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Kia Ora! So the page wrongly states: Multiple rivers and streams in New Zealand have the prefix wai-, the Māori term for river. Notable examples include the Waikato River (river strong flowing river) and Waimakariri River (river cold river).[10]
The prefix wai- means water, NOT river. The prefix/suffix 'awa' means river, i.e. Awamoko (Lizard River). Useful website is: [1] Thanks!! 139.80.239.164 ( talk) 12:11, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Pasquale, you reverted my edit saying "every Japanese river name ends in -kawa 'river'; if you then tack on 'River', it's automatically tautological, but there's no point listing them all". This is true in some cases, such as Sumida-gawa (Sumida River) or Tama-gawa (Tama River), but the kawa in Arakawa is an integral part of the name. Saying 'Ara River' for Arakawa River is no more acceptable than saying "Wood City" for Woodville.
Compare Sumida Ward, named after the Sumida River, with Arakawa Ward, named after the Arakawa River. 'Kawa/gawa' can be and is removed from Sumida, but not from Arakawa.
Unless you can explain to me why this does not belong on the list, while something like Jiayuguan Pass or Mount Lushan is acceptable, I think I will restore my edit. LeeWilson ( talk) 15:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't Mount Fujiyama mean "Mount Fuji Mountain" in Japanese? If so, it should be added. 86.140.87.154 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Some indication is warranted of what these places and geographic features are called in their native languages. The Chinese do not say "Heilongjiang River" for instance, it's just "Heilongjiang". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.253.134 ( talk) 02:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Dunstanburgh Castle could be translated as 'Castle Stone Castle Castle', assuming that 'Dun' is from Gaelic. But Dun (e.g. in the name Dunstan) could be translated as 'Dark' from Old English. Which loses a Castle, and so is slightly less satisfying. Is there any evidence to support one of these translations? 82.236.235.136 11:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Only that "Dark stone castle" (Dun stan burgh) seems a boringly sensible name for a castle, hence is probably correct. PaulxSA ( talk) 03:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
If, as PaulxSA says, "Gobi" truly means 'very large and dry' in Mongolian, then "Gobi Desert" is not a tautology and should be removed. Pasquale ( talk) 20:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Street Road, also known as Route 926, is located in Chester County, where I live. Check it on Google Earth. Does this count as tautological? If so, could someone add it to the appropriate category? i kinda suck at formatting and all, and i don't have much free time. Billytrousers ( talk) 04:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
A little more information, please: Chester County of what state? What country? -- If you mean Pennsylvania, USA, I think it was named after some relative of former Mayor Street of Philadelphia. Thnidu ( talk) 19:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know why this one has been removed — when I was on holiday in Kendal (Cumbria), the nearby body of water was always referred to (even by the locals) as "Lake Windermere" ("mere" being in this context an archaic English word meaning "lake"), never simply as "Windermere". 86.146.93.142 ( talk) 02:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I've restored the mention. A little Google searching (and not counting the same name used elsewhere) finds a good many references to it as "Lake Windermere" (as well as some to "Windermere", which I'm not listing here):
Thnidu ( talk) 20:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
In my experience locals use "Lake Windermere" to disambiguate the lake from the town of Windermere on its shore, which was (re)named after its railway station (see Windermere,_Cumbria) 88.211.54.85 ( talk) 12:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
; to it 'tautological' may not necessarily mean 'wrong' but it does require some redundancy of information. I had assumed it was at least intended that there should be some consistency between this article and that. Rjccumbria ( talk) 22:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)In grammar, a tautology (from Greek tauto, "the same" and logos, "word/idea") is an unnecessary repetition of meaning, using multiple words to effectively say the same thing (often originally from different languages). It is considered a fault of style and was defined by A Dictionary of Modern English Usage ( Fowler) as "saying the same thing twice", when it is not apparently necessary to repeat the entire meaning of a phrase. "Close proximity" is an example of a tautology. If a part of the meaning is repeated in such a way that it appears as unintentional, or clumsy, then it may be described as tautological. On the other hand, a repetition of meaning that improves the style of a piece of speech or writing is not necessarily tautological.
Lurlock ( talk) 20:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Very few of the etymologies, or back-translations, or whatever you wish to call them, cite any sources. Some are inadequate as descriptions (e.g. Cuyahoga is from "a Native American language" - but which one?), and some appear to be incorrect (e.g. both Charnock (1859) and Smythe Palmer (1882) suggest that Faroe Islands comes from faar "sheep", not a word meaning island). In any case, most look like the dreaded original research. Original research can be particularly troublesome on "vernacular" pages of this sort, since it tends to invite unverified, and sometimes incorrect, local knowledge. I have found, when editing other pages, that it is best to supply reliable sources for what you've got, and be wary of accepting new additions that offer none. Cnilep ( talk) 23:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I am happy to concede that the editors of this page are more knowledgeable than I regarding, among other things, North Germanic languages. Nonetheless, Wikipedia policy is that reliable sources should be provided for any statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged. I think a few comprehensive dictionaries would go a long way in sourcing most of the material on this page. I'll try to find some appropriate sources for languages that I speak or study. I hope others might do the same. Cnilep ( talk) 15:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Names of Chinese geographical features are often imported in full and have "mountain", "river", etc. tacked on to them. For instance, " Changjiang River" (=Long River river), " Huanghe River" (=Yellow River river), " Mount Huangshan" (=Mount Yellow Mountain). Is there anywhere in the article where this could be added (with appropriate sources) as a generalization, rather than having to list a whole bunch of individual examples of the same phenomenon? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 14:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I have removed three items that were added without citing a source. Each is problematic.
Cnilep ( talk) 22:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Should we include Napton-on-the-Hill? "The toponym Napton is derived from the Old English cnaepp meaning 'hilltop' and tun meaning 'settlement' in the Old English language". Unfortunately, our article lacks a source for this - but it is clearly correct. 18:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Apparently the Japanese city of Kyoto comes from the words "Kyo" and "To", which both mean "Capital" in neighbouring regional dialects. So "capital city capital city". However, I don't have a source, and there are already too many unsourced entries. So I'll leave it here, perhaps someone can dig up a suitable source for the etymology. - PaulxSA ( talk) 01:37, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
I read somewhere that "Scotia" is Latin for land. 195.148.36.108 ( talk) 10:36, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
This list has grown over the years, but very few of the entries are sourced (and several of those which are are not reliably sourced), which makes it seem like this list is full of original research. There needs to be a solid list of criteria for inclusion, which should include having the tautology itself discussed in a reliable source. ansh 666 20:55, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
There are a number of rivers in Britain with names derived from the Brythonic Isca or the Gaelic uisge, one sense of which is river - the Exe (Devon), Axe (Dorset, Somerset), Usk (Wales), Esk (Cumberland, Yorkshire, Dumfriesshire, Midlothian and Angus).
With regards to Lake Windermere, mentioned above, I am one of those who considers the use of lake with any of the larger bodies of water in the Lake District other than Bass(enthwaite) Lake (aka Broadwater and Bassenwater) to be a solecism, but the usage does occur.
You also can find people referring to Glen Strathfarrar.
There are quite a few Gaelic/Norse tautologies to be found in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (e.g. Gleann Lingeadail and Gleann Lacasdail in Lewis). Lavateraguy ( talk) 20:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I know this has come up before on this talk page, but I can't help feeling there's something odd about the presence of Arakawa river.
First of all, it's not a tautology in Japanese. It's Arakawa in Japanese, not Arakawa-kawa. Secondly, the Japan Water Agency refers to it in English as the Ara River. OsFish ( talk) 08:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't know where the line lies here, but Nullarbor Plain takes its name from the Latin for "no trees', which is of course the feature (or lack of feature, depending on your POV) that make it a plain. Include? Elguaponz ( talk) 01:41, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
The discussion of Russian in the intro makes no sense - "For example, in Russian, the format "Ozero X-ozero" (i.e. "Lake X-lake") is used." That format is NOT used in Russian. No example from Russian is given anywhere below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.187.84.237 ( talk) 14:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
The characteristic property of items on this list is closer to the notion of pleonasm than that of tautology. The appropriate title is "List of pleonasmic place names". 77.212.198.131 ( talk) 23:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
This landmark is missing from the list - "Christ/Christo(s)" means "saviour" in greek, while "redentor" means the same in portuguese! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.90.247.14 ( talk) 08:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Is "Wagga Wagga" tautological or plural? Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 09:52, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
I was somewhat puzzled that @ Crouch, Swale: came to my own talk page to discuss the content of this article, rather than doing so here. In such cases I normally redirect editors to the article's talk page but, knowing they are an experienced editor, thought it may seem patronising or combative to question their choice to discuss it in seclusion. The discussion is here. I guess I assumed that if they were approaching me personally, they would only act publicly if they persuaded me of their case.
The matter regarded my removal of various terms that are only tautological if you choose to use an unnecessarily tautological form. I could have removed more but only addressed those where the appendage is more clearly superfluous. One example is the "Isle of" Raasay, a recently failed requested move of C,S's.
The reinstallation of these examples with the edit summary "restore per User talk:Mutt Lunker#Tautological island names, no consensus to remove" seems rather... audacious as you can just as easily say "no consensus to include, from a discussion at an obscure location, away from this article".
I invite Crouch, Swale to rethink and revert their action until a discussion has been held at this, the appropriate place. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 19:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Mount Monadnock - /info/en/?search=Mount_Monadnock - /info/en/?search=Inselberg
The whole list, barring the few reliably-cited items, reads as pure editorial, or to put it plainly WP:OR. The editorial glosses discussed above in this thread are clear examples; but without citations, every single entry can reasonably be accused of original research – Wikipedia relies entirely on being Verifiable by editors other than the person who adds each item, and without any sort of citation, there's no evidence. Yes, I know some items are bluelinked, but since "Wikipedia is not a reliable source", that is not reliable evidence either – indeed, many of the bluelinks go to articles where the claim remains equally unsourced (and who invented the texts over there, hmm?), so even if we supposed that a link could substitute for a citation, the fact is that it can't. This article needs major pruning and proper sourcing. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 10:08, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Surely the Rhine is a River River? Mamegann ( talk) 01:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This article was nominated for deletion on 29 March 2014 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep. |
![]() | This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Kia Ora! So the page wrongly states: Multiple rivers and streams in New Zealand have the prefix wai-, the Māori term for river. Notable examples include the Waikato River (river strong flowing river) and Waimakariri River (river cold river).[10]
The prefix wai- means water, NOT river. The prefix/suffix 'awa' means river, i.e. Awamoko (Lizard River). Useful website is: [1] Thanks!! 139.80.239.164 ( talk) 12:11, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Pasquale, you reverted my edit saying "every Japanese river name ends in -kawa 'river'; if you then tack on 'River', it's automatically tautological, but there's no point listing them all". This is true in some cases, such as Sumida-gawa (Sumida River) or Tama-gawa (Tama River), but the kawa in Arakawa is an integral part of the name. Saying 'Ara River' for Arakawa River is no more acceptable than saying "Wood City" for Woodville.
Compare Sumida Ward, named after the Sumida River, with Arakawa Ward, named after the Arakawa River. 'Kawa/gawa' can be and is removed from Sumida, but not from Arakawa.
Unless you can explain to me why this does not belong on the list, while something like Jiayuguan Pass or Mount Lushan is acceptable, I think I will restore my edit. LeeWilson ( talk) 15:06, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
Doesn't Mount Fujiyama mean "Mount Fuji Mountain" in Japanese? If so, it should be added. 86.140.87.154 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Some indication is warranted of what these places and geographic features are called in their native languages. The Chinese do not say "Heilongjiang River" for instance, it's just "Heilongjiang". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.253.134 ( talk) 02:01, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Dunstanburgh Castle could be translated as 'Castle Stone Castle Castle', assuming that 'Dun' is from Gaelic. But Dun (e.g. in the name Dunstan) could be translated as 'Dark' from Old English. Which loses a Castle, and so is slightly less satisfying. Is there any evidence to support one of these translations? 82.236.235.136 11:55, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Only that "Dark stone castle" (Dun stan burgh) seems a boringly sensible name for a castle, hence is probably correct. PaulxSA ( talk) 03:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
If, as PaulxSA says, "Gobi" truly means 'very large and dry' in Mongolian, then "Gobi Desert" is not a tautology and should be removed. Pasquale ( talk) 20:27, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Street Road, also known as Route 926, is located in Chester County, where I live. Check it on Google Earth. Does this count as tautological? If so, could someone add it to the appropriate category? i kinda suck at formatting and all, and i don't have much free time. Billytrousers ( talk) 04:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
A little more information, please: Chester County of what state? What country? -- If you mean Pennsylvania, USA, I think it was named after some relative of former Mayor Street of Philadelphia. Thnidu ( talk) 19:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know why this one has been removed — when I was on holiday in Kendal (Cumbria), the nearby body of water was always referred to (even by the locals) as "Lake Windermere" ("mere" being in this context an archaic English word meaning "lake"), never simply as "Windermere". 86.146.93.142 ( talk) 02:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I've restored the mention. A little Google searching (and not counting the same name used elsewhere) finds a good many references to it as "Lake Windermere" (as well as some to "Windermere", which I'm not listing here):
Thnidu ( talk) 20:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
In my experience locals use "Lake Windermere" to disambiguate the lake from the town of Windermere on its shore, which was (re)named after its railway station (see Windermere,_Cumbria) 88.211.54.85 ( talk) 12:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
; to it 'tautological' may not necessarily mean 'wrong' but it does require some redundancy of information. I had assumed it was at least intended that there should be some consistency between this article and that. Rjccumbria ( talk) 22:49, 1 March 2014 (UTC)In grammar, a tautology (from Greek tauto, "the same" and logos, "word/idea") is an unnecessary repetition of meaning, using multiple words to effectively say the same thing (often originally from different languages). It is considered a fault of style and was defined by A Dictionary of Modern English Usage ( Fowler) as "saying the same thing twice", when it is not apparently necessary to repeat the entire meaning of a phrase. "Close proximity" is an example of a tautology. If a part of the meaning is repeated in such a way that it appears as unintentional, or clumsy, then it may be described as tautological. On the other hand, a repetition of meaning that improves the style of a piece of speech or writing is not necessarily tautological.
Lurlock ( talk) 20:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Very few of the etymologies, or back-translations, or whatever you wish to call them, cite any sources. Some are inadequate as descriptions (e.g. Cuyahoga is from "a Native American language" - but which one?), and some appear to be incorrect (e.g. both Charnock (1859) and Smythe Palmer (1882) suggest that Faroe Islands comes from faar "sheep", not a word meaning island). In any case, most look like the dreaded original research. Original research can be particularly troublesome on "vernacular" pages of this sort, since it tends to invite unverified, and sometimes incorrect, local knowledge. I have found, when editing other pages, that it is best to supply reliable sources for what you've got, and be wary of accepting new additions that offer none. Cnilep ( talk) 23:32, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I am happy to concede that the editors of this page are more knowledgeable than I regarding, among other things, North Germanic languages. Nonetheless, Wikipedia policy is that reliable sources should be provided for any statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged. I think a few comprehensive dictionaries would go a long way in sourcing most of the material on this page. I'll try to find some appropriate sources for languages that I speak or study. I hope others might do the same. Cnilep ( talk) 15:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Names of Chinese geographical features are often imported in full and have "mountain", "river", etc. tacked on to them. For instance, " Changjiang River" (=Long River river), " Huanghe River" (=Yellow River river), " Mount Huangshan" (=Mount Yellow Mountain). Is there anywhere in the article where this could be added (with appropriate sources) as a generalization, rather than having to list a whole bunch of individual examples of the same phenomenon? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 14:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I have removed three items that were added without citing a source. Each is problematic.
Cnilep ( talk) 22:39, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Should we include Napton-on-the-Hill? "The toponym Napton is derived from the Old English cnaepp meaning 'hilltop' and tun meaning 'settlement' in the Old English language". Unfortunately, our article lacks a source for this - but it is clearly correct. 18:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Apparently the Japanese city of Kyoto comes from the words "Kyo" and "To", which both mean "Capital" in neighbouring regional dialects. So "capital city capital city". However, I don't have a source, and there are already too many unsourced entries. So I'll leave it here, perhaps someone can dig up a suitable source for the etymology. - PaulxSA ( talk) 01:37, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
I read somewhere that "Scotia" is Latin for land. 195.148.36.108 ( talk) 10:36, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
This list has grown over the years, but very few of the entries are sourced (and several of those which are are not reliably sourced), which makes it seem like this list is full of original research. There needs to be a solid list of criteria for inclusion, which should include having the tautology itself discussed in a reliable source. ansh 666 20:55, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
There are a number of rivers in Britain with names derived from the Brythonic Isca or the Gaelic uisge, one sense of which is river - the Exe (Devon), Axe (Dorset, Somerset), Usk (Wales), Esk (Cumberland, Yorkshire, Dumfriesshire, Midlothian and Angus).
With regards to Lake Windermere, mentioned above, I am one of those who considers the use of lake with any of the larger bodies of water in the Lake District other than Bass(enthwaite) Lake (aka Broadwater and Bassenwater) to be a solecism, but the usage does occur.
You also can find people referring to Glen Strathfarrar.
There are quite a few Gaelic/Norse tautologies to be found in the Scottish Highlands and Islands (e.g. Gleann Lingeadail and Gleann Lacasdail in Lewis). Lavateraguy ( talk) 20:18, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
I know this has come up before on this talk page, but I can't help feeling there's something odd about the presence of Arakawa river.
First of all, it's not a tautology in Japanese. It's Arakawa in Japanese, not Arakawa-kawa. Secondly, the Japan Water Agency refers to it in English as the Ara River. OsFish ( talk) 08:43, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't know where the line lies here, but Nullarbor Plain takes its name from the Latin for "no trees', which is of course the feature (or lack of feature, depending on your POV) that make it a plain. Include? Elguaponz ( talk) 01:41, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
The discussion of Russian in the intro makes no sense - "For example, in Russian, the format "Ozero X-ozero" (i.e. "Lake X-lake") is used." That format is NOT used in Russian. No example from Russian is given anywhere below. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.187.84.237 ( talk) 14:36, 23 August 2016 (UTC)
The characteristic property of items on this list is closer to the notion of pleonasm than that of tautology. The appropriate title is "List of pleonasmic place names". 77.212.198.131 ( talk) 23:12, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
This landmark is missing from the list - "Christ/Christo(s)" means "saviour" in greek, while "redentor" means the same in portuguese! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.90.247.14 ( talk) 08:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Is "Wagga Wagga" tautological or plural? Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 09:52, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
I was somewhat puzzled that @ Crouch, Swale: came to my own talk page to discuss the content of this article, rather than doing so here. In such cases I normally redirect editors to the article's talk page but, knowing they are an experienced editor, thought it may seem patronising or combative to question their choice to discuss it in seclusion. The discussion is here. I guess I assumed that if they were approaching me personally, they would only act publicly if they persuaded me of their case.
The matter regarded my removal of various terms that are only tautological if you choose to use an unnecessarily tautological form. I could have removed more but only addressed those where the appendage is more clearly superfluous. One example is the "Isle of" Raasay, a recently failed requested move of C,S's.
The reinstallation of these examples with the edit summary "restore per User talk:Mutt Lunker#Tautological island names, no consensus to remove" seems rather... audacious as you can just as easily say "no consensus to include, from a discussion at an obscure location, away from this article".
I invite Crouch, Swale to rethink and revert their action until a discussion has been held at this, the appropriate place. Mutt Lunker ( talk) 19:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
Mount Monadnock - /info/en/?search=Mount_Monadnock - /info/en/?search=Inselberg
The whole list, barring the few reliably-cited items, reads as pure editorial, or to put it plainly WP:OR. The editorial glosses discussed above in this thread are clear examples; but without citations, every single entry can reasonably be accused of original research – Wikipedia relies entirely on being Verifiable by editors other than the person who adds each item, and without any sort of citation, there's no evidence. Yes, I know some items are bluelinked, but since "Wikipedia is not a reliable source", that is not reliable evidence either – indeed, many of the bluelinks go to articles where the claim remains equally unsourced (and who invented the texts over there, hmm?), so even if we supposed that a link could substitute for a citation, the fact is that it can't. This article needs major pruning and proper sourcing. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 10:08, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Surely the Rhine is a River River? Mamegann ( talk) 01:44, 5 March 2023 (UTC)