Why to old_name? The Armenian names are in use among the language speakers. I found numerous links to news papers, Wikipedia articles, web pages which referes to the Armenian name of the places. These name are alive and thus belong to the name:hy key. I still think the only one who can now decide is the DWG. This is therefore my last comment to the topic.
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That is correct but only up to a point. Since Londoners are unlikely to
call their city āLondresā, our āon-the-groundā rule does not work well
for name:xx tags (you wonāt be able to go there and photograph a sign or
so). Instead we would expect a significant number of French-speaking
people to be using that name.
There have been situations in the past where someone, for example, added
Russian names to little-known 1000-people villages in rural Africa and
it turned out that these were translations or transliterations of names
but not names that actual people speaking that language would use to
mean that actual village. In these cases the name is ficticious.
It is sometimes hard to prove if a name is a made-up translation/
transliteration, or something that is actually in use. The bar for āin
useā is however rather low, and as you correctly say, the nation in
which a city is in doesnāt have a say about the names other people might
use.
I am just writing this as a general observation, not being familiar with
the conflict being discussed here.
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old_name was just a suggestion. Whether it is an alternative name, an old name or the name in another language is a matter for the field of philosophy and would depend on who you ask 
Few people would know the local situation the way @menkaura does, but I would suggest that the easiest way here is to leave the :hy names as they were. If the Armenian language has a set of names for these places - then it is not wrong for OSM to have them. You canāt force the Armenians to say āAgdamā instead of āAnkaā, even if you could force them to not live there anymore.
As long as the battle is not over the name tag (hrmph persian gulf 
)
Totally agree with @menkaura . There are many examples how town names in Karabakh area were changed to new names that were given just 20 years ago. For example, Khojaly (Xocalı) town was renamed to Ivanyan in 2001 just after Ivanyanās death and adding this name as an official armenian name is not correct, because until occupation even armenians called it Khojaly. What we see is somw fake names are added with :hy tag and declared as armenian names. But in reality it is different. It is ridiculous how names were changed even in towns and villages where no armenian population lived until conflict (1988). Names like Akna (instead of Aghdam), Varanda (instead of Fuzuli) are not official armenian names, even today armenian officials are calling them by real names from soviet era. So, instead of these names, official armenian names (which are Aghdam and Fuzuli but in armenian script) should be added under :hy tag.
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following your logic, there is reason to add the tag āname:azā to the villages of the Republic of Armenia, from which 201 thousand Azerbaijani population was expelled in 1987-1990ā¦ there were 172 such villages, and each of these villages had an Azerbaijani name, marked in the state register of Armeniaā¦ all of them have been renamed to fictitious Armenian namesā¦ all this is in the same Wikipedia, both the date and the namesā¦ to this we can add the resettlement of 95 thousand Azerbaijanis from the Armenian SSR in 1937-1954 by Stalinās decreeā¦ the decree and facts are also on the Internetā¦ they were resettled from villages with Azerbaijani namesā¦ these are facts on the basis of which you can add the tag āname:azā with original Azerbaijani names to the current names of settlements in Armenia ā¦ there are 228 such villages in totalā¦ and the Azerbaijani population of these settlements perfectly remember the names of their native settlementsā¦ as the respected Wulfmorn put it (Iāll paraphrase his words a little) āYou canāt force the Azerbaijanis to say āYerevanā instead of āIravanā, even if you could force them to not live there anymoreāā¦ what do you think about it?
Was it the government of Armenia which revised the names? Itās up to Armenia government what the names are in Armenian. AFAIK they didnāt change a thing. And Armenian names must be in name:hy, not in old_name:hy as it is a current situation.
name:lang is not a translation of original name, itās the name in this lang. For example, name=Deutschland somehow became name:az=Almaniya. Why so? Just three letters are the same but not even in the same order. Thus itās not for Azerbaijani to decide what are the names in Armenian.
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Do you have Armenian documents, that would say that the name of the town is Khojaly and itās newer than 2001? Sometimes cities got renamed, e.g. Leningrad became Saint-Petersburg
You mixed up cause and effect: new Armenian names were declared and then were added with name:hy
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The solution to these disputes is that we add all relevant alternatives and variants as long as there is a significant amount of people who understand and use these names.
We have a lot of name-key variations to capture fine nuances.
Possible tags are for example:
alt_name (an alternative name)
official_name (the official name)
loc_name (only locally used name)
old_name (an old name that has been replaced by a newer name)
etc.
All of these can have a language postfix.
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Although when I was travelling to Antwerpen for SOTM-EU in November I did receive a stamp in my passport which says Londres 
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Ivanyan was armenian army general who died in 1999. After his death so called ārepublic of Artsakhā renamed Khojaly town (where before conflict majority were Azerbaijani people) to Ivanyan. I am pretty sure today armenian officials will not call it Ivanyan, because it will be considered as territorial claim again and will not serve for peace. Same is with the names like āArtsakhā, āAknaā, āVarandaā and etc. You can look at soviet maps for the names.
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Do you understand how this is not of relevance for the name:az tag but only the name:hy tag, and if they have control on the ground, the name tag?
What I mean is that official armenian name is Khojaly, not Ivanyan. Those other armenian names should be either in old_name:hy or alt_name:hy.
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By the way, I found another changeset with 20 more
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the name āAlmaniaā in Azerbaijani is a historical toponym of the country, not fictitiousā¦ but the name, for example, Varanda, which Armenians use to call the original Azerbaijani city of Fizuli, is fictitious and introduced into use by Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Fizuli, which Armenians began to write only 20 years ago with only one goal - to claim this cityā¦ whatās the difference?.. the difference is that we call Germany as Almania, but do not claim its landsā¦ and the Armenians, renaming Fuzuli to Varanda, openly declare claims to this cityā¦ I repeat, Armenians have never lived in Fizuli, this is a native Azerbaijani cityā¦ and there are hundreds of such settlements in Karabakhā¦
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within your country you can rename any city and nameā¦ russians donāt call Stanbul as Constantinople, and Berlin as Stalingradā¦ yes, if they officially called Stanbul as Constantinople, then the Turkish government would have issued a condemning note and there would have been youāre right about thatā¦
but there is another pointā¦ for example, having annexed Kƶnigsberg, the Russians renamed it Kaliningradā¦ the Armenian occupiers did the same - they renamed the captured Azerbaijani cities in their own wayā¦ and now the tag āname:hyā actually states their claims to these cities, and this aggravates the situationā¦ but the tag āalt_name:hyā reflects the real state of affairs and does not create legal problems in the future
So should Polish users delete all name:de from Poland?
probably notā¦ but if we assume that the German name of a Polish city creates a precedent for claims on this city?.. or vice versaā¦ this situation creates problems for the futureā¦ and in OSM these cases are not isolatedā¦
the āalt_nameā tag eliminates such problems
Then we should probably delete all the Russian names from the world to be safe from world takeover.
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There is no more Soviet Union at least 30 years. If you refer to soviet maps then show me such a map with Saint Petersburg on it. I was asking for Armenian documents with Khojaly.
If you say so, it wouldnāt take a lot for you to give us such documents.