"Who the dickens decided that "pavement" or "footpath" - terms that everybody from the youngest child to oldest codger understands - should instead be called a Footway?"
But a moment's reflection was enough.
The bureaucrats it is (together with their friends the politicians), who always and endlessly decide to rename things.
Rename them without regard for clarity of communication or traditional associations* - and in accordance with their own incentive structures that reward institutional change - including change for the sake of change, or change for the worse (it does not matter which).
That the purpose - the only proper purpose - of a sign is to communicate information, and that "Footway" fails to do this - is irrelevant to the bureaucrats/ politicians, and fellow travellers.
I first noticed this more than 20 years ago when I saw that the road signs and marking in Hay-on-Wye (which straddles the border between England and Wales) had important instructional highway signage in a bilingual form - with Welsh coming first!
Presumably this is for the benefit of the (non-existent) hordes of monoglot Welsh who could pass their driving tests only in Cymraeg.
The 99.99 (recurring) percent of road users who can only be distracted and delayed by the priority of a foreign phrase, and who need to read the English in order to obey the important and urgent traffic instruction; are irrelevant compared with the all-conquering bureaucratic imperative of making a point.
*In 1974 the then "Conservative" government, gratuitously abolished or renamed many of the traditional counties of the UK. My then place of residence, Somerset; was renamed "Avon". Most egregious was the Scottish county of Clackmannanshire charmingly became... "Central Region". Some of these changes were later reverted by popular demand.
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