Talk:Baie des Chaleurs

Wikipedia's policy on place names is to use the name which is most used by serious sources: Wikipedia's naming conventions or Wikibooks naming policy. In this case let's compare the three possible names for the bay as used by Canada-wide media. The following results are obtained on english language Google:

I will of course take care of any necessary relinking.--Tallard 09:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't wish to get drawn into a debate over the merits of the French name versus the English name, however the official authority on such matters in this nation rests with the Geographic Names Board of Canada, which lists it in English as "Chaleur Bay" for both New Brunswick and Quebec and in French as "Baie des Chaleurs" for both provinces .  The GNBC also notes that the bay is a "Pan-Canadian Feature" which requires representation in both official languages on all federal cartographic products.Plasma east (talk) 04:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not about "merits" or "official government" opinion/law, it's about Wikipedia Naming Conventions, no politics here at all. Names must reflect majority usage. A majority of Canadians use Baie des Chaleurs, including the government's English language media. There is no argument here, the usage facts speak for themselves. Please read the Wikipedia policies as referenced above.Tallard (talk) 12:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Tallard, I think you may have been a bit quick to change the title and unnecessarily sharp with Plasma East. When I search the CBC English website, and plug in 'Chaleur Bay' I come up with 308 references; in contrast I get 75 for 'Baie des Chaleurs'.


 * "Globe and Mail" Baie des Chaleurs: 478.  "Globe and Mail" Chaleur Bay: 289.  "Globe and Mail" Bay of Chaleur: 194.


 * Those aren't huge discrepancies, by any means. The website for the local town of Dalhousie, NB also refers to the geographical feature as Bay of Chaleur, and presumably the local anglophones know what they call the body of water next to their town.  The New Brunswick government website gives me 1250 hits for Bay of Chaleur and 571 for Baie des Chaleurs, and presumably the government of New Brunswick would be considered a fairly reputable source (although I wouldn't base a decision on that alone).  The Dalhousie Port Authority adds a new twist by calling it "Bay Chaleur" on their English-language website --perhaps a compromise partway between the English and French?  Wikipedia naming policy on English Wikipedia does allow for the use of non-English names, but there is a clear direction to use English names:  "Use the most commonly used English version of the name of the subject as the title of the article" unless this is a case for an exception.  Your numbers are not entirely convincing.  They actually indicate fairly divided usage to me in line with the followihg from Wikipedia policy:


 * "Google hits are an unreliable test, but can suggest that no single term is predominant in English. If several competing versions of a name have roughly equal numbers (say 1803 for one variant and 1030 for another), there may well be divided usage. When in doubt, search results should also be evaluated with more weighting given to verifiable reliable sources than to less reliable sources (such as comments in forums, mailing lists and the like). Do consult reliable works of general reference in English." Where usage is divided, Wikipedia policy is the following:


 * "When there is evenly divided usage and other guidelines do not apply, leave the article name at the latest stable version. If it is unclear whether an article's name has been stable, defer to the name used by the first major contributor after the article ceased to be a stub."


 * Your change to a non-English name on English Wikipedia should have only been done in more compelling circumstances. The rush to change the article to a French name is suggestive of politics at play.  It would be good to hear from anglophones who live in that part of New Brunswick to see what they say.  As for myself, personally, I would say 'Baie des Chaleurs', because for whatever reason that's how I encountered it and I have an excellent home atlas that refers to it by that name.  But my personal preference and my atlas don't determine what the name of the article should be. Corlyon (talk) 05:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Further to the above, both the online Canadian Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica refer to the feature as Chaleur Bay. The Bathurst NB website refers to 'Bay of Chaleur'.  Faced with Google results that indicate divided usage in the media, but with official federal government designation as Chaleur Bay in English, NB Government usage indicating greater use of Bay of Chaleur, local English usage suggesting Chaleur Bay (or Bay Chaleur), and reliable works of general reference referring to Chaleur Bay, I think the case for the English (or more correctly anglicized) name on English Wikipedia is stronger in this case at this time.  The article should note in the introduction, however, that although the official name may be 'Chaleur Bay',  'Baie des Chaleurs' is often used by English-speakers, which seems to reflect the actual current divided usage.  Regards. Corlyon (talk) 15:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I note that the article title has been retitled again the 'Baie des Chaleurs'. I have not been able to duplicate the results that Tallard has inserted in the table being used above. When I input search terms into Google (which I acknowledge is not the definitive test in any event) I consistently come up with higher hits for the terms 'Chaleur Bay' or 'Bay of Chaleur' and results that are very different from Tallard's i ran my hits on April 17, 200):

The 'Bay of Chaleur' results in particular are quite different and I have tried this a couple of times with the same result of 19,300 for CBC. When I look at results involving a local anglophone newspaper, the Miramichi Leader, the results are 87 for Baie des Chaleurs; 147 for Chaleur Bay and 607 for Bay of Chaleur, consistent with the pattern established by the other credible media sources. Tallard could you please doublecheck your search results? I can't seem to reproduce them. Corlyon (talk) 20:25, 17 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't entirely trust the '19,300' hits fo CBC and Bay of Chaleur above, so I redid the searches with "quotes" around all terms and added an additional anglicized term 'Bay Chaleur' which seemed to be a common variant on the web. My updated search was April 25.


 * {| class="wikitable"

! Search terms cross-section        !! Baie des chaleurs !! Chaleur Bay !! Bay of Chaleur !! Bay Chaleur
 * CBC                                                           || 1790              ||    571            ||  465                   ||  1776
 * "Canadian broadcasting corporation" ||   333               ||      227         ||   1,290             ||  416
 * CTV                                                           ||    453                ||   744           ||   1,810             ||  375
 * "Canadian press"                                     ||    106              ||      315        ||         197                 ||  323
 * "Globe and Mail"                                       ||    323             ||        85       ||     337                 ||  499
 * Total                                                            || 3,005            ||    1,942    ||   4.099       ||  3,389
 * "Canadian press"                                     ||    106              ||      315        ||         197                 ||  323
 * "Globe and Mail"                                       ||    323             ||        85       ||     337                 ||  499
 * Total                                                            || 3,005            ||    1,942    ||   4.099       ||  3,389
 * "Globe and Mail"                                       ||    323             ||        85       ||     337                 ||  499
 * Total                                                            || 3,005            ||    1,942    ||   4.099       ||  3,389
 * Total                                                            || 3,005            ||    1,942    ||   4.099       ||  3,389


 * }


 * Usage in English seems to be clearly divided between 4 variants with encyclopedic and governmental sources seeming to favour 'Chaleur Bay', while 'Bay of Chaleur' seems somewhat more common in the mainstream media. Given English Wikipedia's policy of preferring English names for articles and given the official standard name in English is 'Chaleur Bay'.:  "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). This makes it easy to find, and easy to compare information with other sources." []   I think overall 'Chaleur Bay' is the most appropriate title at this time. Corlyon (talk) 16:09, 25 April 2010 (UTC)