name tag should be made deprecated with introduction of name:* tags. It just calls for argues.
name:* tags already allow having names in needed languages. Existence of name tag just creates confusion.
Introduction of another tag, something like “local_language” that would contain designation of local language (or languages separated by semicolons) may provide needed information how name is displayed on local signs.
From software side that would clean, straightforward and simple way to tag names in various languages and on social side it would remove arguing and fighting about what should stay in name tag.
name tag lost its basic function to display what is on the ground as that rule is not applied everywhere and is proved to be avoided due to various political biases.
Even where it is agreed how to put multiple languages in name tag it is impractical. Using multilingual name just makes map cluttered. Map renderer has to know local rules and parse content based on those rules.
Deprecating name tag, using name:* tags and using local_language tag would allow universal way to tag names and render maps, by having better control of rendering, regardless of languages used for naming.
I don’t want to sound discouraging, but deprecating name=* seems like a total non-starter. It might be perhaps the oldest, most consistently used (paired) tag in OSM. It is likely supported by every single use case (router, renderer, text-to-speech module…) out there, and all would need to be re-written / modified if we were to deprecate name=*. I doubt this would happen without great upset to our project.
Modifying the name=* tag, like with name: subtags, well, we’re listening and discussing, as that could actually fly.
Welcome to this discussion! As you can see, this discussion has dragged on quite a while and is a bit difficult to follow. Your point about the importance of name:* is well taken, but various posts above have touched on why it’s insufficient to rely on a key that indicates which name:* to display. Here are some links to individual comments as a starting point, to avoid repeating these arguments:
A proposal for name:language was rejected in part because mappers didn’t want to repeat the same information on every named feature in a language region.
If you’re following me so far, what remains is a debate about whether to insert human-readable punctuation or a machine-readable delimiter between multiple tag values when the values happen to be names (but aren’t alternative names, official names, short names, or the names of destinations, brands, operators, or owners).
From software side that would clean, straightforward and simple way to tag names in various languages and on social side it would remove arguing and fighting about what should stay in name tag.
sure, removing the name tag would stop arguing what to put in the tag, but introducing local_language as a new tag will start new arguing about the exact same topics (which languages to add and in which order)