I created a thread asking what problems a specific name on a specific pavement was creating, and we got four problems:
- When a footway has a name, routers will announce that name instead of the type of footway, which is more relevant in some circumstances.
- Renderers will render the name of the sidewalk in addition to the name of the roadway, which creates visual clutter.
- Ways that could be attributed to more than one road (e.g. at intersections) cannot be tagged with more than one name.
- Adding the name to the highway way as well as the sidewalk way duplicates data in the map.
I did this to challenge my own opinion, which is that since the sidewalk is part of the road, and the road has a name, the sidewalk also has a name - and the way you tag things with names in OSM is with name=*.
I am not convinced any of these reasons trump that essential logic.