Been with you on this since you first suggested it. For those of us who are also trying to take care of non-English named areas it can be a real headache to hold up the current policy.
I think that if this would be implemented it would save a lot of work for people correcting problems and provide for a more streamlined site.
It might also give users a chance to personalize their interface a little (with choices such as “view places in [English]” / “view local names”) which again would increase popularity – since users love personalization :)
Places which have but one name, or don’t have a translation into your chosen language could also be marked with a star.
Each name could be added similarly to when one adds an attachment to an email, with a small box to the side from which you could choose what language to mark it as. A small field below the names could allow you to choose which name could be considered the original.
For the more problematic places one could just choose [ English (default) ].
Now that there are even 43places in other languages than English I think this is really becoming quite pressing..
