Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Spain

Standard for Spain?

When I input (inputted?) the articles "List of municipalities in (province)" (linked to from Provinces of Spain), I set it up with the links of the form Illán de Vacas, Toledo (city, province). I had a few reasons for this:

• I understand that the names of the provinces are in current use in Spain as a natural disambiguator, for example in writing addresses or saying where you're from, in the case of towns other than major cities.
• I thought it would be useful to have a natural disambiguator, in case the need should arise.
• It sounds kind of stupid to refer to a town of 5 as Illán de Vacas as opposed to Illán de Vacas, Toledo; it gives at least a little context (context which probably even a Spaniard would need.)

I didn't intend to presume to move important cities; Madrid would stay at Madrid (not least because nobody would call it Madrid, Madrid - indeed, most of the provinces are named for their capitals). Instead, I set up redirects from the entry in the lists for towns that already had Wikipedia entries.

I'm also open to suggestions regarding alternative disambiguation that would be more in line with what people actually use (for example, by island in the case of the Canaries and Balearics).

However, Efghij has decided to remove the disambiguation from these lists. I understand the reasoning, but I would appreciate it if more Wikipedians could have their say, so we could arrive at a consensus. - Montréalais 03:09, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I have been bemused for a long time why the standard worldwide isn't "City, Province". After all we have over 40,000 like that for the United States, why should the rest of the world be any different? - Hephaestos 03:15, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Not every country thinks of their towns as being so identified; however it's my understanding that Spain does. Incidentally, I posted a message on the es.wiki's village pump-equivalent asking for input. - Montréalais 03:19, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That's true, and my last comment came off a lot more US-centric than I would have liked. Nevertheless every worldwide city I can think of is in a province, and such a scheme would cut down a lot on what would otherwise be necessary disambiguation. - Hephaestos 03:25, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'd prefer City, Province as long as such a naming makes sense in the context of the country. Major cities should have redirects from their name, and some exceptions can be made for silly things, so we have Madrid instead of Madrid, Madrid (a similar exception is made in the US -- New York City instead of New York City, New York). --Delirium 09:01, Aug 31, 2003 (UTC)

Err, upon checking, apparently we do have New York City actually at New York, New York. This is consistent, but a bit silly in my mind. I'd rather have New York City and Madrid than New York, New York and Madrid, Madrid personally. --Delirium 09:02, Aug 31, 2003 (UTC)

I guess the difference is that if you're addressing an envelope, you do write "New York, NY"; but you don't write "Madrid (Madrid)", just "Madrid". - Montréalais 15:17, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

A check in the Spanish Wikipedia (http://es.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=ciudad) shows that they yet have articles on only few cities/towns [1][2], but that notation with parenthesis seems more common than comma-notation. (But I don't know why. Maybe the English language wikipedia's policy favoring parenthesis as "standard"; maybe usage in Spain?)

For the English language wikipedia, I would propose that articles are named without disambiguator, unless neccessary. For international readers, the subdivisions of Spain is probable too obscure - disambiguation with [[City (Spain)]] seems the most intuitive - maybe exceptions ought to be made for Canary Islands, Catalonia and the Basque Country?. But empty links in tables, in particular to municipalities and villages, that's quite another issue. I don't have any opinion on that.
--Ruhrjung 10:24, 31 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think we should use the [[City, Province/State/Territory/Whatever]] format whenever that is the prodominate form within the country. This applies at least to Canada, the US, and Australia. If it applies to Spain, then we should use this format for it too.

If use this format for a country, it should apply to all cities, not just the ambiguous or lesser-known ones, although an exeption could be made for Spainish provincial capitals that share their name with the province. - Efghij 18:14, Aug 31, 2003 (UTC)

I think it should go by how people from that country say it (or, rather, don't say it). Although it's not usual to say "Montreal, Quebec", it's not wrong; but my understanding that "Barcelona, Barcelona" is wrong. There are a few questions:

• whether, say, "Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña" is wrong (major city);
• which is preferable: "Frontera, Santa Cruz de Tenerife" or "Frontera, El Hierro" (province vs. island);
• whether a comma or some other punctuation mark should be used.

I'm annoyed that we haven't had any response to the question I posed on the es:wiki yet. That could clear this up quite quickly. - Montréalais 17:05, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe you don't have to be much in Spain to get the impression that towns and cities usually are mentioned without any qualifier similar to the added US-states in USA. Compare for instance time-tables for busses or trains.

Googling around visiting pages for Spanish cities ought to give you the same impression.

For a quick answer by people outside of the wikipedia-community, why not try Usenet:soc.culture.spain?
--Ruhrjung 18:42, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Well, usually a Canadian says "Moose Jaw", not "Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan," but the latter is acceptable. I guess we're trying to find out what's acceptable among Spaniards. Unfortunately, at present there don't seem to be any Spaniards around to enlighten us... - Montréalais 23:31, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think even if it's acceptable (or even preferable) in the country to omit the province name, we should still prefer to use it, unless it's simply entirely unacceptable to do so. While a Spaniard may have no problems referring to individual cities with no qualifiers, for a non-Spaniard the contextualization is quite helpful (and we are, of course, an international encyclopedia). Similarly, any American would understand "Phoenix" with no qualifiers, and in fact this usage is probably more common than "Phoenix, Arizona", but the latter is much more useful to non-Americans. --Delirium 01:30, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't think it would be a good idea to limit this to "major cities", unless we have a fixed deffinition of what a "major city" is (provincial capital? cathedral city?). I also think basing it on sub-provincial divisions would also be a bad idea, although in the case of the Canaries and Balearics, using "Canary Islands" or "Balearic Islands" instead of "Santa Cruz de Tenerife" or "Palma de Mallorca" would be better if Spaniards do something similar. - Efghij 01:36, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I don't think "Palma de Mallorca" is used any more to refer to the province of the Balearics (just as it's now called Asturias, not Oviedo), so that's not an issue. I'm content to use what we have at present - List of municipalities in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has all the cities as "Ciudad Fulano, Santa Cruz de Tenerife", with the island listed thereafter - since I've seen it used at least once to refer to a city that wasn't on Tenerife. But if a Spaniard tells me that that's wrong, I would change it. - Montréalais 19:35, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Oh, okay. I was basing that on the map at Provinces of Spain, but that's probably out of date since the list says "Illes Balears" on both the English & Spainish Wikipedias. - Efghij 03:40, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)