Reporter: tom[at]acrewoods.net
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 5.12am, Wednesday, 8th August 2007]

There are two problems with name rendering at the moment.

First, areas don't get named, which leads people to add nodes in the middle of them with the name. This covers all sorts of features where the area at least gets rendered like parks, supermarkets and schools, as well as areas that aren't currently rendered at all, like hospitals.

Second, even with nodes the names don't always show up consistently. In the following map, for example, the "Amott Road Baptist Church" gets named at levels 17 and 18, but no other churches in the area are that priveleged:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.464552924485&lon=-0.07433913392533095&zoom=17

I can't see any reason for this, like roads or other features being in the way, or bad tagging. Given that pub names show up consistently and rather well I also assume it's not a bug in mapnik.

Having names on the maps makes them ten times more useful!