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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Rationale: Soča is the Slovenian, and Isonzo the Italian name for this river. Article titles should not be lists of names in various languages.Soča is currently a redirect. AFAIK there is not a single widely accepted English name for the river. About 70% of the length of the river is in Slovenia. See also the discussion below, and#Rivers with multiple names.Markussep18:17, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen it discussed before somewhere, and I've used it several times. I think most of the discussion was when it didn't work as well as it does now. At one time, I think the category listing in the redirect had to be right after the redirect wording on the same logical line; that might not be necessary any longer.Gene Nygaard07:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oops: the trick very nearly works, but not quite in the way that is needed. We now have the river appearing twice in the Rivers of Italy cat:once from the redirect page, and once from the main page. When I tried removing the cat from the main page to fix that problem, it created a bigger one: the link toCategory:Rivers of Italy longer appeared at the foot of the main page. —Ian Spackman07:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the problem ofCategory:Rivers of Italy not appearing on the articles main page, by moving the category listing on the redirect page to the same logical line as the redirect. Apparently that's where the problems in using categorization with redirects comes in, so you just need to be sure you don't put in a line break before or between the categories.Gene Nygaard14:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think so: it will look as though they are separate rivers. The cat-redirect trick could usefully be employed to fill a newCategory:Names of rivers which run through Italy, which would include Tevere and Tiberis as well as Tiber, for instance. But I do find the current category, with its one-to-one relationship between category-entries and articles, a useful one. —Ian Spackman11:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can't imagine that one-to-one correspondence being useful for anything other than counting the number of elements of that particular category which have Wikipedia articles, which won't often be that useful to anybody. It is far more important that people looking for some particular element of a category are able to find it, so that existing information doesn't remain hidden.Gene Nygaard15:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to look at all the articles in a category (quite common, I’d have thought) you want that one-to-one correspondance, or something close to it. But since you’ve fixed the problem of the redirect category not appearing in the main article, the question has become a bit moot. And this talk page is now overwhelming the article! —Ian Spackman07:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom andOlessi. On a passing note, it would appear that the opposing editor, Giovanni Giove, has also been involved in adding Italian(?) names to some other articles. No prior discussion or survey that would justify such changes. I am not sure what the fixation is all about, but it doesn't seem right.RedZebra18:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, preferIsonzo. I do not support the present naming either, but strongly suspect that the river is best known as theIsonzo. There were at least ten WWI battles, all over the same valley.Septentrionalis18:24, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I did a little Google test (english language, no wikipedia):Isonzo and Italy gets 86,200 hits (most about towns in Italy with Isonzo in their name, e.g. Gradisca d'Isonzo, and the WW1 battles), andSoča and Slovenia gets 102,000 hits (most about outdoor activities). No clear preference, I guess, but I can live with "Isonzo" as well.Markussep18:50, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One name solution is definitely preferrable to what we have now. I lean, however, more to the Slovenian name as the river originates there and two thirds of it seem to be in Slovenia. For what is worth The Guardian, apparently, has even a photo gallery in its online tourist guide on Slovenia where the river is clearly identified as Soca[1].RedZebra19:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ButSoca is not what is proposed as the move; if it is best known in English as Soca rather than Soča, then that should be the article name, setting aside the fact that Isonzo is the best name.Gene Nygaard07:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry aboutSoca andSoča misunderstanding. I don't have Slavic letters on my keyboard. I am in favour ofSoča. As far as I can tell, the fact that English-speaking media (or Western media in general) inadvertently leave out the hacek should not prove as a hinderance to using the Slovenian name. After all, the former Romanian dictator is also known asNicolae Ceausescu and notNicolae Ceauşescu. British sources often refer toCitroen and not toCitroën[2]. As for the WWI battles they are clearly identified as theBattle of the Isonzo. On the other hand, the river originates in Slovenia, two thirds of it flow through the country and, apparently, contemporary sources predominantly refer to it as Soča.RedZebra08:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is usually not "inadvertent". We have every bit as much right to establish our own identity by using our own alphabet when writing in our own language, as do any others who have no better way of establishing their indentity than by seeing if they can make cuter letters than their neighbors can. It is not anerror to write in English without using those diacritics. Furthermore, this whole discussion is tainted since that option hasn't received just consideration.Gene Nygaard15:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Historical sources may prefer Isonzo, but contemporary usage prefers Soča and the river runs mostly in Slovenia. To point out another example, historical sources refer to the town ofKobarid almost exclusively as Karfreit or Caporetto (the German and Italian names, respectively), even though the town has no native Italian or German population. It is more of a consequence of the second-grade status of the Slovenian language at the time, even in areas that were over 99% Slovenian. A similar case isLjubljana, which used to be reffered to as Laibach in English, reflecting the official language at the time (German), yet today the city is called Ljubljana in English. The establishment of the Slovenian names has gone so far that now Kobarid and Ljubljana are used more often than Karfreit or Laibach in the German language itself. Also, a quick Google search revealed that there are 1.5 million hits forisonzo while there are 4.8 million hits forsoca (sic) and 207 thousand hits forsoča. However, I do not believe the diacritic mark should have any effect on the decision for the simple fact that on standard English-language keyboards (UK and US), there is simply no key for thehacek symbol neither is it supported in Western European coding and as such very inpractical to write.edolen117:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A simple visit to the disambiguation page atSoca will expose the major flaw in your analysis of the Google results. Isonzo probably isn't used for anything else; soca clearly is, and likely for several things not even on that disambiguation page.
Ah yes I didn't notice that, but that wasn't my main argument anyway. However in any case I strongly oppose having this double name. There already was a discussion about this and the result was that the river was named Soča. However, a certain user again moved the river from Soča to Soča-Isonzo and here we are again.
And about those Google results.. Well, not that it should be the defining factor, but searching forsoca river andisonzo river revealed 294,000 versus 57,200 hits respectively.edolen112:35, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You searched for "soca" AND "river", etc., any article containing both words. Searching for the exact phrases "Soca river" gives 12,200 hits and "Isonzo river" 10,500 hits, clearly a toss-up as far as what can be ascertained from any Google search. So dual naming probably isn't a bad idea.Gene Nygaard13:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
To which I would just like to add that I have not yet seen an argument here (or one convincing enough for me to remember) against dual-naming. The first sentence of the article will be derisory if it doesn’t mention the two names, and should probably include the Friulian one too. Why should the URL be different? —Ian Spackman20:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My main argument against bilingual naming in general (also for towns, see Bozen-Bolzano and the current survey atTalk:Communes of South Tyrol) is that it's ambiguous and confusing. The title suggests that the name of the river is Soča-Isonzo, while it's actually the two names of the same river in two languages.Markussep15:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Besides (to answerIan Spackman's argument) no one is contesting the inclusion of Slovenian, Italian and any other relevant name in the first sentence of the article. By all means, let the article provide the reader with as much relevant information as possible. However, dual name of the article is IMO altogether a different issue. It is cumbersome, confusing and, asMarkussep has pointed out, misleading. Moreover, thousands of toponyms, in Europe in any case, have several names. I can only dread the prospect of someone embarking on renaming, say, Wikipedia entries for towns and vilages inSilesia with the aim of creating articles carrying dual Polish and German names. Not to mention that such a change would extend over hundreds of articles.RedZebra18:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I still do not see how it’s confusing or misleading. It would be better, perhaps, if we could call it the Soča/Isonzo so that it was instantly clear that this was not intended as a canonical name. But wikitext doesn’t allow that. As it is we have the next best thing, which is to put spaces on either side of the hyphen. But the article title is no more than a URL: and it really doesn’t matter what that is as long as there are redirects from everything a sane user is likely to be looking for. Is there currently any chance that any such reader is likely to be unable to find the article? The heart of the matter is the first sentence of the article, which seems ok. I could understand the apparent passion over this debate if it were on the (apparently resolved) issue of Derry vs. Londonderry. But this isn’t an area of such live politics: nobody’s seriously trying to redraw the boundaries between Italy and Slovenia; and nobody’s trying to divert the river—let alone (a somewhat more difficult project) trying to move its source. Why worry? Today I started a short article on a musical instrument which has two names. I chose one for the URL—the one I thought was probably the least uncommon. I could have chosen the other or done a combination of both. It didn’t seem to matter much. And I don’t think it matters much what URL is assigned to Wikipedia’s treatment of this river. (As toSoča - Isonzo River being cumbersome I would entirely agree: absolutely I would assert that the ‘R’ should be lower-case. Should be, yes. But is it worth a fight? No.) Executive version: Who cares? Wouldn’t it be better to extend the article rather than fussin over its URL? —Ian Spackman20:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't got the impression that this debate is any way heated nor do I believe that the reason why this article should be moved to its original name has anything to do with the fear of Italian irredentism that I gather you are referring to. Dual name is confusing because it deviates from Wikipedia practice. There are hundreds, if not thousands of toponyms which could well have "dual name", but they haven't. An article onBreslau is entitledWroclaw and notWroclaw_Breslau orBreslau_Wroclaw. Note, however, that there is an article about theBattle of Breslau. SimilarlyDanzig isGdańsk and notGdańsk_Danzig orDanzig_Gdańsk. And yet in both of these cases, unlike this one, you could easily compile a list of valid arguments for the above-listed dual names. Your question about the purpose of fussiness over the dual name brings me also to another point. In this case the original name of the article seems to have been changed to its current version on two occasions: the 6th of December 2005 by currently an inactive user and the 11th of August 2006 byGiovanni Giove. Both of these users changed the name without discussing the change first, let alone trying to reach a consensus regarding the proposed move. The first dormant user has in the meantime been accused of sock-puppetry[3] and the second user seems to demonstrate inexplicable fixation with changing the names of obscure articles. Not to mention thatGiovanni Giove's correspondence makes it very difficult for me to assume his good faith. In a nutshell, I don't see why we should preserve the novelty that he seems eager, for whatever reason, to introduce into Wikipedia. Listing all the different language versions of this river in the first sentence of the article is perfectly acceptable approach that has been used in thousands of other articles. I cannot see why this article should be an exception.RedZebra11:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It would be OK if Isonzo Soca were the name of the river, but it's two names of one river. It's like Brussel-Bruxelles, or Fribourg-Freiburg, or Gerona-Girona, or Koper-Capodistria (oh I see you just moved that one toKoper - Capodistria!).
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate.Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
I'm not happy with this move to "Soča-Isonzo River". Nobody calls this river Soča-Isonzo, it's Soča in Slovenian, and Isonzo in Italian. It probably has another name in Friulian, another important language of the region. I propose a move to either Isonzo or Soča. Take a look at how other language wikipedias and paper encyclopedias treat these cases, it's usually Isonzo, except (of course) in the Slovenian wikipedia. The name to use in other article should depend on the context: Gorizia lies on the Isonzo, Nova Gorica on the Soča. Related to this: let's get rid of all these double names in South Tyrol!Markussep11:38, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The Friulians call itLusinç. I agree that the name is inexistant, it is almost a political construction. The river streams for almost 100 km in Slovenia, for a bit more than 40km on Italian territory. I move it therefor to Soča, with a redirect from Isonzo.Besednjak13:41, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This is messy. I am particularly unhappy with the use of word 'Fiume' in the title, it's inappropriate for the title of an article to use a foreign language common noun that won't be found in an English language dictionary (and is not readily understood by English language speakers without knowledge of a romance language). I will move to Isonzo - Soča River.Nick Fraser15:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Some rivers have names with multiple spellings which vary with the different countries the rivers pass through. (An example would be theCunene River inAngola, which is known as theKunene River inNamibia. Occasionally, a river can have several genuinely distinct names. For example, theCuando River not only has the variant spellingKwando, it's also called theLinyanti and theChobe. The following rules are suggested for choosing a primary name for such a river:
If the river is particularly famous under one name, then choose that name.
If the section of the river that uses a particular name is much longer than other sections, then use that as the name.
If everything else is equal, then choose the name for the section of the river closest to the river's mouth, since generally that is where the river is widest.
I wouldn't know which name is most used in English, maybe Isonzo because of the WW1 battle. If Isonzo and Soča are both used in English, the second rule applies (Soča then). But well, anything is better than Soča-Isonzo.Markussep10:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Isonzo means a lot to Italians: we fought battle after battle here in WWI to help the allies fighting on the western front. A tremendous number of soldiers were sent to die here. With all due respect to Slovenia, I think Italian history was written here in blood. The name should be Isonzo-Soca. The anglo-saxon world seems to have no problem labeling sites in the world in English but a river that crosses two nations, that touches Caporetto Kobarid, Monte Nero, etc that means hundreds of thousand of dead Italians and Austorungarian soldiers, this river deserves two names, Isonzo-Soca river. What is the problem? Totally against looking for Isonzo and finding Soca only: the reasons are really anti-Italian at best.User :Giovanni De PEtris 28 of january 2010--129.176.151.10 (talk)22:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think your remark about anti-Italian reasons does justice to the discussion above. People who look for Isonzowill find this river article, in which the name "Isonzo" is prominently mentioned. And they will find articles about the battles of the Isonzo. It is common practice in Wikipedia not to use double names like you suggest. The choice between Isonzo and Soča was made based on objective criteria: English usage shows no clear preference for either name, and the scetion of the river in Slovene speaking area is longer than that in Italian speaking area. If you can establish that Isonzo is clearly more used in English than Soča, that would be a good basis for a new move discussion. You can start a move discussion by following the procedure atWP:RM.MarkussepTalk10:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As someone with a long history of rafting on and hiking around this river (although I am not Slovenian or Italian), I can confirm that it is almost always called Soča in English. I would dare say that you would rarely if ever find an English travel book using any other name but Soča for this river. The current name of the article should remain. PS: Calling the river "Soča" has absolutely nothing to do with any anti-Italian sentiments. Most English speakers are probably ignorant of the battles near this river. --Thorwald (talk)00:55, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My take might seem a bit controversial, but that's likely due to second-grading Slovene language. Current naming follows naming conventions of other rivers that flow over multiple countries (language regions). Hence, I oppose the renaming. Best regards,A09|(talk)18:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]