Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (toponymy)

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[edit] Ambiguous place names

Q: When linking to city or town names, especially with names where there may be another city or town with the same name and spelling in another state or country (i.e., Paris, France and Paris, Texas), what type of convention might we use? I understand that Paris, France would stand alone as Paris because it is a city of note. But, might we use Paris, Texas to specify this particular town in Texas? -- Invictus

I think "least surprize" should be the guiding principle here. This implies several things: first, that disambiguating pages should list things in the likely order of significance. For example, the "Paris" page should have links to the French city, the Texas city, and the mythological figure, in that order. Second, when one mentions a subject in another page, it should link directly to the most specific page. For example, the "Macbeth" link on the Orson Welles page should link directly to a page specific to his movie, not to the play or other movies or to the disambiguating page. The text of the link, however, should be whatever makes sense in context; i.e., in a list of Welles' works, the link text should just be "Macbeth", but its destination should be "Macbeth (Orson Welles film)" (Let's get those parentesized titles working!). Similarly, if one is writing about Helen of Troy, the name "Paris" should appear unadorned to make the text read smoothly, but it should be linked directly to "Paris (mythological figure)". --Lee Daniel Crocker

I don't think the principle of "least surprise" implies that we should make Paris a links page. I think it implies that we should make Paris about Paris, France, and also, on that page, include links to Paris, Texas and wherever else. Bear in mind, though, that pretty soon we're going to be able to use parentheses in titles, and all of this will be moot (thank god). --LMS

I agree with Lee, see User:Eclecticology's revision of seal. --Aidan

It might be tempting to write about Paris, Texas on a page named Texas/Paris, i.e. a subpage to the entry on Texas, because that city lies entirely within the state of Texas. In this case, Texas could also be a subpage to the United States, which might be a subpage to the North American continent. At some level this hierarchical structure gets very ridiculous, so where should the line be drawn? The state of California has been part of USA since 1850, but was earlier a part of Mexico. Some cities in Europe have belonged to different nations during history, so the hierarchical approach is not universally useful.

I totally agree with this. I was going to label a link Genoa, Italy, when I remembered that Genoa existed for quite a while before Italy per se existed.  :-) Generally speaking, when we--very soon, now!--upload the latest UseModWiki software to the server, we'll be able to use parentheses, and some of these sorts of troubles will be over. Then it will be a question whether we want to label the page "Paris (Texas)" or "Paris, Texas." And we will still probably not want to label the page "Genoa (Italy)"--though, given that there are probably several other noteworthy (to some extent) Genoas around the world...well, we can use parentheses for those Genoas, and leave the main old Genoa unparenthesized. --LMS

The recent tendency to show all place names other than US ones in the simple (City, Nation) format really looks bizarre for Canadian place names where the (City, Province) format is usual. Furthermore I see no necessity to include the country name in the article heading. The 13 Canadian provinces and territories are just as well known as the 50 US states. Ditto for the Australian states. Eclecticology, Monday, July 8, 2002

[edit] Descriptive part of place names

I was wondering whether this page should be a disambiguation page or not. When I (not native speaker of English) hear Colorado, my first thoughts are with the river of the Grand Canyon, next with this US state. Although the river has its article at Colorado River, I would at least except some linking here, if not a real disambiguation. Is this acceptable from US/native English point of view? I mainly ask this because the **** River construction is sometimes used, sometimes not (you don't really hear Rhine River, but you do hear River Thames (with the River as a prefix this time)) and I'm not really sure what the acceptable standard is. Just want to know before I move this Colardo article (And the no doubt many links) which somebody then has to revert. jheijmans

This article should only be about Colorado the state -- some minor disambiguation at the bottom could then be done with links to the other various "Colorado's". Generally in these cases if two terms are known by the same name then you always first try to see if one of those terms is also widely known as something less ambiguous (such as Colorado River]]). This way articles can be naturally disambiguated. However, Colorado the state is almost never called "Colorado state" by English speakers (at least in the 'States), so that type of disambiguation would be inappropriate. Cheers! --maveric149

As for the other rivers or anything else for that matter -- naming should give priority to what most English speakers would most easily recognize with the minimum of ambiguity. This doesn't always follow any set pattern or logic, so we have River Thames, Colorado River and Rhine. However the "Rhine" example is the most problematic example since "Rhine" is aslo the name of the river valley amoung other things. In this case the most famous and widely used example of the word is used for the Rhine entry (this is similar to reasoning behind having the home of Paris, France at Paris). Hope this helps. --maveric149

Thanks; some more questions though: The R in Colorado River (and also River Thames) is capitalised; this means it is considered part of the proper name? And is that common for all rivers in English/American lands, or only in the case of Mississippi and Colorado (don't know any other Thames's, however)? I often also see "xxxx river" in texts on rivers located in non-English countries, and then usually not capitalised, so I assume that is to clarify it is about a river then? Or is it, as you say, completely without any logic (which seems to be the case with the big river in Egypt, which you may encounter as both Nile and River Nile). Also, it seems the "River" prefix is English (UK), is that right? Sorry for being this curious and all... jheijmans

The capitalization of of "R" in river, "M" in mountain, or even "O" in ocean or "S" in sea is a problematic topic with wikipedia right now. There seem to be equal numbers of people who want to lowercase all these and another set of people who feel that those words should be capitalized since they feel the words are part of a proper name. So this is something that we are still trying to work out. I personally feel that these words should be capitalized but then that flys in the face of our naming conventions for these things so I am often compelled to lowercase the title when in doubt and provide a redirect for the capitalized term. One useful tool to use, however, is Google. What I do when pondering this, is enter in the term in question into Google (which isn't case sensitive) and search for it. I then look for examples of the lowercased term being used in one of the hits on the 1st and 2nd search result pages (The terms will almost always be capitalized when they are presented as titles or headings, so look for the highlighted term within the sample body text that Google displays). If a see a few examples of the term not capitalized then I revert to the wikipedia naming convention of Lowercase second and subsequent words for words that are not always capitalized in English (you shouldn't look too hard for examples though, since you can easily find incorrect English usage on the Internet). I dont' really know about the "River" prefix issue since I am only familiar with the River Thames example -- sounds like something the Brits would do though. BTW, being curious is a good thing and not something to be sorry for. :) --maveric149, Monday, May 6, 2002

I see the problem with this capitalisation. As (vaguely) mentioned above, I'd say that the second letter should be capitalised if part of the proper name, which I would say to be the case if:

  • the first part of the word is an adjective (Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Black Sea), or
  • if the descriptive part is commonly used with the name, such as in River Thames and Colorado River

The latter is of course the most difficult one to judge, given the "commonly used". I would say that if it's not clear whether it's commonly used or not, we should stick to the lower case second part (like you said).

Now, the (non-existing) Gobi Desert article is a nice example. First of all, Gobi means desert in Mongolian, so adding desert is quite useless (there's a Gobi article). However, most people will not know this, and in English (also in my native language, Dutch) it is quite common (looking at Google) to say Gobi Desert, which is also seen on maps (Looking at other web-encylopedias, there is no consensus). So, actually, Gobi Desert should be the name of the article, not Gobi.

I would say that a redirect from Gobi Desert to Gobi also does the trick here (leaving the first article, redirecting is also some Wikipedia policy, isn't it), or not? jheijmans

No, that isn't any sort of policy -- it is just easier to do than moving the article so it is often done instead. I agree that Gobit should live at Gobi Desert so I will make the move myself. --maveric149

[edit] River X / X River

Which is preferred, River Thames or Thames River? Should we agree on one form? Which one is currently dominant? -- Tarquin 14:33 Oct 18, 2002 (UTC)


[edit] Abbreviations normally in place names

How do we handle cities and other places with "Saint" vs. "St.", "Mount" vs. "Mt.", etc.? We have "St. Louis, Missouri" and "Saint Paul, Minnesota". -- Zoe