Talk:Kolkata/Archive 4

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Google, usage, and an objective criterion for resolving this issue according to policy

Look, folks, this is one issue where Google can resolve the problem almost instantly: the question, based on the naming convention is "which name is used most commonly in the English language"?

  • Using [1] we get "about 1,060,000 English pages for kolkata"
  • Using [2] we get "about 1,930,000 English pages for calcutta"

So, the name of the article should be "Calcutta" for now. When those two figures cross over (which I fully expect them to do sometime during the next couple of decades) you will find me arguing, just as forcefully, and for the just the same reasons, for the change to "Kolkata". But for now, it must, according to the naming conventions, stay as "Calcutta". -- Karada 13:59, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Er, I don't know what's up with Google, but try these two queries:
  • [3]: 2.06 million.
  • [4]: 2.13 million

I suffixed an "India" to get the context right for both (avoiding "Calcutta" as a gambling term etc). While Calcutta is still ahead, the gap is wildly different. Also, "Kolkata india" scores more hits than just "Kolkata" (though I can't see why). I don't know if we should trust Google on this one. -- Brhaspati (talkcontribs) 17:16, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

I don't think we can trust Google to be quite that accurate. More to the point, I don't think that Googling should be a defining criterion for Wikipedia. It only measures an approximate number of occurences on the Web. In particular, I could change these results within a month by creating a (dynamically-generated) tree of pages containing either word hundreds of thousands of times - it'd get a low PageRank, but that's ignored by your test.
More generally, I haven't voted on the issue because I'm not really qualified - I knew it as Calcutta, but I don't mind being corrected. The article should live at the "real" English name of the city, whatever that means. How can we judge the real name? I have a few ideas:
  • What does the government say it's called?
This isn't necessarily a good idea, since this is an English encyclopedia; if the government's official language were not English, we'd be stuck with a strange name that nobody uses (note: I like the idea of English speakers changing over to call places what the people who live there call them, but that's a massive language change and irrelevant to this discussion). However, the language of the Indian government is English; it's the nation's only common language. So perhaps, as an English encyclopedia, we should use the official English name, since one exists?
  • What to the people who live there call it?
Again we have language issues; it doesn't make sense to call it what the people who live there call it in some other language. However, a great many English speakers live there; what do they call it? I don't know, but from the comments on this board from Kolkattans, it looks like they're somewhere in between, but moving to "Kolkatta".
  • What do most English speakers call it?
Well, this is not necessarily a great idea; at one point most English speakers called black people "nigger", but I don't think that would necessarily have been the best choice for an encyclopedia. But if we want to use this standard, remember that there are several hundred million English speakers in India. Just because everyone *you* know calls it "Calcutta" doesn't mean that most English speakers do. In fact, it's worth remembering that North Americans are strongly over-represented on Wikipedia when trying to judge English speakers - and we want this to change.
  • Can we achieve a political goal by picking one name rather than the other?
We could try to demonstrate our political correctness/embracing of diversity (depending whether you like it or not) by calling it by the official Indian name; we could try to demonstrate our strong resistance to political correctness/adherence to British imperialism by calling it by the British Imperial name. I don't think this is a good criterion, but I do think it's what's generating most of the heat. I think it's probably why the Indian government changed the official name.
  • Is one name offensive to some people we don't want to offend?
Well, it seems like both are offensive to somebody. "Calcutta" seems to be offensive to Indian nationalists, and "Kolkatta" seems to be offensive to Americans who were taught in school that it was called "Calcutta".
  • Can we stop the senseless bickering by picking one name rather than the other?
I don't think so.
  • Will we need to suffer through this again in a few months?
It's a big job to rename a page; if we knew that in two years everyone on earth would call it "Kolkatta" or that the "Kolkatta" fad would fade within a year, the decision would be pretty clear.
In summary, I'm not going to make any claims about which criterion we should use; for many of them, it's not even clear which name it favors. But it's worth realizing that there are many different possible criteria to use.

BTW, I'd like to point to this article, written write before the name change, which indicates a poll of residents of the city, with 52% opposed to the name change, and 38% in favor. The argument seems to be that West Bengali Marxists pushed through the name changes as a kind of demagogic campaign to maintain their falling popularity. So, can we really stop with the emotional arguments about British imperialism and offensiveness, and so forth? The question is "should we use a new official name, when the old name is more familiar to most English-speakers?" That is the entire valid issue here. I'm not completely sure of the answer - as whoever I was responding to above notes, it's hard to say, given that we don't know the fate of the name change yet.

Another point to argue against my own point of view a bit, I'll note that we use Ho Chi Minh City rather than Saigon, even though most Vietnamese still use Saigon, and that remains more familiar to most people than "Ho Chi Minh City." I'm not sure, though, if that's an argument for moving this article, or moving that one. john k 17:28, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I second many of the above reservations about how accurate a measure google gives. But if we're going to take google straw polls of usage, it ought to be Indian usage; from the style manual:

  • Proper names should retain their original spellings.
  • Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country.

As I said before, if Indian English tends towards Calcutta, or is sufficiently split to leave the issue in doubt, the general familiarity is also a legitimate consideration. Since the national newspapers are split on this, and since googling for Indian sites in English for Kolkata and for Calcutta produce very similar numbers of hits this may indeed be the case. but personally I'd still like to hear more evidence as to the prevalent usage in Indian English. Alai 18:41, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apologies for the large duplication. This has happened to me a couple of times, is it a known bug?: edit a section, get an edit conflict, incorporate one's own new text (only!) into the upper box, and... whoom. I didn't spot it'd happened this time, sorry. Alai 20:41, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[5] The UK government also uses Kolkata. With the CIA (US govt) and the UK government using Kolkata, that should resolve the issue that the name is "foreign" to English language. Nichalp 21:17, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Why the controversy

An encyclopedia is supposed to provide whatever is the best known information at the time of its writing. So if calcutta is called kolkata the article should be called kolkata so that the people who look for calcutta can come to know that the city is now kolkata. The whole controversy of english does not arise as both names are in english.

Both brittanica and encarta use kolkata as the city name. The wikipedia guidelines says that - if you are talking about a person, country, town, movie or book, use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article (as you would find it in other encyclopedias). This makes it easy to find, and easy to compare information with other sources. Most of credible sources on the internet and in publication always use the most recent official name for places and i dont see why we should do it in any different way.

This is not correct. The 2004 CD-ROM edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica lists it under "Calcutta," and begins by noting that the Bengali name is Kalikata. Dpbsmith (talk)
the online britannica has the city name as kolkata and not calcutta. [6]kaal 01:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Anybody searching for calcutta can be easily redirected to kolkata, and i do not see why this is a problem. A large number of india related pages already use kolkata (calcutta) as the name of the city and i dont see why anyone clicking on this link should be taken to calcutta instead of kolkata.

And anybody who searches for "Kolkata" can easily be redirected to "Calcutta." Dpbsmith (talk) 00:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Still does not solve the problem of internal consistency with india related articles. kaal 01:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

By not explicitly telling the people that kolkata is the english name of the city and calcutta is no longer a city in india, we are not doing the job of what an encylopedia is supposed to do, i,e give accurate information to people. It is immaterial to the tilte if some people feel the change of name was done for wrong or political reasons. All these can be discussed in the article. But it is not a valaid reason to say that the city should be called calcutta when that is no longer its name. We are not here to determine what the people want or not. Their is also no clear way of defining or finding out what most english speakers call it, as this term is very qualitative. If they want back calcutta the people of the city will get it changed, otherwise it will remain kolkata. Once again the idea of an encylopedia is to first and foremost give people uptodate information. kaal 00:15, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is not Wikipedia's job to tell our readership what name they should be using for the city. It is entirely appropriate that the articles on Rome, Florence, Naples, Moscow, etc. are a) under the most commonly used names for these cities and b) make it clear that these not the name used by the inhabitants. It is entirely appropriate that the same thing be done for Calcutta. And it is entirely appropriate that the article be moved to Kolkata when that becomes the commonly used name. I am sure that in due course the New York Times, the Associated Press, the BBC, etc. etc. will adopt style sheets saying that they should change to using the spelling "Kolkata" and that it will become familiar to the English-speaking world outside India. As of 2005 that is not the case and it is premature to move the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:32, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Again we are not talking about names in different languages like i understand in the case of moscow etc, but two english names. And i agree that we should not be telling people what name to use, but we should also not provide them with wrong information on what the name is. For all practical purposes the city is now kolkata. Also determining when something becomes commomly used again is qualitative and based on POV of what publications you are refering to. kaal 01:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The government of Saudi Arabia has promoted Makkah as the preferred romanization of مكة المكرمة for many years now, but I submit that one would find little support for moving the article at Mecca to Makkah. A case must exist that because a country's government would prefer a given English spelling is not a sufficient reason for listing the article at that spelling. Shimmin 00:54, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

More on google

Search for google on

Kolkata + city -- 1,500,000 [7] Calcutta + city -- 1,450,000 [8]

so the point of using google to support commonly used english usage is not entirely correct. Calcutta as such gets larger number of hits as a number of books, movies, buildings etc are also named after it and this should not be considered here for this discussion. kaal 01:08, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

An experiment

I am about to try an experiment. I do not know yet what the outcome will be. First, I am going to look at the map of India in the Times Atlas of the World which I purchased a couple of years ago. Second, I am going to search The New York Times.

  • The index of the Times Atlas of the World has no entry for "Kolkata." The entry following Kolkasrag, Latvia is Kölkad, Hungary. On the map, the big city on the west coast is labelled Mumbai (Bombay) but the big city in west Bengal is just labelled Calcutta, not even Calcutta (Kolkata). Tenth comprehensive edition, copyright 1999.
  • I am now doing an online search of The New York Times for the years 2000 through 2005. "SEARCHING: NEW YORK TIMES, THE for: Kolkata Results: 1 - 3 of 3." "SEARCHING: NEW YORK TIMES, THE for: Calcutta Results: 1 - 10 of at least 200."

Of the three articles, one simply uses the name Kolkata without explanation; one, a travel piece about a train ride, says "Intellectual Bengalis from Calcutta, now called Kolkata, were a challenge. I had to match wits with them before they would share their luscious rosogollas (sweet cheese balls) and sandesh (milk and sugar squares) with me." One, dated March 8, 2001, includes a number of short items and says "INDIA: NAME CHANGE: The city of Allahabad will have its name changed to Prayagraj, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Rajnath Singh, announced. Allahabad is a name with Muslim origins. At a mammoth Hindu festival held recently in the city, religious leaders demanded that the name be returned to Prayagraj, which was the name used in ancient times. Many Indian cities have undergone name changes of late: Bombay is now Mumbai, Calcutta is Kolkata, Madras is Chennai."

Despite this, the Times continues to use "Calcutta" and has used it 30 times in the last twelve months. A typical recent context: Feb 8, 2005: THE moment the Oscar nominations arrived, Ross Kauffman was in Calcutta, his cellphone on speaker, so that the children crowded around him could hear what would come next. 'You got it,' the producer said, prompting the children to jump and scream with delight."

A similar search on the Boston Globe for the last twelve months gives 33 instances of "Calcutta," NONE of "Kolkata." Dpbsmith (talk) 17:18, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

From this, I conclude: a) At present, the name of the city is not commonly spelled Kolkata in the English-speaking world outside India itself. Despite reporting in 2001 that the city "had undergone a name change," The New York Times continues to use "Calcutta" (without qualification). b) Attempts to change the name of this article are premature and reflect an urge to shape usage rather than reflect it; c) According to our naming conventions, the name of the article should remain "Calcutta." Calling it anything else would be as silly as moving Moscow to "Moskva" or Naples to "Napoli." Dpbsmith (talk) 17:11, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gah, are we going to have to this argument about Allahabad, as well? Sigh. I will note, though, that your atlas was published before the name change. So that's not really a valid point. john k 17:28, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The BBC News website has 219 hits for Calcutta, just 10 for Kolkata. -- Necrothesp 17:31, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You've displayed the search results of local US news agencies. (By local I mean NY Times has a very large local NY base as compared to a worldwide audience as far as the print medium is concerned (contrast with CNN)) Until we know their reasons for not switching over, I don't think the test is conclusive. As far as the atlas is concerned, the kolkata was renamed in 2001 much later than 1999 as what the copyright states. :) Nichalp 21:12, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I hardly think you can say that about the BBC though! -- Necrothesp 21:15, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
BBC's usage is inconsistant as debated before. To confirm the usage see [9] a snapshot taken on March 3, 2005. Kolkata is clearly mentioned. Nichalp 20:23, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
And if you read my comments below you will see that that is the only usage on the BBC website by a BBC correspondent. All other references are to Calcutta. 10 total references to Kolkata against over 100 to Calcutta. Inconsistent? I don't think so. -- Necrothesp 23:35, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
A ratio of 1:10 would certainly be inconclusive to state that the Beeb Kolkata is almost never used. We don't know BBC's policy on renaming, so why use BBC as the model of our discussion? Nichalp 20:00, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
Because BBC are usually right. Dmn / Դմն 15:28, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Really?? See this Google query Nichalp 20:02, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)


Popularity measure

I am sure Wikipedia's standard based on popularity was made after much thought and for a very good reason. However, I have a few points to remind myself and everyone else about in terms of popularity:

  • The only acceptable popularity measure would be a mass survey of people, which is clearly impossible.
    • No. The measure is "Wikipedian consensus about what the 'most common name'" is, arrived at after discussions like this one. There's no way to push a button and get an automatic answer. For easy questions ("Should the last name of the leader who brought India to independence be spelled "Ghandi" or "Gandhi") it doesn't much matter what you do, Google or encyclopedia or what, you'll come to the same conclusion. For "hard" questions, there's no easy answer. What there should not be any debate about is that the policy is "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." The most common name, not
      • the most "correct" name,
      • the most "official" name,
      • the name used by those most knowledgeable in the topic,
      • the name used by the national group with the greatest interest in the topic,
      • the name used in the most recently published atlases (as opposed to the name used in the atlas I happen to have.
    • The most common name. That's what we're discussing. My firm belief at this point is that as of 2005 "Calcutta" is still, by far, the most common name. My expectation is that by 2015, the New York Times and the BBC will be using new style sheets, I will have bought a new atlas, the high school classrooms will have new textbooks and new maps, and "Kolkata" will be the most common name. As of 2005, it is not. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:01, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Please see above for the discussion on "What is common?". You mention "firm belief". Well it is my "firm belief" that Indian English publications consistently use Kolkata since the renaming. So, obviously personal beliefs and thoughts are not objective guidelines! -- Urnonav
      • With regard to 'national group with the greatest interest in the topic' (i.e. in this case, the English-speaking country which contains the city whose English name is under debate), you seem to be suggesting that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), which doesn't address the issue of different national varieties of English, simply totally trumps the Manual of Style, which does? Alai 06:02, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Please rephrase: are you asking me a question? Urnonav
          • No, that was a response to dpbsmith, hence the number of bullet-point-indents. Alai 22:56, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
But we don't use incorrect names—what kind of encyclopedia would this be then? My favourite example: every schoolchild's best known dinosaur Brontosaurus, three-to-one Google search results leader, redirects to Apatosaurus. —Michael Z. 2005-03-8 00:32 Z
  • Taking samples, while a good approximation, is still only an approximation and might give biased results; statistics would support this view.
  • When using Google or BBC hit counts, please do not ignore effect of the elusive fourth dimension, time. How many of the hits returned were written before the Government changed the official English spelling? Should we be interested in only post-alteration articles or not? Does BBC use Kolkata in recent articles and TV coverages?
    • Over 50% of those references to Calcutta (i.e. well over 100) came after the official name change. The most recent usage was on 28 February 2005. Of the ten total usages of Kolkata, five were used by members of the public (mostly residents) in posts to 'Have Your Say' sections, one was actually "Calcutta (also known as Kolkata)", and three were in articles connected to the name change. That leaves a single article in which a BBC correspondent actually referred to the city as Kolkata. I think we can safely say that the BBC still calls it Calcutta. -- Necrothesp 22:22, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Do you mean references on Google or BBC? From what I see, BBC's website uses Kolkata as well. An article written on 3 March 2005 uses it. So, judging by that BBC does not have a standard laid out yet, I believe. I have seen them use "Kolkata", in their videos used in the South Asian region's broadcast. Also, I don't think checking out "Have Your Say" section is a great idea, obviously because more people against the name change would show up there, since they want it changed back; people who are happy would not usually bother with it!
        • On the BBC website, as I said above. Over 100 references to Calcutta since 2001, as opposed to 10 for Kolkata. Seems pretty conclusive to me. The article you mention is actually the only article on the BBC website in which a BBC correspondent refers to the city as Kolkata. And the "Have Your Say" sections have nothing to do with the name change - they're generally just people listing the city they come from - so not likely to be biased either way. -- Necrothesp 16:57, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedian vote yet again is a very small sample of the English speaking World, which also includes South Asia; are votes gathered from such a small statistical sample likely to represent the entire population?
  • Does the standard on common use still hold in the case where an English-speaking country changes spellings? Does it not apply only in the case of alternative spellings? Is our current issue a matter of alternative spellings or a case of altered spellings?
    • Yes, of course, or at least it should. But it happens so rarely actually in English-speaking countries that it's not an issue. Usages for foreign cities do change though. An example is the fact that Marseille and Lyon used to be spelt "Marseilles" and "Lyons" in English. Now they very rarely are and they therefore appear under their native names here. And so they should. A more extreme case is the rather bizarre but formerly common reference to Livorno as "Leghorn". The German city of Mainz also frequently used to be called by its French name, "Mayence", by English speakers. These are old-fashioned usages and have now changed, but they changed over time. Language evolves - it doesn't just change because a government decides it should. To English speakers, who don't have any form of national language authority, this is a weird concept and any attempt to impose change is likely to be heavily resisted. The name of Calcutta only changed four years ago - you can't expect everyone to change their language immediately because of a political whim. That's alien to us. This isn't some campaign by old-fashioned colonials desperate to keep the names "we" gave cities; it's just a plea for common sense and common usage to prevail. -- Necrothesp 22:42, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • You are absolutely right on that: people will not change their language in four years. I still continue to spell "realise", "programme", etc, just becaues I was taught that way. I don't see it changing soon. Popularity, a debatable term as we see above, can be an indicator of spelling. Hence, we see some newspapers not changing the spelling. The increased power for Wikipedia is redirect, so for us shouldn't the bigger issue be consistency than popularity, because with either name visitors will end up at the same page. The name change affects two standards: one is consistency in naming for Indian cities and the second is Wikipedia's standards about popularity measure, which I find is a really bad standard because the measure is subjective and can be argued upon as we see above. There's no valid absolute measure of popularity. Hence in a borderline case, I would go with the safe call: Kolkata. Why did we do it? Well, we didn't find an absolute popularity advantage of Calcutta and Kolkata was official! At this point, I couldn't care less about reasoning. What seems more important to me is finishing this debate off; it's going on for a little too long and needs to be taken to a different page!!! -- Urnonav 04:53, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Nobody is forcing an induvidual to call a city as per government whims. The fact is that wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should reflect what is the current name of the city. Think how silly it would be to read about Peking when the name is Beijing. E. Brittanica, World Book and Encarta have all changed their names. I don't think they have any political agenda to fulfill. Why are we being so notoriously difficult in effecting a name change? [10], [11], [12].

Nichalp 20:40, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

        • I agree on the comment. I personally find it weird that the article is titled Calcutta and then the article writes everywhere Calcutta (now Kolkata). Once again, standards are not meant for the visitors of Wikipedia; they couldn't care less about our standards. To them, writing Calcutta (now Kolkata) but at the same time naming the article Calcutta would end up being confusing. "If Kolkata is the spelling now, why should the article not say instead Kolkata (previously Calcutta) instead?" could be a very typical visitor's stream of thoughts. I still fail to see what politicalisation went around the topic of a respelling. Even the name wasn't changed, unlike in the case of Chennai or the proposed case of Indraprastha! What grand political motivation was achieved by a spelling change that only reasserts the city's name? (From what I know of Hindi and English, the new spelling is just as complicated/simple to pronounce as the old one, ironically!) -- Urnonav 00:29, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So let me get this straight - the BBC favors Calcutta by 10 to one (and that 'one' is a single reporter on a single section of the website), the New York Times use Calcutta exclusively, and google favors it overwhelmingly. Dpdsmith is correct - this is an obvious end-run around the idea of using the common english name, and an attempt to shape the use instead of reflect it. →Raul654 01:50, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

When the BBC and the NYT become good metrics as to the prevalance of common usage in Indian English, I'll give this argument some credence. National variety of English is specifically endorsed by the manual of style, why should the naming conventions be any different? If these discussions are always going to come down to "unqualified majority usage rules", we might as well just say "US usage everywhere" and have done with it. Alai 02:16, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)