Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by karussell | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

karussell

See: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1206310

name:en=Lake Ontario

vs.

official_name:en-US=Lake America

View on HN

Not sure it's really valid to call this "official". Trump can issue an executive order to the USGS to change names in the GNIS, but the use of USGS/GNIS data as the "official" name of things outside of the federal executive's own activities is itself just a matter of convention.

Makes me wonder, has North Korea or Iran made an equivalent declaration about naming the USA "사탄의 겨드랑이" or "زیر بغل شیطان"?

(Google Translate from "Satan's armpit").

I mean, if temper tantrums by the supreme executive are allowed and all.

Or a future president renaming Mar-a-lago as Epstein's Resort... this opens the door to all kinds of petty behavior.

He should've renamed New Mexico to New America. I read a while back the state name causes confusion amongst those who think it's part of Mexico.

And while he's at it, Georgia could become Trumpia to avoid confusion with the nation of the same name. (Why even do you have a state named after the granddad of the king you fought off?)

But I guess those might accidentally be useful, so of course he's not going to do them. :P

It seems that there are 363,123 `official_name:` tags in OSM [1], and the discussion thread hints that at least some* of them are due to naming disputes. Given (according to the thread) no-one actually renders the tag on their maps, using that tag in this case seems like a good policy.

[1]: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/official_name#overvie...

North Korea has all sort of nasty names ready to throw at America, South Korea, or others, though at least I think they're just name-calling, not considering them as "official" names. (So, in a twisted sense, even North Korea is more adult-like than Trump. I guess that's another cause of celebration for some HN commenters who look up to Trump for being the manly leader who boldly does the right thing that nobody else dares to do.)

Thankfully, North Korea's antics doesn't matter, because nobody is trying to sell map service to North Koreans anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com