Fellow Australian Tannin (Tony Wilson) and I were confused as to the naming of Canberra -- why is it [[Canberra, Australia]] rather than just [[Canberra]], since there is only one in the world? It turned out that Karen Johnson had moved the article to [[Canberra, Australia]] before either of us came here. Tannin, Karen and I discussed the matter on Karen's user page. I'm keen to move every non-ambiguous name (e.g. Canberra) and every predominantly Australian name (e.g. Brisbane) to the simple [[Canberra]] or [[Brisbane]]. Karen said it was fine with her, as long as I can "persuade people to agree". So here I am.
Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?
-- Tim Starling.
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I don't have a strong opinion on this, so the only comments I have are to just list some of the factors that should influence our decision.
1. Consistency -- consistency might argue for all place names to be qualified in some fashion. If some are qualified and some are not, we are inconsistent. But consistency is only one factor.
2. Familiarity -- Every English speaker knows where [[New York]] and [[Paris]] are, but possibly not [[Tallahassee]] (Florida) or [[Canberra]] (Australia). That's probably relevant.
Probably the only town named [[Gnaw Bone]] is in Indiana, but that uniqueness is probably not an argument against adding some more information in the title.
Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?
Probably there's nothing special about Australia here, so if we're going to set a standard, it might be more general than that, i.e. a standard for all city names.
We've discussed this in the past, but I don't remember the result.
--Jimbo
Tim Starling wrote:
Fellow Australian Tannin (Tony Wilson) and I were confused as to the naming of Canberra -- why is it [[Canberra, Australia]] rather than just [[Canberra]], since there is only one in the world? It turned out that Karen Johnson had moved the article to [[Canberra, Australia]] before either of us came here. Tannin, Karen and I discussed the matter on Karen's user page. I'm keen to move every non-ambiguous name (e.g. Canberra) and every predominantly Australian name (e.g. Brisbane) to the simple [[Canberra]] or [[Brisbane]]. Karen said it was fine with her, as long as I can "persuade people to agree". So here I am.
Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?
I object because it takes these Australian city names as though they were the only uses of those names. There was certainly a well-lnown military aircraft called the Canberra. Perth is also a significant city in Scotland. Sydney, Nova Scotia was at least big enough for an English travel agent to mistakenly send a young honeymooning couple there a year or two ago.
Eclecticology
Tim Starling wrote:
Are there any objections to my setting a new standard for Australian city and town names, favouring simple names such as [[Canberra]]?
I thought that just this was already agreed upon in unambiguous cases -- no special naming conventions except in the USA and Canada. The disagreement still festering on the talk page (and its archives) is over commas vs parentheses, yes?
And mav has come over the light side of the force ^_^ on that matter, I'm happy to see, so perhaps we could take it up again at [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)]]?
-- Toby