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Contents 1 Taiwanese naming poll 1.1 Please, anything but Hokkien 1.2 Poll on words Minnan and Hokkien 2 Better example? 3 X Lake 3.1 X Lake - more harmonious appearance 3.2 X Lake - Other reasons 3.2.1 .cn 3.3 X Lake - Discussion 3.4 X Lake - Changing the NC 4 X Mountain 4.1 List of X Shan that should NOT be named X Mountain 5 Railway naming 6 Yue Chinese vs Cantonese 7 naming conventions for varieties of Chinese 8 Apostrophes for disambiguation 9 Emperors' names (again)

Taiwanese naming poll

• "Taiwanese Minnan" (current title)
• "Taiwanese Hokkien"
• "Taiwanese (Minnan)"
• "Taiwanese (Hokkien)"
• "Taiwanese (language)"
• "Taiwanese language"
• "Taiwanese dialect"

I'm not sure how to vote on this poll that Kwami put up, but these are my positions:

Support Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect Readin (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Will tolerate if necessary Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese Hokkien Readin (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Please try to support more than just your absolute favorite. If everyone only chooses one we'll never settle on a consensus. Readin (talk) 00:42, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support any of the above as long as dab-page remains. Regular readers should be able to find this page without expert knowledge. If outcome is Taiwanese language, dab-statement needs to be on top of article. Seb az86556 (talk) 01:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone has a problem with the dab page. kwami (talk) 06:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese language. Oppose "Taiwanese Minnan", "Taiwanese Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 02:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support (1) Taiwanese Hokkien, (2) Taiwanese Minnan as analogous to Taiwanese Mandarin, Canadian English, etc.

Tolerate (3) Taiwanese (Hokkien), (4) Taiwanese (Minnan) as unnecessary but not incorrect tag parallel to "Taiwanese (Mandarin)", "Canadian (English)", etc.

Oppose Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect as factually incorrect. kwami (talk) 06:11, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support (in that order) Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese dialect.

Tolerate Taiwanese (Hokkien), Taiwanese (Minnan).

Oppose Taiwanese language. Akerbeltz (talk) 11:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Support Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese (Hokkien), Taiwanese (Minnan).

Tolerate Taiwanese Minnan (current title).

Oppose Taiwanese (language), Taiwanese language, Taiwanese dialect.

Bathrobe (talk) 01:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese Hokkien or Taiwanese Minnan. Keahapana (talk) 23:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It sure looks like Taiwanese Hokkien is winning this. Readin (talk) 23:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Gunn (2006), Rendering the Regional: local language in contemporary Chinese media, uses "Taiwanese Southern Min", because he feels using "Taiwanese" alone implies that Taiwanese Hakka, Mandarin, and Austronesian are not Taiwanese. It shows that, in the rare case where dabbing is necessary, such composite names are acceptable. kwami (talk) 07:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks like Taiwanese Hokkien has overwhelming support. Would we make this pattern (sub-branch name followed by branch name) the norm, or is Taiwanese a special case? Readin (talk) 15:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

That is a norm, along with "X dialect", unless there's an unambiguous common English name to override it. I'll go ahead and make the move. kwami (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, anything but Hokkien

I didn't see this discussion and vote until now when I saw the page move and traced back. Almost any combination of Taiwanese/Minnan/Southern Min/Holo/Hoklo language/dialect/speech would be far better than Hokkien, the one term that is not used in Taiwan for the language and is both specific to Southeast Asia and prone to confusion with Fujian/Fukien province, besides which northern Fujian speaks not this but other Min dialects. Can we please keep this decision making process open and arrive at some saner conclusion? If we need a yes/no vote now, the first should be "Hokkien" vs. "any of the terms recognized in Taiwan".

To address some of the points discussed earlier, Minnanyu (translation: Southern Min language) is the technical linguistic term in Chinese, Holo/Hoklo and Taiwanese are colloquial terms used in Taiwan, and "yu" is used in Chinese as a suffix for the varieties of Chinese seemingly without the political baggage of "language" vs. "dialect" in English discussions of Chinese language. "Hokkien" is just the Southern Min pronunciation of Fujian, the province whose south coast sent emigrants to both Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

Wikipedia articles for the first-level varieties of Chinese are titled:

• 6 X Chinese: Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Min Chinese, Jin Chinese, Huizhou Chinese
• 2 X (language): Hakka (language), Gan (language)
• 2 other: Cantonese, Pinghua

The article for the southern Min dialect is titled simply Min Nan. From these we would expect something like Taiwanese Min Nan Chinese for the Taiwan variety. I would personally prefer either Taiwanese Minnan Chinese or Taiwanese Southern Min Chinese slightly over Min Nan, but other than that, a name like that seems like the best and most widely acceptable compromise to me:

• Is a proper hierarchical taxonomic phrase that also includes all terms discussed, except Hoklo/Holo which has low recognition in English and Hokkien which is identified with other places
• Suffixed with Chinese like a majority of the major Chinese dialect articles
• Includes the two most widely used terms in Taiwan for the language, Taiwanese and Minnan
• Including both Taiwanese and Chinese is least likely to offend either Taiwanese or Chinese nationalists
• Avoids the term Hokkien which is identified with other places

--JWB (talk) 03:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to the discussion. It's a pity you didn't turn up earlier. Your comments are saner than some we have seen and deserve consideration.

Bathrobe (talk) 05:08, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Since there hadn't been any objection since the move, I just redirected & reworded about 60 articles when I saw this. I was happy enough with 'Taiwanese Minnan', though 'Taiwanese Hokkien' is more precise, since the general meaning of Fujianese/Fukienese/Hokkien in English is the Amoy etc. dialect of Minnan, not everything spoken in Fujian, or even all of Minnan. Our general convention is Min X for Min languages, and X Chinese for non-Min languages. Hakka and Gan are exceptions because some people objected that 'Hakka Chinese' and 'Gan Chinese' could refer to people. IMO 'Cantonese' should be a redirect page, and in any case Canton dialect should have preference over all of Yue. But that's a discussion going on over at those pages, which you might want to join in on-one point of contention is that since the Canton dialect article has been named Standard Cantonese, it should now be restricted to Standard Cantonese; another is that since Taishanese isn't Cantonese = Canton dialect, it shouldn't be described as such at Cantonese = Yue Chinese (one reason IMO for more precisely named articles). kwami (talk) 07:06, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've now read all the discussion above as well as looking at Hokkien (which last year was accused of being a recent POV fork of Min Nan) and other articles.

Hokkien and Min are at base both semantically equivalent to Fujian - they all refer to the same province. In Southeast Asia Hokkien connotes the local dialects originating in southern Fujian and/or a standard local form based on those dialects, but this is simply because there was little migration from other parts of Fujian, therefore no non-southern dialects. In linguistics Min connotes the group of dialects historically originating from Fujian, including Teochew and Hainanese.

Using Hokkien or Min(nan) as designations for the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou subgroup of Southern Min are both examples of totum pro parte synecdoche - either Fuzhou and the rest of north and central Fujian, or Teochew and Hainanese, are being omitted for convenience. The word Canton from Guangdong is also an example of totum pro parte. Actually, if you go even farther back, Min is the name of the river meeting the sea at the provincial capital of Fuzhou, so Min meaning Fujian province may be a pars pro toto synecdoche similar to the identification of other Chinese provinces with their principal rivers; then Minnan for Taiwanese would ultimately derive from a sequence of generalization, another generalization, a specialization explicitly indicated by the adjective South and excluding the area of the original river, and then another specialization not explicitly indicated. Standard Cantonese and Standard Mandarin both look to me like phrases which are not heavily used by themselves, but are reasonable disambiguations for Wikipedia titles if there is no short common term making the meaning clear.

Unfortunately there is no unambiguous and common short form of "Quanzhou-Zhangzhou subgroup of Southern Min dialects". But if we have to choose between the two synecdoches of Hokkien and Minnan, for Taiwanese let's use the form used in Taiwan not the form that points away from Taiwan. --JWB (talk) 08:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

This difference in search results is kind of spectacular:

• 1 - 10 of about 296,000 for "台灣閩南語"
• 1 - 10 of about 48 for "台灣福建語"

--JWB (talk) 20:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese Minnan would be acceptable if Minnan itself were classified as undisputably a language. For whatever reason, good or bad, some people still classify Minnan as a dialect group of Chinese. Besides which, the term "Taiwanese Minnan" in English is not in use anywhere. Wikipedia would be the first to properly call the language by that name... Colipon+(Talk) 23:43, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't those arguments apply at least as much to "Taiwanese Hokkien"?

The argument that the whole phrase is not in wide use does not hold water. Hardly anyone says "Berkeley, California" all the time; normally you just say "Berkeley". But the article is named Berkeley, California because more taxonomic structure is needed for disambiguation. It is understood (and could also be stated in the article if needed) that more abbreviated forms are normally used when context is sufficient. I believe the Wikipedia naming convention policies say this more or less, but I'm not going to look for citations again tonight.

What amazes me about the above discussion and voting process, is that little of the discussion was about Minnan vs. Hokkien, and few seemed to have a strong opinion on Minnan vs. Hokkien - most seemed to view other issues as more important. Yet when it came to a vote, the only result was to change Minnan to Hokkien, leaving the rest of the name unchanged. --JWB (talk) 06:13, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Hokkien is no better, I agree. But "Berkley, California" is a phrase that is often used in journalism, academia etc. to describe the place, whereas no one has ever described Taiwanese as "Taiwanese Minnan", at least in the English language. There are at least some legible results for "Taiwanese Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 08:55, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

In Google Scholar: "Taiwanese Minnan", #3 has "Taiwanese (Minnan)" and #10 "Tenacious Unity in a Contentious Community: Cultural and Religious Dynamics in a !" has Taiwanese (Minnan, or Southern Fujian Dialect)", #12 "Taiwanese Corpus Collection VIA Continuous Speech Recognition Tool" has "Taiwanese (MinNan)", #13 "The Multiple Pronunciations in Taiwanese and the Automatic Transcription of Buddhist !" has "Taiwanese (Minnan)", #14 and #15 both have "Taiwanese Minnan", #16 has "Taiwanese (Minnan-hua)", #17 has "Taiwanese (Minnan)" again. Following pages have more results. Did you miss these or not view them as "legible results" for some reason? The first page with results #1-#10 does mostly have "Taiwanese (Minnan and Hakka)" referring to people rather than "Taiwanese (Minnan)" referring to language, but this just means that those biology papers are more popular than the linguistic papers which appear in later results.

In Google Scholar: "Taiwanese Hokkien", there are actual results for "Taiwanese Hokkien", but also "A comparison of Taiwanese, Taiwan Mandarin, and Peking Mandarin" is #3 but neither the title nor the front page refer to Hokkien - the front page has "Taiwanese (Tw), a variety of Minnan", while #9 "Educational Attainment in Taiwan: Comparisons of Ethnic Groups" identifies "Taiwanese" and "Hokkien" as separate ethnic groups. #42 and #45 actually have "Taiwanese Southern Min" in their titles, while #42 and #44 say "Tai-gi (also called Taiwanese, Hokkien, and Southern Min)" "Southern Min (also known as Taiwanese, Hokkien, or Amoy)" and do not have the phrase "Taiwanese Hokkien".

The Google Scholar results do not show a preponderance of Taiwanese Hokkien over Taiwanese Minnan and/or Taiwanese Min. --JWB (talk) 20:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

If it were up to me, I would say neither "Taiwanese Minnan" nor "Taiwanese Hokkien" are good choices. I'd say just move it to "Taiwanese language" or "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or something of that sort. If you search up "Taiwanese language" on Google Scholar, you will know why I take this position. You find 66 results for "Taiwanese Minnan", none in that specific phrase form, you find 101 for "Taiwanese Hokkien", also quite insufficient, but then you find over 400 for "Taiwanese language". Editors here insist that "Taiwanese language" is "inaccurate" because Taiwanese is not, linguistically speaking, a 'language'. Colipon+(Talk) 23:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

This is still really bad. What is the best way to get it reverted or renamed to something other than Hokkien? I won't repeat the whole reasoning above, but if there are any specific points obstructing this let's take them up. --JWB (talk) 20:44, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Poll on words Minnan and Hokkien

Please rank these alternatives in decreasing order of preference.

• Article title contains Minnan (or other forms Min Nan, Southern Min, etc.)
• Article title contains Hokkien (or other forms Fukien, Fujian, etc.)
• Article title contains neither

(1) Minnan, (2) neither, (3) Hokkien --JWB (talk) 21:03, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

(1) Hokkien. More precise, more common, don't see a reason to change. (2) Minnan. As for inventing names, the name is "Taiwanese", and it is "Hokkien"; there are lots of composite names on WP, & we use what works. "Language" is no good because, as said before, besides the fact that it's not a language of its own, there are lots of Taiwanese languages. That would be like moving General American to "American language". kwami (talk) 21:12, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Dispute that it is "Hokkien" - Hokkien is a regional English (SE Asia) shorthand referring to a local standard by the name of a larger unit around its place of origin. It is analogous to "Minnan" except that 1) "Hokkien" is used in SEA, "Minnan" is used in Taiwan 2) Hokkien refers to Fujian Province, Minnan refers to southern Fujian Province. --JWB (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The "part for whole", "name of larger unit", etc. arguments don't seem terribly relevant to me. It's interesting how these names came about, but the process by which names come to have narrower or broader meanings than one would expect does not seem a valid argument for excluding certain usages. If you use that kind of argument, "Mandarin" is out completely, since there are no mandarins left to speak it :) Bathrobe (talk) 07:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

kwami's argument seemed to be that Hokkien means Southern Min excluding Hainanese and Teochew and is therefore a smaller or lower level taxonomic unit than Southern Min as a whole and therefore a better language name even for Taiwanese. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I've seen 'Hokkien' around quite a bit. Perhaps it's a bit old fashioned? Lots of sources equate Taiwanese with "Hokkien" or "Hokkian", but not many say exactly what they mean by that. Ethnologue has "Xiamen has subdialects Amoy, Fujian (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese)." Making capitalism in China: the Taiwan connection‎ (1998) has "the Taiwanese managers spoke Hokkian, a Taiwanese dialect (originating from southern Fujian)". The New York Times Almanac 2002 and the The CIA World Factbook (2007) have "Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese)". In Singapore English (2007), you have "Hokkien is characterised by many null-subject structures, such as the following from Taiwanese Hokkien"-perhaps this is the regional influence you speak of, though the other citations don't seem to be particularly regional. There's also Introduction to Chinese characters for students of Taiwanese Hokkien (1969), Pronunciation drills for Taiwanese Hokkien (1965), "The third element in the hierarchy I am proposing is seen in Taiwanese Hokkian or Taiwanese." in Linguistic Categories (1983), etc. etc. etc. We can make an argument based on etymology that "Hokkien" means the entirety of Fujian Province, just as one could argue that "Cantonese" is etymologically the entirety of Guangdong Province, but that doesn't seem to be the common usage of the term in English. "Hokkien" is also a more familiar term than "Minnan". kwami (talk) 22:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

It's less old-fashioned than "Canton dialect". :) The Ethnologue quote is putting (Fukien, Hokkian, Taiwanese) and possibly Fujian on some kind of par, either as 3-4 separate subdivisions, or more likely 3-4 different regional names, which seems to confirm the necessity for different names in different regions instead of making one name applicable in all regions. The NYT Almanac / CIA Factbook quote also appears to be putting Hokkien and Taiwanese as separate regional names, not applying Hokkien to both SEA and Taiwan. Singapore English uses the Singapore local word as you say. The other quotes do not show obvious signs of SEA influence at least without further investigation. But 10 or so citations does not show relative currency of the term; only comparison does that. It is not immediately clear that Hokkien is "more familiar a term"; for starters, Minnan beats it in Google hits 2.5 million to 400k. --JWB (talk) 23:45, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't know about the CIA, but Ethnologue just lists alternate names. They aren't necessarily regional or anything else. I assume for the CIA the diff is Taiwan vs. China, not SEA.

Google Books has 250 hits for Minnan or Min Nan, and 402 for Hokkien or Hokkian. Of course, much of the latter is ethnic rather than linguistic. With regular Google, if you omit "similar results" (the default), there are only 650 hits for Minnan or Min Nan vs 773 for Hokkien or Hokkian. (If you click on the last page of the search results, you'll find that many of them never materialize.)

But I don't have a particularly strong preference of Hokkien over Minnan. I only object to "language". kwami (talk) 23:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

These are the web searches I was using: Minnan: Web 2.5M hokkien: Web 400K. Not sure how you got yours. For Books, I get different numbers than yours, but Hokkien wins - although if you restrict to recent results, it gets very close. But the question is not which term gets more mentions in total - it's whether Hokkien is appropriate for Taiwanese, and it's much less common in that use, especially in English in Taiwan and Taiwan-oriented sources.. --JWB (talk) 00:14, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, by clicking your links for a Web search, I get Minnan 3,380,000 and Hokkien 4,460,000. Are you sure you haven't set some kind of filter? Bathrobe (talk) 04:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Taiwanese (Min Nan) was suggested before, and I still vouch for that over "Taiwanese Hokkien". Min Nan used as a qualifier for other possible varieties of Taiwanese, but also not used with Taiwanese as a single name. But this debate was getting to be about the same length as the "Cantonese" one. Colipon+(Talk) 02:03, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that Google searches aren't arbiters of naming on Wikipedia. They are merely one useful reference point.

(To digress a little, I googled "windscreen" and "windshield" and found that "windshield" is more common and therefore, presumably, "standard". And indeed, the Wikipedia article is at Windshield, with "windscreen" given as an alternative name. But when I googled "carburettor" and "carburetor", surprisingly "carburettor" came out on top. Despite this, the Wikipedia article is at Carburetor. Should the article therefore be moved? Well, if you believe in using Google results as the arbiter, it probably should. But if you use common sense you will realise it's not a major issue. "Carburettor" redirects to "Carburetor", which means anyone can find it, and the article starts by giving both spellings, so no usage is being dismissed as "non-standard". I also did a search on "railroad" and "railway", and found that, lo and behold, "railway" got more results than "railroad". Is the Wikipedia article at "Railway"? No, it's at the much more sensible alternative of Rail transport, which is broader and avoids the kind of silly disputes that are liable to arise over this kind of thing.)

carburetor 859,000; carburettor 174,000. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For some reason I got quite different results when I clicked your links: 5,310,000 for "carburettor" and 3,690,000 for "carburetor". Since I wasn't sure about the results I was getting, I deliberately wrote "I googled" instead of "if you google". At any rate, the point is that google searches shouldn't be regarded as the absolute arbiter of usage. If you are proposing to take the worldwide majority of North American speakers as setting a gold standard for Wikipedia, I think we have rather some rather serious issues to discuss. Bathrobe (talk) 03:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has proposed using it as an "absolute arbiter". There is actually a policy guideline, WP:Google test. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For the title of the article on Hokkien or Minnan as spoken in Taiwan, I'm don't mind either "Taiwanese Minnan" or "Taiwanese Hokkien". But if Taiwanese Hokkien is not the usual name for Minnan or Hokkien as spoken in Taiwan, then we should probably not use it. I personally have a soft spot for "Hokkien" as it is a widespread traditional name for the Minnan language. (There appears to be a subtle chauvinism in matters Chinese that marginalises the south, overseas Chinese, and Southeast Asia in particular as being somehow "irrelevant", "non-mainstream", or "divergent" and therefore casually sloughable.) But in this case, if "Minnan" is more appropriate for the Taiwanese situation than "Hokkien", I would certainly not insist on "Hokkien".

My comments in earlier threads relate to the naming of the main standard dialect as a whole, spoken around Xiamen/Quanzhou, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. This is normally called Minnan or Hokkien. I don't mind either name as the title of the article, as long as alternative names are prominently used where appropriate, and not just referred to briefly in the introduction. What I mean by this is that the article should not say "Minnan is widely spoken in Southeast Asia..... Minnan usage is especially strong in ...", it should point out that "Minnan is widely spoken in Southeast Asia, where it is known as Hokkien. ... Hokkien usage is especially strong in...". In referring to Minnan or Hokkien as used in Taiwan, the article should refer to "Taiwanese" as a name. Whether it should then continue to use "Taiwanese", or use "Hoklo" or some other name is another question.

I also believe that there is no need for mindless conformity in naming, nor is it our place to aggressively assert new standards over existing usages, especially where the new standards have not yet, in fact, displaced existing usages.

Agree with these paragraphs. Insisting on "Minnan" in an article on Singapore or Malaysia would be equally out of place. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

To repeat, I think we should probably use Taiwanese Minnan as the name of the article if Taiwanese Minnan is the more common term. I'm less happy with "Taiwanese language", even if it is commonly called that, because it is inaccurate -- "Taiwanese" is not a language, or even a dialect, but merely a major variant of a dialect, and not even its speakers would maintain that it is a distinct "language". Bathrobe (talk) 02:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

The only reservation I held about "Taiwanese Minnan" is that it is not at all in common usage as a string. The argument against having it simply named 'Taiwanese' was because there are other things that can be called "Taiwanese" such as indigenous languages. Therefore, "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or "Taiwanese (Min Nan)" does the job of using "Min Nan" as a disambiguating factor, but retaining the commonly used term "Taiwanese" as the subject of the article. Colipon+(Talk) 02:55, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I see Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese/Minnan, Taiwanese or Minnan, or any similar combination as being basically the same. As I pointed out, in order to avoid ambiguity Wikipedia titles are often much more qualified or specific phrases than are usually used in actual speech, but this is not a big issue in my view. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth (and I'm not saying it's worth that much), a Google search of hokkien taiwan got me 501,000 results, minnan taiwan got me 68,400 results, hoklo taiwan got me 50,400 results, and "min nan" taiwan got me 28,800 results. It sounds to me like Hokkien and Taiwan are not so mutually exclusive, after all. (On the other hand, it could just be a lot of southeast Asians posting to BSBs and blogs about the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan.) Bathrobe (talk) 06:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, I get different numbers; also, when I reverse the order with "taiwan" first in the phrase, "taiwan minnan" gets more hits than "taiwan hokkien", which is opposite to the results for the opposite word order.

As I said before, the main argument is that the terms Minnan and Hokkien are common usage in Taiwan and SEA respectively. kwami also made a claim that Hokkien is a significantly more familiar word in general, which I don't view as overriding the first argument, but he might. The variety of search results so far do not seem to support that claim. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

At the moment there are two articles on the same topic, Min Nan and Hokkien. Shouldn't we consider merging them? Bathrobe (talk) 05:21, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the content of those articles was copied from one to the other with minor changes, leading to understandable charges of WP:POV fork. Since the terms do not have identical connotations, I am not against separate articles if there is enough separate material, but that may currently not be the case. --JWB (talk) 08:27, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

See, "Hokkien" simply means "Fujian" in Minnan. I don't know who it was that defined "Hokkien" as the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou branch specifically, and would like to see the sources for that bold blaim. Colipon+(Talk) 10:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Jerry Norman (Chinese, Cambridge Linguistic Surveys, Cambridge UP, 1988:

"

In Southeast Asia, dialects of the Xi��m�n type (so-called "Hokkien dialects") predominate, except in Thailand, where Ch�ozhōu-speakers form the majority. Smaller communities of F�zhōu, P�ti�n and Hǎin�n dialect speakers are also to be found, especially in Malaysia.

"

This pretty much indicates that "Hokkien" refers to Amoy-type dialects. Bathrobe (talk) 11:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and this is referring to a single point (Xiamen) rather than to an extended area. Also, this one, non-primary reference is in a paragraph on SEA; the previous paragraph is on Taiwan and does not mention "Hokkien". The chapter on Min goes on for 11 pages and abundantly uses terms like "Southern Min" and "Xiamen", but only gives "Hokkien" once as a gloss for the SEA regional terms, deprecating it with "so-called". The whole book makes no other mention of "Hokkien" except the bibliography which lists a course "Spoken Amoy Hokkien". Ramsey's "The Languages of China" does not mention "Hokkien" even once. --JWB (talk) 16:06, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It is not necessarily referring to a single point. It is referring to dialects of the Xi��m�n type, which renders it somewhat less precise than what you are implying. In fact, "Xi��m�n" is Norman's usual characterisation the dialect we are describing. With regard to Taiwan, Norman says: "The majority of the inhabitants of T�iwān speak Mǐn dialects closely related to that of Xi��m�n in southern F�ji��n". If we were to follow Norman, the title of the article would be "Xiamen-type Min dialects".

In fact, in its section on dialects, Norman's book deals almost exclusively with abstand languages rather than ausbau languages. In discussing the Min dialects, he concentrates almost completely on linguistic aspects like the distribution of dialects, isoglosses, etc. If he is niggardly in his use of "Hokkien", deigning to use it once, prefixed with a "so-called" and firmly ensconced in quotation marks, this is generous compared to the treatment that the term "Minnan" gets. Norman does not use the name "Minnan" at all. What he does mention is "Southern Min" in the context of the traditional linguistic division between Northern and Southern Min dialects, and then proposes that it should be superseded by an East/West division, which he thenceforth uses almost exclusively. If anything, Ramsey is even worse, virtually apologising for mentioning Southern Min at all: "Somewhat arbitrarily, let us look more closely at the Southern Min dialect of Amoy, which is essentially the same dialect as Taiwanese" (my emphasis).

At any rate, that is not the point. I was merely answering Colipon's call for a source for the bold claim that "Hokkien" can be restricted to a narrow meaning, and Norman does that. You will notice that Norman is pretty much a stickler for using putonghua terminology (he is the one who preferred Yu�� over Cantonese in the broad sense, and also uses K��jiā in preference to Hakka), and it would appear to be a major concession that he even mentions the term "Hokkien".

As for whether "Hokkien" is widespread terminology in the academic literature, that is another question. Norman and Ramsey, as academics dealing with Chinese languages within a Chinese framework, seem extremely reluctant to use non-standard, non-Mandarin terminology, even more so if it is terminology used outside China. Notice that Ramsey uses the word "Hoklo" only once, and not in the Min section, but in the context of "The Classification of the Minorities":

"Who, for example, are the mysterious "boat people"-- the Hoklo, the Tanka, the Xumin, and perhaps others -- that one catches mention of from time to time? Presumably they still ply the waters in and around the South China coast, but little concrete is known about them."

Needless to say, academic usage would definitely be a factor in deciding what to name the article, but the failure of Ramsey and Norman to use "Hokkien" certainly doesn't tilt the argument in favour of "Minnan". Bathrobe (talk) 22:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I wrote "I don't know who it was that defined "Hokkien" as the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou branch specifically, and would like to see the sources for that bold blaim." I did not ask for anyone to demonstrate that "Hokkien" is limited to a "narrow meaning". You may have misunderstood. I am asking someone to demonstrate that "Hokkien" is the same as the "Quanzhou-Zhangzhou" linguistic classification, as the article currently claims without citation. The reason "Hokkien" is in wide usage is clearly not at the behest of linguists trying to classify dialects by drawing taxonomic trees on a desk. The reason "Hokkien" is a common term is because Chinese descendants in Malaysia and Indonesia refer to their home language as "Hokkien". Drawing on this demographic profile Hokkien would seem like a segment of the Min Nan group of languages. Xiamen dialect is generally known as "Amoy" in and that is where the article is currently located. Whether this is a problem, I don't know.

For dialects of Min, it is difficult to say whether or not an Ausbau variety still exists, period. Fuzhou dialect served as the basis for a "standardized Min" language although I doubt this had much reach outside of a 100-km radius. Min languages are extremely diverse - with five or six mutually unintelligible forms.

The reason I advocate for "Min Nan" over "Hokkien" is only from personal experience. Of all the Taiwanese friends I have that actually speak Taiwanese, they refer to their language as Tai-yu or Minnan-hua. The name "Taiwanese (Min Nan)" reflects this usage. No one refers to it as "Hokkien" or any variant thereof. The Taiwanese government calls it "Hoklo" or "Minnan", variably, but never calls it "Hokkien". Colipon+(Talk) 23:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Colipon, my Norman quotation obviously didn't quite hit the mark, so we still need a proper source. As for the rest, I was merely pointing out that neither Norman nor Ramsey provides justification for using Minnan over Hokkien. This is not the same as pushing for Hokkien. Bathrobe (talk) 00:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

JWB said, "These are the web searches I was using: Minnan: Web 2.5M hokkien: Web 400K." Well, I clicked on your links, and Minnan has 653 hits, while Hokkien gets 758. Google claims they are actually 2.6 and 0.4M, but then clarifies, "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 758 already displayed." These are mirrors, archives, and the like. kwami (talk) 08:49, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I find it very strange that we are getting such different results. What exactly is going on? Could location have anything to do with it? Bathrobe (talk) 09:24, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It could be region as well as settings and personalization based on past search history.

I clicked through to the "very similar" hits and got stuff like zh-min-nan Wikipedia articles, and blogs. Did not see mirrors or archives, but Google will not return results beyond 1000 for any query. 653 or 758 seem like very low numbers for those words. --JWB (talk) 09:35, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

JWB, the vast differences we are getting are very worrying. Perhaps you should check your Google settings. My only setting is to choose English-language pages. I'm not sure how much control you can get over personalisation, but in any case, it appears that your numbers are far more restricted (i.e., smaller in an absolute sense) than mine are. The extreme differences in numbers make Google searches virtually useless. Bathrobe (talk) 23:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Are there any real objections to moving it to "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or "Taiwanese (Min Nan)"? Calling it "Taiwanese Hokkien" is very awkward for a native Taiwanese speaker, who has generally always considered their language "Minnanhua" (at least the ones I've spoken to; most of them have never heard the term "Hokkien" to describe the language). Could also get some participation from WikiProject Taiwan... Colipon+(Talk) 10:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I think Taiwanese Minnan, Taiwanese (Minnan), Taiwanese Hokkien, and Taiwanese (Hokkien) would all be acceptable. IMO there isn't a whole lot to differentiate them from an English-speaker's POV. kwami (talk) 19:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Better example?

The NC-CHN currently gives "When there is a more popularly used form in English (such as Taoism)" as an exception to the Hanyu Pinyin convention. Since WP editors have continuously disagreed over the Daoism-Taoism romanization issue, could we find an uncontroversial example? Maybe Peking duck or Yangtze River? Keahapana (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'll change it to "Yangtze River". Keahapana (talk) 02:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

X Lake

X Lake - more harmonious appearance

See also List of lakes in China

In Category:Lakes of China, there are some "X Lake" and some "Lake X". I suggest to change them to one unified format "X Lake". So Hongze Lake instead of Lake Hongze; Google lets you find sources that use Hongzhe Lake. I do not say one format is for its own is better than the other. But the overall appearance of the articles related to Chinese geography may be more harmonious. Other geography articles named like X Classname:

Class (E)	Class (C)	Class (P)	Example (Pinyin)	Example (English)
District		Qū	Bīnch�ng Qū	Bincheng District
Autonomous Region				Tibet Autonomous Region
County		Xi��n	N�nt�u Xi��n	Nantou County
City		Sh��	N�nt�u Sh��	Nantou City
Province		Shěng	T�iwān Shěng	Taiwan Province
Mountains			Āil�oshān	Ailao Mountains
Mountain		Shān	Tiānm�� Shān	Tianmu Mountain (also has Mount X)
Glacier			..	Mingyong Glacier
Peak		Feng
Hill			..	see List of hills in Hangzhou
Island		Dǎo	Li�gōng Dǎo	Liugong Island
Plateau		Cǎoyu�n	B��sh��ng Cǎoyu�n	Bashang Plateau
Peninsula			..	Shandong Peninsula
Spring		Qu�n	Bǎi M��i Qu�n	Baimai Spring
Waterfall		P�� B��	Hǔ Kǒu P�� B��	Hukou Waterfall
River		H�	Hu�i H�	Huai River
River		Jiang	Chang Jiang	Chang River
Valley			..	Insukati Valley
Pass		Guān	Kūnl�nguān	Kunlun Pass
Beach
Basin		P�nd��	Tǎlǐm�� P�nd��	Tarim Basin
Sea, X Gulf		Hăi	B� Hăi	Bohai Sea
Desert		Shām��	Tǎk��lāmǎgān Shām��	Taklamakan Desert
Gorge		Xi�	Wū Xi�	Wu Gorge
Bay		Wān	B�hǎi Wān	Bohai Bay
Strait			..	Taiwan Strait
Cave		D��ng	Xiānr�n D��ng	Xianren Cave
Plain		P��ngyu�n	Ch�ngdū P��ngyu�n	Chengdu Plain
Reservoir				Zhelin Reservoir

Lakes have X Lake and Lake X. I suggest for lakes like for the other landforms to use consistently: "X Lake" / H�ngz� H� / Hongze Lake What do you think, would it improve the appearance of articles related to Chinese geography? TrueColour (talk) 00:51, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake - Other reasons

better sorting in tables

• List of lakes in China

Usage - "Aibi Lake" and "Lake Aibi"

• Used by Ministry of Water Respources http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english1/20040802/38171.asp
• Aibi Lake: @ sina.com http://english.sina.com/china/2008/1202/202055.html
• Aibi Lake: @ china.org.cn http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/233972.htm
• .cn
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=%22aibi+lake%22+site:cn 804
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+aibi%22+site:cn 34

.cn

• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+dongting%22+site:cn 1700
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22dongting+lake%22+site:cn 17000

X Lake - Discussion

"Lake X" is normal English. "X Lake" is a kind of Chinglish innovation. Why try to force Wikipedia to embrace the inferior term for the sake of "uniformity"? This is not going to "improve the appearance of articles", it is simply going to enforce uniform ugliness. Is it something about Wikipedia that "setting forth the sum of human knowledge" gets to be interpreted as "creating an even better Wikipedia version of human knowledge"? Bathrobe (talk) 14:34, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

My first check on your Chinglish statement was to look at Category:Lakes of Arizona. Please use harmonious language. I am trying to increase beauty. Both ways "X Lake" and "Lake X" are acceptable. Lake X may be more archaic and X Lake more modern. TrueColour (talk) 15:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a quick scan of what's more common in China related literature might help. I agree that Lake X is more common in English as a pattern but the moment I read it, I had to think of West Lake which I've never seen any other way in Englisn publications. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

West Lake is an exception becasue West is a literal translation, and the word "West" has its real meaning and should be placed before "Lake". But usually China's lakes' English names are just pinyin. --Pengyanan (talk) 17:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

@"I agree that Lake X is more common in English as a pattern" - So the Chinglish took over in Arizona Category:Lakes of Arizona? TrueColour (talk) 18:22, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake and Lake X are both valid English. X Lake is the native Germanic pattern, Lake X is a loan from French. The Noun-Adjective pattern has prestigious connotations to some and continues to be imported to English, for example "Team X" which has only gained ground in the last couple of decades. While I understand the impulse to avoid making English conform to Chinese, all too often it winds up championing some other unstated preconception of what English ought to conform to.

Lakes of England has 19 X Lake(s) and 0 Lake X. Lakes of the United States has 696 lines containing Lake, of which 205 start with Lake. Lakes of Canada has 402 lines with Lake, 52 beginning with Lake, almost all of which are lakes originally explored and named by the French. Lakes of Australia goes against the pattern with 62 and 37, so perhaps User:Bathrobe whose page says he is Australian can be forgiven for the assumption. --JWB (talk) 19:13, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Also note that for some of the most famous lakes in China, there is an existing English language tradition of using the "X Lake" format. For example, googling "Tungting Lake", 13,900; "Lake Tungting", 1,990. --JWB (talk) 19:25, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks JWB, especially for the numbers for names in English native countries. TrueColour (talk) 19:35, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I strongly suggest that the names of articles, whether "X Lake" or "X Mountain" not be changed until consensus is reached. Many Chinese mountain article names have now been changed, Mount Wuzhi being one example.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

I am pleased to see someone bring this issue to discussion. I personally do not have any preference on which one should be the naming convention. I am simply a rule follower and will be pleased to follow, if applicable, the new rules. BTW, I recently just moved XX Lake back to Lake XX, and XX Mountain back to Mount XX. It is someone else that unilaterally changed the lakes' and mountains' names against the current rules. And I moved Mount Wuzhi from Wuzhi Shan, not from Wuzhi Mountain. No mater which one, XX Mountain or Mount XX, should be adopted as the naming convention, XX Shan is apprently not the correct title for English Wikipedia. Thanks, Anna Frodesiak.--Pengyanan (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Tian Shan for example has been established usage in Western languages for over a century. --JWB (talk) 01:46, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Exceptions always exist. And exceptions cannot replace the principle. And I have not ever moved Tian Shan. --Pengyanan (talk) 02:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mount Everest and Tian Shan are the first exceptions that came to my mind. JWB, thank you for " The Noun-Adjective pattern has prestigious connotations to some " - it is a feeling I had, but I had no good words for. Noun-Ajective is a little bit like when addressing a person, Mr. X, Mount X, Lake X - for me. And X Lake, X Mountain sounds more relaxed, better flowing in the language. Having heard Mount Everest for so long, it is strange to hear Everest Mountain, but I would even like this better. Nonetheless I think this is no topic for discussion, most people will prefer Mount Everest. TrueColour (talk) 02:21, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Mr. X is of Romance origin, as is the convention of placing personal name before family name. Latin/Romance conventions are both default-prestigious or default-dignified and default-foreign for many English speakers. Another good example is English speakers giving strong penultimate stress, as if they were Italian or Spanish, to Japanese words that are actually stressed on other syllables or not at all. --JWB (talk) 02:58, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Pengyanan for being so relaxed about the whole thing. I'm sure we can all work this out if we are friendly.

My position, just to be clear, is that there are plenty of X Lake and plenty of Lake X names across the globe. Both must exist. A rule or convention won't serve in this case. A guideline is the best way to go. Something like: Try to name the thing xxxxxxx unless it really must be the other way. Same for mountains and rivers and whatever. Wikipedia is here to represent the truth, not create it. Cheers and good will to you both. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:56, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

This is not about lakes around the globe, but about lakes in China. Sometimes several things are true. Some people say X Shan, some X Mountain, some Mount X. Please, what are the reasons for "Lake X"? I see none. Only that Australians seem to like that more. TrueColour (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

FYI, it seems that Encyclop��dia Britannica does not adopt a universal naming convention for lakes in China. For example, it uses Lake XX for Lake Poyang and XX Lake for Lake Dongting. But it seems that it adopts Mount XX, not XX Mountain, as the naming convention, e.g., Mount Tai, Mount Wutai, Mount Huang, and Mount Wuzhi. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

• X Lake I think it would best to follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case. --JWB (talk) 03:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Lake X and X Lake are both found. If you look at a list of lakes in Canada, both are found. If you look at a list of lakes in the U.S., both are found. If you look at a list of lakes in Australia and New Zealand, both are found, although Lake X is overwhelming. If you look at a list of loughs in Ireland or lochs in Scotland, the overwhelming usage is Lake/Lough/Loch X. It appears that in England the normal usage is X Lake.

There is a good reason why Lough/Loch X is in that order in Ireland and Scotland - Gaelic is a language with noun-adjective order. If we were to follow that example, we would list Chinese lakes as X Hu, after which you would complain again we were trying to foist Chinese conventions on English text which ought to be strictly English. --JWB (talk) 12:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a ridiculous argument. It's irrelevant whether the order came from French or from Gaelic. A number of English-speaking countries follow that usage. You appear to hold the view that the only valid usage in English is that of England. Are you English? Your argument appears to be that, according to my own logic, we should follow Chinese order, and that then I "would complain that we were trying to foist Chinese conventions on English text". Sorry, that's not my logic, it's yours, and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't tell me what I think. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I will admit to being from one of the English-speaking countries where "X Lake" is in the majority, which have a dozen times as much population as the total for the English-speaking countries where "Lake/Loch/Lough X" is in the majority. Thank you for clarifying that you are not complaining about apparent usage of Chinese styles in English, as you have done on occasion in the past. --JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It's also interesting that 25% greater is "overwhelming" while a 7:1 ratio in a much larger sample is merely "both are found". --JWB (talk) 13:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I was speaking impressionistically and it's nice see that you are so spending so much time counting these lake names and calculating the percentages to prove that my impression was overhasty. However, nothing you've said proves which usage is correct. Is this really a POV that is so dear to your heart that you are willing to spend hours of your time ensuring that "X Lake" prevails? Or are you simply feeling annoyed that I loftily claimed that "X Lake" is Chinglish. I admit that I was wrong, but my being wrong doesn't seem like a good reason to waste any more time on this. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

If neither usage is "correct" (to the exclusion of the other) and there is not a clear established usage for a particular Chinese lake, that means we are free to consider the choice on other merits, rather than dismiss one alternative out of hand as "inferior" and "ugliness".--JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I have already admitted that my original statement was incorrect. If that all you have to say, you've made your point. Can you now proceed to proving why (1) We need to decide on one usage and (2) Why the "X Lake" convention should be the default setting for China? Or does your argument boil down to the fact that you come from an English-speaking country which "has a dozen times as much population as the total for (other) English-speaking countries"?Bathrobe (talk) 17:03, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The arguments were already presented and your response was the inflammatory comments starting this subdiscussion. Briefly, they are that consistency (of several kinds: between same-language articles, between languages, and between various classes of Chinese geographical features) may be desirable, all other things being equal, and that Wikipedia has decided on conventions in some cases, which is exactly what this page WP:Naming conventions (Chinese) is about. --JWB (talk) 17:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

The statistics and a look at Category:Lakes of Arizona are bringing light into the discussion and will shift away the clouds brought by the saying: ""Lake X" is normal English. "X Lake" is a kind of Chinglish innovation. Why try to force Wikipedia to embrace the inferior term for the sake of "uniformity"?" . TrueColour (talk) 16:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

There is no evidence that X Lake is "general usage" in the English-speaking world, and thus no reason to favour one over the other. This proposal is only being made because a Portuguese Wikipedian (this is only relevant in the light of said Wikipedian's comment that "Only that Australians seem to like that more") has decided that he personally prefers X Lake, and wishes to impose this on all China articles. You will notice that TrueColour only came to this naming conventions discussion page after his efforts to change names at China-related articles were blocked by reference to naming conventions. This is a mischievous proposal and is a guaranteed waste of time. Bathrobe (talk) 10:51, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Of course, nobody has actually claimed X Lake is "general usage" in the English-speaking world. For one thing, it is just a vague phrase rather than actual reference statistics. As for the suggestion of Portuguese bias, Portuguese has the opposite order, Lagoa de X. --JWB (talk) 13:17, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Portuguese order is irrelevant. The point is that TrueColour is a non-native English speaker who is coming to articles on Chinese topics and trying to set naming rules according to his own preferences. He has himself declared that "And X Lake, X Mountain sounds more relaxed, better flowing in the language. Having heard Mount Everest for so long, it is strange to hear Everest Mountain, but I would even like this better." The only thing that seems to be stopping him is that "most people will prefer Mount Everest".

If you check this user's past edits, you will find that he was consistently changing the names of Portuguese towns to "X Municipality" until he was stopped. He also seemed to want Mongolian aimags to be called provinces on the grounds of uniformity. He seems very big on this sort of thing. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-native TrueColour seems to know more about X Lake usage in the United States than you. The Mongolian aimags are called provinces, only the overview article Aimags of Mongolia that was moved by some user should be moved back to Provinces of Mongolia. WP:UE. Light may come into your body by visiting Aveiro_District#Municipalities, where it is shown that municpalities and towns are different entities, e.g. Santa_Maria_da_Feira_Municipality#Cities_and_towns Santa Maria da Feira Municipality has 3 cities and 13 towns. It is dark speech to say " he was consistently changing the names of Portuguese towns to "X Municipality" until he was stopped.". Only blind people may think they find that, as they see nothing. People looking for harmony and light will find other things. You could be more friendly to other people. If you want to rename "Mount Everest" to Everest Mountain I think you will not succeed for long. TrueColour (talk) 16:54, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hint: 'follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case' is referring to two cases, not one, and the second case is the one in which there is not an established English name for that particular Chinese lake. It is not something like 'follow established English usage, one has been shown to exist, which is "Lake" after name in general usage' as you seem to have misread. --JWB (talk) 13:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it would best to follow established English usage where one is shown to exist, and "Lake" after name in the general case. No, I understood it correctly. "Follow English usage wherever one exists, otherwise follow X Lake". In other words, unless there is an established usage, the default usage is "X Lake". Please let me know if I have misunderstood.

I can see interminable problems caused by this issue, not least that raised by TrueColour: "What would be exact requirements to say that 'X Lake (used by Chinese government and Chinese media) can be overwritten by media published in the British Isles or elsewhere?" For a start I can right now produce an example of "Lake Tung-t'ing", in a translation of a Chinese poem by A. C. Graham (who, for the record, was not Australian). Will this entitle me to change "Dongting Lake" to "Lake Dongting", or to veto attempts to enforce "Dongting Lake"? Are we going to be swamped with editors citing Chinese-based web sites proving that "Dongting Lake" is correct? Do we really need this much trouble because someone likes "harmony"?

I already produced 1,990 examples of "Lake Tungting", and the number is probably greater if you separate the syllables. The point is that there are many times as many for "Tungting Lake" making this case fairly clear and not challengeable by a single example.

The status quo on the issue is that there is no standard at all, and editors are free to contest each name individually. By definition this is more conflict and chaos than if there is some standard, even if there are some borderline cases where the standard is difficult to apply, as is the case with most standards. --JWB (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Taking search hit counts as naming justification lets the naming being influenced by producing search hits. One poem "Dongting Lake" published on two thousand pages quickly leads to new count results. here are 17000 for Dongting Lake within .cn. TrueColour (talk) 18:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

That is a risk, although the biggest effect is usually from mirrors of Wikipedia which often bias results towards the Wikipedia status quo. See WP:Google test for policy on using and interpreting search results. --JWB (talk) 19:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Book titles - mirrored by book stores. TrueColour (talk) 20:06, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I still feel that this is a waste of time being caused by one single editor who is trying to force uniformity where no uniformity should be enforced. I am disappointed in JWB's taking up the cudgel on behalf of this person and can only hope that it is because I have somehow rubbed him up the wrong way and caused him to come out fighting, rather than an actual commitment to this Wiki-storm in a teacup. Bathrobe (talk) 14:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

We've participated in previous discussions (e.g. Yangtze andChang Jiang four years ago) where you strongly opposed what you perceived as importing Chinese terminology, and I was more tolerant of it and took a moderate position in cases where English usage is not established or is in the process of changing. My views on the subject were formed before any contact with you, although discussion has made me articulate them more clearly.--JWB (talk) 16:19, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

User JWB, you have been waiting for a long time -- four years? Since I started out by making a wrong call on this one, I withdraw my comment and withdraw from this debate. You are free to join forces with user TrueColour to argue for this new convention. I will not oppose you, nor will I make further comments. Bathrobe (talk) 22:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry you feel cudgeled. My point was not that this is some kind of personal grudge match, but rather that my position and yours are longstanding views, not cooked up recently. I think the debate was productive and stimulating in spite of the tone that started this exchange. I have not been waiting but have simply explicated my views when discussions have come up during the periods when I have been following Wikipedia. I hope future interactions will be more cuddly then cudgely. --JWB (talk) 02:26, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

How editors come to the discussion here or where they live or what religion, if any, they adhere too, is private affairs. The claim was made that X Lake is Chinglish, as reply a pointer was made to Category:Lakes of Arizona to show that this is probably not true. Links were given to show that X Lake is used by English language media in China including government publications. English language sources may apply different naming patterns for same lakes. So, likely both ways are acceptable. To make lives of readers (easier recognition, i.e. easier parsing by human brain) and editors (linking, sortable tables) more beauty, the proposal is to use X Lake for all lakes. One could revise this convention if it is found that "Lake X" is established for a specific lake in literature and that use of "X Lake" in that case is very misleading. What would be exact requirements to say that "X Lake" (used by Chinese government and Chinese media) can be overwritten by media published in the British Isles or elsewhere? TrueColour (talk) 14:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry to have opened this can of worms again. Black Lake should be not be renamed Lake Black, whether in Portugal, China or Canada. The name of the article should represent the name of the place or thing. That should supersede a desire for harmonious appearance, ease of sorting, consistency, etc.

Wuzhi Mountain has been renamed Mount Wuzhi, which translates to Mount Five Finger. This sounds pretty darn dumb to the people of Hainan. 8 million of us here know it as Wuzhi Mountain. Wikipedia is now teaching the world something that is not true. I would be mighty grateful if somebody would change it back to what it is called. Now I have to go. Mount Brokeback is coming on in 5 minutes. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 21:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Anna, let me clarify two things. 1. Wuzhi Mountain has NOT been renamed Mount Wuzhi. I have pointed out this for more than once. I moved Mount Wuzhi from Wuzhi Shan, not from Wuzhi Mountain. More clearly, it is Wuzhi Shan, not Wuzhi Mountain, that has been renamed Mount Wuzhi. Wuzhi Shan is not the correct title, no matter how much you like the name Wuzhi Mountain (please notice the difference between Mountain and Shan). 2. Most of the 8 million people in Hainan are Chinese people. They do not speak English and cannot know this mountain as Wuzhi Mountain. I believe that what you refer to are at most thousands of English speaking people who resident in Hainan. Please don't exaggerate. -- Pengyanan (talk) 22:13, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pengyanan, Okay, perhaps not all 8 million. Definitely thousands of Chinese people (students, people in the tourist industry and others) and thousands of foreigners. Regardless of what it was called, it is now called Mount Wuzhi. Either Wuzhi Shan or Wuzhi Mountain would be fine by me. Cheers.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

some numbers

• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wuzhi+mountain%22 12400
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22wuzhi+shan%22 10000
• http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mount+wuzhi%22 778

TrueColour (talk) 23:28, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

What's your argument? If you want to move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan, then the number of Wuzhi Shan in your Google search is not valid because many, if not most, of the pages just provide the pinyin of this mountain. If you want to move Mount Wuzhi to Wuzhi Mountain, as I already said, I have no position on this debate. Please try to reach consensus by yourself. --Pengyanan (talk) 23:50, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Someone said "Wuzhi Shan is not the correct title, no matter how much you like the name" - that's a point of view that the numbers may change. TrueColour (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

As someone said, the number of Wuzhi Shan in your Google search is not valid because many, if not most, of the pages just provide the pinyin of this mountain. "Wuzhi Shan" is still apparently not the correct title in English Wikipedia. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:35, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone say that Wuzhi Shan is the correct title? But there was someone who moved from Wuzhi Shan to Mount Wuzhi and whilst seeing this numbers he takes no action to fix the former move. TrueColour (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If no one says Wuzhi Shan is the correct title, then no one should move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan. I have to ask you again: what's your argument? Do you want to move Mount Wuzhi back to Wuzhi Shan to fix the former move? --Pengyanan (talk) 00:56, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The light may come: Wuzhi Mountain! TrueColour (talk) 01:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I have NEVER EVER moved Wuzhi Mountain! What I moved is Wuzhi Shan! How many times do I need to repeat myself to you! My move is correct if you also agree that Wuzhi Shan is not correct! --Pengyanan (talk) 01:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I know. I never said the article was moved from Wuzhi Mountain. The move at least made it more English. The horizon shows that the best of the three versions will be there. TrueColour (talk) 02:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

X Lake - Changing the NC

I changed the NC per discussion. I was directly reverted. I reverted again. There is no opposition to change to X Lake as default, JWB, TrueColour support it, Anna supports local usage, no other opinion. TrueColour (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

No, Anna has not supported to change the naming convention from Lake XX to XX Lake. She just said: "My position, just to be clear, is that there are plenty of X Lake and plenty of Lake X names across the globe. Both must exist". And this discussion started only less than two days ago. Please be patient and wait for potential other editors to participate in. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Did anyone say she supported to change the naming convention from Lake XX to XX Lake? Your moves and reverts are really ugly, I now loose my patience with your style. You always say you have no opinion on the matter but prevent other editors to fix obvious issues. Your constant reverts waste time of other editors. You do not even know who made up this convention. It is just plain bad. TrueColour (talk) 00:36, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

If she does not support your proposal, then the consensus has not yet be reached. Again, please be patient. And, please be calm. If you want to know who made up this convention, as I told you, please check the edit history of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese). Help yourself. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

"If she does not support your proposal" - there are thousands of editors that do not support the change. Your argument is nonsense. You should see the light. Come out of your blindness or darkness or whatever. Face the reality. Aibi Lake numbers were above, here is Tai Lake:

• 32000 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22tai+lake%22
• 22000 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22lake+tai%22

TrueColour (talk) 00:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Please try to be civil. Only four or five editors participate in this discussion, and only two (including you yourself) support your proposal, and the discussion only lasts less than two days. Please be patient and wait for at least another several days. --Pengyanan (talk) 00:50, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Three editors take part, JWB, TrueColour, Anna. You always say you have no opinion and that we should settle the matter. Now we settled, and you revert and you call for waiting several days. My patience with your reverts is over. 2 of 3 support "X Lake" as default, 1 supports local usage, which is "X Lake" as shown by the links. So there is no need to wait "another several days". It is not that we only vote, but we all three brought sound arguments, statistics, numbers, and local usage from Chinese media. TrueColour (talk) 00:59, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The "four or five editors" I said include 1) TrueColour, 2) JWB, 3) Anna Frodesiak, 4) Bathrobe, and perhaps 5) Akerbeltz. If you think that the consensus has been reached, do as you please. I am tired of this discussion and your hostile words. --Pengyanan (talk) 01:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I missed Akerbeltz and stand corrected. Bathrobe left discussion TrueColour (talk) 01:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

X Mountain

X Shan are often translated as X Mountain.

List of X Shan that should NOT be named X Mountain

Please add mountains here and provide evidence.

• Tian Shan
  • neutral, no evidence just feeling. TrueColour (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
• Mount Everest Chinese is Qomolangma, official translation is Mount Qomolangma
  • neutral, Mount Qomolangma would be ok to me. TrueColour (talk) 00:25, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Railway naming

There's a discussion at Talk:Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway on whether the names of articles on Chinese railways should be faithful copies of the formal Chinese names ("Wuguang Passanger Railway") or English common names ("Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway"). The current naming conventions say that the Chinese name should take precedence, but this would seem to violate WP:COMMONNAMES, especially for high-profile projects like the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which is known in English almost exclusively by that name and never "Jinghu High-Speed Railway". Please chip in! Jpatokal (talk) 02:28, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Comment - Anyway, we should use single standard. No matter whether a railway is well known in the West. Python eggs (talk) 02:14, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Yue Chinese vs Cantonese

Back when the "(linguistics)" tag was abandoned for non-linguistics articles, and we decided to follow the Ethnologue convention of "X Chinese" for primary branches of the Chinese language, we left Cantonese/Yue as a possible exception. A few months we came to an impasse as to what it should be called; we did a straw poll to settle on a temporary name, "Cantonese (Yue)", until the placement of Standard Cantonese was settled, and we could get back to it. (Arguing about the placement of Standard Cantonese was complicating the discussion on Yue, and at least one editor voted for the name he didn't like so that we could get it over with an move on to the other article.) Now that the latter article has been moved to Cantonese, several of us feel that the names are confusingly similar and that the temp name needs to be revisited.

For the past month there has been an attempt at further discussion, with a poll in which "Yue Chinese" had a slight lead over "Cantonese (Yue)". I thought that perhaps we could agree to compromise with everyone's second choices, which were mostly "Yue Chinese (Cantonese)" and "Yue (Cantonese)" (the runner-up the last time around) respectively. However, most of the 'Cantonese' side has said they are opposed to any compromise. Are there people here who have not yet joined in the discussion on a permanent name? Should we leave the two articles at Cantonese and Cantonese (Yue), or should they be made more distinct? Cantonese isn't going anywhere; we actually got consensus on that. What about the latter? Status quo temp name? Follow our naming conventions & Ethnologue? A compromise of the two? Something else entirely? kwami (talk) 06:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

naming conventions for varieties of Chinese

This would be a good time to review the "X Chinese" convention for the 7 major dialect areas. "X dialects" would better communicate that the article is about the spoken varieties of a whole region rather than an individual variety. As referring to a whole region, this is independent of any controversies over whether some individual dialect should be classified as a "language". "Dialect" is simply the customary English name for Chinese speech varieties; Victor Mair coined "topolect" to be etymologically correct, but general usage has not found it necessary to adopt the new term and continues to use "dialect" to mean "topolect" without any implications on the relation between dialects. --JWB (talk) 21:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

But they are not topolects, are they? We make the claim that they are related to each other (ie, that Yue, Wu, Hakka, Mandarin, etc. are all valid taxonomic nodes)-or is that what "topolect" entails? Also, they are often considered to be languages, which would be obscured if we called them "X dialects". If I remember correctly, this is more or less why this terminology had been rejected, though of course people might think differently this time. kwami (talk) 22:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

A group is of course not a topolect. It is a set of topolects/dialects. Some might think Shanghainese or the whole Wu group is a language, but nobody maintains every single local Wu dialect is a language, and it is the set of these that "dialects" refers to. --JWB (talk) 03:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I have consistently disagreed with the blanket "X Chinese" formula, and contrary to what Kwami claims, looking through the archives it is far from apparent that page moves to "X Chinese" had consensus from involved parties. That aside, I do endorse the use of "Mandarin Chinese", as the use of that string is found commonly in the English language. The rest should be named according to their individual circumstances. I have no problems with "Hakka (language)" either. I make the following proposals for the other branches:

• Wu (topolect)
• Xiang dialects
• Min languages
• Gan dialects
• Yue (topolect) or Cantonese (topolect)
• Hui dialects
• Jin dialects

I base this proposal purely on my subjective experience with the topic and my observations through lengthy debate of involved parties, both on and off Wikipedia. These names do not have a "reliable source" subscribing for the 'proper' use of each name, but neither does the usage of "Hakka (language)" or "Mandarin Chinese" - both of which came about from using some common sense and following general wikipedia guidelines at WP:TITLE. Specifically, I reserve the use of "X dialects" to divisions that are known to be largely mutually intelligible and share a common identity. More complicated topics, such as Wu and Yue, are given the X (topolect) treatment because of the relatively diverse internal divisions, and lack of mutual intelligibility amongst some of its varieties. The reason Min is "Min Languages" is because it has so many mutually unintelligible internal varieties. I realize this may face some opposition from Chinese nationalists, but I somehow doubt that they would provide sound reasoning that we should avoid use of "language" at all costs (note too, that Hakka (language) has been stable and no one seems to have a problem with that). Colipon+(Talk) 01:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Ethnologue is just fine as a source. It's what we normally follow on Wikipedia. Though I agree with you, you'll have quite a fight on your hands if you want to claim that Min is several languages rather than a dialect of Chinese. "X topolect" is IMO not good for a title, as almost no-one knows what it means. "X Chinese", on the other hand, is transparent. "X dialects" might get by, but it also has problems; for one, it implies that the dialects do not form a coherent whole. Also, it doesn't really capture the articles, since they cover the languages, not collections of dialects. kwami (talk) 02:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't imply the dialects do not form a coherent whole; it is agnostic about it. In some cases there may be controversy about whether they form a cladistic unit. Not sure what you mean by "languages not collections of dialects" since your past position has been that language means Abstand, i.e. collection of dialects.

Regarding Colipon's proposal, I think we should avoid a language-dialect distinction based on mutual intelligibility or some assessment of distance - this leads to endless controversy. I would avoid the count noun "language" entirely except for Ausbau languages, which are based on social opinion and are what non-linguists mean by a "language", and only use "dialect" in its lay common usage meaning what some linguists call "topolect". --JWB (talk) 04:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

We normally call languages "languages"; if we call them something else, we imply that they are not languages. This is part of what drove the language-dialect debate.

Yes, when I say Wu etc. are languages, I mean it in the Abstand sense. But that's hardly the same as a collection of dialects; India-n dialects comprise several different language families.

As for whether these may not actually be Abstand languages, well sure, which is why we occasionally update the articles. But conceptually they do represent Abstand languages, and IMO their titles should reflect that. kwami (talk) 05:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Looking up again the meaning of Abstand, it is actually defined by the distance / intelligibility criterion. This is difficult to measure, has to be measured on a scale, different studies get different results, and is skewed by preexisting knowledge of the languages. In the study I added to Spoken Chinese#Quantitative similarity, there were many different measures giving different results and they were divided between objective and subjective ones, with genetic distance yet another criterion that was not even mentioned. This is the kind of thing that needs to be discussed at length in articles, not be assumed to be cut and dried as a basis for naming articles. --JWB (talk) 08:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but that's the case for nearly all language articles. Very few languages have a national standard; maybe, what, 5%? For all the rest we're going on intelligibility criteria, and that is inherently problematic. Generally we go with the divisions of Ethnologue, unless there's reason to diverge from it. Yue is considered an Abstand language by Ethnologue, and although problems are sometimes noted (notably Ping), generally by other refs as well. kwami (talk) 09:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

You are for leaving distinctions based on distance or intelligibility out of Chinese language article titles and I'm agreeing with that. I'm just pointing out that the word "dialect" in actual common usage just means a local speech variety and does not have connotations of a mutual intelligibility test. Every local form of even a major language is a dialect except possibly in the case of an isolated language which has no internal variation at all. --JWB (talk) 19:05, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Dialect says the word has two definitions. One is merely a speech variety as I have been saying. It mentions "topolect" as a subclass of dialect, which eliminates the argument that by using "topolect" we can escape from some constraint of "dialect". The second is a speech variety subordinate to a standard language. Mutual intelligibility is only mentioned much further down the article in "Concepts in dialectology" where it says "Some have attempted" to use the mutual intelligibility criterion and that straightforward application of it is "untenable". --JWB (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Apostrophes for disambiguation

Sometimes it is necessary to show where the syllable break lies (e.g. jingao can be jing ao or jin gao). In both cases, the pinyin convention adds a ' symbol to resolve ambiguity, for example, jin'gao vs jing'ao.

According to this site (the best online pinyin resource out there), this is half-wrong -- only the "jing ao" sequence should contain an apostrophe:

Lest anyone misunderstand, let me make this perfectly clear: Under the rules of Hanyu Pinyin, an apostrophe will never come between an n and a g.

The logic here is that the absence of an apostrophe in jingao makes it clear where the syllable boundary lies -- note how the capital of Shandong ("Ji nan") is officially Jǐn�n / Jinan, without apostrophe, whereas the capital of Shaanxi ("Xi an") is Xī'ān / Xi'an. The rule is simply to use an apostrophe before all vowel-initial syllables not in word-initial position, even if there is no ambiguity (for example, 可爱 / 可愛 would be written as kě'��i or ke'ai, even though kě��i / keai is also unambiguous). -123.168.72.152 (talk) 05:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Emperors' names (again)

I brought this up a few years ago and got mostly shot down, but I still find it irritating, so how about I try again. Emperor Wu of Han and similar is just an awful format. The form ought to be Han Wudi, and similar, for the emperors before the Ming Dynasty (using temple or posthumous names as appropriate). The only argument given against this is that this form does not make it clear that the person is an emperor, which still seems completely ridiculous to me - a vast number of article titles on monarchs do not make clear that the person is a monarch. Why is Saladin or Ashoka or Charles the Bold or Bhumibol Adulyadej acceptable, but Han Wudi is not? The place to make clear that someone is an emperor, or the meaning of their name, is the article itself, not the title. Emperor Wu of Han is awkward and ugly, and furthermore is an awkward partial translation which implies that "Wu" is a proper name, when in fact it is a posthumous description ("martial"). What is the advantage of this system, besides inertia? john k (talk) 12:43, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

'Emperor Wu of Han' being 'ugly' or not is entirely up to your own views and POV, not everyone thinks of it as so. 'Emperor Wu of Han' is a fully appropriate translation for the Chinese name 'Han Wudi'. The 'examples' you've given us are the said subjects' own actual names, nothing 'temple' or 'post-humous' about them. 'Emperor Wu of Han' would be the respective counterparts to 'Charles the Bold'. The only 'post-humous' name of Wudi is 'Wu'. 'Han' signifies the empire's name, 'Di' means emperor, so 'Han Wudi' in English would be 'Emperor Wu of Han' or 'Han Emperor Wu'.Liu Tao (talk) 16:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)