Talk:Chagossians

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Ethnic groups, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to ethnic groups, nationalities, and other cultural identities. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project's talk page.
NB: Assessment ratings and other indicators given below are used by the Project in prioritizing and managing its workload.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the Project's importance scale.
	After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses.
WikiProject Ethnic groups open tasks: Here are some open WikiProject Ethnic Groups tasks: Meta-tasks: Place the {{Ethnic groups}} template on the talk page of articles within the scope of this project. Articles about ethnic groups that currently have issues needing resolution: Category:Unassessed Ethnic groups articles Category:Ethnic groups articles needing merge action Category:Ethnic groups articles needing infoboxes Category:Ethnic groups articles needing reassessment Category:Ethnic groups articles needing attention Iyer Peruvian people Start an article: Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic groups/Article requests Feel free to edit this list or discuss these tasks.

[edit] Chagossians

It seems the islanders prefer to be called the "Chagossians", as "Ilois" has come to have pejorative connotations. See para 17 of the recent court case:

"17. ... These latter were known as the Ilois, a term not always used with a precise or commonly agreed definition. Most of them lived on Diego Garcia, the largest island. They now describe themselves as "Chagossians", but again with no precise or commonly agreed definition. Chagossians is a name which they prefer to "Ilois" because that has come to have pejorative connotations."

Rwendland 14:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Well spotted. A Google search also shows the two terms appearing roughly as often (26,000 results for Chagossians, 28,400 for Ilois). Moving the article to the preferred name is probably justified. — Itai (talk) 19:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I have moved this page to 'Chagossians' as proposed above (over a year ago!). It is the preferred self-description of these people, and also the most commonly used: it now gets twice as many Google hits as 'Ilois', and also more than 'Chagos islanders'. 'Chagossians' is therefore the name best fitting the guidelines of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (identity). I have replaced the word 'Ilois' with 'Chagossians' throughout the article. Terraxos 01:52, 11 July 2007 (UTC)