Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements)

Past discussion

Read the discussion contained in the archives:

Talk:Durham

Open issues

As noted before, two issues have been decided, but these leave lot of room for discussion.

The issue of using normal disambiguation rules should be clear; articles on cities get that name unless there are other topics with the same name.

Next, it has been decided that the "comma notation" ([City, Something]) is used for city names in stead of the parenthesis format. That still leaves the following possibilities:

Disambiguation is done at the necessary level. That is, if there are two different cities with the same name in two different countries, we use [City, Country]. If the two cities are within the same country, use the common local disambiguator for that nation in English language, or for that country if none available. If there are two cities within the same state (f.e.), use the common local disambiguator for that state in English language, etc., etc.
Define a natural disambiguator for each country and use it all the time.

The first option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Canada, and Las Vegas, Nevada and Las Vegas, New Mexico (assuming both city names are equally common in use). The second option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.

I myself have no preference for either option. The latter may be easier to remember, but shows less consistency. However, since in many cases there will be many US cities and some foreign ones with the same name, that one seems the best and most logical option.

In either case, it should be investigated and listed what the standards for disambiguating nationally are per country. For the USA and Canada, these have already been established as being [City, State] and [City, Province]. For others this still has to be decided. A remaining question is whether to use the natural disambiguator for a country (be it in English language or not) should also be used if it doesn't have the comma notation. I'd say yes here - if Malta's (example) English language convention is to use City-Province, I'd say we should use that.

The last issue is the so-called "Paris" problem. As we're following "normal disambiguation" rules, it states that when one of the disambiguated articles has priority, it gets to stay at the main article (Paris, in our example). If none of the articles has priority, they're all disambiguated. The current disambiguation rules also state this decision must be made on a case-to-case basis. I think that solves our problem here. In case we decide (no matter how) that the French city has priority over the Trojan and all the other spots on the map, we put its article at Paris, and put a block-format disambiguation at the top. If we decide the city hasn't got priority, we use the normal disambiguation article. I don't see any other possibilities, but I may be wrong.

Summarising, we need to decide on :

the way to use the comma notation for disambiguation (I say always use the country-specific one)
whether to also use natural disambiguators without a comma (I say yes)
what to do with the Paris problem (I say use the normal disambiguation rules)

Jeronimo

IMOH some vote results were prematurely moved to archives.

Please let's not introduce another format as in [City-Province]; that can only promote more argument. It could also make things more difficult for the average searcher who will become confused about how to search for things.

With the parentheses format retained for non-cities we can know that [Paris (hero)] is not a city, and [Paris, Ontario] is a city.

I accept using [Paris] for the French city as long as it includes a disambiguation block at the beginning of the article.

"Has priority" needs some definition. To me this does not mean the historical priority that British cities of Boston, Perth and Halifax may have The criterion should be one of overwhelmingly common usage. The aqverage people in Paris, Kentucky can reasonably be expected to have heard of Paris, France, but the average people of Paris, France cannot reasonably be expected to have heard of Paris, Kentucky.

Eclecticology 11:16 Aug 18, 2002 (PDT)

I think "has priority" is "defined" at disambiguation as the most commonly associated meaning of the name, if any. For some, this is difficult to determine, but for a city like Rome, it is pretty clear that this one should has priority. Jeronimo

Archive 4 came from here.

Archive 5 came from here.

I just got a note that somehow Wiki convention got established that "St." should be abbreviated in city names. For US cities, at least, this is contrary to the official US Government policy that states that "Saint" should be spelled out. I think it has to be agreed that, regardless of what we do in the case of other countries, "Saint" needs to be spelled out in US placenames -- BRG July 19, 2003

Hm. I guess the US Census is in violation of the federal mandate because the place names came directly from them. See user:Rambot. And we are not Wiki! Our name is Wikipedia. Haven't you noticed other wikis around? --mav 18:42 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, IIRC, the Rambot uploaded duplicate articles for many places with "saint" in the name. Saint Albans, for example. Also, I thought the general convention was to spell out "saint" rather than using abbreviations, for both people and places. Martin

I used "wiki convention" because that phrase was used in the note to me. I should, I guess, have put it in quotes. -BRG

What the US Government's official policy is doesn't matter a damn, any more than the official French government policy, Italian government policy, Irish government policy etc does. If a city's official name uses St then it should go in as St. If it officially called Saint then that should be used. BRG's constant causing chaos in naming cities on wiki is getting ludicrous. He has already caused chaos by mucking up disambigulations and links with crazy name changes which no-one agreed to. Now cities with St is his next place to unilaterally cause chaos. FearÉIREANN 18:41 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What on earth does Jtdirl mean by "the city's official name"? The BGN is the agency that makes names official in the USA. Cities don't unilaterally name themselves, and nobody has the authority to make a name official but the US government. So I fail to understand what Jtdirl means by "What the US Government's official policy is doesn't matter a damn," especially when he couples it with "If a city's official name uses St then it should go in as St. If it officially called Saint then that should be used." The two statements are in conflict! - BRG

Not only does "St. Paul" MN yield 5 times as many google hits as "Saint Paul" MN, even the Saint Paul, Minnesota official website uses the abbreviation... it is located at http://www.ci.stpaul.mn.us/ Also, I believe that you are mistaken. I don't think that it is the federal government that makes local place names official. --Dante Alighieri 19:07 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

BRG keeps referring to the BGN, so I've provided a web link. Click here. I think it interesting to note that the following is the stated purpose of the BGN: "the Board is authorized to establish and maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government". Given that the federal government is not local government, I take this to mean that local governments can damn well choose their own names for things like cities. On further exploration, it seems that the job of the BGN is to standardize names for geographic features (for example, mountains, lakes, valleys) rather than towns. --Dante Alighieri 19:21 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Yup. That's what I understand its role to be too. BTW The Clerk's office in St. Cloud, Minnesota is also at St. Cloud, not Saint Cloud. St. Cloud city clerk page Is this another rerun of BMG's Exeter fiasco, when he decided to create a unilateral disambigulation approach that was contrary to wiki policy, contrary to the naming style used and contrary to logic, but defended it to the end even when users were queuing to tell him to stop? BTW, for all the renaming (which I have reversed) did BMG actually check to see if any links had been broken with his latest st. to saint batch of renamings? FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Someone needs to archive this page. It is now at 54K. I would do it but I am on a v-e-r-y--s-l-o-w- link from Ireland that can take minutes to form a page sometimes. If I tried, it would take so long I'd be caught up in edit conflicts. (I archived something recently and it took me nine attempts to save the changes because everytime I tried, someone else had added in a new comment.) It is best if someone on a fast link does it. (Either that or I'd have to protect the page for a couple of minutes to stop anyone editing it while I was archiving it. Hell on wiki is trying to do an archive on a slow link and then getting trapped in a constant edit conflicts.) FearÉIREANN 19:31 19 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Quoting from the BGN's site: "Although established to serve the Federal Government as a central authority to which all name problems, name inquiries, and new name proposals can be directed, the Board also plays a similar role for the general public." Therefore, as you can see, if _any_ authority has the right to be called "official," it is the BGN. BTW, The Postal Service does follow this rule as well: You can address a letter to "St. Louis" and it will get delivered but in all postal directories, the place is shown as "Saint Louis." I am still waiting to find out what Jtdirl seems to think _is_ official, since he has claimed that he wants to use "the city's official name"! (After all, that is what _I_ want to do as well!) BRG July 21

Stop mis-interpreting the role of the BGN. The guide is obviously what the cities regard as their official name. The BGN plays the same role as other similar organisations in other states of co-ordinating names, of dealing with problems should one urban entity wish to use a name already being used elsewhere. But unless a problem occurs, the urban centre's chosen name becomes the one and when a city adopts a name that is it. The BGN may like people to use saint but if a city (as they have) adopt St., St. it is. It is that simple and this gross mis-understanding of the BGN's role simply making an issue of a non-issue. FearÉIREANN 19:24 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think you are being absolutely stupid, stubborn, and thick-headed. A web site is not an assertion of an official name. A city may use "st. Something" on its website, just as the FBI may use "FBI" on its website, but that has absolutely no official standing; it is just an abbreviation. I sign my name "Bruce R. Gilson" -- but my official name is "Bruce Robert Gilson," because that is the name on my birth certificate.

If you were to actually read the BGN's site, you will see that it is the authority; and while I don't know what the status of cities is in Ireland, actually a city does not have the legal power to adopt a name officially. Cities gain their existence from state governments, which may give them any power they choose to, or deny them it. If you were to argue that anyone other than the BGN has any authority here, it would be the state-issued charter defining the city (analogous to my birth certificate). And I don't know that you have ever looked at the charters of all these cities.

What right do you, an Irishman who I am certain has absolutely no knowledge of US laws, have to try to arrogate to yourself the decision as to what is considered official? Cities are created by state laws under the US Constitution. The US government normally is considered authoritative in defining standards, state governments are authoritative in defining city powers, and cities do not even have the right to amend their own charters without state permission! -- BRG July 23

BRG, with all due respect, you are wrong. I was just in communication with Roger Payne at the Geographic Names Information System (a U.S. Geological Survey database that works with the BGN). He imparted the following information. The legal name of a city (or what have you) is the name listed on the incorporation papers. In the case of St. Louis, it happens to be the abbreviated form. Therefore, the legal name of St. Louis is St. Louis (I am not dealing with the presence of absence of the state name from the legal name, but merely the spelling of "Saint"). The BGN's decisions have no legal binding on anything other than the federal government. Even if the BGN decided that the name of St. Louis was "officially" Jellytown, St. Louis would still be St. Louis IN St. Louis and everywhere except the US Federal Government. Furthermore, by its own mandates, the BGN limits its decisions to natural features, canals, and reservoirs. It leaves local administrative names up to the local administrators. Therefore, the BGN accepts as official whatever the local authorities accept as official. It IS the policy of the BGN that all words be fully spelled out in their official roles, thus they list St. Louis as Saint Louis. Nevertheless, even the BGN recognizes "St." as an appropriate abbreviation of convenience for "Saint", and you will therefore find countless federal documents (including USGS maps) using the abbreviation "St." instead of "Saint". I explained to him the purpose of my question and he agreed that it was "wholly appropriate" to have an article on St. Louis at [[St. Louis]] rather than [[Saint Louis]]. So, if you would like to note in the article, BRG, that the BGN likes has an official policy of spelling out Saint in its database, feel free. Of course, I think it more important to point out, in the article, that the legal name of the city is St. Louis. --Dante Alighieri 16:28 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, if you noted what I wrote above, where I said that "Cities gain their existence from state governments, which may give them any power they choose to, or deny them it. If you were to argue that anyone other than the BGN has any authority here, it would be the state-issued charter defining the city (analogous to my birth certificate)," I am perfectly willing to accept the remark of yours that "The legal name of a city (or what have you) is the name listed on the incorporation papers." And if, in the case of St. Louis, that is what appears on the incorporation papers, fine and dandy. I'm not sure where you got access to the incorporation papers, but if someone is willing to check all these out, I'm perfectly willing to accept the result of this checking. But your earlier statement that the St. Paul Website uses the abbreviation, on the other hand, carries no weight. A Website has no official status. Of course, this doesn't help in the case of unincorporated entities, but I think it would take care of most of the "Saint"/"St." questions.

Assuming you are being honest about "St. Louis" being on the incorporation papers, then some such statement as "The city was legally incorporated as 'St. Louis' in 18__. However, the United States Postal Service and the United States Board of Geographic Names database prefer 'Saint Louis,'" would seem appropriate. -- BRG July 23

Sadly, I don't know how to go about getting hold of incorporation pages. Mr. Payne was kind enough to look up St. Louis for me. Since he didn't put me on hold and I heard keyboard typing, I assume he had some internet resource. I don't know what it is, and it may be government only, but if anyone wants to sleuth around and find such a database, I'm sure it would be useful to the Wikipedia cause. Of course, the SLOW way to do this is call the city hall for every city and just ask them. Or we could REALLY bother Mr. Payne and make him do it. ;) Those of you wishing to contact Mr. Payne for other reasons (PLEASE don't ask him to search for every incorporated city with the word Saint in it, he was very nice and helpful) such as asking him if we can get access to the incorporation database, the number for the GNIS is (703) 648-4544 which I found at the GNIS home page. Note that the GNIS is in Reston, Virginia so be sure to call during local business hours. --Dante Alighieri 22:15 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Someone has moved the discussion about disambiguating names of cities, towns, and vllages (commas vs. parentheses) to Talk Archive 5. However, as far as I am aware, the issue has not been settled yet. Talk Archive 2 seems to contain all the arguments, and Talk Archive 3 contains a vote which the comma style won by 10 votes to 4, but there are still a lot of people unhappy with the idea. Basically, it seems to me that we have a perfectly workable Wikipedia convention for most articles - to use natural disambiguators and then parentheses if that doesn't work - which we are arbitrarily overriding for the specific case of placenames, just because that's how the Americans like to do it. From the archives, it seems that Toby gave the most detailed arguments; those arguments were against the [City, Country] format, and I can't find any convincing argument against him. I don't consider a vote to be a satisfactory replacement for an argument, really. So can someone please explain why they think the argument is wrong? If not, I think we should get rid of the [City, Country] format altogether. -- Oliver P. 04:15 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I tend to agree (even though it was me who originally proposed that convention!). The only places that [City, Country] could make sense is for cities in the United States, Canada or Australia but those three nations prefer either [city, state/province] (much more-so in the US) or just [city]. So, I think, standard disambiguation should be used for reasonably ambiguous city names outside of those nations (that is, the use of parenthesis when and only when they are needed). The US has settled on [City, State] even for the rare cases where city names are unambiguous - I would be interested to know if our Canadian and Australian users are also interested in settling on preemptive disambiguation too (and for that matter what to do in cases of ambiguity). --mav

I agree with both Mav and Oliver. (See mav, an entire day cannot go by when he don't agree on something! :-) ) FearÉIREANN 05:34 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I actually quite like the comma seperated method (city, country or city, state, as appropriate). I'm not particularly fussed, so I won't bother voting, but my reasoning would be:

Fairly compatible with existing articles (dumb argument, but true)
Encourages people to write (for example) Kabul, Afghanistan - rather than writing Kabul or [[Kabul (Afghanistan)|]] and assuming that the reader already has an encyclopedic knowledge of geography.
Makes for a nicer header at the top of the page (real dumb...)

Whatever happens, I'd like there to be a worldwide standard - if we do articles on Afghanistan cities differently to US cities, then people wanting to make helpful links will need to know the different naming conventions for the US and for Afghanistan, and that's non-ideal. If people created copious redirects, maybe that'd make things easier, though. Martin

? Is there another Kabul that is so important that Kabul needs to be parenthetically disambiguated? US city names are given in the [City, State] format as if those are the real names (this is not really disambiguation as has already been pointed out; Auburn, California is treated as the full name of that city in very similar way as George Washington is regarded as a full name). That is how they are commonly used. Other cities around the world are not treated in this way so standard rules of disambiguation apply to those cities. --mav 10:11 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Martin wrote "Whatever happens, I'd like there to be a worldwide standard". It is fallacious to believe that a worldwide standard is going to be acceptable "worldwide". There's enough difficulty with the status of Cornwall let alone places with a more complex political and cultural history. A default method of disambiguation with exceptions as required is more tenable. Mintguy

In reply to Mav's query a few paragraphs above, here is one particular Australian's view. Just the plain city name is always best. Qualifiers (country or state, comma or parenthesis, etc.) should only be used to resolve ambiguities. This point is the only one I really care about, the details of how the disambiguation is handled I'm not too fussed about either way. I'd just like to have it settled so that I know what to do next time the question arises. So, should it be Armidale, New South Wales, Armidale (New South Wales), Armidale, Australia or Armidale (Australia? I don't much mind, but I've listed them in best-to-worst order (but even my "worst" is perfectly OK). Tannin (Actually, that was a bad example, as "Armidale" has to be listed with the New South Wales because there is another well-known Armidale in Victoria.) (PPS: I'm talking about Oz and rest of the world here - the existing US cities practice is clearly well supported and should be retained.)

I say we should use Armidale, New South Wales, for at least three reasons:

At least one Australian, Tannin, seems to think it's the best choice (and I suspect most other Australians agree)
It's consistent with our practice in the US and Canada
It agrees with most of the material originating in Australia that I've seen.

-- BRG

Small cat among pigeons. The inner Melbourne suburb is Armadale, not Armidale. Gritchka

Well, so there are at least 2 Armadales in Australia; I found one in Western Australia! BRG

Worldwide standard

Suppose we have:

I think this would be a very bad idea, and I would like it to be avoided. However, if we do end up with this solution, can we agree that the "default" name will always be redirected to whatever the "local" name might be. This will at least ensure that people can continue to make links freely with some confidence that they'll go to the right place. Martin 17:28 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well the standard is to just write the name of the place. That should always lead to (at worst) a disambiguation place. -- Tarquin 17:39 23 Jul 2003 (UTC)