Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Naming

message: instead of enlarging the discussion, you can write you point of view here directly. use NPOV 
====Naming variants====
Five variants to name an river article exist: 
# plain "X" in general (e.g. Nile, Rhine)
##X can include foreign words for river (e.g. Rio Grande, Amu Darya)
##X can include Creek, Stream for rivers for which it is conventional (resp. USA, Canada, Australia and UK, Ireland).
###that means you can also have "River X" in these countries because it is actually part of the name there. (e.g. River Cam)
# "X River"
##if there are other place names called "X"
##some people, esp. English speakers, prefer to use this as general rule
# "River X"
## there are people that consider X River to be either a New World thing, or an indicator of a river being named after something else, like a district or region, and who assume that river X or River X can be used either for rivers in the Old World or for rivers that have a name of their own.
# "X (river)" 
##there are people that would like to apply general disambig rules when other things called X exist
##this is mostly supported by non-English-speakers
# "X river"
##if "River" is not part of the name this might sometimes be the way someone writes about it in an article. He would probably not use "X (river)" and maybe dislikes "X River", because the latter suggests at least to some people that River is part of the translated name. English natives might have a different approach here, because they are less afraid of having the word River in the name (e.g. Rhine River Google for it). 
##this is mostly supported by non-English-speakers
====Naming methods====
#use 2(3) naming variants: "X" (including "River X", "X River" for english-nativ countries) and "X River"
##this does not say what has to be used in general, whether plain "X" or "X River" (e.g. rivers of Germany are currently mostly "River"-less)
##if different "X River" exist, use bracket-disambiguation
##supporters (this is not voting!, please remove a name, if putting it here was a mistake)
###User:Stan Shebs ("River"-less generally allowed)
###User:Tobias Conradi ("River"-less generally allowed)
###User:Markussep (preferably "River"-less) 
###User:Waltpohl ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
###User:Maximaximax ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
###User:Bkonrad ("River"-less only for very well known rivers) 
####his wording appr.: use "X River" in all cases EXCEPT where there are credible and verifiable sources indicating that the preponderance of English-language usage warrants using some other form.'
###llywrch ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
####he quoted Bkonrad and added "This is the idomatic form for titles of articles."
###User:Rmhermen ("River"-less only for very well known rivers) and it is always X River, never X river.
##unclear supporters
###User:Mikkalai. My only objection is against undertaking any massive renaming. If a country has a solid cooperation of contributors, like Germany, IMO it is up to them to decide whether they would like to standardise to any of valid naming conventions. Also, I don't quite understand when "River" is part of the name. IMO it is like saying "Mister" is part of the name of Mr. Smith. May be my English knowledge is poor... 01:32, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion summary - !you can write here directly! to keep discussion short

message: #use 2(3) naming variants: "X" (including "River X", "X River" for english-nativ countries) and "X River"
##this does not say what has to be used in general, whether plain "X" or "X River" (e.g. rivers of Germany are currently mostly "River"-less)
##if different "X River" exist, use bracket-disambiguation
##supporters (this is not voting!, please remove a name, if putting it here was a mistake)
###User:Stan Shebs ("River"-less generally allowed)
###User:Tobias Conradi ("River"-less generally allowed)
###User:Markussep (preferably "River"-less) 
###User:Waltpohl ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
###User:Maximaximax ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
###User:Bkonrad ("River"-less only for very well known rivers) 
####his wording appr.: use "X River" in all cases EXCEPT where there are credible and verifiable sources indicating that the preponderance of English-language usage warrants using some other form.'
###llywrch ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
####he quoted Bkonrad and added "This is the idomatic form for titles of articles."
###User:Rmhermen ("River"-less only for very well known rivers) and it is always X River, never X river.
##unclear supporters
###User:Mikkalai. My only objection is against undertaking any massive renaming. If a country has a solid cooperation of contributors, like Germany, IMO it is up to them to decide whether they would like to standardise to any of valid naming conventions. Also, I don't quite understand when "River" is part of the name. IMO it is like saying "Mister" is part of the name of Mr. Smith. May be my English knowledge is poor... 01:32, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming methods

message: Tweed River, New Zealand, more at List_of_rivers_of_New_Zealand Tobias Conradi (Talk) 03:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: TODO: wrong namings/help needed

message: :Category:Rivers_of_Ecuador were moved to X (river) by User:2004-12-29T22:45Z
, he seems not to like talk. instead of responding to my question he did blank: 
Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Undesired Moves

message: Present-day Britannica uses umlauts and such also, so we have good precedent. Stan 12:05, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I wonder how they can be consistent and usable if they have vietnamese language content: Cần Thơ, Đà Nẵng, Hải Phòng, Thành phố Hồ Chí, Bắc Giang, Bắc Kạn, Bạc Liêu, Bắc Ninh, Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu, Bến Tre, Bình Định, Bình Dương, Bình Phước, Bình Thuận Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, Vietnamese is a problem. So are the Hungarian ő, the Romanian ş, ţ, ă, and several Czech, Polish, Slovak, Croatian and Latvian characters. As long as they are in the ISO 8859-1 set, let's use the diacritics, and if they're not in that set, take the closest "normal" character. As a service to users, we can make redirects from the diacritics-less versions. Markussep 10:09, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not really see why an encyclopedia should follow ISO 8859-1. Why is Zürich called Zurich in english? Because in english they do not use umlauts in general. All the names that were imported into english long time ago, beside some french words, have no diacritics. I allways would prefer anglicizing. We also do not use cirilic letters in english. Other WPs are much stricter, one will never have so much foreign letters in bulgarian or chinese WP. I just would strip off diacritics everywhere. ;-) But well, we will not solve this question here in the River Project. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:15, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Umlaut-less Zurich is the "English translation" just as "Munich" is the translation of "München". If things have a standard translation, we use it, otherwise we refrain from making up our own. My EB on DVD does go outside 8859, and en: will be able to do so also when the Unicode conversion happens. Stan 15:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: will we put chinese rivers under their ideographs then? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:56, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That question has actually come up on the commons, because it's not supposed to favor any particular language. For instance, the pictures of Russian cities are nearly all at Cyrillic titles, although not everybody is happy about that. Stan 19:34, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Diacritics

message: I didn't realize there was a Rivers project when I started writing about rivers in Wisconsin.  There are, in Wisconsin, 4 "Yellow River"s, several "Black River"s, and even 2 "Eau Claire River"s.  What I did was the following, and I'm nowhere near done, so stop me before I get out of hand...I said me, "There are 2 Eau Claire Rivers, one is a tributary of the Chippewa, the other is a tributary of the Wisconsin.  As it happens, there are Chippewa Rivers in at least Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and based on Google searches, in Ontario as well (although I haven't been able to find the Ontario one(s) on a map yet).  These rivers are, accordingly Chippewa River (Wisconsin), Chippewa River (Michigan), Chippewa River (Minnesota), and Chippewa River (Ontario).  Obviously a couple of those haven't been written yet. :-)  Anyways, as far as I'm aware, there will only ever be one Wisconsin River in the world.  So then what to do about the Eau Claire Rivers.  I've redlinked them as Eau Claire River (Chippewa River (Wisconsin) tributary) and Eau Claire River (Wisconsin River tributary).  I realize these names are rather long, but disambigs are easy enough to write, and the article names are more exact.  As for rivers which have multiple tributaries with the same name, I'm sure that those tributaries can be further disambiguated such as Salmon River (Snake River tributary (Washington)) or whatever.  Thoughts?  Tomer TALK 19:37, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
I should probably also note my idea about "Fork"s, since I don't see that discussed anywhere.  A number of rivers in the US and possibly elsewhere, are named "North Fork" or whatever of some other river's name.  I had originally thought to make each fork a separate river article, but since then I'm thinking it would be better to make each named "Fork" a subsection of the main river's name, and then make a (properly named) redirect for each "Fork" article that points to the correct river article.  So East Fork Chippewa River would point to Chippewa River (Wisconsin), for example.  This will cut down on confusion in articles where the river's total length is actually measured from the source of the longer fork to the mouth of the main river, instead of from the confluence of the forks to the mouth of the main river.  Commentario?  Tomer TALK 19:44, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
:We already have a couple of protocols which yield shorter names than your examples:
:A river can be identified uniquely as a tributary of another river. It should be named with the name of the principal river following in parentheses. So St. Joseph River (Lake Michigan) and St. Joseph River (Maumee River) 
::So then, how to deal with the two tributaries of the Columbia or Snake or whichever, named Salmon River?  Tomer TALK 08:34, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
:::Not sure that that situation has come up but I note that for Michigan rivers, we have Iron River (Iron County, Michigan) and Iron River (Marquette County, Michigan) where both rivers flow directly into Lake Superior and there are rivers of the same name in other states. They are disambiguated by the county/state that their mouth is in. I don't think that this is included in the Wikiproject guidelines anywhere though. Rmhermen 16:03, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Also in Michigan, I think, some rivers are disambiguated by the county there mouth is in. 
The Forks idea sounds good. The fewer articles the better, I think.
As for the Wisconsin River, USGS GNIS is your friend. It lists all named places in the U.S. that the U.S. government deems official. And it only lists one Wisconsin River. Rmhermen 23:47, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
:I knew there was only one Wisconsin River!!! :-p  Maybe some day on Mars tho... :-D  Tomer TALK 08:34, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Oh boy.  There are at least 2 Wolf Rivers in Wisconsin.  One is a tributary of the Fox River (Wisconsin) (presently there is an article on this river, unhelpfully named Wolf River (Wisconsin)), the other a tributary of the North Fork Eau Claire River (Chippewa River).  Naming ideas welcomed either here or on the individual articles' talk pages.  Tomer TALK 22:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looking for comments on my idea about naming 

message: Could those interested please review and comment on the discussion at Talk:River Plate#River Plate name.  Thanks, Tomertalk 05:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing no comment or objection, I'm going to move it to Río de la Plata.  Tomertalk 06:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is now a vote going on at Talk:Río de la Plata#Final naming poll. Tomertalk 04:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Input request at [[Talk:River Plate]]