Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Naming

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see also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (landforms)‎
see also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (landforms)

Contents

[edit] Naming

[edit] Proposal to be worked on

feel free to edit, write NPOV, to keep it short do not sign if not neccesary

see also: Wikipedia:Proper_names

  1. If the river has a universally-agreed and unambiguous name in English usage, use that. Examples are Nile, Danube, Orinoco, Rio Grande (note anglicized "i" not "í"), Syr Darya.
  2. Otherwise, in English-speaking areas where the local convention is to prefix, say "River X". Examples are River Cam, River Rouge.
  3. Otherwise, use "X River".

If there are more rivers with the same name, disambiguate by country, subnational entity or distributary. To avoid conflicts with cities use brackets (e.g. Indian River (Michigan) vs. Indian River, Michigan)

[edit] Discussion summary - !you can write here directly! to keep discussion short

instead of enlarging the discussion, you can write you point of view here directly. use NPOV

[edit] Naming variants

Five variants to name an river article exist:

  1. plain "X" in general (e.g. Nile, Rhine)
    1. X can include foreign words for river (e.g. Rio Grande, Amu Darya)
    2. X can include Creek, Stream for rivers for which it is conventional (resp. USA, Canada, Australia and UK, Ireland).
      1. that means you can also have "River X" in these countries because it is actually part of the name there. (e.g. River Cam)
  2. "X River"
    1. if there are other place names called "X"
    2. some people, esp. english natives, prefer to use this as general rule
  3. "River X"
    1. there are people that consider X River to be either a New World thing, or an indicator of a river being named after something else, like a district or region, and who assume that [[river X]] or [[River X]] can be used either for rivers in the Old World or for rivers that have a name of their own.
  4. "X (river)"
    1. there are people that would like to apply general disambig rules when other things called X exist
    2. this is mostly supported by non-english-natives
  5. "X river"
    1. if "River" is not part of the name this might sometimes be the way someone writes about it in an article. He would probably not use "X (river)" and maybe dislikes "X River", because the latter suggests at least to some people that River is part of the translated name. English natives might have a different approach here, because they are less afraid of having the word River in the name (e.g. Rhine River google for it).
    2. this is mostly supported by non-english-natives

[edit] Naming methods

  1. use 2(3) naming variants: "X" (including "River X", "X River" for english-nativ countries) and "X River"
    1. this does not say what has to be used in general, whether plain "X" or "X River" (e.g. rivers of Germany are currently mostly "River"-less)
    2. if different "X River" exist, use bracket-disambiguation
    3. supporters (this is not voting!, please remove a name, if putting it here was a mistake)
      1. User:Stan Shebs ("River"-less generally allowed)
      2. User:Tobias Conradi ("River"-less generally allowed)
      3. User:Markussep (preferably "River"-less)
      4. User:Waltpohl ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
      5. User:Maximaximax ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
      6. User:Bkonrad ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
        1. his wording appr.: use "X River" in all cases EXCEPT where there are credible and verifiable sources indicating that the preponderance of English-language usage warrants using some other form.'
      7. llywrch ("River"-less only for very well known rivers)
        1. he quoted Bkonrad and added "This is the idomatic form for titles of articles."
      8. User:Rmhermen ("River"-less only for very well known rivers) and it is always X River, never X river.
    4. unclear supporters
      1. User:Mikkalai. My only objection is against undertaking any massive renaming. If a country has a solid cooperation of contributors, like Germany, IMO it is up to them to decide whether they would like to standardise to any of valid naming conventions. Also, I don't quite understand when "River" is part of the name. IMO it is like saying "Mister" is part of the name of Mr. Smith. May be my English knowledge is poor... 01:32, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        1. seems to propose country by country approach, what does he mean by "standardise to any of valid naming conventions"
          1. he means that if it will be decided that both 'X' and 'X River' are valid names, then it is up to the correponding country contributor clique to decide whether they want to rename the existing articles and how. Mikkalai 23:53, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  2. use 2(4) naming variants, "X" (including "River X", "X River" for english-native countries), allow "X river" for others
    1. User:Ezhiki "River"-less only for very well known rivers, not strongly opposed to lowercase.
  3. use? (people that took part in discussion, but it is not clear what kind of rule they support)
    1. User:Ruhrjung
    2. User:Joy
    3. User:Tuomas

[edit] lowercase/uppercase in the title

"X river" is never recommended

Why? What's wrong with lowercase? --Joy [shallot] 20:22, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proper name - usual rule is to capitalize all (OK, almost all) parts. We only write it as "new York city" if we're avant-garde poets. :-) Also, "Delaware River" refers to fewer rivers than "Delaware river". Stan 00:09, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Er, how is "River" part of a proper name of a river that isn't in an area where English is spoken? --Joy [shallot]
Hey, please answer this question - why is this never recommended, and does that mean that it must really be in uppercase all the time? Tobias Conradi is on a spree of changing all such references to non-English rivers into uppercases, and it will be a lot of work to revert him if more time passes without a precise answer... --Joy [shallot]
Kako? I am on a spree? Everything ok with you? It is not only about reverting him if you want to go with your non-english proposal as you do with "your" croatian counties than you really have to change a lot of other rivers.
My watchlist has recorded you going through tens of references to rivers changing them to "$1 River", regardless of whether the article exists or not. That's called a spree in my book :) I want to hear from a native English speaker that this is really The One True Way(TM) before letting it be. --Joy [shallot]
whether it exists or not - well maybe by changing I suddenly see it exists. :-) --Tobias
That particular part refers to Sana. --Joy [shallot]
Then what I wrote further about changes was ment for Sana. You know how I came there? By a non-disambiguated plain Sana link. [1] I could not stay away from fixing this :-) I because I do not like upper and lower case X rivers I stick to what is allready used in english countries. Tobias Conradi 12:43, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
BTW: even if it is decided to name the articles in your way ("X river" I assume, like the counties) what is the problem to redirect the X River there?
Oh, of course. But you're not making redirects in that direction right now. --Joy [shallot]
This is english wikipedia, if the english people say in english, it is common to use X River than this is fine. Isn't it? "River" is part of the translated proper name. Tobias Conradi 11:37, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
But is it really? I see it as just a descriptive word, a common thing but not a prescribed word. The river Sava for example can be called "Sava River" and "River Sava", neither is really better, or at least I can't see why it would be. And since it's not native to English, it can be called just "Sava", too, which is IMHO the best as it's closest to the original. --Joy [shallot]
I like plain Sava as well. Seems to be a conflict only between some (e.g. Stan not) of the english-natives and those non-english natives that argue it is not really part of the name. I did not change any of "X" to "X River" just for fun. For Sava I did it, because the link let to Sava-disambig page, so I disambiguated. And because I am in favor of having only few ways to name rivers, I did not make it with lowercase, neither with brackets, but with uppercase - trailing. Tobias Conradi 20:46, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The Sava page was already disambiguated, you just changed " (river)" to " River" in the title and in the links pointing to it. But anyway, I don't think it's a good idea to interfere in this discussion by doing this while the English speakers have not made up their mind. Let them have a poll or something before normalizing everything to one form. --Joy [shallot]

I guess you would call it X River if River were actually part of the name. For many rivers (outside USA, UK etc) it isn't, so if you have to use "river" (e.g. because of disambiguation), I suppose it can be anything: inside brackets or not, upper or lower case, before or after X. Markussep 20:07, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's exactly why we have to have a single convention, to avoid guessing. Not to say that in one language River may be part of the name, while not in another one, for the same river. In such cases the primary goal is convenience for numerous editors; readers are more interested in correct and complete contents of the actual article, which may contain all possible names and spellings.
When writing an article full of personal and geographic names it is a great pain to double-check each and every name. It is especially confusing in the case of missing articles. When we have red links for Qaxan River, Qaxan, Qaxan river, Qaxan (river) Quaxan River, Quaxan, Quaxan river, Quaxan (river), Qazan River, Qazan, Qazan river, Qazan (river), great chances are that after some time we will have duplicate articles, with pain in the neck remaining to collect all the remaining red links into one place. This kind of discussion happened for numerous other things: Aircraft carriers, lakes, etc. And nearly always the best solution is a single solution, even if sometimes it produces awkward and unusual article titles, like Vasili IV of Russia, who is overwhelmingly known as Vasili Shuisky Mikkalai 21:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but this confusion can be easily avoided if you check in a list or by searching what's the name of the article you're referring to. For instance, I started to write an article about the city Echternach but found out via German wikipedia that there was already an article called Echternach, Luxembourg, that wasn't referred to from the usual pages (lists of rivers, cities etc.). Since there are no other Echternachs as far as I know I moved it to Echternach. I usually check links I make, I hope everybody does that. BTW in what language is Kazan called/spelled Qaxan? You may want to add it to the article, so people can find it by searching, and/or create a redirect.

My opinion about upper or lower case: upper case suggests that River is part of the name, which may be so for USA, UK, Australia etc., but not for Germany, France, Russia etc. Suggestion: get rid of brackets for rivers, but make it lower case river if it's not part of the name, but required because of disambiguation. Markussep 11:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To my understanding, river name 'X' is better to have for major internationally known rivers, like Nile, Rhine. 'River X' is reserved to British, the rest of the unknown waterflows it is better to be 'X River'. Mikkalai 21:59, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Some local river in places other than Britain use River X that is why we use the local use convention. Michigan in the U.S. for instance has River Raisin and River Styx, etc. Rmhermen 00:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

By the way, did you know there is Volga River in Iowa (I suggest to name the article Volga River, Iowa), in addition to Volga, Iowa city? 21:59, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, wwe don't need to keep reinventing the wheel. The Wikiproject already describes how to name U.S. rivers and even explains the reasoning. Volga River (Iowa) is the format. Rmhermen 00:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] River X / X River - need for clarification

can Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rivers#Naming be clarified, I think "River X" is only used for the UK and one or three Rivers in Spain. I wanted to help your project by turning the russian/finnish River Vuoksi into Vuoksi River, but this was reversed, see Talk:River Vuoksi. As I can see it, River Vuoks is the only example outsied UK/Spain in River X format. Tobias Conradi 21:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No there is River Raisin and River Rouge in Michigan in the United States. Not to mention things like Rio Grande. It depends on most common local usage. Rmhermen 00:48, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
Rio Grande does not have the term River inside. most common local use - how do you apply this to a river flowing in a russian and finnish speaking area? Tobias Conradi 01:51, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The general rule is most common English usage (thus Milan not Milano), with common local usage as a fallback. In a non-English-speaking area, "River X" vs "X River" is unlikely to be an issue, because "river" is an English word and would not be a local usage at all. Exceptions might be if a government published official English orthography rules in addition to rules for their own languages (unusual, but not unknown). In the Vuoksi case, I don't see why it's different. Stan 13:52, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
that would mean to use "X River". Stan can you change the Naming section

River articles may be named "X", "X River", or "River X", depending on location and most common usage. "X river" is never recommended, and "X (river)" should only be used if absolutely necessary.

to something like

River articles may be named (in that order)

  1. "X" in case where X is unambigously the name for the River
  2. "X River" in ambigous case
  3. "River X" depending on location and most common usage. Because "River" is an english word, this naming would apply only to english speaking areas.

"X river" is never recommended, and "X (river)" should only be used if absolutely necessary.

Or make it more clear in another way. For me it was clear before, but I would like to avoid such discussions in future. Best regards Tobias Conradi 15:36, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think the current version is clear. And the new proposal is wrong. "X" alone is not the recommended first choice. "River X" or "X River" is. "X River" is not prefered to "River X". In some cases of rivers in non-English-speaking areas, the most common English name might still be "River X". We just use the most common name, we don't try to make up names ourselves. Rmhermen 15:55, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
  1. Rmhermen, as you may have noticed from Talk:River_Vuoksi and your own words above were you intervened in the disccusion with the words "It depends on most common local usage." what is helpless in a country where no english local usage can be found, it is not as clear as it could be.
  2. if you think it is wrong make a better one.
Tobias Conradi 17:56, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Tobias, you might not know it, but in fact, the Finns are far more proficient in English than, for instance, our fellow countrymen the Germans. Plenty of both governmental information and ordinary www-pages exist in multi-lingual versions, and beside the domestic languages, English and German parallel texts are definitely not unusual.
In effect, English usage of names related to Finland (or in this case, Karelia) is dominated not by native English speakers but by lingua-franca users.
If a Finn, or someone connected to Finland, reacts and tells us that one form is to be considered less correct than another, then we have every reason to take that seriously.
Redirects can not, in my sincerest opinion, be a matter here. If River Vuoksi redirects to Vuoksi River, or the other way around, or if they both redirects to Vuoksi, that doesn't matter at all. If you want to construct neat lists with "river" behind the name, then do so; it will be taken care of by redirects.
Similarly, categories can, if wished, be neatified with the help of pipes.
There is no need what-so-ever for Wikipedia-style to express preference for X River over for River X or the opposite, but maybe we should make it a tad clearer why and when we prefer X instead.
Ruhrjung 15:46, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

My proposal:

  • X River or River X for rivers for which it is conventional (resp. USA, Canada, Australia and UK, Ireland).
  • otherwise plain X.
  • In case there are also towns, lakes etc. called X we should call the river X River or X (river).
  • if there are more rivers with the same name, disambiguate by country, subnational entity or distributary.
  • to be solved: translation of foreign words, meaning "River" like in Amu Darya -- Tobias

I think "X" would be a good choice for most rivers outside native English speaking countries. I prefer writing "I was walking long the Danube" to "I was walking along the Danube River". I guess it's different for rivers like Delaware River and the Yellow River.

Markussep 19:31, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Discussion copied from User_talk:Markussep:

Why are you renaming River articles? Please look into River and into lists of rivers quoted there. It is a common convention to name river as e.g., Missouri River. If you disagee, please discuss this, e.g., at the River page, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers, or at Wikipedia:Naming conventions before unertaking massive changes like this one. Thank you. Mikkalai 16:34, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rivers#Naming. It may be conventional for rivers in America and the UK to have the word "river" in the name, but it isn't for most European rivers. What I'm doing here is moving "X River" to "X" if there is nothing else called X (like Irtysh). Markussep 16:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
You are not supposed to undertake major renaming projects single-handedly without discussing with other editors. there is a reason in your logic, but it is also quite possible you are missing some objections, e.g., naming uniformity, etc. I strongly urge you to talk at the pages I mentioned, at least as a courtesy to other countless editors who provided original names. Mikkalai 17:31, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Mikkalai here. Be you right or wrong, the change is too massive without at least trying to discuss it first. Plus, did you think about the number diasmbiguities this would create? There are plenty of places that have the same names as rivers; having the word "River" in the river's name helps alleviate the problem considerably.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 17:58, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
I guess we should start a proper naming conventions discussion then. As far as I know there aren't any clear rules now, only what's on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rivers#Naming. My proposal:
  • X River or River X for rivers for which it is conventional (resp. USA, Canada, Australia and UK, Ireland).
  • otherwise plain X.
  • In case there are also towns, lakes etc. called X we should call the river X River or X (river).
  • if there are more rivers with the same name, disambiguate by country, subnational entity or distributary.

Markussep 19:31, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I also disagree with your idea of massive renaming rivers articles. If you don't know enough about countries to which these rivers belong then it is not the best idea to start your work with changing the rules. For example you renamed Ob River to Ob - but there is also Ob town on this river. There are 2 rivers with name Chulym and it was better to split the article into 2 separate articles than to rename it (there ia lso a town with name Chulym). And so and so on. Why did you start your renames with a country you don't know enough about? Start with your own one, may be it will help you to understand that it is better to use already created and not so bad rules with which most people agree than claim your own rules without any notification of people who worked in this area before you. MaxiMaxiMax 20:01, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) PS. There are at least 3 rivers with name Oka in Russia. MaxiMaxiMax 20:03, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

he did not claim his own rules, or his own rules where the same as on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rivers#Naming. It is not a matter where he comes from. If there is Ob City and you now this, then fix his mistake and write a disambig, thus also preventing mistakes by other wikipedians. If not disambig, then make at least a note on the page. Was Ob City mentioned anywhere? Wikipedia has to be usefull for everyone, russian river articles are not supposed to be read only by people living at those rivers. Tobias Conradi 20:11, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, you are right - he has such rights. We all have equal rights in Wikipedia but not equal knowledge about this or that subject. If I don't know enough about rivers in Indonesia I do not start mass renaming of them. To your question why I did not add a disambig about Ob river or Chulim river or Oka river I can answer only that my English is not good enough to write encyclopedical articles, but I watch activities in the areas I know something about and I can tell what is good and what is wrong. MaxiMaxiMax 20:18, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC) PS. I also think that system to add River suffixes is very useful (at least for Russian rivers - we very often have other objects with the same name). MaxiMaxiMax 20:21, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Let's continue this discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rivers. About the Russian rivers I moved: the towns Ob and Chulym are much less significant than the rivers (maybe not if you live there). If someone writes an article about the towns, he/she could make a line on the main article like "there's also a town called Ob, see Ob, Novosibirsk Oblast", like at London or Eschweiler. I know there are more Oka's, let's wait with splitting the article until someone writes something substantial about the other ones. Likewise for Pechora and Mezen, if someone writes something interesting about the city we can always disambiguate them like London and Eschweiler. BTW I didn't move Oka River, so what are you talking about? Markussep 20:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I just tried to prevent not necessary movements back and force. I also think that it is better to discuss proper things in proper place. But you started these renaming without any discussions. As for me it would be more convinirnt if we always have articles about rivers with suffix "River" and a redirect or disambig from its simple name - then we will always expect in other articles how to refer to the river, even if article about it is not created yet and we do not know are there any other valuable objects with the same name. MaxiMaxiMax 20:36, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The trouble is that there isn't really a platform to discuss this on in detail yet, at least not to my knowledge. If you want to know how to refer to a river, the easiest way is to check Rivers of Russia. After my moves I was going to change the references there as well. And as for objects with the same name, it's usually clear which one is the most significant, see Moskva, Kostroma and Ob. I think it's a bit of a nuisance to type Ob River all the time when it's clear that most people who refer to Ob would mean the river.Markussep 20:46, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure that all peple who refer to Chulym mean one or another Chulym - most of people did not hear about both of rivers and a town. Also note that most people (at least outsude the USA) who refer to Mississippi mean not the US state but the river, becuse it is more famous, but the state has just name and river has the suffix River. MaxiMaxiMax 20:56, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It should also be taken into consideration that the new way is quite a nuisance to editors. Imagine writing an article that mentions rivers—with your system in place one would actually have to check all names to make sure the links go to the actual articles, and not to the disambiguation pages. Wouldn't you agree that it is so much more convenient to write "[[X River]]" and "[[Y River]]" and be sure that this works as planned? The current system is working reasonably well, and, to my best knowledge, you are the first person to have such a strong stand against it. In any case, this should be moved to WikiProject Rivers talk page and discussed there with that project's participants before any more moves are done.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 21:04, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

(I moved the discussion to the bottom, to reduce the timewarping. Stan 22:31, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC))

River naming is a bit like town/city naming, in that we have a mix of expectations, meaning that it is unlikely that a single rule will be entirely satisfactory. Some names are clearly unambiguous by themselves, "Rhine", "Nile", "Danube", for instance. Few people even know of non-river things with these names, let alone assume them. So the motivation to add "River" just isn't there. Conversely, for "Delaware", "Congo", "Orange", the non-river meanings are just as common or more common, so you have to add something. "River" is convenient, because in many areas, "X River" is the official name too. So if you can disambiguate by using a longer official name, great, everybody is happy. In some additional cases, the official name doesn't really correspond to English usage well - for instance, when I hear "Ruhr", I think of what WP calls the Ruhr Area, and when reminded there's a river in it, I would say "Oh yeah, the Ruhr River". In the US almost every river is named after something else, so to USians it seems pretty normal to pre-disambiguate by adding "River" - and to say it as "River X" if you want to be poetic or pretentious or both. :-) The idea of a river uniquely named just Aar is a little strange, because it's not one of those famous ones. Stan 22:55, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

While I, too, lean towards the form "Rhine River" for the title of the article (the magic of linking on Wikipedia is that one needs not write "[[Rhine River]]" but "[[Rhine river|Rhine]]" to supress the seond part of the compound noun when needed), there are a couple more details we ought to consider, if we're going to set up a standard:

  1. There seems to be a tendency on Wikipedia to avoid unnecessary capitalization; I have found the form (for example) "Wide River" & "Wide river". Which should we prefer?
  2. Obviously local or common usage should be preferred: Rio Grande, not Rio Grande River; River Thames, not Thames River (when speaking of the one in Britain). Yet what do we do about rivers in Anatolia or Turkey, which are known by both their Ancient name & their modern Turkish name? I ask this because I encountered this problem concerning the Halys River, which is also known as the Kızılırmak river. Admittedly, most people who have heard of the Halys river don't exactly know where it's located, & those who see the Kızılırmak on a map don't immediately know it's the same river as the Halys.

PS -- I noticed that my proposal for a naming standard (which was never accepted) is still on the subject page as if it is accepted policy. I think it should be removed. -- llywrch 23:35, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What proposal are you refering to exactly? The word river is always capitalized when it is used as part of a name, whether it comes before or after the name. Usually we use the modern name of things, not the ancient. The real problem arises when different groups currently have different names for the same thing, like the names of rivers in New Zealand which have English and Maori names. In general we try to use natural disambiguation before we resort to inventing systems for parenthetical disambiguators. So if rivers can be differentiated from towns by simply added the word River to form the natural term, X River, it is the prefered solution to any system like X (river). Rmhermen 00:52, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
Nevermind my comment; I had glanced at the section "Multiple rivers with the same name", & thought it was identical to what I proposed a long time ago, & was rejected because it was too cumbersome. Looking at the page history, I see that my original proposal is not what is currently on the page. -- llywrch 18:30, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
What we discuss will be lost to the world. But we can work on article about Place_names put all our knowledge together and streamline the discussion. Maybe someone likes to look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Subnational entities/Naming were I also tried to streamline a more complex subject than just names of Rivers ;-) I inserted Amu Darya in the proposal of Markussep, as something to be addressed. Tobias Conradi 03:23, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

On ancient vs modern names, I think we need to give precedence to modern names, with redirects from various formulations of the ancient forms, just as we do already for cities - Naples not Neapolis, etc. "Most common" tests would probably be skewed by classicists who recite the name over and over online, while the living breathing people of the area don't have websites of their own, not yet anyway. Ironically, while we say we want to use local names, we only seem to like Latin-1 transcriptions - on the Commons, articles for Russian cities have been moved to their Cyrillic forms, for accuracy, but the category page is now rather daunting! The Turkish "ı" is similarly confusing; even lots of native Turks seem to substitute "i" when writing web pages in English. So we have to be a little wary of the enthusiasm for "nativizing" names; uniformly adding "River" to the name of rivers in a non-English-speaking region is a longstanding practice by English writers, and we could legitimately adopt it as a house style rule. Stan 13:15, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

nativizing can really be a mess. e.g. there are more than five versions to write the arabic term for wilaya, because it is used in variants in other languages. as well as the variants of the russian oblast in kyrgyz, kazakh, belorussian ... . Latin-1 is allready the beginning of nativizing, because one does not use ä ö ü in "regular" english. Tobias Conradi 15:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, my Chicago manual (13th edition) says "always capitalize generic when used as part of name, but don't say anything about adding "River", confining themselves to a couple examples that I quote verbatim:

Kaskaskia River (but the river Elbe)
Rio Grande (not Rio Grande River)

They also refer people to an atlas or gazetteer for the correct form of a name. Stan 13:24, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

maybe one day, because of the well structure and internal consistency, wikipedia manual will be cited. By, e.g. the Chicago manual :-) Tobias Conradi 15:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm getting confused in this discussion -- although I'm sure some people would say I'm normaly confused. ;-) Let me paraphrase what I think is being proposed here:
  • The general rule is that the name of the river comes first, followed by "River", capitalized (e.g. Hudson River).
  • However, if the river is easily identified by it's name alone, then we do not capitalize the river; it is not part of the proper noun. (Example: Danube river [there is only one Danube], but Columbia River (there are many Columbias).
  • However, if common English usage either puts "River" first as part of the proper noun (e.g. River Cam in Britain), or uses another word instead of river (Rio Grande, Mill Creek), then "river" is not added (thus we should not see Rio Grande River or Starvation Creek river).
  • In any case, there must be a modifier that indicates that the noun applies to a stream of water: either a familiar term for this body of water ("River" "Stream" "Creek" etc.) or a known foreign word (e.g. "Rio").
  • Spelling should be in Latin-1, unless a good reason can be made for the variance. (The last clause is my addition: think of it as the "if we use Latin-1, then the name becomes an embarassing obscenity in the local language" rule) -- llywrch 19:21, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Do not confuse us by not signing your post and by making a new list of proposals. the list of markussep was much more compact than yours. :-) Tobias Conradi 19:19, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, with the discussion being so wide-ranging, & a number of topics being mentioned, I had to ask for a clarification. That is also the reason I moved a lot of the older material into an archive, & to put your rephrasing both at the top of the page & keep it next to the rest of the discussion. -llywrch 23:53, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC) (remembering the 4 magic characters this time)
Seems to me as if you've clarified Tobias' position. :-)
That doesn't make me support it, though. --Ruhrjung 00:04, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

I hope no one wants to change Amu Darya to Amu River (and Syr Darya and Rio Grande likewise). Darya is a Persian word, but the same name is used in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, even though as far as I know Darya is not an Uzbek or Kazakh word (maybe a native speaker can correct me). Markussep 20:23, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I would tinker with llywrch's suggestion a bit to make it more algorithmic:

  1. If the river has a universally-agreed and unambiguous name in English usage, use that. Examples are Nile, Danube, Orinoco, Rio Grande (and note anglicized "i" not "í"), Syr Darya.
  2. Otherwise, in English-speaking areas where the local convention is to prefix, say "River X". Examples are River Cam, River Rouge.
  3. Otherwise, use "X River".

I got inclined to be more severe about usage of foreign words for "river" after seeing confusion in books about Africa, where the same river might pass through French, Spanish, and Portuguese areas. I'm undecided about what I see in Category:German rivers, I suppose they could be justified as "River"-less under my rule 1. Stan 04:19, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with any proposal that tries to make just X the standard. In common usage, we only use plain X for very famous rivers like the Rhine or the Danube. I don't like just X because it will inevitable lead to disambiguation problems that are easily avoided using the common forms River X or X River by preference. Most people will not know all the uses of a name and what they may think unambiguous may only reflect a limited knowledge of other political or geographical names. Rmhermen 05:44, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
That's why I suggest "universally agreed" as the standard. Even if some ignorant person thinks just "X" is OK, if not everyone else agrees, then any one of them can move it to "X River" and be done. Of course, I'm assuming that there are very few people who would try to insist on "Nile River". Stan 06:09, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Actually, what I wrote was not a suggestion; I was simply attempting to figure out what we are talking about -- although I may have slanted what I thought was the consensus with my own opinion. And one point I want to strongly advocate for is that the title of the article should keep some form of the river -- or an apropriate synonym -- in it. The reason for this is: (1) for consistency; (2) to help people whose English is somewhat shakey to understand which article they have found; & (3) to avoid further disambiguation problems down the road. Dropping "river" from names like "Nile", "Orinocco", "Danube", etc. may look straightforward right now, but I can see 6 months from now someone coming in & complaining that this style is confusing. -- llywrch 06:42, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
But the ring of Rhine River is somewhat laymanish, isn't it? I feel pretty uneasy when sounding it in my head. Shrug!
--Ruhrjung 07:30, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "laymanish" Ruhrjung. Is the word you're looking for "colloquial"? Ich kann Deutsch. Wenn du das exakte Wort auf English nicht weisst, schreib auf Deutsch, dass du meinst.
But to respond to what I assume is your point, this is one of the cases I feel that "river" -- with a lower case r -- should be used. Otherwise, do we want to get into endless arguments over what is meant by "famous"? Is the Columbia river famous enough to be known only by "Columbia"? What about the Willamette river? Or the Rogue river? While I'd argue in favor of the first being famous enough, it suffers from a namespace collision (I believe there is a country by that name); but I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to argue in favor of the other two examples. -- llywrch 00:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm strongly in favour of plain X, if there's nothing else called X, and if X is the most significant object called X. Usually, the first line of a river article is: "X is a river in country Y", so people would have to be really poor English speakers not to understand what type of article they found. If there are more, but less significant objects called X, make a reference to the other X or a disambiguation article in the first paragraph, or in italics above it. And if the other X is more important, call the river X river (or X River). Markussep 11:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Markus! I've always found all these "River" in the titles somewhat silly. I also don't understand what need for disambiguation there is. If, for instance, it turns out that there exists a lesser known village or lake or something that in English is known under exactly the same name, why not just simply apply the usual disambiguation rules? /Tuomas 14:50, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maybe it is in vain, but I would like people that say, I agree with... I hope .... and so on, to structure their minds and put in in an NPOV style proposal or an NPOV style discussion summary. We produced so much kilobytes for only little things. With NPOV style we save time and will have less probability to miss somthing that was said. regards Tobias Conradi 20:17, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I find it amazing that a native speaker of English is arguing for maximum clarity on the English Wikipedia against 3 or 4 editors for whom English is a second (third, or more) language. (And no, I am not trying to insult anyone's grasp of the English language here.) All I can say is never under-estimate your audience's ability to misunderstand directions -- & I say this based on many months of doing phone support for computers. -- llywrch 00:55, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The naming of rivers in English is so uncontroversial that I can't believe we're having this discussion. Almost all rivers have the word "river" as part of their name in English. There are exceptions (the Nile, for example), but they are indeed exceptions. Maybe the naming scheme is silly, but it's how we name rivers in English. -- Walt Pohl 08:04, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I tried to find out what those people that do not like the method to use only X (including River X for english countries) and X River want. They are talking for the use of brackets, for finno-english, for lower case, but I have not seen a complete proposal of them. The only ones that made clear what they favor are Stan, Walt Pohl and me. Tell me if I am wrong and please show where to find your proposal Tobias Conradi 18:10, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I share Walt Pohl's amazement that this issue is generating such voluminous discussion. The existing convention is quite simple to understand and I oppose any instruction creep to make things more complicated than need be. In general the name should be "X River", unless there is a good reason for using some other form. "River X" is a common form in many areas, and there are some cases where the river is so well known that "X" alone is unambiguously recognizable as referring primarily to the river (such as the Nile or Danube). Unless there is very strong evidence that "X" is easily recognized by most English-speaking parts of the world as referring to the river with that name, the articles should be at X River or River X. So rivers that are not widely known outside the local area should always be at X River (or River X where warranted). Redirects can handle cases where a less familiar "X" refers only to "X River". older≠wiser 19:57, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
I also like the agreement that almost all river names have suffix "River". It is no problem if there are several wide-known exeptions such as Nile or Danube but for not wide-known rivers it is much better to have this suffix all the time. It gives for writers a possibility to set up links without worrying about exact names of referred articles (note that they may be not created yet). I think that system is very convinient especially for writers and for people for whom English is not native language. I did not take part in this discussion because of my only basic level of English and I thought that native speakers see the best solution better but now I decided to add my 2 cents as I see that we have no progress in this discussion. So, I support "X River" with exception of only very well-known rivers, with redirects from plain "X" to these articles if there is no disambigation page. MaxiMaxiMax 05:51, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I've been away for only a couple of days, and look what happened with the discussion! I honestly read over it twice, but I still do not see the clear definitions of the proposals. Would someone mind to please compile all of the options into one poll, so everyone could vote? The outcome of the poll can then be discussed, so the deficiencies of all of the proposals can be revealed. Right now, with a few rare exceptions, it is impossible to understand what each of the participants wants to see as the final system for naming rivers.
As for me, I personally support MaxiMaxiMax—use plain "X" only for very well-known rivers, use "River X" when this variant is established (like with the River Thames in England), and use "X River" for all the rest. I do not strongly oppose the "X river" variant, but I do not see the benefits of using it either, especially considering the number of changes that need to be done to convert all river references.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 18:54, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)
I think that the reason you do not see the clear definitions of the proposals is that most people are arguing for the status quo, not for a new proposal. I would note again that "X river" is not proper capitalization in English. Rmhermen 14:07, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)
I figured as much, but it'd still be nice if those arguing for the status quo made their intentions more clear. As for the "X river", I realize it is not proper capitalization, and this is one of the reasons I oppose it. I am "weakly" opposed, because, as it had been mentioned earlier, the "X River" variant is also considered to be improper capitalization in some cases.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 17:13, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

I might be one of those arguing for the status quo, but to be honest, I'm still not clear on just what it is we are arguing about. There seems to be a consensus that we should have a basic rule of naming, with exceptions -- but what is this basic rule? Is it:

  • "X River"; or
  • "X" alone?

I feel that this is the situation, with my arguing for "X River" as the basic form (with exceptions) -- & this may be the current practice -- & Tobias arguing for "X" alone (with exceptions). If this is not the case, & we have all been arguing for the same thing, I'm going to feel very foolish. -- llywrch 23:09, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the "X"/"X River" choice of default is the only genuinely unclear point. Stan 18:34, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Moselle River

I am first of all not particularly interested to discuss matters of English usage, non-English speaker as I am. But, I am a bit curious about what you mean by something being the name of a river. Consider the paragraph:

The Moselle (French Moselle, German Mosel) is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg and Germany, joining the Rhine river at Koblenz. Major affluents are the Meurthe, Sauer, Ruwer and the Saar.

That's quoted from Moselle River. Strangely, only the Rhine has been joined by a "river" (and that without a capital R). Is it really a good Wikipedia practice to aim for:

The Moselle ([[French language|French]] Moselle, [[German language|German]] Mosel) is a [[river]] flowing through [[France]], [[Luxembourg]] and [[Germany]], joining the [[Rhine River|Rhine]] river at [[Koblenz]]. Major affluents are the [[Meurthe River|Meurthe]], [[Sauer River|Sauer]], [[Ruwer River|Ruwer]] and the [[Saar River|Saar]].

or would we prefer:

The Moselle River (French Moselle, German Mosel) is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg and Germany, joining the Rhine River river at Koblenz. Major affluents are the Meurthe River, Sauer River, Ruwer River and the Saar River.

--Ruhrjung 01:33, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)


One does not need to say that something called "X River" is a river. As well there is no need to write "X River river". In case "X River" is obligatory for foreign Rivers except they are very well-known, I would use
'''Moselle River''' ([[French language|French]] Moselle, [[German language|German]] Mosel) flows through [[France]], [[Luxembourg]] and [[Germany]], joining the [[Rhine River]] at [[Koblenz]]. Major affluents are the [[river]]s [[Meurthe River|Meurthe]], [[Sauer River|Sauer]], [[Ruwer River|Ruwer]] and [[Saar River|Saar]].
Moselle River (French Moselle, German Mosel) flows through France, Luxembourg and Germany, joining the Rhine River at Koblenz. Major affluents are the rivers Meurthe, Sauer, Ruwer and Saar.
but if you are so suggestive in your example why do you not say what you would like? You can easily state this on the top of the page. There is not that much use allways and only to say what you not like. Tobias Conradi 05:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
For two reasons: Firstly because I'm a German, and as such maybe my view is of lesser relevance; Secondly because I didn't wish to underestimate the intelligence of the reader of this talk page. :-) --Ruhrjung 15:53, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the Moselle river article is not consequent in its usage of "river". I prefer Ruhrjung's first example because it is obvious from the context that the Rhine, Meurthe, Sauer, Ruwer and Saar are rivers. Moselle, Meurthe, Ruwer and Saar are "X River" articles because there are other things with the same name: (former) French départements Moselle and Meurthe, the town Ruwer and the Saar area. BTW I'm not so happy with the redirect to Saarland, is it usual in English to call Saarland Saar?. Markussep 09:30, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

WP's own articles are probably not a good guide, since they are often written by non-native speakers. I was looking at my Baedeker for Switzerland, but random sampling found "River X", "X River", and "X" all within the space of a few pages, hmmm. On "Saar", I think of "Saarland" as a governmental entity, while "the Saar" is a historical region. My old Saar stamps say "Saargebiet" for example. It;s the usual situation of how to describe the history of a region that is similar but not identical to the modern entity; one could probably justify splitting into two articles. Stan 18:34, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I would suggest you use "The Moselle River (French Moselle, German Mosel) is a river flowing through France, Luxembourg and Germany,..." but, at the very least, please remember to include a link to the article river somewhere in every article about a river. I have found a number recently which haven't had this simple connection. Rmhermen 23:23, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
thats why I put it in the last sentence. 1) Rmhermen, you really say X River is a river?? 2) what about The X [[River]]... there we have the word river. But I can imagine people do not like this. 3) for german english speaker it is super strange to have a Saar redirect to Saarland. Northern is not redirecting to Northern Territory. Maybe USians should refine their history books? they could use X Area for the historic _entity_. ;-) Tobias Conradi 10:23, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that's Wikipedia's primary mission! ;->> --Ruhrjung 15:53, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

So if I click on Saar above, what am I to get? The river, the region-Saarland or the surname Saar.....? LaSaar 01:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)LaSaar

[edit] TODO: wrong namings/help needed

Tweed River, New Zealand, more at List_of_rivers_of_New_Zealand Tobias Conradi (Talk) 03:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested moves

Under current Wikipedia:Requested moves:Relevant policies and guidelines if a "River Page" is put forward to be moved to a new name, mention of the move should be placed on this page under this section.

These pages will be move after five days if people support the move on the talk page of the article to be moved. They will not be moved if people oppose the move (See Wikipedia:Requested moves)
add any more "Requested moves" above this message

[edit] Discussion on moves

This section is for moves in general please place specific arguments on the talk page of the page to be moved.

I proposed [the moves for Wuemme River and Weser River] because I wanted to revive the discussion. I noticed some pages have been renamed unilaterally (examples: Zala river, Regen river) even though the discussion has not yet led to a disapproval of "X river". I chose Weser and Wümme because for German rivers there seems to be a consequent choice for "X", unless there's something else more important called X. For Weser and Wümme there isn't, so they should be "X". And Wuemme is wrong, or are we going to rename Düsseldorf to Duesseldorf as well? Markussep 11:38, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

clear majority of discussion participants is against "X river". If you join Stan and me and find some supporters than "X"-Riverless has a chance. But I personally do not like diacritics and umlauts in en:WP. It is incredible what all those english-second language people do on en:WP. Tobias Conradi 14:39, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, back to Wümme and Weser: why not move them? Markussep 10:11, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would not oppose. I wonder whether there is something on our planet called Weser but not refering to the River? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:04, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I would oppose because that is not the standard way that geographical objects are referred to in the English language. We could call it the Atlantic but we do call it the Atlantic Ocean. Rmhermen 14:19, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
just a curios question, can't you say, "I crossed the Atlantic"? In German we also call it "Atlantischer Ozean" but one can shorten it to "Atlantik". Actually there is even a word Atlantiküberquerung. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 15:27, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes we can but you will find theee encyclopedia article under Atlantic Ocean. We can call people by their first name or their last name only but we wouldn't include them in the phone book that way. The British may call people by their aristocratic title alone but in this encyclopedia we list them by their full personal name. Rmhermen 15:45, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

The difference is that "Atlantic" is an adjective to "Ocean" (correct me if I'm wrong), and cannot be a complete name as such. Atlantic may be an ambiguous case, but you can't say "I crossed the Indian" (instead of ... Ocean) or ".. the North" (instead of ... Sea). You can see the difference in German: Atlantik is a noun, Antlantisch is an adjective. In the case of Weser (and all other German, Dutch, French etc. rivers): it's a noun, and the complete name of the river. I don't see "River" as the "family name" of Weser, I wonder if anyone does. Markussep 17:26, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just to get something clear: "X" is allowed if there's nothing else (important) called "X", right? I've seen some pretty useless moves from "X" to "X River", and also lots of "X River" creations when there's no article at "X" (not even redirect or disamb). Markussep 13:32, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

that's the way I would use it. and at least create redirect. If creating an article of a river with short naame one might google for other things callled X, create a disambig and so avoid futuer moves.Tobias Conradi (Talk) 08:04, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
It's about time the naming rules we agreed upon above (use 2(3) naming variants: "X" (including "River X", "X River" for english-nativ countries) and "X River"; this does not say what has to be used in general, whether plain "X" or "X River" (e.g. rivers of Germany are currently mostly "River"-less); if different "X River" exist, use bracket-disambiguation) are copied to the project page, and maybe also to "naming conventions". Markussep 12:08, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Undesired Moves

Category:Rivers_of_Ecuador were moved to X (river) by User:2004-12-29T22:45Z , he seems not to like talk. instead of responding to my question he did blank: [2]

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:03, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Names to be watched

[edit] comma disambig

[edit] River X outside english-speaking country

[edit] Diacritics

Present-day Britannica uses umlauts and such also, so we have good precedent. Stan 12:05, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wonder how they can be consistent and usable if they have vietnamese language content: Cần Thơ, Đà Nẵng, Hải Phòng, Thành phố Hồ Chí, Bắc Giang, Bắc Kạn, Bạc Liêu, Bắc Ninh, Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu, Bến Tre, Bình Định, Bình Dương, Bình Phước, Bình Thuận Tobias Conradi (Talk) 13:04, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
OK, Vietnamese is a problem. So are the Hungarian ő, the Romanian ş, ţ, ă, and several Czech, Polish, Slovak, Croatian and Latvian characters. As long as they are in the ISO 8859-1 set, let's use the diacritics, and if they're not in that set, take the closest "normal" character. As a service to users, we can make redirects from the diacritics-less versions. Markussep 10:09, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I do not really see why an encyclopedia should follow ISO 8859-1. Why is Zürich called Zurich in english? Because in english they do not use umlauts in general. All the names that were imported into english long time ago, beside some french words, have no diacritics. I allways would prefer anglicizing. We also do not use cirilic letters in english. Other WPs are much stricter, one will never have so much foreign letters in bulgarian or chinese WP. I just would strip off diacritics everywhere. ;-) But well, we will not solve this question here in the River Project. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 14:15, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Umlaut-less Zurich is the "English translation" just as "Munich" is the translation of "München". If things have a standard translation, we use it, otherwise we refrain from making up our own. My EB on DVD does go outside 8859, and en: will be able to do so also when the Unicode conversion happens. Stan 15:23, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
will we put chinese rivers under their ideographs then? Tobias Conradi (Talk) 17:56, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
That question has actually come up on the commons, because it's not supposed to favor any particular language. For instance, the pictures of Russian cities are nearly all at Cyrillic titles, although not everybody is happy about that. Stan 19:34, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Looking for comments on my idea about naming

I didn't realize there was a Rivers project when I started writing about rivers in Wisconsin. There are, in Wisconsin, 4 "Yellow River"s, several "Black River"s, and even 2 "Eau Claire River"s. What I did was the following, and I'm nowhere near done, so stop me before I get out of hand...I said me, "There are 2 Eau Claire Rivers, one is a tributary of the Chippewa, the other is a tributary of the Wisconsin. As it happens, there are Chippewa Rivers in at least Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and based on Google searches, in Ontario as well (although I haven't been able to find the Ontario one(s) on a map yet). These rivers are, accordingly Chippewa River (Wisconsin), Chippewa River (Michigan), Chippewa River (Minnesota), and Chippewa River (Ontario). Obviously a couple of those haven't been written yet. :-) Anyways, as far as I'm aware, there will only ever be one Wisconsin River in the world. So then what to do about the Eau Claire Rivers. I've redlinked them as Eau Claire River (Chippewa River (Wisconsin) tributary) and Eau Claire River (Wisconsin River tributary). I realize these names are rather long, but disambigs are easy enough to write, and the article names are more exact. As for rivers which have multiple tributaries with the same name, I'm sure that those tributaries can be further disambiguated such as Salmon River (Snake River tributary (Washington)) or whatever. Thoughts? Tomer TALK 19:37, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I should probably also note my idea about "Fork"s, since I don't see that discussed anywhere. A number of rivers in the US and possibly elsewhere, are named "North Fork" or whatever of some other river's name. I had originally thought to make each fork a separate river article, but since then I'm thinking it would be better to make each named "Fork" a subsection of the main river's name, and then make a (properly named) redirect for each "Fork" article that points to the correct river article. So East Fork Chippewa River would point to Chippewa River (Wisconsin), for example. This will cut down on confusion in articles where the river's total length is actually measured from the source of the longer fork to the mouth of the main river, instead of from the confluence of the forks to the mouth of the main river. Commentario? Tomer TALK 19:44, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

We already have a couple of protocols which yield shorter names than your examples:
A river can be identified uniquely as a tributary of another river. It should be named with the name of the principal river following in parentheses. So St. Joseph River (Lake Michigan) and St. Joseph River (Maumee River)
So then, how to deal with the two tributaries of the Columbia or Snake or whichever, named Salmon River? Tomer TALK 08:34, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
Not sure that that situation has come up but I note that for Michigan rivers, we have Iron River (Iron County, Michigan) and Iron River (Marquette County, Michigan) where both rivers flow directly into Lake Superior and there are rivers of the same name in other states. They are disambiguated by the county/state that their mouth is in. I don't think that this is included in the Wikiproject guidelines anywhere though. Rmhermen 16:03, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Also in Michigan, I think, some rivers are disambiguated by the county there mouth is in.

The Forks idea sounds good. The fewer articles the better, I think.

As for the Wisconsin River, USGS GNIS is your friend. It lists all named places in the U.S. that the U.S. government deems official. And it only lists one Wisconsin River. Rmhermen 23:47, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I knew there was only one Wisconsin River!!! :-p Maybe some day on Mars tho... :-D Tomer TALK 08:34, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Oh boy. There are at least 2 Wolf Rivers in Wisconsin. One is a tributary of the Fox River (Wisconsin) (presently there is an article on this river, unhelpfully named Wolf River (Wisconsin)), the other a tributary of the North Fork Eau Claire River (Chippewa River). Naming ideas welcomed either here or on the individual articles' talk pages. Tomer TALK 22:24, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Input request at Talk:River Plate

Could those interested please review and comment on the discussion at Talk:River Plate#River Plate name. Thanks, Tomertalk 05:17, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Seeing no comment or objection, I'm going to move it to Río de la Plata. Tomertalk 06:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
There is now a vote going on at Talk:Río de la Plata#Final naming poll. Tomertalk 04:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)