No. For that specific Croatian example, some clarification: there are few significant minorities in Croatia, which do get dual-language treatment (on streetsigns etc) - Italians on the parts of seaside, Serbs on the east border towards Serbia, etc.
So, where the name is signed in multiple languages - yes, they all should get multiple name:xx
tags.
For regions where that is not the case, I suggest continuing to use current model - i.e. mostly only Countries and Cities (as they are known internationally by their names even if they are locally unsigned in those languages on the ground) get per-language name:xx
tags (and even then not all cities have translated names in all countries - smaller ones are known only if few languages of the region, for example, so they might get only those name:xx
tags).
So, for example, Capital city of Zagreb is likely to have a lot of name:xx
tags (as it is common that capitals of countries are known worldwide), while random local ma’n’pa grocery store is unlikely to have any name but Croatian one (so it will continue to have only name
tag).
As for your question, when you zoom-in to cities and below, the issue with “how it should be called” mostly disappears - except in hot warzones, the jurisdiction and on-the-ground signage is quite clear, even in multi-language areas (e.g. on Croatian region of Istria, the random street will be bilingual).
Problem with bigger areas (like the gulf in question) is that they are bordering several different jurisdictions, and each of them might have its own idea about naming, thus creating the issue. That does not happen on smaller areas like neighbourhoods, so the problem does not exist there.
So, for technicality, assume user has a preference for language hr
(Croatian). On zoom level 1 (whole world view), It would show oceans, countries etc. with their name:hr
(or lacking that, which should not happen really, with int_name
).
So, for example, instead of some (to me) completely unreadable script, it would say “Sjeverna Koreja” on eastern part of the map (which is how we call “North Korea” in Croatian). If I were to zoom in on its capital, it would say “Pjongjang” (which is how we in Croatia call capital which is in English called “Pyongyang”). If I were to zoom even further, there would be no more name:hr
tags, nor int_name
tags, so the system would start showing local North Korean name
tags for streets and shops instead) – which is mostly fine: if I need that precision, it likely means I am in North Korea, and would need to compare the map with street signs anyway, and there are no other tags anyway).
But really, you can try that today at e.g. OSM Americana; interactive example would likely work better that the wall of text.