Talk:Arakawa River (Kantō)

Article Title
Isn't Arakawa River redundant? Kawa means River, so the title is Ara River River. - Parsa (talk) 01:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is technically redundant, but it is invariably referred to as the "Arakawa River" on English-language maps, and in English-language sources, so this is the best title. --DAJF (talk) 01:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Yamanashi
This article should be arakawa river (tokyo), there is another arakawa river in yamanashi and shizuoka. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.207.66.217 (talk) 11:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually there are many other Arakawa Rivers around the country, but even if/when they have Wikipedia articles written about them, the Arakawa River flowing through Tokyo is by far the most well-known, and hence the primary topic, so there is unlikely to be a problem even in the future. --DAJF (talk) 13:59, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Title again
The Japan Water Agency refers to it as the Ara River. A search of google scholar suggests that at least in recent years, Ara River appears just as often as Arakawa river. Is the current title correct? OsFish (talk) 08:45, 6 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Support renaming - Theoboyd (talk) 16:43, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Arakawa River. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20131227155451/http://www.potomacriver.org/2012/component/content/article/39-facts-faqs/facts-faqs/92-arakawa to http://www.potomacriver.org/2012/component/content/article/39-facts-faqs/facts-faqs/92-arakawa

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Ara River or Arakawa River ?
The title of this article is "Ara River", but the article opens with "The Arakawa River..." Should the article open "The Ara River..."?

For your information, it is called "Arakawa River" by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Japan. --WwLMvm (talk) 00:39, 22 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Well spotted! I've edited the lede to reflect the title (it was moved recently from Arakawa River at my suggestion) and included an "also known as". It's a slightly mixed bag. The Japan Water Agency calls it the Ara River, and you can find both on the Ministry website, as well as in scholarly articles. There's a similar situation with the Yodo River/Yodogawa River and Toyo River/Toyogawa River. There's a redirect from Arakawa River, so anyone looking for it should find it here. OsFish (talk) 07:43, 23 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Actually, I didn't think The map of The Japan Water Agency was made in Japanese, because it was written in English.
 * By the way, almost all Japanese call this river "Arakawa River" when they speak English, but why is it called "Ara River" in the English wedsite made by Japanese? --WwLMvm (talk) 11:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know why it happened. (A lot of people used to say Fujiyama or even Mt Fujiyama.) I don't think there's data on what Japanese say when they speak English, but for Japanese who write in English in scholarly works, it seems to be an even mix between Ara and Arakawa. Curiously, this gallery of ukiyo-e uses both for the same picture! If you look at Google Ngrams (which looks at mentions in books) Arakawa River suddenly became popular in 1960, but in the 2000s, Ara River became much more common. OsFish (talk) 07:12, 25 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I see. For your information, this article from Japan River Association says they think "Arawaka River" is better than "Ara River" because of rhythm and rhyme. In additon, Geospatial Information Authority of Japan decided on thier policy of translating of names of places in Japan on January 6, 2016. According to this article, it is not easy for Japanese to think "Ara River" is Arakawa.
 * However, the page we edit is for English, not for only Japanese, so I think it is good to leave the title "Ara River." --WwLMvm (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's quite important. I found the report here. It looks like they have decided officially to call it the Arakawa river (I'm assuming this meeting is a reflection of policy). It seems to be based partly on whether Japanese would recognise what the English name referred to, which seems reasonable. It's a funny business. They have, for example, 那珂川 as Naka River but 中川 as Nakagawa River. It kind of makes sense, I suppose. If I have time, I'll look to see if there's place to get policy clarification on this. We may have to move it back. Thanks for finding that! OsFish (talk) 08:55, 27 May 2016 (UTC)