Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)/Archive 8

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Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8

Taiwan or Republic of China

I just closed a dispute at DRN concerning the name of the nationality of Hsiao Bi-khim. One editor had changed it from Taiwan to Republic of China. Other editors had changed it back. It appears that we do not have a place-specific guideline in the East Asian guidelines that says to use Taiwan. So my question is: Should we have a guideline that says to use Taiwan rather than Republic of China? If so, a Request for Comments is in order. If this is the wrong talk page because this guideline only has to do with titles, please advise me where we should discuss. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:21, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

MOS:CHINA seems to take "Taiwanese" as a given under the Ethnicity section, although that is not exactly the same as "nationality" (and I note the field in question is "Citizenship" rather than nationality, which may again be subtly different). That said, this falls under existing broader guidelines (likely why it is taken as a given). Per WP:OTHERNAMES alternative names [to the article title] should be used in prose when specific context suggests it. For Taiwan, there were discussions around the period when the current conventions were put into place that this was mostly limited to specific state institutions (eg. Flag of the Republic of China) and national politics (eg. Politics of the Republic of China), but not to the place (Taiwan) or the people/demonym (Taiwanese people). The page on citizenship is at Taiwanese nationality law. There may be specific exceptions based on reasons of personal identity which would be worth taking into consideration on a case-by-case basis as they are for other citizenships, but that does not appear to be the case here. CMD (talk) 02:16, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
In my experience, MOS:CHINA is not the most fleshed-out page yet, useful as it is. To the best of my understanding, "Taiwanese" is not used to represent an ethnicity, especially when one is confronted with the numerous ethnic identities of the island. This is directly analogous to Han Chinese people in mainland China not being ethnically "Chinese"—Han Chinese people in Taiwan are not ethnically "Taiwanese", either. "Taiwanese" is a nationality—the reason that passage in under that section has to do with treatment of various social divisions in Taiwanese society.
Moreover, "Taiwan" is absolutely the existing consensus per WP:COMMONNAME, as presented on every relevant article, with "Republic of China" being reserved for when contrasting with the PRC per-se, or when speaking about the period before the state's relocation to Taiwan in 1949. To change this existing consensus would be what requires an RfC, in my view. Remsense留 03:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I certainly agree with your point regarding MOS:CHINA as a whole, it has never felt that firm or that clearly supported by the community. Some parts do reflect wider discussions though, and one is the use of China and Taiwan as common names for both polities, which as you say is the existing consensus. CMD (talk) 04:11, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I have been paying some attention to both it and WP:NC-CHINA (which seemingly do not need to be different pages), but it's hard to unilaterally improve a policy page without potentially amplifying the chance of stepping on toes a hundred-fold. Remsense留 04:17, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
I have read MOS:CHINA again, looking for where it states, as User:Remsense says, that there is a consensus that "Taiwan" is the common name. I didn't find a statement to that effect. I agree that it is the common name, and I agree that in Wikipedia we should use the common name, but I was asked in good faith by an editor where it says that, and I can't answer the question. I agree that there is an unstated consensus, but an unstated consensus is less than satisfactory because new good-faith editors may disagree. Can someone please show me where this consensus is documented, or do we have an undocumented consensus? If the latter, why, and how are new editors supposed to learn about it? Robert McClenon (talk) 08:25, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Agreed whole-heartedly. I did not say that MOS:CHINA stated the consensus, and I should've made my gesturing to the idea of a working, unstated, but ultimately pretty solid consensus clear. I simply do not feel comfortable being the one to enshrine it in text or potentially "rock the boat", as it were—not so much because I don't think there is that consensus in the end, but because the due discussion may be long, messy, and ultimately dull (the last point being more selfish than the others) Remsense留 08:30, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
The Common name consensus was established through Talk:Taiwan/Archive 20#Final closing statement. The practice of continued use of Republic of China in various cases comes from later discussions and failed move requests after that. On the point of new editors and documentation, the default assumption should be that the article title is itself documentation, being for the majority of our articles an expression of WP:SILENT consensus. Changing the name elsewhere without strong WP:OTHERNAMES reasons is time-wasting and likely disruptive, desire for name changes should occur through an RM at the relevant page. CMD (talk) 11:52, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

How about deleting the 'nationality' parameter from the infobox. If not? then seeing as the main page is named Taiwan, perhaps we should use "Taiwan". GoodDay (talk) 14:19, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree with the approach of using “Taiwan” as default. I think the field can be relevant for bios in the 1930-1950s era where Taiwanese politicians may have switched nationality from the Empire of Japan to the ROC, though I can’t think of an example right now. Butterdiplomat (talk) 15:50, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

About the county equivalent in Connecticut and possible influence in naming convention

From 2024, the county equivalent in Connecticut is not "county" itself, but "council of governments". Maybe we should clarify whether "county" or "council of governments" in Connecticut should be used for disambiguation one day (but not now, because I have not found any two cities/towns in Connecticut with the same name). John Smith Ri (talk) 14:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps not a big impact on article titles, but may be a bigger impact on categorization. For example, Category:Populated places in Connecticut by county. Discussion perhaps woul be best done at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Connecticut as to whether to convert the existing county-based categories or to erect parallel sets. older ≠ wiser 14:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
Counties still exist there on paper, but have not had any governmental functions since 1960. I don't know if they are still used for non-governmental purposes, but CT petitioned the Census Bureau to recognize the councils as county-equivalents and this was accepted. Agree that a discussion should take place there to determine what changes should be made. It could be that this will end up like parishes in Louisiana and boroughs in Alaska. 331dot (talk) 15:09, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
From what I can understand, they aren't even there on paper, other than as a historical artifact. It may be that people still identify with them somehow, but the Councils for Governments appear to be completely distinct from the historical counties. For example, Bridgeport, Connecticut was in Fairfield County, Connecticut but is in the Greater Bridgeport Planning Region, Connecticut rather than Western Connecticut Planning Region, Connecticut which has much of the are formerly in Fairfield County. older ≠ wiser 15:54, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Clarity on the spelling policy

The current text states:

In some cases it is not the local name but the spelling of the name in English that has changed over time. For example, Nanjing, as the contemporary pinyin spelling, is used for the name of the article rather than Nanking. However, the article on the Treaty of Nanking spells the city as was customary in 1842, because modern English scholarship still does.

However, based on the given example: while the article refers to "the Treaty of Nanking", it refers to the city as "Nanjing". If my reading of the policy is correct, then historic events, objects, quotes, etc, which refer to the old spelling should use the old spelling, but if the place itself is mentioned in such an article, then the place should use the modern spelling. Is this correct?

And just to clarify, what about institutions that have existed through a spelling change? For example, would the article on the Treaty of Nanking write "The Nanking City Administration decided to..." or would it say "The Nanjing City Administration decided to..."? My read is the latter, but again, clarity is desired. -- Rei (talk) 12:04, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

On the first question, that's generally up to editorial judgment on a per-article basis. I think in most cases, we continue using the historical name for the historical place. It can become very confusing to readers to veer back and forth, and can be confusing to apply a modern name when it is significantly different from the historical one. In this case, the names are so similar it probably doesn't make a real difference. On the second question, it should probably be "Nanking City Administration" because that's [at least ostensibly] a proper name, and no such entity as the "Nanjing City Administration" yet existed (if any such entity exists today by that name in English, for that matter). If that's not the actual proper name of the entity, then it shouldn't be capitalized, and should be rendered "Nanking city administration" or "Nanjing city administration", whichever agrees with the rest of the usage in the article. I would lean twoard consistently using Nanking in this historical article, to avoid confusing readers with the idea that Nanjing was the conventional spelling so early. By way of proper-name analogy, if something called the Manks Cat Fanciers' Society existed as such from 1870 to 1901, and later became the Manx Cat Fanciers' Society, if referring to their publication of 1894 they'd be called the Manks Cat Fanciers' Society. In general, avoid rewriting history just for the sake of imposing a modern name on something. Our readers are perfectly capable of understanding something like "(modern-day Nanjing)" or "(today spelled Nanjing)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:03, 25 October 2023 (UTC)
I wouldn't agree that the degree of difference makes much difference - there are plenty of place names differing by only one letter from other places. So better to avoid possible confusion in such historical articles by using relevant consistent spelling with, as you suggest, "(today spelled Nanjing)" or similar - and at first mention (in this case sentence 2 in the Lead). Davidships (talk) 22:23, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that makes sense.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:53, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
That paragraph is subordinate. But both the lead paragraph and that one make it clear that old names are not preferred by default, but only when they are preferred by reliable sources. Both the respective paragraphs clearly qualify it:
  • Older names should be used in appropriate historical contexts when a substantial majority of reliable modern sources do the same
  • However, the article on the Treaty of Nanking spells the city as was customary in 1842, because modern English scholarship still does.
There’s a problem with the wording of the lead paragraph, in that part of the intent has to be read between the lines. It says “For articles discussing the present, use the modern English name . . . rather than an older one. Older names should be used in appropriate historical contexts when a substantial majority of reliable modern sources do the same; this includes the names of articles relating to particular historical periods.”
But what about when discussing the past and reliable modern sources use the modern name? Obviously, we should follow sources and use the main article’s title and modern name. But this is not unambiguously stated in a literal reading of the naming convention.
I propose a fix: “For most articles, especially those discussing the present, . . .” This makes it clearer that the exception applies when following sources, and doesn’t automatically overrule the rules of COMMONNAME and using the main-article title.  —Michael Z. 21:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
That seems reasonable, as far as agreeing with the intent and meaning of the rest of the material. However, COMMONNAME is not particularly a factor. That's about (and only about) what to use as the title of the main article on the subject. It can't be used to, e.g., refer to the 1707–1801 Kingdom of Great Britain as "the United Kingdom" (a name not in use until later-1801 onward) just because the main article on what is now the UK is titled United Kingdom. (And it still wouldn't be possible to do that even if a Kingdom of Great Britain side artile didn't exist and the material on it was merged into the "History" section at United Kingdom, a situation that is very common when it comes to countries that don't attract as much detailed article writing as the UK, e.g. various countries in Africa that have changed names and changed territorial boundaries a bit over the generations.) It's also important to keep in mind that this is only a "defer to the sources" matter on the name to use in a particular chronologial context; we do not normally defer to sources in any way on style questions, or we would not have our own style guide. (See WP:SSF and WP:CSF, the false beliefs that we have to write about a subject either the way that experts writing for other experts do it, or the way that is most common in the largest number of sources, usually news journalism; in both cases, the writers are following in-house stylesheets for particular journals or newspapers, radically different from ours.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

CIA World Factbook for country names

At present, we list the The World Factbook, produced by the US government, as a "disinterested, authoritative reference work" as establishing a widely-accepted name "for modern country names". I would note that:

  • The US government cannot credibly be described as "disinterested" in global affairs
  • Works of the US government reflect the US government POV, which is not NPOV. For example, there are only two countries in the world that would accept this as a current map of Morocco without qualification - it just happens that the US is one of them.
  • In terms of modern country names it tends to promote WP:OFFICIALNAMES over WP:COMMONNAME - as is common from government sources (from all governments).

In terms of modern country names, our consensus - often longstanding and repeatedly litigated - routinely differs from CIA names in contentious (or potentially contentious) cases:

I'm actually struggling to find genuinely controversial cases where we use the same name as they do - other than Taiwan. But in all of those cases the case for using the names we do should be pretty clear from other sources without having to rely on US government POV.

I contend that the CIA World Factbook is not being taken as authoritative in these disputes, because it is not a good source for common usage. I therefore propose that it be removed from the list per this bold edit. Kahastok talk 22:28, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Support removal, it is not a bad source, but it is also in no way "disinterested". The WIAN list is interesting as a whole, the "nationalistic, religious or political reasons" caution for news surely applies to all of them. CMD (talk) 02:08, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it should be removed, but I think it should be presented more accurately instead. Obviously, it is not disinterested, but it is in some sense an authoritative reference work. Remsense留 02:10, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
Government publications are not independent by definition. Is there a simple alternative source? Roger 8 Roger (talk) 05:15, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
I never said it was independent. Franky—if there's a comprehensive, independently sourced world atlas, thinking of all that entails to assemble and publish, it's not going to be independent of anybody. Remsense留 11:41, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
There is a big difference between how sources published by reputable independent publishers are received at RM, and how sources published by national governments are received. In the realm of geographic names - and particularly for country and major city names - the former type of sources tend to be considered significantly more persuasive in terms of judging a widely accepted common (as opposed to official) name than the latter.
In practice, though, the most persuasive evidence on usage comes not from atlases but from independent newspapers and other independent media - particularly mainstream English-language media from English-speaking countries. Kahastok talk 17:30, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Right—and there's also a big difference between the CIA World Factbook and other things we can associate with the organization. I think it's reasonable that it can be treated the same way we treat any other state-sponsored source of information—appreciating the benefits made possible by the institutional support, but with several grains of salt when it comes to information related to geographical areas or topics we think might be especially biased Remsense留 17:38, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
This isn't about the World Factbook's general reliability. This is about it's specific suitability for a list of sources to be taken as disinterested, authoritative reference works to be used to decide what names we should give to our articles about modern countries.
You seem to accept that it is not a disinterested reference work, and even that it should be taken with several grains of salt. You also seem to accept that it is not considered persuasive when it actually comes to determining the widely-accepted names of modern countries. But you also seem to argue that it should be included on a list of sources that are considered persuasive for this purpose.
Perhaps I have misunderstood something, but this seems inconsistent. Perhaps you could clarify? Kahastok talk 19:16, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
I think no single source can be considered persuasive on this matter by itself: I see the purpose of the list as to provide a body of sources that may collectively establish one option over another. Is that fair? Remsense留 02:01, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
I don't see any need to remove. Your examples all look like correct applications of COMMONNAME instead of unthinking use of the Factbook's form, so I don't think there's an actual problem here. We could make a modest change, though: instead of giving the Factbook its own line, we could append the same text to the previous bullet point about government agencies.
The point that the Factbook is not disinteresed is well taken, but any source has its bias. That's more a case for tweaking the general language in that section. --BDD (talk) 19:48, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
To be clear, are we saying the common name is what RSSs use or what the man in the street uses? They are not always the same. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
Fair question, but IMO a general one rather than one central to this discussion. --BDD (talk) 03:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Remove and do not replace with anything else. I think the purpose of this section is to suggest authoritative references when information is sparse. But there is a limited number of countries in the world and every controversial case has already been discussed ad nauseum (with arguments unique to each country regarding what the best title is), so I don't see a need to recommend any particular source for country names. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:44, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I don't believe it should be removed. If it has 5, 8, 10 or whatever number of bullets that may be objectionable to some, so what?....No source is infallible nor absolutely neutral - this is why we demand that articles provide several sources, and why we demand that even single "facts" that are questionable to some or objectionable to other also be sourced from several reliable sources. If the book doesn't present a NPOV to some, again, so what?...we are used to that -- it simply gets balanced by equally non-NPOV but opposing POVs. Mercy11 (talk) 00:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
    The issue is not that the source is fallible or does not present as NPOV. The issue is that the list supposedly lists "Disinterested" sources, and the source in question is specifically created for the US diplomatic corps rather than as a disinterested perspective. CMD (talk) 01:36, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
    There's really no such thing as a "disinterested" or truly neutral source, because they are all written by humans, with biases and cultural perspectives, and politics, and other sources of skew. The solution to me seems to be to remove the claim that they are disinterested sources. It's always going to come down to a WP:COMMONNAME determination anyway (or a disambiguation therefrom); we're just recommending various sources on countries with which to begin that analysis.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:14, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
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