President Donald Trump just said during his inauguration that he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Aside from the political aspects, how does that even work? How does OSM choose a source for that? I’m curious! Also, somebody executed what I thought while I wrote this post:
As of revision version #85, OpenStreetMap has the following tags for Golfo de México:
The name itself can’t really change in OSM because it’s based on what someone “on the ground” would see, i.e. street signs, etc.
Previous OSM naming conflicts have usually been areas of disputed land where some group de-facto controls the land and therefore the street signs, and therefore the OSM ‘name’ and ‘name:en’ tags.
That’s not going to work very well for a region of mostly international waters with several countries putting up their own signs to it.
The name itself can’t really change in OSM because it’s based on what someone “on the ground” would see, i.e. street signs, etc.
Previous OSM naming conflicts have usually been areas of disputed land where some group de-facto controls the land and therefore the street signs, and therefore the OSM ‘name’ and ‘name:en’ tags.
That’s not going to work very well for a region of mostly international waters with several countries putting up their own signs to it.