Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)

Please post discussions about Railway station names at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (stations).

Frequently asked questions

Why is the article on Georgia named Georgia (country), and Georgia is instead a disambiguation page?

The consensus is that there is no primary topic for the term "Georgia". Supporters of that position successfully argued that since the country is not significantly more commonly searched for than the US state of the same name, it cannot have primary topic over the US state. Opponents argued that internationally recognized countries should take precedence over sub-national units like the US state. Some opponents argued that the current setup conveys a US-centric bias. Attempts to rename the articles to a natural disambiguation title like "Republic of Georgia" or "State of Georgia" have not reached any consensus (see the list of archived discussions).

Why is the Ireland article about the island, while the article on the country is named Republic of Ireland?

The naming of Ireland articles dates back to 2002. Previously, content for both the island and country appeared on the same page,[1] but it was then decided to move content and the page history about the country to its official "Republic of Ireland" description, while keeping content about the island at "Ireland". Ever since, this issue has been heavily disputed, but there has not been any consensus to change this status quo. Previous failed proposals have included making the country the primary topic of "Ireland" instead, or using parenthetical disambiguation titles like "Ireland (island)" and "Ireland (country)". According to an ArbCom ruling in 2009, discussions relating to the naming of these Ireland articles had to occur at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration. In 2023 this requirement was withdrawn so discussions can take place on the talk pages as normal.

Why do articles on populated places in the United States primarily use the [[Placename, State]] "comma convention" format? Why is there an exemption for cities listed in the AP Stylebook as not requiring a state?

This is an issue where different rules of Wikipedia:Article titles can conflict with each other, thus consensus determines which ones to follow. Most of these articles were created by User:Rambot, a Wikipedia bot, back in 2002 based on US Census Bureau records. When creating these pages, Rambot used the "Placename, State" naming format, initially setting a consistent naming convention for these articles. Supporters of keeping the "Placename, State" format argue that this is generally the most common naming convention used by American reliable sources. Opponents argue that this format is neither precise nor concise, and results in short titles like Nashville redirecting to longer titles like Nashville, Tennessee. After a series of discussions since 2004, a compromise was reached in 2008 that established the Associated Press Stylebook exception rule for only those handful of cities listed in that style guide (the dominant US newswriting guide) as not requiring the state modifier. There has been since no consensus to do a massive page move on the other articles on US places (although individual requested move proposals have been initiated on different pages from time to time).

Need for clarity on linking major American cities

Consensus is sought as to the correct way to refer and link to major American cities such as Los Angeles and Boston. The discussion is being held at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Need for clarity on linking major American cities.

Capitalisation of "oblast" when used as the name of a Ukrainian administrative division

I have made an ngram review of "X O|oblast" for the oblasts listed at Oblasts of Ukraine#List. While many of these do not give an ngram result, where they do, they do not show that oblast is consistently capitalised in sources (per WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS) that would lead us to a conclusion that we should cap these names on WP. See Chernivtsi Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Kiev Oblast (no result for Kyiv Oblast), Lviv Oblast, Poltava Oblast and Sumy Oblast - others retured no result. A cursory look at Google Scholar results would confirm mixed capitalisation - Sumy Oblast, Donetsk Oblast and Kharkiv Oblast. For these names in Cyrillic, oblast (о́бласть) is not capitalised. There is therefore no to argument that capitalisation from the native language gives rise to a need to capitalise the term in English. The same would be true for other administrative divisions (eg raion). The same is likely true where the same terms are used for other nations (eg Russia). Cinderella157 (talk) 02:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but see Talk:Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast/Archive 1#Requested move 29 April 2022, Talk:Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast/Archive 1#Requested move 11 June 2022, and especially Talk:Cherkasy Oblast#Requested move 12 May 2022. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 06:28, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

RM results that boil down to "capitalize because the sources I prefer and cherrypicked like to do so" are pretty common when people deeply involved in some topic show up in force to dogpile an RM (or one or two bloviate at tremendous length with their personal WP:OR about why something "is" a "proper name" despite numerous RS not treating it as one by capitalizing it). As our editorial pool shrinks, the entire RM process is starting to fail because too few editors pay any attention to it at all, and those who show up to comment too often have a "screw the guidelines and policies, I want capitalization in my topic else" attitude with no regard to sourcing and guidelines. The way to get around this is to do a bunch of source research beforehand showing that the capitalization level is nowhere near what we'd expect for WP to be capitalizing. Not just n-grams but Google News and Google Scholar and IA Scholar results – e.g. here showing that lowercase "oblast" clearly dominates in journals, but do more such searches for all these terms so the evidence is unassailable. Then do a mass RM that is "advertised" at various higher profile venues like WT:MOSCAPS and here and WT:NCCAPS and even WT:AT and WP:VPPOL if it seems to warrant that. Make it clear that the earlier RMs were based on false claims about the capitalization level in the source material and that you can prove it. This is basically the same situation as all that sports [d|D]raft stuff: topic-devoted editors are hell-bent on over-capitalizing, but do not have the sourcing to justify it. Same with the state panhandles (an RM saga that still continues). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:59, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure practices in other languages should be used to decide what to do in English; different languages just have different conventions. French, for example, capitalizes noun forms (like Amérique for America) but definitely not demonyms (like américain for American). French does Amérique centrale for Central America but Amérique du Sud for South America, though that may be similar to the difference between "North America" and "northern America".

I guess in English there's disagreement or uncertainty over whether the type descriptor is part of a proper noun or a separate noun being modified by a proper noun adjunct. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (US stations) says "station" is lowercase except where "Station" is already part of the name, leaving that question up to sourcing. Conductors say South Station and not "South", and "Penn Station" not "Penn" (which means the university). But they might say "Back Bay" or "Yonkers", so we have Back Bay station and Yonkers station. But many people write e.g. "Back Bay Station" as if "Back Bay" is a short version of the full proper name, just as "New York" is a short version of "New York City", which is never written "New York city". This is somewhat unsatisfying, but so is the difference in pronunciation between "Kansas" and "Arkansas", so c'est la vie.

Given sometimes the type descriptor is incorporated into the name and sometimes it's not, and given that capitalization of type descriptors in general seems to be common in English though not always universal, I think declaring as a style choice that English Wikipedia always capitalizes would be acceptable as an arbitrary choice between two common conventions, and also safer in that we'd never mistakenly lowercase a name where the descriptor has been incorporated, which seems to happen over time or for words where the short version is already taken.

It looks like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Ukrainian places) already favors the capitalized version, and given that some professional English sources use that convention, it's not wrong for Wikipedia to choose it arbitrarily. Especially given that the short versions of these names are already taken by city names, it seems likely that the type descriptors have or will some day be firmly incorporated by English speakers. -- Beland (talk) 19:11, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, the naming convention page is silent on capitalisation except for the usage. Weirdly the Ukrainian English-language newspapers I can find use the word "region" instead of oblast in their reporting... SportingFlyer T·C 21:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Region-specific guidance for Turkish cities

Can we add some specific guidance for Turkish cities? For some cities, this is almost getting to ridiculous levels. For example, count how many Smyrna's are in the lead of İzmir in this version [2] (there's one extra in the footnote as well). Btw, there's also Smyrna and Old Smyrna articles. Historic names should usually be presented in "Names" or "Etymology" sections, except significant ones such as Constantinople in the lead of Istanbul for example. However, non-English alphabet versions should also be in "Names" or "Etymology" sections. Turkish is spoken by 85-90% of the population. The rest is mostly Kurdish. Except Arabic, other languages would be less than 0.1% Bogazicili (talk) 16:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Türkiye

Could we get a section addressing users adding Türkiye or replacing Turkey with Türkiye? I usually revert those edits and point to wp:commonname or another MOS-related guideline, but it would be helpful to point here. Classicwiki (talk) If you reply here, please ping me. 05:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Probably easier to have a generic “use the main articles title”; we may eventually move the article to Türkiye, and even we do we will have the problem in the opposite direction. BilledMammal (talk) 06:13, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sněžka", Śnieżka or an English exonym, if there is one ?

A discussion at Talk:Sněžka#Requested move 17 July 2024, regarding a mountain on the Polish—Czech border, may be of interest. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 17:44, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Primary topics and WP:USPLACE

How should we decide the primary topics of "Placename, Country", "Placename (city)", "Placename (town)", etc., especially for some countries (like the United States) whose cities cannot have articles named Placename, Country? The existing rules applied to Canada may be useful references. John Smith Ri (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@John Smith Ri: There is a difference between naming conventions and eligibility as a primary topic, i.e. a page name does not need to be eligible to be the preferred title of an article in order to be in contention for primary topic; it is sufficient for the page name to be eligible either for preferred title or redirect. For example, Barack Obama is the primary topic of Obama even though the latter would never be allowed as the title of the article. And so Birmingham, United States is a primary redirect to Birmingham, Alabama even though other Birminghams exist in the US. (Note that Birmingham, England, is not in contention for primary topic since Birmingham, United States is neither a valid title nor redirect to that topic.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 16:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

However, Birmingham, England is the primary article for “Birmingham”. Blueboar (talk) 17:34, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]