On Sat, 19 Jul 2008, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
One theory (though disputed) as to how the city of Nome, Alaska got its name is that a mapmaker misread an explorer's notes where he had written "? Name" next to a spot on an older map to indicate that he wasn't sure what that point was or ought to be named; this got misread as "Nome" and it stuck as the official name of the place.
If "Nome" is a mistake, but everyone uses it, we'd have to use it too.
But if 51% of everyone used the name "Nome" and 49% used an actual name from the explorer's notes, we should use the actual name from the notes. The fact that we have a rule which says to use the most common version has to be moderated by common sense.