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Hm, I was looking for discussion I half remember about cities and towns in the USA being placed with their state names, eg "Chicago, Illinois". I recall seeing some other articles about naming conventions about specific subjects that seem not to be linked to here. They probably should be. -- Infrogmation 15:30, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names). The two pages need merging. By the by, both pages have a "not a formal policy yet" tag... and the tag is probably inappropiate in both cases! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:37, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Proposal for disputed places

I propose that in disputes over the correct name for a place in the English Wikipedia, those who are not native English speakers be prohibited from voting, though encouraged to advise on the history involved. Reason: native English speakers are more likely to know the native English usage and less likely to have partisan interests. Jamesday 20:36, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This sounds like a very good guideline to me. Martin 20:57, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What is a "Unitary Authority"

Is a Unitary Authority outside its former county?

As a county borough Sunderland was entirely independent of Durham County Council, but remained part of County Durham until the 1974 reorganisation placed it in the new metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear.

Darlington was recently created a unitary authority. The convention seems to say it must now be described as "formerly part of County Durham". But surely it is still part of the county, but entirely independent of the county council.

The first unitary authorities in effect were the metropolitan districts after their county councils abolition. For such authorities to be outside their counties would mean the counties have been abolished in wikipedia, despite the convention saying otherwise.

Surely the terms are "Sunderland, a city in the metropolitan County of Tyne and Wear" and "Darlington, a unitary authority in County Durham" garryq 21:25, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The policy is self-contradictory in many places. However, until it can be modified, it is acceptable to say "Darlington, a unitary authority in the traditional county of Durham", which conveys the necessary information accurately. One can also accurately say "Darlington, a unitary authority in the ceremonial county of Durham". However, one cannot accurately say that Darlington is in the (administrative) county of Durham, because it isn't! Neither traditional nor ceremonial counties are used in administration, so if the term "county" be taken solely to mean "administrative county" then all one can say is the terribly enlightening fact that "Darlington is in Darlington"! 80.255 22:00, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whose idea was the nonsensical "County of Milton Keynes"?

It's legal status is a Borough, the Borough of Milton Keynes. See Milton Keynes (borough). The term County of Milton Keynes is complete misnomer. The same is true of "County of Swindon". --Concrete Cowboy 23:44, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

You can blame the government for that one. In their nonsensical local government terminology MK is both a borough and a county of itself. See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1995/Uksi_19951769_en_2.htm
Constitution of new county of Milton Keynes
  8.—(1)  Milton Keynes shall cease to form part of Buckinghamshire.
     (2)  A new county shall be constituted comprising the area of
          Milton Keynes and shall be named the county of Milton Keynes.

Obviously, this only applies in the narrow field of local government. In ordinary parlance MK does not cease to form part of the traditional county of Buckinghamshire and there is no such thing as 'the county of Milton Keynes', but the current mess of local government terminology makes this extremely difficult. Owain 12:50, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Addendum: Bear in mind other Wikipedia policies

It occurs to me that the naming conventions for British counties need to be applied in ways that don't breach other guidelines. In particular, it might be unreasonable to include details of historical counties in the lead section of an article. This is meant to be a concise summary and include only the most major points. If an article mentions these details it should do so in the main body, not the lead section. See the guide to writing better articles, look under the heading 'Lead section'. Chris Jefferies 30 June 2005 19:07 (UTC)

Therein lies the disagreement as to what people think is important and what isn't. To use the Cardiff example, stating 'The city of Cardiff is in the county of Cardiff' is no use whatsoever as both entities are the same thing. Stating 'Cardiff is in the traditional county of Glamorgan' is useful as it places the city in a specific geographical area. The fact that that grographical area has no administrative functions shouldn't be an issue because we are trying to explain where the place is geographically, not administratively. Owain 13:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Proposal

by ChrisO moved from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)

Hierarchy of place names and disambiguation guidelines

Some place names are replicated for entities of differing levels of geographic significance. For instance, Georgia is both a country and a US state; Luxembourg is a country, a district of the country, a city and a province of Belgium; the name Limburg is used for provinces in both Belgium and the Netherlands. A consistent approach should be taken when disambiguating place name clashes, as some places are more important than others.

The hierarchy that should be followed is as follows:

When disambiguating identical names, priority should be given to the highest-ranking place. Therefore Luxembourg the country takes a higher rank than the province or the city; the hierarchy for disambiguation is as follows:

-- Anon.

  • In some countries, city can be larger, smaller, or same size as county. So the above county > city thing doesn't work globally. --Menchi 21:51, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, your size argument is good but we should follow the political boundaries/hierarchy. Another example, Canadian is PEI (the province) has less people than most cities in Canada yet PEI has more power than most of these cities due to the hierarchy of the Canadian governments. Burgundavia 06:01, 1 May 2004 (UTC)
  • The usual solution for disambiguating cities (i.e. add a comma and the country name, or, as the Naming conventions (city names) for the US and Canada, to add the name of the state/province) seems preferable to me. I agree with Menchi that county > city doesn't work globally, specially when trying to compare entities in two different countries. -- User:Docu
  • As a US state is a sovereign entity, I see no reason it should not be given equal precedence to a European state (or any other state/country). anthony (see warning)
  • Counter-intuitive strangeness. I Oppose this. There is nothing wrong with the main article being a disambiguation page since it allows virtually 100 percent of the readership to be a single click away from the article they are seeking.. Davodd 11:41, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)
  • I also strongly belive that, in the event of a name clash, the main article should ALWAYS be a disambiguation page. It is the most fair way to avoid cultural disputes. Allow me to assure you that many people in the U.S. State of Georgia belive their state to be just as sovirgn as the nation sharing the same name. Putting one location "over" the other for ANY reason is highly insensitive and offensive to the residents of the "lower" placed area.

Another proposal

There are a few important factors to consider when clarifying/qualifying and disambiguating names.

  1. Ease of use by wiki-editors.
    • Will most editors naturally link to the right article in their writing? How difficult will standard written usage of the term be?
  2. Ease of use by readers.
    • Will the disambiguation and/or clarifications be clear? Will readers be confused by seeing one article rather than another? Will they know where to go to find the information they want?
    • Will special-focus readers be able to find what they want, if one of the conflicting terms is only used in a narrow context?
  3. Conceptual/field-related importance; Propriety, Justice, Fairness
    • How should the various articles be named, in an ideal world (where no writer or reader is confused)?

Three common dab situations are:

  1. A common, important term conflicts with an uncommon, niche, or derivative term
  2. A common term conflicts with a specific, important term in a different context
  3. Two important terms in similar context conflict with one another.

(There are other combinations of these situations, but let's start with these.)

In the first case, we agree the common/wide-use term should get "term", the other terms should get "term (clarif)", and the main "term" page should have a note on it pointing readers to the other pages:

  • the note is generally at the top, unless the other uses are really minor in comparison; in which case it is at the bottom.
  • for one or two dab terms, the note can look like "For the clarif-1, see term (clarif 1). For the clarif-2, see term (clarif 2)".
  • for two or more dab terms, create a dab page at "term (disambiguation)" and have a note like "for other uses of term, see term (disambiguation)".

In the second case, both editors and readers in one context may not be thinking of the use in the other context, and may therefore be quite confused to be directed to the wrong page (or may regularly link to the wrong page). consider polish. There is agreement that visitors to polish should see a dab page, but I think it should be via a redirect to polish (disambiguation) -- that makes it crystal clear, before one gets past the first H1, that this is not the final page any reader was looking for.

In the third case, I think the shared context and the magnitude of any popularity/population difference is key. When the context is almost completely shared by the different terms (as with Luxembourg (country) and Luxembourg (city), or as with the various Fame articles), it makes sense for the original name/event (the country; the film) to occupy the unclarified name, and link to the others. When the context is only partly shared (as with Georgia (country) and Georgia (U.S. state)), I prefer an explicit (disambiguation) page, with only a redirect at the unclarified name. +sj+

I must confess I was the one who moved "Fame (movie, TV series, and theme song)" to "Fame", and I want very much to be able to move that to "Fame (disambiguation)"... but until there is some consensus on what to put at the unclarified Fame, I'm leaving it as is. +sj+ 07:33, 2004 May 18 (UTC)

Applying this proposal to the above examples:

  • Luxembourg is closely related to Luxembourg (province of Belgium), Luxembourg (district), and Luxembourg (city); they all share the same name origin, and none greatly eclipses the country. So we can use the above-suggested hierarchy to assign the unclarified name to the country.
  • Fame (movie) is closely related to Fame (television), Fame (musical), and Fame (song) -- the latter three all named for and derived from the first. The other common use of fame is a dicdef which doesn't have its own article. So we can assign the unclarif. name to the film.
  • Georgia (country) and Georgia (U.S. State) are linguistically unrelated and in somewhat different contexts, though both are placenames. People can be divided fairly neatly among those who first think of the country and those who first think of the state when they hear the name. The articles do not mention one another. As a result, a dab page is created at Georgia (disambiguation), and the unclarified name is redirected there.
  • Cambridge, England, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other places named Cambridge (disambiguation): all are cities, all were named after the old and renowned city in England, and none vastly eclipse the original in size or popularity, so the original city gets the unclarified page.
  • Santiago de Chile, Santiago de Compostela, and other places named Santiago: all are cities, all were named after Santiago the patron saint of Spain, but Santiago de Compostela was by far the first. However, unlike the case above, the original Santiago (population 100,000; capital of an autonomous region) is in some ways eclipsed by Santiago de Chile (population 5,000,000; capital of a country). So neither gets an unclarified article title (and the current page at Santiago should be redirected to Santiago (disambiguation)).
  • Azerbaijan, and the Iranian provinces West and East Azarbaijan: All are named for the same thing, in the same part of the world. The country is higher on the heirarchy up above, and larger and better-known than the provinces. It should clearly get the unclarified article name. Since the Iranian provinces are related, their articles should be linked-to from the main article. (I just added a dab mesg at the top of Azerbaijan; before that, there was no mention of Iranian provinces on the page. +sj+ 08:22, 2004 May 18 (UTC))
(Who wrote that? User SJ? Never heard of him.) But I am sure I will hear more of you, SJ, as when it comes to city names, common sense is a most uncommon quality, and your examples just above are full of it. I hereby nominate you to be our Tsar of place name confusion. Tannin 09:40, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

A different rule for each country?

There are plenty of cases where a city and its province share a name that is mostly used for the city. Since there has been no common naming convention so far, what we have is chaos:

Should we just let the writers for each country decide on their own rules?

-- ran 08:25, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

Until recently, with exception of Counties of Croatia there was no more lower-case around. User:Golbez started to unilateral revert this, while knowing that at least one other user (me) opposes. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:05, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
I think that each country should have its own rules, with a standard disambiguation style. To say otherwise will inevitably make article names that look "wrong" to locals, and could sometimes be downright offensive. However, this is not to say that conventions cannot be attempted or debated - some locals may be swayed by the arguments to accept a more global standard. However, until then, I say we go on a per-country basis. It worked well enough til Tobias came along and started unilaterally moving articles around. :) --Golbez 17:14, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Arabic province / city names

If a province and its capital have the same name, what is the best way to name the articles? Wikipedia seems to do it in three different ways:

In some cases, the Arabic version is used for the province and the English version for the city. (Sometimes the only difference is the al-.) I find this strange and confusing (Moscow city, Moskva oblast?), but then, I don't speak Arabic. Can someone clarify if this is right?

Iraq
An Najaf province; Najaf city
Al Basrah province; Basra city
Al Karbala province; Karbala city

Egypt
Al Iskandariyah province; Alexandria city
Al Isma'iliyah province; Ismailia city

In some other cases, the city and the province share the same article, with the Arabic name redirecting to the English name. Should there be two separate articles for the province and the city instead?

Egypt
Al Qahirah redirects to Cairo city
Al Jizah redirects to Giza city

Syria
Dimashq redirects to Damascus city

Jordan
'Amman redirects to Amman city

Algeria
Alger redirects to Algiers city

Then there's a third way, which is to have the English province redirect to the Arabic province, and the Arabic city redirecting to the English city. The clearest way so far, but IMO a bit elaborate:

Saudi Arabia
Mecca province redirects to Makkah province
Makkah redirects to Mecca

What's the best way to sort all of this out?

-- ran 09:06, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

I think that "Al-Something" is "the something". "Al Karbala" => "the Karabala". - anon

I'm going to start rearranging the city and province pages. The new scheme will be like this:

Al Basrah redirects to Basra (this is the city, not the province)
Al Basrah province redirects to Basra province

If anyone disagrees, post something here. -- ran 07:50, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Historical places

Is there a convention for referring to a geographical location at a historical moment, now in a different nation-state than at time of the event in question? For example, the List of earthquakes makes reference to places as being in the United States, not being incorporated into same at the time. Is this as per the convention, or ought they to refer to Spanish Empire, Mexico, etc, or flag as "in present day", or some such formula? Alai

For clarity, maybe both should be indicated. Maurreen 06:15, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree, where both are relevant, both should be mentioned. For an article about a modern place, the current name should be used. But if the article has a history section, the previous name(s) should be mentioned there. If the article is about an historical event or person it should use the name that was current at the time but should probably also say 'currently in xyz'. Chris Jefferies 14:02, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Country names in category titles

There's a discussion on standardization of country names in titles (at least for categories) on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion which may be of interest. -- Beland 02:30, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Countries (Moved from general conventions)

Is there a central list of "commonly misnamed" countries, and what they should be referred to on Wikipedia? This might seem fairly obvious, but sadly not all country names are as simple as Canada, Australia, Brazil or France. This refers to both in article names, AND just as importantly, as a short form (see bolded examples below).

Examples:

I'm sure there are others! I found most of these while doing up the table at Template:WikiProject Olympics Country Table and needing short forms of the country name for the table - not to mention article names like Democratic People's Republic of Korea at the 1992 Summer Olympics are a bit of a mouthful! -- Chuq 06:59, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Such a list would be helpful: I've just disambiguated a couple of the links in the 2004 summer olympics series where an article existed but did not show up in the 04 olympics template because of misnaming. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 15:16, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
List of sovereign states might be helpful for this. Maurreen 04:40, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The two Congos are best identified as Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa), ie using the capital cities to identify which one you mean. This was the custom before Congo (Kinshasa) changed its name to Zaire, and is the least confusing way to refer to these two countries.
Taiwan is best referred to as such. It is only really Americans who tend to use "ROC" or "Republic of China" and that usage confuses the hell out of the rest of us. Note that the Taiwanese government uses both forms itself. There is a difference between Taiwan and ROC, namely a small number of small heavily militarised islands close to the Chinese mainland. However, almost always the difference is irrelevant.
The People's Republic of China can almost always be shortened to "China" without causing confusion. Some care is necessary if Macau and/or Hong Kong are in point.
Referring to "South Korea" as "Korea" would be an unwelcome development, jguk 08:22.
There's only ever been one Yugoslavia, as far as I'm aware. But it shrunk somewhat in the 1990s. If it's borders at any one moment in time are important, you'll have to describe them:)
I'm not aware of ever seeing the British Virgin Islands (which are often abbreviated to BVI) being called the UK Virgin Islands - and we should not be in the business of renaming things here, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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