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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)

Past discussion

Read the discussion contained in the archives:

Open issues

As noted before, two issues have been decided, but these leave lot of room for discussion.

The issue of using normal disambiguation rules should be clear; articles on cities get that name unless there are other topics with the same name.

Next, it has been decided that the "comma notation" ([City, Something]) is used for city names in stead of the parenthesis format. That still leaves the following possibilities:

Disambiguation is done at the necessary level. That is, if there are two different cities with the same name in two different countries, we use [City, Country]. If the two cities are within the same country, use the common local disambiguator for that nation in English language, or for that country if none available. If there are two cities within the same state (f.e.), use the common local disambiguator for that state in English language, etc., etc.
Define a natural disambiguator for each country and use it all the time.

The first option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Canada[?], and Las Vegas, Nevada and Las Vegas, New Mexico (assuming both city names are equally common in use). The second option would give Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia.

I myself have no preference for either option. The latter may be easier to remember, but shows less consistency. However, since in many cases there will be many US cities and some foreign ones with the same name, that one seems the best and most logical option.

In either case, it should be investigated and listed what the standards for disambiguating nationally are per country. For the USA and Canada, these have already been established as being [City, State] and [City, Province]. For others this still has to be decided. A remaining question is whether to use the natural disambiguator for a country (be it in English language or not) should also be used if it doesn't have the comma notation. I'd say yes here - if Malta's (example) English language convention is to use City-Province, I'd say we should use that.

The last issue is the so-called "Paris" problem. As we're following "normal disambiguation" rules, it states that when one of the disambiguated articles has priority, it gets to stay at the main article (Paris, in our example). If none of the articles has priority, they're all disambiguated. The current disambiguation rules also state this decision must be made on a case-to-case basis. I think that solves our problem here. In case we decide (no matter how) that the French city has priority over the Trojan and all the other spots on the map, we put its article at Paris, and put a block-format disambiguation at the top. If we decide the city hasn't got priority, we use the normal disambiguation article. I don't see any other possibilities, but I may be wrong.

Summarising, we need to decide on :

the way to use the comma notation for disambiguation (I say always use the country-specific one)
whether to also use natural disambiguators without a comma (I say yes)
what to do with the Paris problem (I say use the normal disambiguation rules)

Jeronimo

IMOH some vote results were prematurely moved to archives.

Please let's not introduce another format as in [City-Province]; that can only promote more argument. It could also make things more difficult for the average searcher who will become confused about how to search for things.

With the parentheses format retained for non-cities we can know that [Paris (hero)] is not a city, and [Paris, Ontario] is a city.

I accept using [Paris] for the French city as long as it includes a disambiguation block at the beginning of the article.

"Has priority" needs some definition. To me this does not mean the historical priority that British cities of Boston, Perth and Halifax may have The criterion should be one of overwhelmingly common usage. The aqverage people in Paris, Kentucky can reasonably be expected to have heard of Paris, France, but the average people of Paris, France cannot reasonably be expected to have heard of Paris, Kentucky.

Eclecticology 11:16 Aug 18, 2002 (PDT)

I think "has priority" is "defined" at disambiguation as the most commonly associated meaning of the name, if any. For some, this is difficult to determine, but for a city like Rome, it is pretty clear that this one should has priority. Jeronimo

What's up with the subject page? I thought we worked out that we would use commas when needed, disambiguate US cites in the [City, State] format, Canadian ones in the [City, Province] format and most other cities in the [City, Nation] format (all of course only when needed). The current subject page says nothing of this. Please redo the main page to be similar to the movie naming convention which is disambiguation based and is only used when ambiguites exist (therefore it is a set of guidelines on how to disambiguate -- which is what I thought we agreed to). --mav

I wanted to, but some details aren't worked out yet. Therefore, I wanted to discuss that here first. For example, the USA/Canada thing was agreed on, but do we always disambiguated a city like [City, State], even if all other cities are abroad? To prevent a load of commments when I put it as a "policy" page, I wanted to talk about it here first. What is on the page right now is the _only_ thing that is absolute clear after the vote, at least as far as I'm concerned. The rest is just details, but details also count. Jeronimo

Jeronimo, by your own comments we have only agreed on two issues 1. Don't disambiguate pre-emptively, and 2. Use commas instead of parentheses. That should have gone on the revised subject page. Your comments also seem to suggest agreement on the default [City, Country] format as well as the [City, State/Province] for USA and Canada, but a reference to the vote on these points is completely missing. I know that this entire discussion has been very messy, and I may be saying the same thing as Mav by asking that the subject page should at least include th points on which we have come to an agreement. A clearly identified listing of items still under discussion would be optional. Eclecticology 12:09 Aug 18, 2002 (PDT)

Yes, the second issue was voted on, but still contains several points that are not clear enough to put this on the subject page (IMO), and these details were not included in the vote. It has been reasonably well established that the [City, State/Province] format is the natural English language disambiguator for cities in these countries; there's been enough input from US/Canadian wikipedians for that, and I can support the format as well, having read enough texts where the format appears. If you feel there's an agreement on more points: go ahead and add it. I won't, because I'm not sure what the agreement is exactly on. Jeronimo

I cannot figure out what this means: "If the two cities are within the same country, use the common local disambiguator for that nation in English language, or for that country if none available." Can someone help me? Does "if none available" mean "if there isn't one in English"? What does "or for that country if none available" have us doing? Vicki Rosenzweig

What I meant to say, but didn't was:

if there's a natural English disambiguator, use it
if there is no such one, but a natural disambiguator used in that country, use it

An example of the second could be Frankfurt-am-Main and Frankfurt-am-Oder, which the Germans use to distinguish between the two cities of Frankfurt. Jeronimo

It's "Frankfurt-an-der-Oder", or better still why not the accepted English versions "Frankfurt on the Main" and "Frankfurt on the Oder" Eclecticology 10:16 Aug 23, 2002 (PDT)

Because if I'm looking for a foreign city I would search for that country's spelling convention (if I knew it). Of course, in this example I would probably search only for "Frankfurt"... At any rate, for the Wikipedia to be complete the native spelling should exist, at least as a re-direct. But then there's the counter-example where an English version of a city name is more common than the foreign country's spelling, eg. "The Hague" vs. "Den Haag"... Bob Jonkman bjonkman@sobac.com

We have a longstanding convention (not always a favourite of mine) to use common English spellings in favour of local spellings for placenames. That really goes beyond the convention on this page, since it applies to far more than just cities, and you could take it up at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (anglicization) if you wish. You're certainly right, however, that redirects with alternative names are a good idea. — Toby 06:08 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

I'm all for disambiguating city names when necessary. I would suggest beginning any city entry as a disambiguation page (unless we're sure the city is the only one with its name, which is possible) and then going to city, State or city, country from there. JHK

I'm starting to get confused again. I thought we had decided that all U.S. cities would be in the [City, State] format; now it seems that this only happens when disambiguation is necessary. Being in favor of the second, I would not mind, but it does means I have misunderstood the question when answering it; maybe others have as well.

I personally am in favor of 'necessary level', but if the other is chosen, then please take a better way of stating it than 'natural disambiguator for each country' - because to me that sounds like we should use some disambiguator within each country, rather than having the country itself being a possible disambiguator. Only when the example was given, did I understand what was meant. Furthermore, I would favor having the possibility of using different levels of ambiguation within one country where appropriate - using a courser disambiguation when possible, a finer one when necessary.Andre Engels

I think soom people don't have a clear idea about what a "natural" disambiguator is. For me a natural disambiguator is one that is a part of the name itself. Thus "City" in New York City or Oklahoma City or Mexico City would be a natural disambiguator, but it doesn't work with Kansas City. Eclecticology

some countries already have internal disambiguators, which result in the full city name being unique. "Kansas City" is precisely that: it's a local disambiguator to distinguish it from the state of "Kansas". Other examples: the two Frankfurts in Germany; all the places called Neuilly in France (which end up as "Neuilly-sur-Seine" for example). Also "Hull" in England, which shares its name with other places until we give it its full name, Kingston upon Hull. (reading the page Kansas City I see there are two Kansas Cities... the plot thickens) -- Tarquin

The two "Kansas City"s are distinguished by what has always seemed to me to be their full names, "Kansas City, Kansas" and "Kansas City, Missouri". This is why I like having commas in the names of US cities; I just didn't like assuming that every other country did things the same way, when Germany, France, and England, at least, do not. (For the thickening of plots, however, note that mav, although as American as I, never saw the "Missouri" as part of Kansas City's full name.) — Toby 10:44 Sep 22, 2002 (UTC)

FWIW, a discussion on the topic of city disambiguation has occured at WikiProject Cities. There are a *lot* of cities. It was easiest to make every city into the format "City, State" for U.S. cities. This makes for standard naming for all cities (in the U.S.). There was the additional problem of more than one "City, State" name. These are disambiguated by "City, County, State", e.g. Salisbury Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. -- Ram-Man

Just to be difficult, I have 2 exceptions in New Zealand. Wellington and Auckland are names that apply to two of the major cities, but the also apply to the regions (a provincial administration level) that encompass the greater urban areas known by the same names. The Wellington region is administered by the Wellington Regional Council, while Wellington (not Wellington City) is administered by the Wellington City Council. The city and the region are known as Wellington but the primary meaning of Wellington is the city, with the reagon as a secondary meaning. Since Wellington City, New Zealand[?] is rather obscure and using Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand[?] seems totally redundant, very obscure and both are still ambiguous, I have left Wellington, New Zealand for the city unchanged and added Wellington (region), New Zealand for the greater urban area, with cross linking on both pages. Is this a reasonable approach? -- kiwiinapanic 16:41 Dec 31, 2002 (UTC)

My personal opinion: I think keeping Wellington, New Zealand for the city is sensible. For the region however, I think the usage of two different ambiguation schemes in one article title is very ugly. I would have preferred Wellington (region)[?], or if that was still ambiguous, Wellington (New Zealand region)[?]. Andre Engels 17:12 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

What is wrong with using Racine, Wisconsin -- instead of Racine, Wisconsin ? Vera Cruz

I've always used the latter form because it was simpler and it was also what most people were using. I thought it was fine, because you can click on Racine, Wisconsin and its article should have a link to Wisconsin. Keeps the article from being too cluttered and you can easily get to the state. I wonder what other people think. -- RM

Unfortunately, the rambot-generated city pages don't have links to the states, but to the county articles. Thus two extra clickthroughs are required to find the state, by going through both city and county pages along the way. Maybe that'd be great if we were an evil advertising-driving corporation, but we're not. ;) It's been suggested that the "pipe trick" be extended to work for commas as well as parentheticals, so we could write [[Racine, Wisconsin|]], [[Wisconsin]], which I guess would be a slight improvement. --Brion 02:12 Feb 2, 2003 (UTC)

Yes please extend the pipe trick to cover commas too. I was just about the suggest that on the tech mailing list. --mav

I started using Lubbock, Texas after noting that not all towns have articles, and thus Sometown, Wherever[?] is completely useless for finding out about the region, whilst, Sometown[?], Wherever is useful. Vera Cruz

Linking to cities When I want to refer to a city, is it better to use "CityName" or "CityName,_Country", e.g., "Paris" or "Paris,_France"? Paris or the redirected one Paris? -- mkrohn 21:56 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

How about Paris, France? --mav

Erm, no offense or anything, but that sounds very American! "Paris" will do if it's obvious from the context that the one in France is meant; otherwise you could say, "the French city of Paris", or something... -- Oliver P. 23:06 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

P.S. - Tarquin says...

My (current) number one Wikipedia grouse is this: "Venice, Italy", "London, England" and so forth. That is how cities are indentified in the US; not in the rest of the world. A rout through UK train timetables for the few duplicate towns shows they use "Gillinham (Kent)", for example. The same form or "Gillinham in Kent" is usual in newspaper or reference articles if readers may not know which country a place is in. However, in the interests of consistency in page names, we're stuck with the stateside terminology. It's probably all irrational reactions to cultural imperialism. That or seeing that dratted comma always reminds me of Marilyn Monroe saying "Paris, France is in Europe?" in Gentlemen prefer blondes...

Yes, I was refering to the cases, where it is clear from the context which "Paris" I refer to. Since I am new, I was interested if there is some kind of policy for that. I did not find anything and before messing things up I decided to ask here. Since it seems common usage to give certain cities priorities, e.g., the main page of Paris is "Paris" and not "Paris,_France" it makes sense to me in these cases to set the link directly to "Paris". -- mkrohn 00:23 Mar 23, 2003 (UTC)

I think he meant "Gillingham", though. :) -- Oliver P. 23:12 Mar 22, 2003 (UTC)

This discussion seem to have come to sleep, and maybe that's good for the moment. :-)) But I do actually have a question which isn't particularly related to the disputes above. I guess still some people have this talk-page on their watchlist, and will see:

The borders in Europe have been redrawn a few times in the least hundreds of years, and many cities have come under new governments, with new dominant languages. This is valid for virtually all towns in presentday Poland, but not only there. I'm itched by the city of Wiburg (German), Viipuri (Finnish), Vyborg (Russian transliteration) or Viborg (Swedish but ambiguous since there is a town in Denmark with the same name).

Personally I'm not too fond of transliterations. Often transliterations to French, to English, to German aswell as to other languages exist concurrently, and for us with other mother tongues than English, this is a problem.

English being, after all, a Germanic language makes me believe that Germanic forms would result in less confusion: Think of Szczecin compared to Stettin.

But that's not the main problem. The problem is: How to know under which name a city is "known" to the English speaking world, when realistically and in all modesty one must assume that the English speaking world doesn't know much about the city at all.

-- Ruhrjung 19:36 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

There are several pages on Australian cities that are listed [City, State] rather than [City, Australia], although the later is the majority usage. I'm moving them to [City, Austrlia]. Any objections? - Efghij

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