[Wikipedia-l] Geographic naming conventions

[Daniel Mayer]

> I asked this question in the naming conventions area, but nobody replied,
> so I'm hoping somebody can come up with a response here.
>
> When we're referring to places that begin with Saint, Mount, Fort, etc., do
> we spell the whole word out?  We have instances of [[Saint Louis,
> Missouri]] and [[St. Paul, Minnesota]], if I remember correctly.
>
> Zoe

Hum - There is an unwritten naming convention in wikipedia for Christian 
saints to have the word "saint" proceed the person's name. So for the saint 
example I would tend not to use the spelled out word for geographic places 
such as cities. 

However, I do often see places such as St. Louis and St. Paul with "saint" 
spelled out. Same for the other examples. I therefore would be hesitant on 
establishing a specific naming convention on this (I don't think you were 
suggesting this though). 

But, if we go with widest useage with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity 
(which /is/ a central part of our naming conventions) then the abbreviated 
saint, mount and even fort will probably win the day in almost every case. 
Just do a Google search to compare. I would suggest not using a period after 
the appreciation --- we have been working hard on obliterating them from 
acronyms and I don't see a need to have them for abbreviations either.    

--maveric149