en Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (country-specific topics) Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics). Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

"(item) of (country)" vs "(adjective of nationality) (item)"

ex: History of Israel vs Category:Israeli history

We really need a guideline on this, as quick glance through Category:Categories by country will demonstrate. Some categories use one form, some use the other, and some, such as Category:History by nation and Category:Politics by country are a chaotic mix of the two.

The best discussion I found on this subject was at Category_talk:Political_parties_by_country:

"It has been agreed that we should not have article names of the form [location] [object] (eg. South African political parties) because this requires not only the knowledge of the location, but how to make that name a possessive (South Africa -> South African). For example, how does one make Côte d'Ivoire possessive? It is simple enough for creators to search for it, but we have users to think about also - whom we cannot expect to guess the correct possessive every single time. This is why we have all articles relating to locations of the form [object] of [location] (eg. Political parties of South Africa, or Geography of Côte d'Ivoire). This simply uses the raw name of the state for ease of use, and for compliance with most other articles." - User:OldakQuill

It looks like this was discussed and consensus was reached. I agree completely. I propose that this be added as a preferred naming convention. (Certainly, if there are any exceptions, these can be noted in the convention.)

- Pioneer-12 12:17, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Vote here

For:

I agree, this seems very sensible. Thryduulf 12:49, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree with the proposal. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:23, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
I agree as well. -Kbdank71 17:26, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've been looking for this policy. I think most people assume it is policy already! --Dmcdevit 22:42, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Of course I agree... I initially proposed it. :-) - Pioneer-12 15:57, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Support; see my comments below -- Tetraminoe 19:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Against:

No biggie to me, but I see less need for standardization, and if it is standardized, I'd go with the adjectival form. That seems more natural. Maurreen 06:01, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pop quiz

re the adjectival form, can you (without looking it up) tell me what that form is for all the following countries:

Côte D'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of Congo
Seychelles
Equatorial Guinea
Tuvalu
Micronesia
Holy See (Vatican City)
Burkina Faso
Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Myanmar
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Perhaps we ought to have a list here of what the adjectival forms, etc, of country names are (or would that fit better at Wiktionary?) Thryduulf 15:49, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

These would be my guesses, without looking them up:

Côte D'Ivoire - Ivorian or Ivoirian, I believe both are equally acceptable.
Democratic Republic of Congo - Congolese, though I'm not sure how one would indicate which Congo
Seychelles - Seychellean
Equatorial Guinea - Equatorial Guinean
Tuvalu - (no idea)
Micronesia - Micronesian
Holy See (Vatican City) - "Vatican" itself is an adjective
Burkina Faso - (I'd guess wildly) Burkinan or Burkina Fasonian
Kiribati - (I've never even heard of this place) Kiribatian?
Marshall Islands - Marshallese
Myanmar - Burmese
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines -- St. Vincentian

How'd I do? -- Jmabel | Talk 04:23, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

Better than I did! I have now looked them all up and the answers are at User:Thryduulf/Country naming conventions pop-quiz answers. Thryduulf 09:25, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...and let's not forget those Monegasques(?) in Monaco, Luxembourgois (or is it Letzeburgisch?) in Luxembourg, Sotho (?) in Lesotho, Ghanaian in Ghana, Manx in the Isle of Man, and Cypriots in Cyprus! And that's without mentioning well-known odd formations such as such as Greek, Spanish, Danish, French, Peruvian, and Dutch. Grutness|^hello? 13:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC). PS - "St. Vincent and the Grenadines" would be a great name for a jazz band.

My guesses:

Côte D'Ivoire - Ivoirian
Democratic Republic of Congo - Congoese (or possibly Zairese, since the country used to be called Zaire)
Seychelles - Echellian
Equatorial Guinea - Guinnian
Tuvalu - Tuvalese
Micronesia - Micronesian
Holy See (Vatican City) - Popian :-)
Burkina Faso - Burkinese
Kiribati - Kiribatian
Marshall Islands - Marshallian
Myanmar - Burmese
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - Vincentian or Grenadian (probably varies depending on the island)

Excellent quiz!

Côte D'Ivoire - Ivorian
Democratic Republic of Congo - Congolese
Seychelles - Seychllean
Equatorial Guinea - Guinean
Tuvalu - Tuvaluan (?)
Micronesia - Micronesian
Holy See (Vatican City) - Vatican
Burkina Faso - Burkinian
Kiribati - Kiribatian
Marshall Islands - Marshall
Myanmar - Myanmari (or Burmese)
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - Grenadinian —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fixman (talk • contribs) 06:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Not only is it hard to derive the adjective from the country name, it's also often hard to derive the country name from the national adjective, especially if it's a multi-word name. Maybe that should be the next quiz. :-) - Pioneer-12 01:44, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Examples of confusion

Each example is another reason why we need a clear policy on this.

Exceptions

What about "--- in Fooland" and "--- from Fooland"? And people categories?

There are alternatives to "of". "In" is sometimes preferable to "of" (particularly in geography). I don't like "from" - "of" is probably better for consistency.

I also think that categories that contain people and are themselves categorised by nationality ought to be "Foowegian ----" rather than "--- of Fooland", unless the reason they are being categorised relates directly to their country as a political entity (so "Prime Ministers of Fooland" but "Foowegian artists"). That's closer in line with normal usage (when is the last time you heard a person described as an "artist of the United States" rather than an "American artist"?) as well as being preferably ambiguous (people are members of rather fuzzy cultures: e.g. "Basque" may be an appropriate designation of nationality but it wouldn't fit in a "by country" scheme). Also bear in mind that many people are identifiable as Foowegian even if they lived before the modern state of Fooland came into existence. As noted above, literature, culture, music and the arts are tied in more with notions of nationality and "peoples" rather than countries as legal and political entities. "Foowegian literature" makes more sense than "Literature of Fooland" (again, when is the last time you heard a book described as a major contribution to the literature of the United States, rather than to American literature?).

Overall I think a strict, overarching policy is a bad idea unless the exceptions leave leeway. On a case-by-case basis, consistent conventions should be worked out (look at Category:People by nationality for example - there are a some "People of Fooland" and the odd "People from Fooland" but mostly "Foowegian people" - where possible I have suggested that the "from" and "of" categories should be put in adjectival form, but reaction seems negative so far). One thing that bugs me is that we have "American foo-doers", "United States foo-doers" and "U.S. foo-dooers" (see Category:American people by occupation)- it's not just deciding whether to use an adjectival form, picking which one to use is also important (Luxemburger vs Luxembourgeois comes to mind - and Dominica and Dominican Republic both have adjective "Dominican", so "of Dominica"/"of the Dominican Republic" always has to be used even where usually the adjectival form would be). Despite this chaos I firmly believe any policies and conventions should be made on this more local scale (deciding on a format for things like Category:People by nationality, Category:European rivers - a nightmare using a combination of "in Foo", "of Foo" and "Fooian" at present - and picking adjectives for countries like the USA, Luxembourg etc) rather than laying down a rule of the form "always of Foo, except for the following exceptions". Making sure that either "Fooian history" or "History of Foo" was standard among "history by nationality" would have prevented that Prussian history cock-up, without the need for an overarching policy - I don't see why such a policy is an immediate necessity. I have no problem with stating that in general "of" is preferable, but deliberately leaving possible exceptions open-ended - if any exceptions are challenged with a {cfr} to "of Foo" form, the onus should be on the challenged names to prove their value on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, if you are going to use a rule of the form on the project page, it really ought to state when in Foo is appropriate - it's now standard in a lot of geography categories. --VivaEmilyDavies 08:39, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback. Flexibility is important. I have added exceptions to deal with situations like English Literature and "of foo" vs "in foo" Are there any other exceptions that should be added?

I totally disagree with the idea of doing this locally. With that method you wind up having dozens of different groups of people arguing the same issue over and over and over again in ignorance of one other. What a waste of time! The purpose of general guidelines is to indicate best practices--to spread wisdom, improve consistency, reduce arguments, and save time. That's what this guideline is striving for. - Pioneer-12 01:10, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with VivaEmilyDavies that an over-arching policy of e.g. "always use of" would be inappropriate and detrimental to Wikipedia (see non-natural examples mentioned above), but I disagree that the standard should be set locally: I think it should be set here, but with enough detail (and coordination with the editors of specific subjects) to be useful. It seems that policies, official or unofficial, are in place for various subjects across WP; this policy should gather, coordinate, standardize and improve them. There are clearly times when X-ish Y is preferable to Y of X. I think the probable comes from the fact that "country" and "nationality" are not always seen as synonymous. To follow VivaEmilyDavies's line of reasoning, I think that for issues tied directly to geographical or political divisions, Y of X may be be better; for issues of nationality, X-ish Y may be better. Thus, "Mountains of Canada" and "Politics of Italy," but "Chinese philosophy" and "American music".

This gets even more tangled up when considering languages, which often bear the name of their country of origin. I think, following common English usage, "Spanish literature" should be allowed, referring to literature in the Spanish language; "literature of Spain" should also be allowed, referring to literature by Spaniards. This may be more appropriate for some languages than others: for instance, Spanish-language literature originates from many countries other than Spain, but does Japanese-language literature come from many other countries than Japan? In this case, it could be helpful for both pages to exist, with one redirecting to the other. (Which redirected to which should likely be a case-by-case basis, since even in situations where the two are nearly synonymous, there is often either some literature in that language originating from other countries, or some literature originating from that country in other languages. It might not be enough to warrant two separate pages, but the redirect should go to the larger one.)

So, taking into account the often tricky overlap between geopolitical boundaries, nationality, and language, some policy to guide these areas should exist, but we should approach it with due research and caution, and expect to craft a fairly nuanced policy that will probably best be refined over time. Otherwise, how could we deal with, say, these articles: "Jewish literature" (religious/national identity), "Israeli literature" (national/political identity), "Hebrew literature" (language), "Yiddish literature" (language/culture) -- or "literature of the Jews," "literature of Israel," "literature in Hebrew," "literature in Yiddish"? Where do they overlap, and where do they diverge or conflict? Other than someone knowledgeable in the area, I don't think you can accurately make the distinction. In these places, an overarching policy could do more bad than good. To craft a policy that provides useful guidance but is flexible enough to account for reality will take some time. -- Tetraminoe 19:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Redundant or competing pages: Places, countries, etc.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions for a discussion on consolidating pages. Maurreen (talk) 16:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Related discussions

Deprecate?

There was a recent poll at Wikipedia talk:Category titles/Archive: Poll started August 4, 2005 during which the subject of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics) came up and the assertion was made that this convention either is or should be deprecated, see also archive 3 and the current debate at Wikipedia talk:Category titles. Thoughts on that issue are welcome, as is input on Category titles and how current policy affects them. Hiding talk 08:27, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Ethnic groups by country categories

A naming convention proposal for ethnic groups by country categories has been made at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Ethnic groups by country categories. Kurieeto 21:44, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Scope of Rule

I assume this only applies to topics like Politics of... and not to proper nouns that are disambiguated by country. This needs to be made clear.

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _talk _contrib 19:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

USA adjective??

Another one for the pop quiz - what's the adjectival form of the United States of America? American might be commonly used within that country, but it surely suffers from too many WP:BIAS issues (see Use_of_the_word_American#Political-cultural_views to be acceptable in principal names of articles. There's also the disambiguation problem does it apply to the continent or the country? Obviously the preferred option would be to use ... of the United States, but in the Wine Project almost all our national wine articles are of the form Italian wine, Australian wine etc on the grounds of WP:COMMONNAME. The major exception is Wine from the United Kingdom, but that's because British wine is legally defined as wine that doesn't originate in the UK (!) I understand that using United States without the America is potentially ambiguous, as there are other countries that are united states, but US wine must be less bad than American wine? I'd appreciate some guidance on this, as over on Talk:American_wine I'm having a hard problem getting people from the US to even understand that there's a problem, despite pointing them to Use_of_the_word_American#Political-cultural_views FlagSteward 19:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Using "American" to mean "of the United States" feels about as biased as prefering "BC" over "BCE". Yes, it has a biased origin, but is today so common that it really isn't much of a concern. Let's not go too far with the political correctness.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:51, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Sovereign states

I was wondering if there is a convention on naming countries as sovereign states as opposed to referring to constituent states or nations? An example of what I mean: should we write "Manchester, England" or "Manchester, United Kingdom"? Or is it up to the individual contributor? The former strikes me as rather anachronistic, since England has not been a sovereign state for 300 years, but referring to it in this way continues in common speech. Despite this, it seems inappropriate to me to refer to a regional part of a sovereign state in an encyclopedia which has global reach.

So for example, instead of the following:

Dallas, Texas
London, England
Munich, Bavaria

shouldn't there be a preferred style of

Dallas, USA
London, United Kingdom
Munich, Germany

or even

Dallas, Texas, USA
London, England, United Kingdom
Munich, Bavaria, Germany

depending on context? I'd like to know if there is a policy on this, as usage varies widely across articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cnbrb (talk • contribs) 12:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

There is only one Texas, so you don't need USA after it. There is only one England, so you don't need UK. There is more than one London, so you need London, England, or London, Ontario. You need Texas, which is a sovereign state, not United States, which is a federation. You need England or Scotland or Wales because of common usage. You would say Munich, Germany, not Munich, Bavaria, because Bavaria, although it is a state, is not a sovereign state. Does this make sense? No, I didn't think so. I guess we just have to wing it. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 07:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're right in a sense. At least, this is how things tend to be described in everyday speech and maybe I seem to be overly pedantic. My feeling is that in articles which attempt to be scholarly, there should be some convention that is more consistent, rather than just "winging it". I always feel that articles that start off saying something is in New York are unsatisfactory, and that in the opening paragraph at least, it should state "New York, USA" even though there is only one New York. It just seems to make it neater. There is, by way of comaprison, only one Skardu, but to write "Skardu, Baltistan" is unsatsifactory, as it assumes knowledge of the whereabouts of Baltistan. To identify the sovereign state for everywhere would be an equal rule and wouldn't make assumptions about the fame of a place.

Personally, I would favour a WP guideline requiring the sovereign state to be referred to in the first paragraph of each article - that would be enough to cover this issue for me.

PS I wouldn't have thought of US states as sovereign in my understanding. For the purposes of an international publication such as Wikipedia, it's more useful for the USA to be treated as a "sovereign state" (or another term if this is problematic). All the best Cnbrb (talk) 15:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You are right about the sovereignty. I overreached. Anyway, they were briefly sovereign at one time, like England and Scotland (for much longer). I guess some of the German states might have been, too. But I feel the other way. To write New York, USA, sounds really odd, but to write Los Angeles, California, does not because there is an L.A. in New Mexico. You don't need a state name with New Orleans because (to my knowledge) there is only one. Ditto Singapore, Hong Kong, and, well, add some more if you wish. When you are writing about Vladimir Lenin, you don't need to say Moscow, Russia, because it is indisputable that Lenin never stayed overnight in Moscow, Idaho.

So what I'm saying is that context plays an important part. That's why WP has editors (to examine the context) instead of just robots. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

"New York, USA" would indicate, to me, the state of New York, because that is the only time in which you would need the context of adding USA to it. To put it another way, if you have to add something to clarify its location, you would generally go one independent level higher, not skip directly to the country (except in the case of the Bavaria/Germany case mentioned already). Using that same logic, "Los Angeles, CA" could indicate Los Angeles County (one somewhat independent level higher). But that would be silly, because then you would have to say "Los Angeles, Los Angeles County". That doesn't help. Furthermore, in California (and probably much of the US) the county is really only significant for those areas not within the city/town limits (the unincorporated areas of the county). Usually county governments don't have much (if any) control over the cities within. Therefore, including a county name would generally be pointless. So my earlier suggestion of going "one independent level higher, not skip directly to the country" still works. It is similar with England. While England may be a part of the United Kingdom, it should not be skipped over simply to get to the highest level. The only remaining problem I see is cases where two places share the same name. The US state of Georgia and the nation of Georgia are examples. If there was a place named "Samplesberg" in both places, then "Samplesberg, Georgia" would be completely ambiguous. "Atlanta, Georgia" is not ambiguous due to the notability and familiarity of the state capital. I know there is a way around this (I saw an article that disambiguated that way before), but I forget the policy. It might be good to mention it here. In summary, I don't think that there is any problem with the current method, even in "scholarly" situations. --Willscrlt (Talk) 09:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Beer in Thailand or Thai beer?

Discussion started here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Beer#Beers_of_the_world_articles_renaming_proposal, in which it is proposed to keep the Country Product format rather than the Product in/of Country format. SilkTork *^YES! 19:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

When I read "Beer in Thailand", it makes me think of drinking any type of beer from anywhere inside a bar in Thailand. "Thai beer" sounds like a brand name or a very specific type of beer from Thailand. "Beer of Thailand" is what I would recommend. "Beer from Thailand" could work, too, but it's a little vague and doesn't indicate what level of origination is involved (made, distributed, or what?); whereas "Beer of Thailand" implies a sense of ownership, leading to the presumption that it was made in Thailand, not just distributed from there. --Willscrlt (Talk) 09:31, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions on countries with same name

I am proposing a new guideline for countries that have the same "short" name.

I think it is very important to apply a naming policy that includes the whole name of the country, for the Resolution applied to the "China" naming conflict to be applied on other articles about countries that the same "short" name. The only modern example of this (I think) are North Korea and South Korea that following this policy should be renamed to People's Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea respectively.

Another big priority should be the re-naming of articles about historical nations with this pattern, such as North Vietnam and South Vietnam being renamed to Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Republic of Vietnam respectively. or South Yemen being renamed to People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (being North Yemen already ambiguous]]).

I think this guideline will help marking an end to giving actual incorrect names to these countries. --Fixman^{Praise me} 06:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You can by all means try, but I must point out that you're going to receive an absolute shedload of resistance when it gets applied to United States and United Kingdom. Nanonic (talk) 06:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You didn't seem to understand two points here

1 - I created this discussion for actually making a community resolution
2 - United States and United Kingdom don't have the same "naming conflict" that the countries I propose to change names to. If you just red the proposal you would have understood. --Fixman^{Praise me} 07:24, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused; this appears to be a solution in search of a problem. None of the countries you mention have the same short name; the short names are "North Korea" and "South Korea", "North Vietnam" and "South Vietnam", "North Yemen and South Yemen". These are the common names, and how they were known to English speakers. See also: East Germany instead of German Democratic Republic. The only conflict is with China, which is a conflicted region to begin with, but has been handled by using the official names: PRC and RoC. (Which allows us to have Taiwan be an article on the island) So what issues are there that need fixing? --Golbez (talk) 19:30, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Correction; there were two North Yemens so a further disambiguation is needed (and present), as you say above, but since the other country's official and common short name was South Yemen, there's no need to move it. --Golbez (talk) 19:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

You are wrong about that: I was meaning to countries of the same region, as Korea or pre-1990 Yemen. The porpuse of this was to avoid "incorrect" names. --Fixman^{Praise me} 20:29, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

What is incorrect about saying "North Korea"? While it's not the official name of the country, it's how the country is known in 99% of anglophone discourse. Maybe I'm not getting what the problem is. --Golbez (talk) 06:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (country-specific topics)/Archive 1