From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. j⚛e decker talk 17:28, 11 June 2014 (UTC) reply

List of cities in the Americas with alternative names

List of cities in the Americas with alternative names (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
(Find sources:  Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs· FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Big old WP:NOTIINFO violation. Most of the list is just transliterations of the city's name into a non-Latin script which has then been romanicized (like all the Chinese and Japanese names). Names like "Beverwyck" or "Kinłání" might be worth discussing, but "Nyū Yōku" or "Sānfānshì" are not. All but one entry on the list is not referenced, so there's that too. — Ryūlóng ( 琉竜) 13:30, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 15:34, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete I expected it to be about items like "Gotham", "The Big Easy", "Second City", etc. Instead it is a major violation of "not a dictionary," as well as "not a directory." Of course place names are different in different languages, but that's not a concern of WP or any encyclopedia. Borock ( talk) 16:17, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Weak delete - At the very least it needs a name change. I could see this list being useful to people at times, but how would they ever find it? I would expect this article to be about alternate names in English. The article needs to be called "names of cities in other languages" or something. Plus, it's unsourced. Bali88 ( talk) 17:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
I could see giving other language names for a (major) city in its own article, but what's the point of a list? Borock ( talk) 21:04, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
I dunno, some people have weird interests! A list of the various monickers of cities like you suggested would actually be an interesting article. I wouldn't fight super hard to keep this one. Bali88 ( talk) 01:47, 4 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Official names or names commonly used in English, whether still in use or not, may be suitable for a list but others are not. Most of these would be deleted as redirects. Peter James ( talk) 18:13, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. I was expected the same thing as Borock. In fact, there are already various lists presented in City nicknames. Clarityfiend ( talk) 23:28, 3 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep but... This is effectively a list of exonyms - such lists act as navigational aids ()and a useful supplement to Wikipedia's gazetteer function), and past AfDs on them have usually ended with the list being kept. However, there are definitely two problems with the article which need to be corrected. Firstly, as is clear from previous points in this discussion, the current article does not make it clear what the subject of the article is, and therefore should be changed - possibly to Names of cities in the Americas in different languages, in line with the similar articles Names of European cities in different languages and Names of Asian cities in different languages. Secondly, the listed names should be verifiable as being used, or having been used in the past, by reliable sources in the language concerned - a reputable atlas would generally be OK for this. And, in general, one would only expect a name to be listed either if it is different from the common English name or (where it is the same) if a reader might reasonably expect it to be different. But bringing the article into compliance with these issues is an editing, not a deletion, problem. PWilkinson ( talk) 18:52, 6 June 2014 (UTC) reply
    Those lists of exonyms may be useful in Europe and Asia where there's been a decent number of border changes that predicate having lists of the names (Gdansk and Danzig for example) but there does not seem to be a utility for the cities in the Americas which are rarely ever referred to by alternate names within the Americas other than stuff like "Nueva York" and maybe the split between Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish with Iguaçu/Iguazu.— Ryūlóng ( 琉竜) 19:13, 6 June 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete – per nom. Names of cities in other languages is hardly remarkable. United States Man ( talk) 02:07, 11 June 2014 (UTC) reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.