Talk:Vlissingen, Netherlands

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A Winner of the September 2005 West Dakota Prize

This entry, one of an unprecedented 52, has won the September 2005 West Dakota Prize, awarded for successfully employing the expression "legend states" in a complete sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetman (talk • contribs)

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Contents 1 The town title 2 Article title 3 Requested move 3.1 Survey

[edit] The town title

I know the article is in English, but shouldn't we be using the Dutch title Vlissingen for their own town? "Flushing" is almost like saying Wipers for Ypres - and even that has changed to Ieper!!! Peter Shearan 20:08, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd rather have this redirect to Vlissingen, Netherlands too. There does appear to be some precedent for using the English form though, see Antwerp (and List of European cities with alternative names) for some. This might require some policy discussion. --fvw* 20:13, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

Thankyou - I suppose all these things take time!!! Peter Shearan 09:38, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about The Hague? The more interesting question to answer in the article: why is this Dutch town important enough in English culture to have its own English name? --Wetman 04:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I would guess it has nothing to do with the town's importance. Alot of cultures give their own names to foreign things, it is, or atleast used to be quite common(just look at the link Fvw has given). I would like to support a move to Vlissingen. Generally, when another country uses a different name for a village or city, the name tends to be so similar to the original name that its very easy to understand what village or city they are referring to. However, with Vlissingen, this is not the case. Flushing is an english word, so it is very easy to mistake it for an english town. When i saw a mention of Flushing, i wondered to myself where this town was because i had never heard of it before. Seeing the name, i thought it was somewhere in the UK. Imagine my surprise when it showed Vlissingen. So i support the move to Vlissingen. Omegastar19 (talk) 05:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

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"Petrus Johannes Van Dierendonck was born here." Can't find him through Google. No Dutch Wikipedia article either. If you can fiund a clue, and maybe his birthdate, put him back. --Wetman 04:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article title

I've considered this in light of the above old discussion from 2005, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), and am fairly convinced that this article really ought to be renamed to Vlissingen, for the following reasons:

1. "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." I'd contend that "Flushing" is a mostly old-fashioned and imprecise name, and that nowadays Vlissingen is equally well-known and commonly used. It is also less ambiguous than other meanings of Flushing.
2. "Generally, use the official English name for the place and its type." I have seen no evidence that "Flushing" is in any way an official English name, just a traditional one (as "Rheims" is for Reims or "Lyons" for Lyon). Hence, Vlissingen would, by default, be the usual English name.
3. "Determine prevalent usage." Going on Ghits, flushing +holland gets 801,000; vlissingen +holland gets 1,260,000. However, flushing +netherlands gets 823,000, whilst vlissingen +netherlands gets slightly fewer at 736,000. Vlissingen still wins overall though.
4. "Use English but foreign and historical names can be acceptable in some cases." I'm not convinced that this is one of those cases where the traditionally English name is better than the modern local and international name.
5. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) provides no country-specific guideline for the Netherlands, but generally for Europe the rule is, "In absence of a common English name, the current local name of the city should be used." Again, I'm not convinced that the traditional English name is sufficiently common and well-known to be used in preference to the local name.

Therefore, I propose a requested move. Cheers, DWaterson 17:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Allow me to comment:

1. What is it precisely that you contend? That Flushing is old-fashioned and thus less known than Vlissingen — or that it is equally known and commonly used? The most relevant other meanings are derived from the English name for the Dutch city; the inherent ambiguity might thus be very informative.
2. Obviously Flushing cannot be official. How does it follow from this that Vlissingen is more usual?
3. Why didn't you use the UK pages only? On these Flushing wins. Remember that Holland and The Netherlands in general are called "Holland" in many languages, all of which but one do not use "Flushing"; most have no common name for Vlissingen.
4. The rule is equivalent to: "Use English in preference to foreign and historical names, except for some special condition to hold". Flushing is English. Flushing is not a foreign name. Vlissingen is. Flushing is not an historical name, i.e. the former name of a place. What is the special condition? That there is a modern local name — and international imitation of it — is not sufficient. A special case has to be made for this.
5. The only empirical evidence you give contradicts your personal conviction, because according to the rule it must be shown that the traditional common name is so fallen into disuse that it can be considered "absent". Yet you have discovered hundreds of thousands of uses of it!--MWAK 17:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Much as I generally favour using the native forms of names, it doesn't seem to be justified by policy in this case. The Google hits above are flawed; searching for "Flushing Netherlands -Wikipedia" or "Flushing Holland -Wikipedia" gives 692,000 and 1,090,000 results respectively, while "Vlissingen Netherlands -Wikipedia" and "Vlissingen Holland -Wikipedia" give 220,000 and 249,000. Also, the town does seem to self-identify as "Flushing" in English [1]. It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 20:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 17:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

A year later and an editor moved the article from Flushing, Netherlands to Vlissingen, Netherlands without discussion (not by me). If people feel it should use the Dutch name instead of the English one, I'd recommend dropping Netherlands. There are multiple Flushings, but I don't think there are multiple Vlissingens. --Stomme (talk) 17:54, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also noticed this had been moved without discussion. Personally, I still consider that Vlissingen is the correct title for the article (not Vlissingen, Netherlands as it now is), but I won't make any changes myself given the above discussions. DWaterson (talk) 11:13, 25 May 2008 (UTC)