Given that there's been much agony and gnashing of teeth over at Talk:Liancourt Islands and Talk:Senkaku Islands, and inconsistent naming, I thought we might have a straw poll.
(E.g., Liancourt Rocks, Senkaku Islands ("Pinnacle Islands"))
(E.g., Olivenza, Kuril Islands)
I want to give some questions and comments on this poll itself.
As a threshold matter, don't you have to ask if there is a 'common' English name in the first place. For example, while 'Dokdo' might be more common than 'Liancourt Rocks,' neither is particularly common (orders of magnitude fewer Google hits than, say, 'Falklands' or 'Malvinas'). I would tend to support using X, as long as there is no other 'common' English name, with some reasonable threshold for 'common' (maybe Google hits, or would the 'average' English speaker have heard of it). A good benchmark is that if wikipedia and mirror hits have more than a negliglible effect on the number of hits for a given name, then there probably is no 'common' English name to begin with. This is my first post, so I apologize for the poor formatting. - BabyLitigator
Comment. For two reasons, the Tsushima Islands are not an example of disputed places with no name besides those used by the claimants. First, the Tsushima Islands have multiple names in English. Even if various East Asian languages use the Chinese characters that are or historically were the same, they pronounce and romanize them differently, and article titles and names of the islands would be different in English. Second, they are not disputed by any national government as far as I know. The article states that the government of Korea prior to the Korean War requested reversion, but did not state any similar requests from the governments of North and South Korea during the ensuing decades. Moreover, the "claim" in the article is an example of a city declaring something to be part of a province (not the city), and the national government has asked the city to retract the claim. Fg2 02:57, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
Another comment. As well as the dispute for Tsushima Islands has been defunct for many decades, there is a name of Tsushima Islands in Korean language. (Kanji/hanja is the same though.) -- Puzzlet Chung 09:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Responding to this comment (from above):
I am a native speaker of English who has taken college courses in Japanese and Korean and can read about 200 Chinese characters. I also understand Wikipedia's NPOV policy very well.
I have begun a project page at Wikipedia:naming disputes. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 28, 2005 12:05 (UTC)
Terms like "Liancourt Rocks" and "Pinnacle Islands" are seldom used. Most people searching in Wikipedia, I imagine, type in either "Dokdo" or "Takeshima" and either "Senkaku" or "Diaoyu". I think whoever controls the territory should get the first right to name and the challenger should get the second.
For example:
Of course, there should also be a reference to the "Liancourt Rocks" and the "Pinnacle Islands" in the first paragraph.
SUPPORT
OPPOSE
Given that there's been much agony and gnashing of teeth over at Talk:Liancourt Islands and Talk:Senkaku Islands, and inconsistent naming, I thought we might have a straw poll.
(E.g., Liancourt Rocks, Senkaku Islands ("Pinnacle Islands"))
(E.g., Olivenza, Kuril Islands)
I want to give some questions and comments on this poll itself.
As a threshold matter, don't you have to ask if there is a 'common' English name in the first place. For example, while 'Dokdo' might be more common than 'Liancourt Rocks,' neither is particularly common (orders of magnitude fewer Google hits than, say, 'Falklands' or 'Malvinas'). I would tend to support using X, as long as there is no other 'common' English name, with some reasonable threshold for 'common' (maybe Google hits, or would the 'average' English speaker have heard of it). A good benchmark is that if wikipedia and mirror hits have more than a negliglible effect on the number of hits for a given name, then there probably is no 'common' English name to begin with. This is my first post, so I apologize for the poor formatting. - BabyLitigator
Comment. For two reasons, the Tsushima Islands are not an example of disputed places with no name besides those used by the claimants. First, the Tsushima Islands have multiple names in English. Even if various East Asian languages use the Chinese characters that are or historically were the same, they pronounce and romanize them differently, and article titles and names of the islands would be different in English. Second, they are not disputed by any national government as far as I know. The article states that the government of Korea prior to the Korean War requested reversion, but did not state any similar requests from the governments of North and South Korea during the ensuing decades. Moreover, the "claim" in the article is an example of a city declaring something to be part of a province (not the city), and the national government has asked the city to retract the claim. Fg2 02:57, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
Another comment. As well as the dispute for Tsushima Islands has been defunct for many decades, there is a name of Tsushima Islands in Korean language. (Kanji/hanja is the same though.) -- Puzzlet Chung 09:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Responding to this comment (from above):
I am a native speaker of English who has taken college courses in Japanese and Korean and can read about 200 Chinese characters. I also understand Wikipedia's NPOV policy very well.
I have begun a project page at Wikipedia:naming disputes. -- Uncle Ed (talk) June 28, 2005 12:05 (UTC)
Terms like "Liancourt Rocks" and "Pinnacle Islands" are seldom used. Most people searching in Wikipedia, I imagine, type in either "Dokdo" or "Takeshima" and either "Senkaku" or "Diaoyu". I think whoever controls the territory should get the first right to name and the challenger should get the second.
For example:
Of course, there should also be a reference to the "Liancourt Rocks" and the "Pinnacle Islands" in the first paragraph.
SUPPORT
OPPOSE