Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places)/Archive

message: This is the final archive for WP:Naming conventions (places), following its merge with WP:Naming conventions (geographic names).
I've tried to gather the relevant discussions from other places so that we can continue the debate in just one place. I'm aware that there have been other conversations about this topic and if anyone feels those should be included, obviously please just go ahead and copy them over.
I decided to leave the originals in place rather than move them here as they often have some relevance in those other Talk pages. Chris Jefferies 20:17, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

message: I've added the guideline tag because it looks like discussion has died down here, and also, being a guideline doesn't remove the fact that discussion can be ongoing. I also removed the merge tag as I can't see any current discussion on it and it has been on for a while. Hiding  talk 13:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  guideline 

message: After reading as many of the related pages as I could find, I've tried to gather the threads into a potential MoS article, or something that could be integrated with this article.  Please review Wikipedia:Naming conventions (subnational entities)#Proposal UP text. 
*It's based upon Proposal B, that received the consensus in August 2005, with a renewed emphasis on ease of editting articles, and following local conventions (instead of the one size fits all of Proposal A). 
*If the page has been vandalized again by Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Tobias Conradi, just look at the latest history version by William Allen Simpson, and post comments on the talk page.  Thank you.
:William Allen Simpson 14:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: William Allen Simpson 17:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: William's representation here is wrong. He posted errors and destroyed the quality of the overview. After marking his errors he re-inserted them again and again. He did not remove his fatual wrong claims. There was absolutly no vandalization by Tobias Conradi. This is only defamation attempt by William. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 11:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  placenames within countries review 

message: Over on Talk:List of Latin place names in the Balkans, a dispute has arisen about using diacritical marks.  This page is my recent split from a massive table of cities that started several years ago, and follows the long-standing Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) practice of using the "English Name" followed by the native language in parentheses. 
Lately, some Albanians and Romanians have been moving their city and other placename pages from the English to use diacriticals. That doesn't bother me, although I'm not sure it follows MoS.  As long as the redirect still works!
Unfortunately, they're changing all the reference links in articles to point directly to those.  That's a problem in this case (and the related Names of European cities in different languages, List of European regions with alternative names, etc.) as these are translation pages.  It makes no sense that both the "English" name and "Romanian" cross-reference are identical!
The stated rationale (so far) are: 
*"Everywhere in Wikipedia, the 'local spellings' are used and AFAIK that is the policy. And in some cases, such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, these are actually transliterations of the Cyrillic names." 
*"There are no English names for those places." 
AFAIK, that's *NOT* the policy.  Transliterations don't make them any less the "English" name.  Proof by assertion is not a compelling argument.  And these English names are from 100+ year old references, not some recent invention!
:William Allen Simpson 17:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  diacritical marks in article names and cross-references 

message: This text was developed based on the existing consensus of August 2005.  I'd like to add this non-controversial section. Comments?  
:--William Allen Simpson 17:17, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: --William Allen Simpson 10:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maintain consistency within each country 

message: This text was developed based on the existing consensus of August 2005.  I'd like to add this non-controversial section. Comments?  
:--William Allen Simpson 17:27, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: --William Allen Simpson 10:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Follow local conventions 

message: This text was more controversial.  It is currently phrased as a separate guideline, but could be easily integrated here.  Comments? --William Allen Simpson 17:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversial prevalent usage text 

message: There is a long discussed proposal for handling historic place names at recently renamed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names) that seems to answer nicely Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#General issues.  Please take a look.  Without significant dissent, I would like to merge that here.
:--William Allen Simpson 09:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming conventions (geographic names) 

message: This text moved from Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Islands -- Chuq 08:57, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) speaks, somewhat obtusely, to this.  Essentially, the rule is that if the island is usually referred to simply as "James Island", then you should use parentheses, but if it's usually referred to as "King Island, Alaska" then it should use commas.  If you have questions, you should bring them up on that talk page; the rule for entries on disambiguation pages is blessedly simple—always use the unpiped canonical title in its entirety so long as it contains the disambiguation term (if it does not, you may use a redirect that contains the disambiguation term instead). --TreyHarris 01:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree with Trey, this is a matter of naming conventions rather than disambiguation. There's a lot of variation in naming places, not only islands. In the U.S., in order to differentiate geographic entities from cities or towns (which fairly consistently use comma disambiguation), there is a tendency to disambiguate geographic entities with parentheses. Outside the U.S. this tendency is not as prevalent (and even in U.S. articles there are numerous exceptions). I thought this had been articulated somewhere, but I'm not able to find anything readily at hand in the heaping mounds of pages in varying degrees of chaos and contradiction that make up the Wikipedia namespace. older ≠ wiser 02:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islands 

message: I'm not sure I'm understanding these guidelines correctly, so I thought I should bring it here rather than possibly continuing to do things wrong. I've recently started creating articles for each of the Districts of Afghanistan. So far I've been doing it like this:
*Where a district name appears unambiguous, it's been created just at the plain name - e.g. Ab Band, with a redirect from Ab Band District (and I should probably do one from Ab Band district as well).
*Where disambiguation is required between two places in different countries I'm using parentheses - Nawa (Afghanistan) and Nawa (Syria).
*Between two identically named districts in Afghanistan, I'm using the province name with a comma - Muqur, Ghazni and Muqur, Badghis. I'm thinking that maybe it should be Muqur, Ghazni province rather than just Muqur, Ghazni - is that right?
*Though it hasn't come up yet, I'm going to have to deal with districts named after their main town, and provinces named after their main district. Should it eventually be Ghazni (city), Ghazni (district) and Ghazni (province)?
Any advice greatly appreciated. I don't want to find that I'm storing up problems further down the line for myself/other editors. --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 09:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Districts in Afghanistan - advice please

message: See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Administrative divisions.
:--William Allen Simpson 04:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests for arbitration 

message: In the cases where we need disambiguation of location names, which happens lots of times, for example, in Portuguese parish names (because they are named after the same Saint or something like that) which of the following rules shall we use?
# Parish, Municipality
# Parish (Municipality)
I would like to create a standard for Portuguese parishes. Would you comment? Thanks. Afonso Silva 10:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portuguese location names disambiguation 

message: There is some controversy (Côte d'Ivoire, Myanmar, etc.) about what name to use when a government decrees that a name other than the common English name be used for a country. I propose that a convention like the following be added:
: If the government of a country or other sovereign entity has requested that a name other than the common English name be used by English-language publications for a place under its sole effective jurisdiction, then Wikipedia will use that name. Note that this does not imply a position on the legitimacy or otherwise of the government in question or its right to determine the name of that place, but is purely a pragmatic policy: failure to obey such a rule could pose legal problems for anyone accessing or redistributing Wikipedia in that jurisdiction - and even when it does not, it is a matter of equity to extend the same courtesy to all sovereign entities. 
:* Examples: Côte d'Ivoire (not Ivory Coast), Myanmar (not Burma)
: The common English name should be redirected as appropriate to the official name and mentioned at the top of the article; any history of or controversy over the name should be mentioned below.
: This policy overrides Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).
EdC 21:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Official" names 

message: I feel that we should either discuss this and/or do a straw poll, or give up and label this as a former proposal. Comments?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, though I appreciate all the effort that was put into it, I think it's been given enough time, that it's worth formally closing it at this point.  --Elonka 23:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It would appear that some other people who also put some time into this in the past months are still willing to work on it, so I wouldn't throw it out just yet. PS. In January you wrote that the proposal is 'too complicated'. Since then we have tried to rewrite it to be more user friendly,and if you can think of any language improvements to make it further so, please propose the changes.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:36, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)]] 

message: Interested readers of this page are invited to vote on some issues that are currently being discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland.  Specifically:
* Whether to use English/Latinized or Polish names for a given region 
** Consensus decision: English/Latinized names should be used for article titles about Polish geography
* What should be the most appropriate translation for the term województwo, such as "Voivodship," "Voivodeship," "Province," or simply "Administrative district or region". 
** Consensus decision: Voivodeship is an official English word, and should be used when referring to these regions
: --Elonka 11:39, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  (posted updates) --Elonka 23:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Votes on Polish naming 

message: Interested readers of this page are invited to consider the issues on Talk:Tenedos and Imbros. 
*Much voting seems to be on the issue: Are the islands Greek or Turkish?
*Less attention is being paid to: Which name is intelligible, or has been heard of, by most anglophones. Septentrionalis 19:25, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Votes on Tenedos and Imbros 

message: Per consensus at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland, an official request on renaming all the "Voivodship" categories to "Voivodeship" has been submitted, at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 July 16#Category:Voivodships of Poland to Category:Voivodeships of Poland. However, there appears to be some controversy. Anyone with an opinion on the matter is invited to participate. --Elonka 01:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (update) Poll closed, CFR umbrella nomination of all Poland-related categories to the "Voivodeship" spelling approved. --Elonka 16:36, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Poll on renaming Polish Voivodship categories to Voivodeship

message: I removed  the part of the unilateral William insertions from december 2005  that had to do with subnational entities. I added a link to the guideline-proposal Wikipedia:Naming conventions (subnational entities) instead. William reverted  . His proposal that he now seems to just offer as official guideline contains false claims and/or examples. I would rather delete them and polish the guideline-proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (subnational entities) Tobias Conradi (Talk) 10:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subnational entities 

message: I propose we reach a convention to Naming convention (administrative divisions). I find it extremely NPOV that hungarian editors keep providing the names by which hungarians refer to administrative divisions of Romania as alternative names for those divisions. I consider this revisionism. They are not content with providing the hungarian name in the section of the article where mention of hungarian minority living in that division is given, they push for an alternative hungarian name of an administrative division of Romania in the lead paragraph. I shown them Britannica, Encarta, which dont use such hungarian names for administrative divisions of Romania in their articles and maps, I explained them there is no current use in any english source (english maps, english media, english encyclopedias, etc), yet since there is no Wikipedia Naming Convention (administrative divisions), I cant ask for administrative measures. Criztu 09:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think naming conventions are mostly about article naming. What you address is content. regards Tobias Conradi (Talk) 22:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming conventions (administrative divisions) 

message: There is an attempt to create a consensus for a change in the present custom on names of Borough articles at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK subdivisions. Please contribute.  --Concrete Cowboy 21:39, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Borough of X' versus 'X (borough)'   (in the United Kingdom) 

message: This principle is widely flouted in relation to Burma, Bombay, Calcutta, &c.  Deipnosophista 18:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use English but foreign and historical names can be acceptable in some cases 

message: The Counties of Britain section is as usual entirely English-focused: there are of course no contemporary counties in Scotland or Wales where only unitary authorities exist.  These are often very wide in extent and it would be preferable to be more specific, saying for example that Newton Stewart is in Wigtownshire rather than Kirkcudbrightshire, not in Dumfries and Galloway.  Deipnosophista 18:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scottish and Welsh counties 

message: Experienced editors are invited to pour oil on troubled waters at Talk:Bernard_Manning#Alkrington_is_in_Greater_Manchester, many thanks, sbandrews (t) 04:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Talk:Bernard_Manning#Alkrington_is_in_Greater_Manchester

message: Earlier today I posted on the Wikipedia:Redirect talk page. Someone there suggested the discussion belonged here. I don't really care where it's discussed, as long as it is somewhere. (I should add that I'm choosing not to spend hours digging through this talk page's archives. If this has come up before, wonderful: post a link. As far as I see, nothing's made it into the guidelines yet.)
I wrote there:
According to WikiProject Redirect, one of the Project's tasks is to "[a]dd redirects about countries - eg. old names…" I don't see anything about this in Wikipedia:Redirect, and I think it should be added.
Currently, "the preferred title of an article is the most common name" would support keeping an old place name if it's better known than a new one. This gets touchy in cases where "old" is "colonial" and "new" is "back-to-native." The Project seems to support redirecting from old to new (it doesn't say 'redirects about countries - e.g. new names'), and indeed we have Godthåb redirecting to Nuuk, Søndre Strømfjord redirecting to Kangerlussuaq, Salisbury, Zimbabwe redirecting to Harare, etc. (They're just the ones that came to mind (I couldn't say why — they just did), and I'm sure there are many others.)
Can we make a decision about this and add it to the guidelines? There's some debate about Nuuk vs. Godthåb (it's currently Nuuk), it just came up in Kiriwina vs. Trobriand (it's currently Trobriand), and I suspect similar esoteric arguments will be had over and over until we do.
(Since writing that, I happened (completely by accident) on the Sulawesi vs. Celebes debate.)
The question is, again: If a place changes its name but is still better known by the other one, do we redirect from the new to the old, or do we move the old to the new and redirect from the old to the new? (I, personally, am in favor of the Sulawesi solution: the new name is the article, the old name redirects, and the lead says 'x, formerly [and?] more commonly known as y.') It'd be great to get a decision into the guidelines. — eitch 18:29, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  which one should be the direct? new/old and common/uncommon 

message: The idea of merging these two synonymously named pages has been raised at WT:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Why two pages?. Please comment.--Kotniski (talk) 23:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Strongly support. Has this page, and its idiosyncratic view on official names, been put up for any wide discussion, anywhere? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:41, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

text: Much of the rest is redundant with WP:NC (settlements). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested merge

message: :Generally, use the official English name for the place and its type.
:*Example: the country has "oblasts" and its government officially translates them as "area", "region", or "zone", then they should never be renamed "province" to conform to another country or some master schema.
:If there is not an official translation, then a general equivalent or obvious cognate should be used, until a better solution is found.
This is the right thing for oblasts, but the wrong reason. We should do what English does, which would be Moscow oblast, but Shandong province, (not sheng, which I had to go look up and which would be hopelessly obscure for most anglophones). A sentence on oblast could be usefully added to WP:NCGN. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Oblasts

message: I have removed this entire former section; it is obscure, and the best sense I can make out of it is bad advice.  It seems to decide because Moscow, Russia, and Moscow (Russia), not on the basis on what English does, but for the sake of Wikipedia's internal links. This is most unwise; we should not produce unreadable text for the convenience of editors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:20, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Comma convention

message: :Always search for the shortest form of the name.  When the short form "ShortName" does not yet exist, while starting a new page, always check the What links here link on the creation page before saving it. If the name has already been used in articles for another purpose, use a Wikipedia:Disambiguation page instead.
:This will give some inkling about how the name has already been used in existing articles, and whether a long form has already been established for that administrative division of a particular country.
This seems to me misguided. It is true that we want to use Rhode Island rather than State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; but that's not the shortest form of the name, which would be RI. Insofar as this is true, it is WP:COMMONNAME; insofar as it is false, it shouldn't be anywhere. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Short form

message: this section is quite long and involved, and not very relevant to the general reader. I propose to make a special page NC_(Counties_of_Britain) and to move the content there, with a link remaining on this page. Jasy jatere (talk) 16:12, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe NC (United Kingdom places), then we could move all the UK stuff from NC (settlements) to it as well. Similarly NC (United States places).--Kotniski (talk) 17:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The guideline has major significance in England and Wales. I would advise that any change to its location be raised at WP:UKGEO first. --Jza84 |  Talk   19:51, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's perfectly intact at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements)/Counties. I've notified the project, with a suggestion that a simpler expression of the same guidance  be added to WP:NC (settlements) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:12, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Counties of Britain 

message: Last call for any opposition to merging this page with the various other pages that have been mentioned....--Kotniski (talk) 17:04, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, looks like we're done. There's nothing of substance left on this page except links to other ones, so time to merge what's left of it with WP:Naming conventions (geographic names).--Kotniski (talk) 11:09, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge