Dear Open Street Map, Why is it that you only use the 'new' names given to the towns/villages/areas in the Turkish military occupied area since the Turkish Invasion of 1974? Thank you in advance This question is marked "community wiki". asked 13 Sep '19, 09:25  JDemetriou |
One Answer:
The database can record all names and mappers regularly make use of this feature. For display, on openstreetmap.org we chose the name that is most likely to be used on the ground in the specific location at the current time. It is possible for anyone to use our data to make maps that prefer other languages if they want. answered 13 Sep '19, 09:33  Frederik Ramm ♦ |
Thank you for your response Frederik Ramm.
Given the political, social, and cultural sensitivity of the area would you not also suggest that OpenStreetMap should simultaneously display both versions of the place's name?
No, because that would open us up for demands from many other regions to display a multitude of names. The way to tackle this in the long run is to make the language selectable so anyone could then choose if they want Cyprus shown in Turkish, Greek, Malay, or Gaelic. In the short run we'll stick to using whatever the people on the ground mainly use, even the people on the ground should be an occupation force. (We do have dual-language names in some regions that are truly bi-lingual, like https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/46.4946/11.3410 but this is not the case in Cyprus.) See also: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf