I mistakenly added Gaelic to the “name” tag on towns and many villages in the Highlands so they were phrased for example as An Gearasdan / Fort William. I realise this is not in accordance with osm guidelines as Gaelic, despite having equal standing with English in the Highlands, is spoken by a small minority in the area as a whole.
Should I completely undo this action or would the Gaelic name be valid in the alt_name tag or something else?
thanks
Are you in Edinburgh by any chance? Because that’s a good topic for the monthly pub meetup.
I’ve also moved your topic to the UK subcategory, hope that’s OK.
This would be more name:gd=* rather than alt_name in my thoughts.
I’d definitely make sure that name:xx tags are populated. It looks like that’s already been done for Fort William. That way, maps that understand languages can show names as desired.
What goes in the “name” key itself is a different question. In the UK these have tended not to include multiple names in different languages separated by “/” or similar (although some OSM communities do do that). I’d suggest name=Fort William here, but elsewhere name=Steòrnabhagh. However, I’m 500km away in England, so am not exactly “local” 
As an unrelated aside - a map style that I look after uses English, Welsh or Scots Gaelic as the name to display, based on location. The area that gets Scots Gaelic names is based on this area, and that’s supposed to cover places with a higher proportion of Scots Gaelic used. If the areas of that could be improved - let me know.
Please don’t use slash-separated names, it’s a nasty hack for certain renderers that makes parsing complex (verging on impossible) for other renderers and routers.
The standard in the UK is for the name= tag to be the majority language spoken in that area. You can use name:en or name:gd for the minority language.
The general agreement is that the Western Isles / Na h-Eileanan Siar are in Gaelic only, while everywhere else is English only. I have my issues with this, and indeed have tried to edit this myself before realising there are established conventions, but having Inverness or Glasgow bilingual is not my priority personally. Gaelic mapping should focus primarily on the Gaelic-speaking areas themselves (the Hebrides and the West Highlands), and secondarily on established or reasonably derivable Gaelic place names in the Lowlands (e.g. town and other settlement names like An Eaglais Bhreac, or Allt a’ Bhonnaich, or Dùn Èideann, which have been used for many centuries, or streets such as Sràid an Dòchais, the name:gd for Hope Street in Glasgow which is attested in Gaelic song and poetry including Màiri Mhòr’s “Camanachd Ghlaschu”, or Sràid Earra-Ghàidheal which is relevant to modern Gaelic-speaking communities in Glasgow). I would humbly suggest that anyone interested in Gaelic should realise that there are still large parts of the Western Isles and the rural Highlands which are severely undermapped in English, let alone in Gaelic (though a lot of good work has been done in the WI recently), and should prioritise these still-Gaelic communities over inventing new place names in the Lowlands.
That’s a bit of a ramble, sorry. Where? I personally would suggest Tiree (Tiriodh), be mapped in Gaelic, as well as Kilmuir parish (Cille Mhoire) and Sleat (Slèite) in Skye, these are the three strongest areas for the Gaelic language outside of the WI with roughly 40-50% speakers - and were overwhelmingly Gaelic-speaking only a generation ago. In recent Scottish policy discussions regarding the designation of an official “Gàidhealtachd”, these are the areas besides the WI which are always mentioned, but there is no official backing for what I propose…yet!
As an aside, I am pleased to see people actually discuss this… !
thank you, that’s a well-reasoned thought and it’s good to have a starting place
I recently visited Glaschu and noticed your change and I thought seeing both Glasgow and Glaschu in place was really beautiful. I wanted to get acquainted to the Gaelic names a bit more, wrote postcards to Queen Maighréad in Glaschu, Alba and I thought it would be great to see the map in Gaelic while being able to see the translation at the same time. Just like with Eire/Ireland.
I now understand this is not the preferred option, but I wanted to express my full sympathy towards the idea. (And I don’t speak Gaelic)
You’re probably already familiar with OSM Americana in Scots Gaelic…
It’s a road map, so it doesn’t have the level of detail that might be nice in some places, but it’s a great start.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for pointing it out again. Yes, it’s a wonderful one. A few things missing, such as names of islands, but I really like seeing the streetmap in other languages. With a bit of handyness you can turn that into any languages, as long as you know the language abbreviations.
Thanks for sharing!