This is partly about the name of the city that is or was commonly known as Aurangabad. It has been changed on the map to ‘Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar’ since early October. The original name has been removed completely from both the name field, from the two alt_name fields, and in Devanagari script language name fields.
This act does not seem to follow the general principle about names in OSM, that it shows the names in common use. The wiki page says that the ‘name=*’ field should contain the common, default name . Are people really all calling this city by this very new, double-barrelled term now? A quick search for web results, for newspapers across India for instance, suggests otherwise.
For those who are not aware of it, it might be worth looking at Wikipedia’s guidance and rules on renaming articles there. Those rules have been thrashed out over long periods, partly in order to stop people changing names for other ends rather than for the needs of the user.
I’m proposing two things here;
First, that the name of this city be set back to Aurangabad now, till it is agreed that it meets the basic test above. Perhaps in this case, at least one year from now.
Second, that OSM India should have a policy for any further similar situations. In this case, it should be that the names of any notable feature on the map of long standing (such as a major historic city in this case) should not be changed without discussion and agreement here.
Hi @indigomc,
I can’t realy answer your questions as I do not have knowlege of this place in India. But maybe a look on this wiki page helps you. There are tags like official_name=*, alt_name=* (alt=alternative), old_name or reg_name (reg=regional). Maybe some combination of these suits your needs.
I’m not familiar with India, but quoting from Wikipedia:
and looking up the cite notes it seems to me that this city was renamed.
My opinion is that the value of official_name should be this new one, but for sure if Aurangabad is not the value of name, then at least the value of old_name
Hi, @indigomc!
Thanks for pointing out this instance of abrasive name change. I have shifted the new name to official_name, spelling variations to alt_name and reverted the name tag to “Aurangabad”.
“If an official name is more unwidely or obscure than another name for the same feature and fewer people use it in practice, even if it is signposted, it is better to put the official name in [official_name] or [alt_name] than to treat it as the primary name.”
FYI: In such cases, you can still find the same city by searching with different names.