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The 'OG' online map platform, MapQuest, says it won't change the name of Lake Ontario
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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You know, I never really considered automatic anti-vandalism mechanisms we have in place on OpenStreetMap, but they surely exist.
All that to say I think we're good on OSM too. lol
It has been added to OpenStreetMap. It says official_name:en-US = Lake America
It's not the name that is likely to show when viewing the map, but it's in the data.
Correct, because that's what
official_namemeans. The US government, one of two countries encircling it, officially calls it "Lake America". That's why it'sofficial_name:en-USspecifically, notofficial_name=. Thename=key, the "primary name of the feature in the real world", remains and will remain "Lake Ontario".I'll correct you and say that there's no "likely" about it: it's not the name that will be shown when viewing the map. That's the
name=key, which is "Lake Ontario".It depends on which map you are looking at. Anyone could take the OSM data and create a map that prefers to show official_name:en-US, when available.
Yeah, and?
official_name:en-us. Want to know how I know? Because instead of wasting my time making something up to be outraged at, I went and looked up how often this key shows up. It's six (it shows five, but it hasn't updated for Lake Ontario yet). In the entire world among billions of key uses, this one is used on six objects. This will not ever happen; it's complete nonsense.Even if it were made (it will not be),
And most importantly,
official_namekey exists for – to distinguish it from the name people actually use. That's why it's a separate key to begin with.You're complaining about OpenStreetMap being accurate, and in order to do that, you have to invent some fever dream application that nobody would ever create and nobody would ever use – and that even were they to create it, they could've accomplished it more easily by just hardcoding six values.
"When available". lol, lmao even