may provide additional cover.) To the extent that we go along with either renaming, it would be for reasons beyond the executive order.
As long as OSM continues to define name:locale=* as the common name in locale, then a different base key is necessary. At this point, “Gulf of America” is hardly the common name. A recent poll found 70% disapproval versus 25% approval among a thousand U.S. adults. The Associated Press has issued style guidance retaining “Gulf of Mexico” except for a sidenote. Maybe other style guides and map publishers will go along with the renaming, maybe not. We’ll be able to track usage over time using tools such as Google Ngram Viewer, as well as our usual on-the-ground observations as a community.
As far as I know, there’s little precedent for U.S. federal or state governments standardizing a non-English name. For example, both Texas and Tejas appear in Spanish-language publications issued by both the federal government and Texas state government. Though you can find government mentions of golfo de California in Spanish, mostly by the California state government, mar de Cortés is more established.
Nevertheless, if Voz de América and other government agencies start routinely referring to the Gulf as golfo de América or somesuch, even when they aren’t referring to the executive order, then a parallel tag for Spanish may be worth considering at some point. But probably not a tag that means “the primary name in Spanish in the United States”.
Not sure I have the background to understand all the underlying debate, but I have a general perception that we are erring somewhere between languages and authorities. Maybe a way to look at it is to see all of these as human groups, represented or not by a formal authority. Those who read US English are a human group, those who are or feel bound by a federal decision are another human group and so on. The trick is then to capture what the appropriate human group is and how to represent it in tag names (e.g. in another domain there’s a large human group who feels bound by ISO216 and that could provide a way to name that group in tags)
I don’t think the citizens of the US will “need” to refer to the gulf as “Gulf of America”, except officially. There is still a long way from being mandated like this from the POTUS to the government he leads, to being accepted and used by regular citizens. This is why official_name exists.
What’s amusing about this whole kerfluffle is that it really is and has always been the Gulf of America. As the left likes to remind us, the US is not “America”. Canada is “America”, Mexico is “America”, Guatemala is “America”, Brazil is “America”. Why shouldn’t the largest gulf in the Americas have been called the Gulf of America from the start? I know, I know, names are accidental and arise from usage, not dictat, but still.
I don’t know what “left” you are talking about [citation needed?], but outside the US, America = the United States of America. In the contexts of geography and geology, America is not used - ‘the Americas’ is sometimes used to collectively refer to the two to four geographic regions or five(-ish) tectonic plates. Outside of such specific usages, no one uses ‘the Americas’, instead using North, Central, South America and the Caribbean. No one, no one, outside of the US will ever say they are American or that their country is America.
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Mammi71
(One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)
187
Ah! Now I understand what the President means by the statement “Make America Great Again”
To put some numbers on this, a poll conducted days before the executive order found strong support for Denali. Even the most uncontested official name change would take a while to permeate society, let alone something that reveals a partisan divide.
Moments ago, the Alaska State Legislature voted to affirm Denali as the mountain’s official name and formally request that the federal government reconsider its renaming. There were no objections in the Senate. I’m unsure if the Ohio General Assembly has ever passed anything (symbolic) regarding the mountain’s name. It was always Ohio’s congressional delegation forestalling Denali at the federal level. In today’s Senate session, one of the resolution’s supporters noted that even Ohio expats in Alaska call it Denali.
While listening the ‘A Political Blues (and Waiting for Columbus)’, was reading the not before visited place=sea wiki and the socks came off since the Adriatic was just reverted from monster MP to just a node in it’s pre 2019 spot and finding that no sea, ocean, gulf, bay etc bodies of salty water names don’t print on Carto, not on Humanitarian either. Appears the name of the topic so shows in the first sentence of the wiki and left unscathed so far. Trust this one is too on the watch list.