Talk:Fongshan District

message: Most or all of the Tongyong Pinyin-derived geographical terms for locations in Taiwan can be found in the Geographic Names Information System as a variant form, proving that they have some level of acceptance and importance in the English language. In the cases in which I have decided to move articles to a title that is Tongyong Pinyin-derived, it has usually been because the local district/township website, city/county website and the most recent picture of the district/township office name (above the front door) etc concurred on a Tongyong Pinyin-derived spelling. Additionally, I was sometimes able to find usage of the Tongyong Pinyin-derived form on multiple Taiwan government websites (recent), in various Taiwanese news media (recent), in international media (recent) and in scholarly works and books (recent). All of these sources were post-2009. Per the Use English policy, "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local name." There are two or three types of forms in competition in these cases: one (or two) forms derived from Hanyu Pinyin (usually endorsed by the central government of the ROC, Google, the USA, the PRC, etc), one (or two) that the local government is currently using, and one (or several) which have been used historically. The only morally acceptable method for naming a place is by using the name which the people in the area are using- the local name. The Chinese characters are the local name, and the English transliterations that an area could use are many and varying. In most cases, there is a pretty clear idea of what they want for their area, despite the background-noise from other transliterations. The English form they want to use is in the website logo of the district in some cases. When we encounter parks, subway stations and train stations that use tweaked Hanyu Pinyin, Chinese dialect-language derived wording and/or English language names, we just follow what's on the sign and what's on the official websites. That is what I have sought to do in my edits- let the sources from the area tell me what the name of the place is, and then check and see if that form is also found in other English language sources. The fact is that the people of Taiwan use several romanization systems for several languages, and the only solution is to include all forms of all names on all of the pages- no deletions because 'Hanyu Pinyin is the standard', and no ignoring anybody's romanizations for any language. All, and nothing but all. The only reason any of these article title names should be changed is if it can be ascertained that the local area has come to a clear consensus about the English-language name. Only in this way does Wikipedia live up to being the great encyclopaedia we want it to be. Hanyu Pinyin is an important part of the situation in Taiwan, but to ignore the other parts of the puzzle would at minimum have to be considered insensitive and at maximum morally deficient. I believe that my edits have established that in some cases, there is a clear consensus for a tweaked-Hanyu Pinyin or pure Tongyong Pinyin name. Despite occasional misspellings or anomalies, they know how they want to spell the names of their own homes, and it's not always the form you think it would be or that you want it to be. It's a tricky subject, but the answers are literal and not philosophical; specific and not overarching. Just because a geographical name comes from Chinese characters, that doesn't mean you get to ignore what's written in English on the sign in favor of something derived from Hanyu Pinyin. You have to engage with the sources on a painstaking and case-by-case basis. There is no other answer than that. The cookie cutter approach simply will not do. Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:32, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: 罷黜百家，獨尊儒術 is Han Dynasty policy, not Wikipedia policy- we don't need any "罷黜百種音譯，獨尊漢語拼音". No no, and thank you. Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
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