is there any consensus on the presence and/or use/content of name, name:en and name:fr tags within the predominantly English speaking provinces?
Things are obviously different in Quebec and Nunavut. I’m primarily asking regarding Manitoba.
I would make sure the name tag was present and filled for backwards-compatibility reasons. In predominantly English speaking provinces, I would fill it with the English place name if known/available, unless it’s a specifically French-Canadian company etc. (common default name).
I would consider the name:en/name:fr tags to be encouraged, but only secondary to the name tag.
Would I be correct in my assumptions or am I missing something or is there a different consensus to consider?
As far as I understand it, the extent of the consensus is that current tagging, whatever it is, is sort of good enough, and shouldn’t be changed or edit-warred about without extensive discussion.
Also I would personally put quite a lot of weight on the autonomy of provincial and regional OSM communities to discuss and determine how to tag things in their areas, even if this means that there’s no national convention – the alternative (being ruled from the centre of the universe ) seems worse.
This sounds good to me in general, but I’m sure there’s some exceptions and tricky parts, for example:
As I understand it New Brunswick is also tricky, constitutionally as well as in practice. And as another example, City of Ottawa’s practice is to use both languages on its signs (“prom. Beauséjour Dr.”) but this is not used in OSM which uses English only in the tag name=Beauséjour Drive.
Is there a particular reason you’re asking? I think I saw some mixed-language street names in Winnipeg (e.g. this wayname=Boulevard Provencher Boulevard), is that why?
City of Ottawa’s practice is to use both languages on its signs (“prom. Beauséjour Dr.”) but this is not used in OSM which uses English only in the tag name=Beauséjour Drive.
I find this suspicious, when the name signs on the ground are in 2 languages we usually reflect this in the name-tag.
Also in national parks: the signs are bilingual all along the Trans-Canada Highway through Banff National Park, including for this exit, but the ways indicate only English. I was wondering whether to add the French names somehow.
Destination signage in national parks is often bilingual, but the roadways themselves typically are unilingually signposted in English. At least, that’s the case in the mountain parks (Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, Yoho, Glacier, Mt. Revelstoke, Waterton). E.g. Wolf Street has no signage calling it “rue Wolf” or “rue Loup”.
There is some destination signage that will call out Highway 1 as “Trans-Canada Highway” and “Route transcanadienne”, and (e.g.) in Banff N.P. some of the destination signage will call out road names in both, like Highway 1A as both “Bow Valley Parkway” and “Promenade de la Vallée-de-la Bow”.
In reality, speaking from a boots-on-the-ground perspective as a (close-ish [Calgary]) local who’s also English-French bilingual… pretty much no one you’d encounter in Banff N.P. would ever call anything in the park by its French name. The great majority of Banff town residents, workers and visitors would scarcely recognize e.g. “Promenade de la Vallée-de-la Bow” and be able to tell you where it is, if you asked them aloud en français. I would tend to put both English & French names in the official_name=* or nat_name=* tags, if anything.
That said, Lac des Arcs—20 km east of the Banff park boundary—is categorically “Lac des Arcs” (/læk deɪz‿ɑrk/), even in English.
I know you’re more specifically asking about Manitoba, but with respect to Alberta—and I think you could say the same generally goes for Saskatchewan—I would make the general comment that English is predominant, but place names are not necessarily going to be English. There are a few places where French is commonly spoken and French names probably ought to be within the name=* tag with equal precedence to the English names, or even take precedence over the English. For instance some villages, towns and cities are officially bilingual (e.g. Beaumont, Legal (/ˌləˈɡæl/, not /ˈliː.ɡəl/), Falher and Plamondon), and often have bilingual signage.
Some nodes are by their very nature ‘amenities’ more for francophones than anglophones, and go by their French names (e.g. l’Alliance Française), especially French-language schools (e.g. École Ste-Marguerite-Bourgeoys, which yours truly added to the map a number of years ago ).
Some things go by a French name regardless and there isno“accepted” “English” equivalent, e.g. the aforementioned Lac des Arcs, or the lake, hamlet and county of Lac La Biche (/ˌlæk lə ˈbɪʃ/ or /ˌlæk lə ˈbiːʃ/). These are never “translated” to English; Lac La Biche is categorically never ever ever EVER called “Doe Lake”.
I think you could mostly extend the same principles to names of things in Manitoba. However, Manitoba is admittedly trickier because the political history surrounding the use of the French language is much more fraught than elsewhere in Western Canada… I would tread very, very carefully wherever you may happen upon something that already has French or both French and English in the name=* tag.
Yes, from my visit, I definitely got the sense that the bilingual signs along the highway were pro forma. Maybe destination:fr=*; some routers might actually do something useful with that if the user happens to have everything in French already. Otherwise, I agree that the English would be the sole default language in that park at least.
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