Talk:List of tautological place names

message: Kia Ora! So the page wrongly states:
Multiple rivers and streams in New Zealand have the prefix wai-, the Māori term for river. Notable examples include the Waikato River (river strong flowing river) and Waimakariri River (river cold river).[10]
The prefix wai- means water, NOT river. The prefix/suffix 'awa' means river, i.e. Awamoko (Lizard River).
Useful website is: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/maori-language-week/1000-maori-place-names
Thanks!! 139.80.239.164 (talk) 12:11, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: New Zealand River Names

message: Pasquale, you reverted my edit saying "every Japanese river name ends in -kawa 'river'; if you then tack on 'River', it's automatically tautological, but there's no point listing them all". This is true in some cases, such as Sumida-gawa (Sumida River) or Tama-gawa (Tama River), but the kawa in Arakawa is an integral part of the name. Saying 'Ara River' for Arakawa River is no more acceptable than saying "Wood City" for Woodville.
Compare Sumida Ward, named after the Sumida River, with Arakawa Ward, named after the Arakawa River. 'Kawa/gawa' can be and is removed from Sumida, but not from Arakawa.
Unless you can explain to me why this does not belong on the list, while something like Jiayuguan Pass or Mount Lushan is acceptable, I think I will restore my edit. LeeWilson (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Arakawa River

message: Doesn't Mount Fujiyama mean "Mount Fuji Mountain" in Japanese?  If so, it should be added. 86.140.87.154 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It does - which is why it's usually referred to as "Mount Fuji". Feel free to add it... Grutness...wha? 23:11, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's called "Fujisan" in Japanese, not "Fujiyama".  And it's Mt Fuji in English.
Some indication is warranted of what these places and geographic features are called in their native languages.  The Chinese do not say "Heilongjiang River" for instance, it's just "Heilongjiang".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.253.134 (talk) 02:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Fuji

message: Dunstanburgh Castle could be translated as 'Castle Stone Castle Castle', assuming that 'Dun' is from Gaelic.
But Dun (e.g. in the name Dunstan) could be translated as 'Dark' from Old English. Which loses a Castle, and so is slightly less satisfying. Is there any evidence to support one of these translations? 82.236.235.136 11:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd always assumed "Dunstanburgh" meant "Dunstan's castle", in which case it's not truly tautological, since neither the dun or the stan there refer to their original meanings. Whichever is the case, the "-burgh Castle" combination is still a tautology. FWIW, the name Dunstan (according to The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names) means "hill stone". Grutness...wha? 22:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Dunstanburgh Castle

message: If, as PaulxSA says, "Gobi" truly means 'very large and dry' in Mongolian, then "Gobi Desert" is not a tautology and should be removed.  Pasquale (talk) 20:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: According to the Gobi Desert article, "gobi" means 'gravel-covered plain' in Mongolian. If not synonymous it's at least close to 'desert', but I'll leave changing anything to someone who actually knows Mongolian. Orcoteuthis (talk) 14:39, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Just for the record, I didn't say Gobi meant v.large/dry; the original line read "Gobi Desert (desert desert, Gobi means "v.large/dry" in Mongolian.) I changed the former to reflect the latter: Personally, I have no [blank]ing clue what Gobi means in Mongolian. -- PaulxSA (talk) 15:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Gobi Desert

message: Street Road, also known as Route 926, is located in Chester County, where I live. Check it on Google Earth. Does this count as tautological? If so, could someone add it to the appropriate category? i kinda suck at formatting and all, and i don't have much free time. Billytrousers (talk) 04:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Street Rd 

message: * Townsville, Queensland, or any of numerous other Townsvilles.  Sometimes the triple-hit of "City of Townsville" is used.
* Mount Midori, like Mount Fuji, is often incorrectly identified as "Mount Midoriyama" - notably on the "Ninja Warrior" show that airs in the US.  (I'm sure the name is used correctly in the Japanese airings of the show.)
* Jersey City is listed on the WP page as "City of Jersey City".  This may be an error on the page, however.  I posted a question on the talk page regarding that.
Lurlock (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More suggestions 

message: Very few of the etymologies, or back-translations, or whatever you wish to call them, cite any sources. Some are inadequate as descriptions (e.g. Cuyahoga is from "a Native American language" - but which one?), and some appear to be incorrect (e.g. both Charnock (1859) and Smythe Palmer (1882) suggest that Faroe Islands comes from faar "sheep", not a word meaning island). In any case, most look like the dreaded original research. Original research can be particularly troublesome on "vernacular" pages of this sort, since it tends to invite unverified, and sometimes incorrect, local knowledge. I have found, when editing other pages, that it is best to supply reliable sources for what you've got, and be wary of accepting new additions that offer none. Cnilep (talk) 23:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are good points, however I don't believe this is original research at all. In many cases, just clicking on the links will provide further information and, in some cases, the appropriate sources. As for Faroe Islands, it's the -oe part of Faroe that means 'island' (see History of the Faroe Islands#Pre-Norse history).  Pasquale (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm wary of using Wikipedia pages as sources for Wikipedia pages. It's turtles all the way down, if you get my meaning. The page in question says, "the name Faeroe is thought to mean Sheep Islands," but doesn't say thought by whom. 71.215.114.165 (talk) 23:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is absolutely no question that the -oe part means 'islands', as it stands for the word for 'islands' in all the Scandinavian languages. That's the part that makes the name tautological. Whether the first part of the name actually does mean 'sheep' is irrelevant to the tautology. I have tried to clarify that in the article.  Pasquale (talk) 14:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources, please 

message: Names of Chinese geographical features are often imported in full and have "mountain", "river", etc. tacked on to them. For instance, "Changjiang River" (=Long River river), "Huanghe River" (=Yellow River river), "Mount Huangshan" (=Mount Yellow Mountain). Is there anywhere in the article where this could be added (with appropriate sources) as a generalization, rather than having to list a whole bunch of individual examples of the same phenomenon? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 14:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese geographical placenames 

message: I have removed three items that were added without citing a source. Each is problematic.
*Wookey Hole Caves. Per the linked page, Wookey is a corruption of Ogof; though the name is derived from a Celtic word for hole, it is not actually a Celtic word for cave.
** Isn't that then tautological as 'hole hole caves'?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.203.193 (talk) 12:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing three unsourced additions 

message: Should we include Napton-on-the-Hill? "The toponym Napton is derived from the Old English cnaepp meaning 'hilltop' and tun meaning 'settlement' in the Old English language". Unfortunately, our article lacks a source for this - but it is clearly correct. 18:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Napton-on-the-Hill 

message: Apparently the Japanese city of Kyoto comes from the words "Kyo" and "To", which both mean "Capital" in neighbouring regional dialects. So "capital city capital city". However, I don't have a source, and there are already too many unsourced entries. So I'll leave it here, perhaps someone can dig up a suitable source for the etymology. - PaulxSA (talk) 01:37, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kyoto 

message: I read somewhere that "Scotia" is Latin for land.195.148.36.108 (talk) 10:36, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really. Scotia was just the land of the Scoti, which is the name the Romans gave to the Gaels.--Gorpik (talk) 11:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scotland 

message: This list has grown over the years, but very few of the entries are sourced (and several of those which are are not reliably sourced), which makes it seem like this list is full of original research. There needs to be a solid list of criteria for inclusion, which should include having the tautology itself discussed in a reliable source. ansh666 20:55, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criteria for inclusion 

message: There are a number of rivers in Britain with names derived from the Brythonic Isca or the Gaelic uisge, one sense of which is river - the Exe (Devon), Axe (Dorset, Somerset), Usk (Wales), Esk (Cumberland, Yorkshire, Dumfriesshire, Midlothian and Angus).
With regards to Lake Windermere, mentioned above, I am one of those who considers the use of lake with any of the larger bodies of water in the Lake District other than Bass(enthwaite) Lake (aka Broadwater and Bassenwater) to be a solecism, but the usage does occur.
You also can find people referring to Glen Strathfarrar.
There are quite a few Gaelic/Norse tautologies to be found in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (e.g. Gleann Lingeadail and Gleann Lacasdail in Lewis). Lavateraguy (talk) 20:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isca/Uisge 

message: I know this has come up before on this talk page, but I can't help feeling there's something odd about the presence of Arakawa river.
First of all, it's not a tautology in Japanese. It's Arakawa in Japanese, not Arakawa-kawa. Secondly, the Japan Water Agency refers to it in English as the Ara River. OsFish (talk) 08:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I went ahead and removed it. As far as I can see, the other entries in foreign languages are all tautologies in those languages themselves.OsFish (talk) 04:18, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ara river/ Arakawa river 

message: I don't know where the line lies here, but Nullarbor Plain takes its name from the Latin for "no trees', which is of course the feature (or lack of feature, depending on your POV) that make it a plain. Include? 
Elguaponz (talk) 01:41, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: No. It should be the same word. Planum or planitia would have qualified, but not this. Besides, some plains have scattered trees.--Gorpik (talk) 15:20, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Nullarbor?

message: The discussion of Russian in the intro makes no sense - "For example, in Russian, the format "Ozero X-ozero" (i.e. "Lake X-lake") is used." 
That format is NOT used in Russian. No example from Russian is given anywhere below.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.187.84.237 (talk) 14:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian? 

message: The characteristic property of items on this list is closer to the notion of pleonasm than that of tautology. The appropriate title is "List of pleonasmic place names".
77.212.198.131 (talk) 23:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title 

message: This landmark is missing from the list - "Christ/Christo(s)" means "saviour" in greek, while "redentor" means the same in portuguese!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.90.247.14 (talk) 08:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, christos means anointed with oil, as they used to do with kings etc. in ancient times.  In Catholic baptisms, the holy oil used is still called chrysm. Pelagic (talk) 04:28, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Estatua do Christo Redentor na cidade Rio de Janeiro! (The statue of Christ the Redeemer in the city of Rio de Janeiro!) 

message: Is "Wagga Wagga" tautological or plural? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:52, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a plural, or an intensifier, if you prefer. I have just removed it from the list, since there is no tautology at all in that name.--Gorpik (talk) 07:41, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wagga Wagga 

message: Surely the Rhine is a River River? Mamegann (talk) 01:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rhine