Perhaps I am missing something, but wouldn't organizing articles in this fashion simply push the argument back upon every article that links to the one with the contentious name?
Right now we have a situation in which these debates can be more-or-less solved by knowing what the subject's "Wikipedia article name" is, and informing people to not link through a redirect. If Ivory Coast/Cote d'Ivoire become equivalent at the backend level, won't the same argument then erupt in the "List of African countries" article, the "List of UN members" article, and the "List of places with Ivory in their name" article?
Jkelly
G'day Tony,
There's no reason why there should be two or more separate articles, with people squabbling about which one should be the main article and which the redirect, if both exist and have precisely the same article id. The synonym creation would also have to operate for the corresponding talk namespace.
Why ... it's so crazy, it's brilliant!