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There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Central Greece Periphery - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RM bot 14:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. Number 5 7 22:39, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
– In an 2011 discussion it was deemed that neither of the two variants were dominant with "West Greece" etc. sounding "more official". In the meantime this however turned out not to be the case with "Western Greece" being both the official English name (see logo, homepage of the administration, but also University of Western Greece) and the clearly dominant name used by third parties (see for example the EU NSRF programme). It is therefore clearly the WP:COMMONNAME. Note that the relevant (sub-)categories have to be renamed accordingly. PanchoS ( talk) 09:13, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
@ RGloucester, Cplakidas, Red Slash, PanchoS, and Number 57: Have we not been too quick in closing this discussion and moving all pages? The sources I linked (especially Invest in Greece, the most "official" English-language website found) uses Western Greece but West/East Macedonia, North/South Aegean. I may have done the mistake of changing the list of pages discussed after most users expressed a support vote for a move request for West->Western Greece only. My bad. Place Clichy ( talk) 17:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
@
RGloucester,
Cplakidas,
Red Slash,
Place Clichy, and
Number 57: In the meantime, I did some more research on comparable cases and thought over this issue again. To a certain point, the form (-ern or not) happening to be used as regional names is result of a historic coincidence, or remains interchangeable in English language. However there are some general rules beyond arbitrariness with the -ern suffix underlining a congruence with a geographic region compared with the suffixless form tending to be a two-tier disambiguator:
The notion of "Western Europe" might have become important as a political demarcation to the Warsaw Pact countries, but to some extent it corresponds to the continent's western region, so one could loosely say it's the westernmost area of Europe compared to "Central" and "Eastern" Europe. On the other hand, "West Germany" was called like that because it didn't match the geographic regions at all, stretching far beyond what would be called the western or even westernmost areas of Germany. Generally, I found no case where regions are called "Northern" and "Southern", or "Western" and "Eastern", when in the middle there is nothing central. All of this makes quite some sense because in most cases, it geographically doesn't make any sense to describe a region with its northern areas bordering the southern areas, unless there is a clear geographic distinction.
From this point of view, "Western Greece" is okay because it loosely contains the westernmost areas of Greece, especially given the Attica-centered mental map and the fact that Epirus clearly constitutes northwestern rather than western Greece. "Western" and "Eastern" Macedonia are fine because they loosely correspond to how a geographist would describe the parts of the region, with "Central" Macedonia being in the middle. "Northern" and "Southern" Aegean on the other hand don't work: unless there is something like "Central" Aegean, the division geographically would be far too arbitrary.
Yes, these findings are
WP:OR, so I'm just using my findings to sort out whether my intuition might have been right. Probably there has been scholarly work on that issue that I didn't find. But the objective facts are that "Northern Aegean" and "Southern Aegean" are clearly less used than "North Aegean" and "South Aegean" both per Google search and Google Books Ngram (see for example
this diagram. I will therefore ASAP start a new, hopefully final, move request on
Talk:Northern Aegean. Regards, --
PanchoS (
talk) 18:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 15:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Central Greece Periphery - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — RM bot 14:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. Number 5 7 22:39, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
– In an 2011 discussion it was deemed that neither of the two variants were dominant with "West Greece" etc. sounding "more official". In the meantime this however turned out not to be the case with "Western Greece" being both the official English name (see logo, homepage of the administration, but also University of Western Greece) and the clearly dominant name used by third parties (see for example the EU NSRF programme). It is therefore clearly the WP:COMMONNAME. Note that the relevant (sub-)categories have to be renamed accordingly. PanchoS ( talk) 09:13, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
@ RGloucester, Cplakidas, Red Slash, PanchoS, and Number 57: Have we not been too quick in closing this discussion and moving all pages? The sources I linked (especially Invest in Greece, the most "official" English-language website found) uses Western Greece but West/East Macedonia, North/South Aegean. I may have done the mistake of changing the list of pages discussed after most users expressed a support vote for a move request for West->Western Greece only. My bad. Place Clichy ( talk) 17:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
@
RGloucester,
Cplakidas,
Red Slash,
Place Clichy, and
Number 57: In the meantime, I did some more research on comparable cases and thought over this issue again. To a certain point, the form (-ern or not) happening to be used as regional names is result of a historic coincidence, or remains interchangeable in English language. However there are some general rules beyond arbitrariness with the -ern suffix underlining a congruence with a geographic region compared with the suffixless form tending to be a two-tier disambiguator:
The notion of "Western Europe" might have become important as a political demarcation to the Warsaw Pact countries, but to some extent it corresponds to the continent's western region, so one could loosely say it's the westernmost area of Europe compared to "Central" and "Eastern" Europe. On the other hand, "West Germany" was called like that because it didn't match the geographic regions at all, stretching far beyond what would be called the western or even westernmost areas of Germany. Generally, I found no case where regions are called "Northern" and "Southern", or "Western" and "Eastern", when in the middle there is nothing central. All of this makes quite some sense because in most cases, it geographically doesn't make any sense to describe a region with its northern areas bordering the southern areas, unless there is a clear geographic distinction.
From this point of view, "Western Greece" is okay because it loosely contains the westernmost areas of Greece, especially given the Attica-centered mental map and the fact that Epirus clearly constitutes northwestern rather than western Greece. "Western" and "Eastern" Macedonia are fine because they loosely correspond to how a geographist would describe the parts of the region, with "Central" Macedonia being in the middle. "Northern" and "Southern" Aegean on the other hand don't work: unless there is something like "Central" Aegean, the division geographically would be far too arbitrary.
Yes, these findings are
WP:OR, so I'm just using my findings to sort out whether my intuition might have been right. Probably there has been scholarly work on that issue that I didn't find. But the objective facts are that "Northern Aegean" and "Southern Aegean" are clearly less used than "North Aegean" and "South Aegean" both per Google search and Google Books Ngram (see for example
this diagram. I will therefore ASAP start a new, hopefully final, move request on
Talk:Northern Aegean. Regards, --
PanchoS (
talk) 18:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 15:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)