The city has been promoting “road name diplomacy” since November 2024, naming roads after sister cities in Japan, the US, France, South Korea, Poland and Lithuania. People have mostly been able to accept these road names, and the government selects smaller roads to reduce the impact on residents, he said. People have said that they have never heard of some of these foreign cities, making the road names hard to remember, Tainan City Councilor Chen Pi-yu (陳碧玉) said. The sentiment of road name diplomacy is valuable, but for the public, it is most important that road names are easy to read and remember, Chen said. Road names in Tainan are generally written in English using Tongyong pinyin, while roads named after cities would follow those cities’ official names in English, Lin said.
