Talk:Unity Pond

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Unity Pond or Lake Winnecook?

To me, the clear argument for keeping the article title that has been around for over six years is that all of the competent authorities call it Unity Pond. These include the State of Maine and the US Geological Survey, and that consensus is reflected in the fact that both Google Maps and Bing Maps identify it as Unity Pond.

One argument given for calling it Lake Winnecoook instead is that it is not a pond but a lake. But many bodies of water are named as ponds even though they are considered lakes by some or all of the divergent criteria for defining lakes vs. ponds. See pond for more on that. The most inclusive definitions of ponds concern whether light hits the bottom of the water body, and whether there is seasonal turnover, which also requires non-trivial depth. Yet there are a bunch of water bodies in Maine that are more than 100 feet deep--much deeper than Unity Pond--yet are widely called ponds, and thus their Wikipedia articles are titled "...Pond". To find them, read list of lakes in Maine, sort each county's list by volume, and try clicking on water bodies called ponds among the list of larger lakes. Other definitions of ponds are even more restrictive, and would qualify even more Pond-named water bodies as lakes. In short, whether something is a lake or pond has little actual bearing on whether it is called "...Lake" or "...Pond".

Another argument that has been raised is that Lake Winnecook was the original Native American name, so we are wrong in calling it Unity Pond. But by that logic, the article on the city of South Portland, Maine should be titled Purpoodock, Maine, since that was the original Native American name. Legions of places and natural features originally had other names in Native American languages, and yet the Wikipedia articles on them are titled based on their accepted current names. If one is incensed that this water body is misnamed, I say persuade the State of Maine and/or the USGS to change what they call it. There would then be a strong argument for changing the title of the Wikipedia article.

A third argument raised is that old maps call it Lake Winnecook. Again, that is beside the point, since what determines Wikipedia article naming is the current names of places. For example the article on Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania is titled as such even though the original consensus (and Native American) name for the town was Mauch Chunk, and the name was only changed in the 1950s. If the town were now renamed Teletubbies, Pennsylvania, the title of that article would be changed, however new and ridiculous that name may be. All of that said, I searched for old maps of Waldo County, Maine in the Library of Congress collection, and the first one turned up, from 1859, calls it 25 Mile Pond or Unity Pond (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3733w.la000276/?r=0.286,0.262,0.3,0.121,0). So if there was indeed ever a time when maps consistently called it Lake Winnecook, that must have been quite a long time ago.

That said, I'd love to hear other arguments along lines I have not considered. And for what it's worth, people searching for Lake Winnecook in Wikipedia will already be redirected to this article, so they will be able to find all the information on the lake. Jbening (talk) 22:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]