Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Place names with English meanings

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete, consensus is that the article is not encyclopedic and unmaintainable. Davewild (talk) 10:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Place names with English meanings

Place names with English meanings (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

The article's creator said "I am not entirely sure that this is either notable or encyclopedic." After observing the article for a while, I have concluded that it is neither. The article's stated premise is that it consists of "place names which look or sound like English words, but have no etymological connection to them," but in fact (1) very few of the place names are supported by references that support this etymology assertion (in fact, few listed names are supported by references and many of the blue internal links do not point to Wikipedia articles for these "places"); (2) many of these place names actually do have etymological connection with English words (for example, see the articles about Gas, Kansas and the village of Horseheads, New York); (3) I believe that in many instances, there is no reliably sourced information available on the origin of these names; (4) the principal sources cited in the article are children's books (not confidence-inspiring); and (5) many of the entries that get added to the list are nothing more than place names that reminded somebody of a "dirty" word of some sort. With due respect to the creator(s), I do not think this article adds value to the encyclopedia. Orlady (talk) 19:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I created the article. I entirely agree with your feelings about this material. As I explained on the talk page when I created it, the justification for this article is simply to keep this second-rate stuff in one place and out of other articles. Of course if we can get a Wiki-wide consensus just not to include this anywhere, I would be happier still. But if the choice is between having this article and having cheap jokes in an article on a mountain because its name (Wank) is so hilarious to the puerile, I say let them have this playground. --Doric Loon (talk) 22:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom's persuasive arguments. I disagree that the puerile will be attracted to this article rather than the places' individual articles. Deor (talk) 23:05, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
• A qualified Keep. While I agree that this collection of place names is of marginal value to the Wikipedia, and perhaps only good for a chuckle, the introduction to the article states that "The collecting of place names with such unetymological meanings, especially when the meanings are potentially amusing, has become an element of popular Anglophone culture" and I believe there is some merit in that. Pasquale (talk) 00:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Although I'm glad both that Orlady nominated it and that Pasquale voted a keep. Because it was nominated, more people will see this than otherwise might have, and because someone voted keep, it won't be taken down immediately. Lists like this are entertaining, and would make an interesting feature for a newspaper, but not suitable to become a permanent part of an encyclopedia. In that spirit, the eventual delete should not be taken as a put-down. Because of the rules in WP:NOT, we're only saying that it can't stay forever. Mandsford (talk) 00:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, I'm also pleased to see this discussion occur. Having defended -- and sometimes managed to help rescue -- more than a few AfD candidates, including several lists, I know that an AfD discussion can turn out to be a positive thing. :-) --Orlady (talk) 04:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and cleanup. (edit conflict)I think one of the reasons this article is in bad shape is because it's mainly written by anons and newcomers. Since there are so many, it's hard to check for accuracy, and another big problem is that some of the places that have no articles are actually not notable at all, considering they may be a single building, if you check Google Maps. Since there are so many, it would be hard to keep track of all of them, and also hard to controll and add any place names that have been missed. Remember, Wikipedia is a work-in-progress. It is a process, not nessecarily a finished work. Some of our articles, most of them in fact, are just in their beginning stages. Is that a reason to delete them? No, but we need someone experienced to work on it, otherwise it will slowly rot away. Some articles are almost never monitored. In fact, before I started editting and looking through Joseph Howe, for example, vandalism by an anon had went undetected for what, a month? The thing is, we need a larger responsible taskforce. We need someone to work on these articles sooner, and we need this to happen to more articles. Should we really set a mental time limit, not known by the other editors, and then delete the article after the article isn't getting attention? Well, I guess you could argue both ways. We can normally say that The World Will Not End Tomorrow, and that, someday, our articles will get better improved. We can also say that, if we leave the articles to rot for a long time, more and more people will come across low-quality articles, and as the number of new readers increases, more people will see our articles in bad shape, and our overall impression will decline. Well, do all those notices and templates and lists begging for improvement of whatever article really even work anymore, that with so many articles in each of the lists and categories for improvement, and not enough people skilled at editting or not enough awareness of the articles that need to be improved? Someone needs to be bold in situations like this, pick an article, and improve it. Now, I could probably work on this article if it doesn't get deleted. I don't have enough time today, and since there are so many, this would be a long, difficult process. If we need better sources than Google Maps, which only prove that the place is probably real unless said person did something wrong, then we'll need to search for sources, remove the ones that can't be sourced or convincingly don't exsist, and remove the ones that don't belong in the article. Why does this article even belong here? Well, remember that many of the places listed actually do have articles. They can't all be irrelevent to the encyclopedia, right? If they are known and notable, even if it's mainly because English-speakers find it funny, it should have an article. It always helps to have a place that directs to links to articles on a specific topic, such as this one. Yes it needs more references, and we do need more experienced people working on it. Will people have time to help? That depends on the individual person. Remember, one person can make a big difference in any article, big or small. We do need to clean it up, and I'll try to add references and such, given enough time. Remember when I added two books as references? That pretty much sourced the ones I added at that time. Well, since no bot will probably be intelligent enough to automaticly perfect the article, we need to work together to help improve articles like this. If it's an incomplete list, I find, often the experienced users find something else to do, and the people that are less experienced go right at it. Sure, sometimes this stuff can get boring if you need to do a lot of work in a given amount of time, but that's why we're here, after all. We need to all collabrate to work on articles, and ones like this I think can be saved if we work on it in just the right way. So, we should find more sources, remove ones that don't belong, and add more legitimate ones, then do some cleanup work. Hopefully I'll have enough time soon to work on this. Is it "innapropriate"? Wikipedia is not censored. Is it turning into a laugh pub? Well, English-speakers who find it funny are probably why the places became notable in the first place, and the place names themselves are usually just called a "funny" name because English-speakers find it funny. Are there too many in the list that don't belong? Be bold and remove them. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 01:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - No encyclopedic value. Really, what is the point of saying "There's a town called Needham, which, heh, sounds a bit like 'Need Ham'". You may as well have a List of people with funny-sounding names. Marasmusine (talk) 18:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

FWIW, see List of unusual personal names. That list is not supposed to include people whose names merely sound funny, but those types of names do get added with unfortunate regularity. --Orlady (talk) 19:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Like I said, if we discover ones that don't belong, we could just be bold and remove them. I'm not sure which ones exactly don't belong, so I'll try to remove a few of the ones that don't seem to belong. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 19:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Suggestion. See place names considered unusual over there? There are several dozen potential references waiting to be used! Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 19:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
• Update. There, now is that a bit better? Now what do we need? Footnotes? Individual references? Articles for some of the more notable place names? All this can be completed if we are given the right amount of time. Remember, this can be worked on, and we do have a bunch of related articles. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 20:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per the nominator but with due respect and regrets. Whether or not any particular town name belongs on this list will always be a judgment call, and hard to maintain to any standard, without adding much value to the encyclopedia. --Lockley (talk) 00:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
• Weeke-upon-Dellette, Nottintoshire, UK With all due respect to all effort put to this article, I'm not sure Wikipedia is the place for this; Wikipedia is not a place for original research, and this is the kind of topic that lends itself wonderfully for OR - not only in form of random additions from random passers-by, but in a form that is somewhat redundant with "professionally" compiled sources. I'm sure someone has done this before; I'm not sure if we can just slap a list here and let it grow... It's a giant big shame, of course, because the topic is both fascinating and amusing. Hmm - let's form a "compile fascinating factoids" group in Wikiversity, or whatever? (and by the way, did you know that "Napa" is Finnish for "navel" or "pole"? =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 15:43, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what would be gained or in what way Wikipedia would be improved by the deletion of this article. Notions of what is 'proper' in an encyclopaedia do change over time. While this article is odd, it does have a serious side which sheds some light on the processes of assigning names to places. Read Accident for example. I would 'vote' to retain. --80.229.61.44 (talk) 18:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.