Talk:Gorno-Badakhshan

Requested move
The article was originally called "Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province". On January 9, 2008 User:Anoshirawan moved "Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province" (Russian name) to "Kohistan-Badakhshan Autonomous Province" (Persian name -- misspelled!) without any explanation or justification on the relevant talk page. I propose moving this page back to its original name "Gorno-Badakhsan Autonomous Province", because this is definitely the accepted name in English: see, e.g., numerous references in Encyclopedia Britannica, Student's Britannica, Encarta, or Merriam-Webster dictionary (additional references can be provided on request). Note that the Encarta reference comes up in response to Google search for "Kohistan-Badakhshan", but then the link actually leads to a page entitled "Gorno-Badakhshan". Also note that many of the sister versions of Wikipedia use the variant "Gorno", and only en:Wikipedia uses "Kohistan".

I would also like to stress that the sentence "During the Soviet period the GBAP was known as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (Горно-Бадахшанская автономная область) or GBAO" that has been edited into the main page "Kohistan-Badakhshan Autonomous Republic" is inaccurate. This province is known in Tajikistan as "Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO)" to this very day. See the official statistical yearbooks: "Tadzhikistan: 15 let gosudarstvennoi nezavisimosti" (Dushanbe, 2006) and "Sel'skoe khozyaistvo Respubliki Tadzhikistan" (Dushanbe, 2007), both published in bilingual editions. --Zlerman (talk) 05:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Support for now; this Britannica link (to a search page on Badakhshan) may be clearer. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Replaced with an explicit Britannica link and added link to Student's Britannica and Merriam-Webster.--Zlerman (talk) 01:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Support for retention and clarification given July 2012 Gorno-Badakhshan clashes that resulted in 40, or more, deaths. Could be further incidents/clashes.--RaqiwasSushi (talk) 11:35, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Table
What is the table currently in the "Districts and geography" section meant to show? 213.246.88.102 (talk) 07:38, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Flag source
Hallo,

What is the source for the flag presented here? I couldn't find such a flag elsewhere. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:08, 17 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It was added by a user whose only contributions were to add the flag here, to upload the flag on Commons, and to make less than a dozen edits in the Russian Wikipedia. If you have done research and could not find the flag, it is best to remove it here and nominate for deletion on Commons.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The new green flag and COA
Now a new COA is being added here, and it's not correct either. I am removing it from all languages. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:36, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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Official name
The official name of the administrative division is Kuhistani Badakhshan Autonomous Region, although Gorno-Badakhshan is more commonly used in English, it is not the official name. The page name should be the official name. For example, the wikipedia page for Swaziland is Eswatini which is the official name, even though the former is more commonly used. Please change article name. Kamran Tetra (talk) 18:35, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * No, the page name must be the most common name in English, see WP:COMMONNAME. Ymblanter (talk) 19:14, 21 May 2022 (UTC)
 * To add to this point, looking for exact matches of "Gorno-Badakhshan" and "Kuhistani Badakhshan" on Google returns 334,000 and 1,340 English language results, respectively. Also, there have been no uses of "Kuhistani Badakhshan" in academic publications from before 2019. Centre Left Right  ✉ 20:09, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, the article states that vulgar titles should be avoided, the word starting with g is homonym to an obscene word. Secondly, the 2 examples it has given for administrative areas are not unofficial. Deutschland recognizes Germany as an alternative name to itself. DPRK claims itself as Korea and it controls the north. In this case it is rather similar to Eswatini as it no longer recognizes the Soviet name. It deadopted its exonym like Eswatini. Also this article is about the administrative division, not the region. The region may be called by the historic Russian name, but such entity as Gorno-Badakhshan "Autonomous Region" (a governing body) does not exist. Kamran Tetra (talk) 20:36, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Your examples of Germany and Eswatini are false equivalences. The German government does not refer to itself as "Deutschland" in English, and Eswatini officially changed its English name from Swaziland to Eswatini. In cases where a polity's government does not adopt an official English name (often cases because it has not considered doing so), the most common name is used on Wikipedia.
 * A more similar example for your argument would be Transnistria, as "Transnistria" is an English exonym that is derived from a term which many of its inhabitants find offensive. However, the alternative names "Pridnestrovie", "Pridnestrovye", and "Pridnestrovia", are not widely used in English.
 * Other examples of English names derived from Soviet-era Russian spellings include "Kiev" (Ukraine) and "Kazakhstan". While the Ukrainian government has made a years-long effort to change the English spelling of Kiev (from Russian) to Kyiv (from Ukrainian), such an effort has not been made by the Kazakhstani government ("Kazakhstan" is from Russian, "Qazaqstan" is the Kazakh equivalent). The latter situation (of Kazakhstan) is the case with Gorno-Badakhshan. Whether you like it or not, "Gorno-Badakhshan" is the more commonly used term in English; maybe not in Tajik or even in general, but indisputably so in English. Centre Left Right  ✉ 22:09, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * You are right, there is no official translation. Thanks for the info. I will call a representative to make an official translation, because in English it doesn't have a nice meaning. Thanks! Kamran Tetra (talk) 22:41, 21 May 2022 (UTC)


 * If you are able to present an official document and/or communiqué (either existing or newly obtained) which can be verified, you may as well go further and propose a page move. However, the problem is still that "Kuhistani Badakhshan Autonomous Region" is not commonly used in English, even in recent publications. See for example, these press releases / statements made three days ago by the United Nations, the U.S. government, and Human Rights Watch. These are three well-known international organisations (U.S. imperialism counts) which still use "Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region" in their communiqués, while "Kuhistani" is not used anywhere.


 * I doubt the translation "Kuhistani" is standard in English either, especially since it is not sourced. Looking up "Kuhistani Badakhshan" or "Kuhistani Badakhshan Autonomous Region" on Google does not return any reliable sources, just mirrors of Wikipedia and personal blogs. Furthermore, if you go to the disambiguation page Kohistan (Kuhistan is a redirect to it and Kuhistani does not exist), which has not been edited in over four years, someone added the translation "Kohistan-i Badakshan". Thus, it is clear to me that nobody in an official capacity (neither from the Tajik government, another national/international body, nor academics) has made a serious attempt to change the English name of Gorno-Badakhshan. Centre Left Right  ✉ 03:39, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
 * And, to be clear, even if the official translation has been provided, we were still looking for the COMMONNAME, since the Tajik government is not in a position to decide on the rules of the English language. The translation may add more weight to one of the candidate English names, but it will be the only argument to move the article. For perspective, Ukraine has a law mandating English names of their localities in English, but it still took about a decade to rename Kiev] to [[Kyiv, and Odessa is still not renamed, despite active attempts of the government, state-sponsored media campaigns, and extensive canvassing. Ymblanter (talk) 06:31, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

You are both correct. It certainly will take a wile until it enters English even after the official translation. To be fair Kuhistani Badakhshan is not really correct in grammar, it's like you say Badakhshan mountainous. You can use it in poetry, but the verb will be implied. For example if the tone is imperative, it will mean Badakhshan (become) mountainous wich does not make sense in this case. Kuhistan-i (with dash) Badakhshan means mountains of Badakhshan, (in Iran's accent it is written with -e). The best way to say it is Badakhshan-i Kuhistani, Mountainous Badakhshan. The spelling of Kuhistan in English is not very clear because the transliteration of middle i depends on the Persian accent (some use e as in enigma) and in English the u sound as in room has many different ways to write. Also, Viloyat means province, it does not mean region in any way, I don't know why region is written. Kamran Tetra (talk) 16:26, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 21 September 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. Per WP:COMMONNAME & WP:CONCISE (closed by non-admin page mover) &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 11:26, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region → Gorno-Badakhshan – Per WP:COMMONNAME, as "Gorno-Badakhshan" is the common name in English, derived from Russian. "Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region" is not the official name of the region in English, and so English media variously use the suffixes "Autonomous Region", "Autonomous Province", "Autonomous Oblast", "Region" or just Gorno-Badakhshan. The sources provided in an earlier move discussion in 2008 are either dead or now use the names "Gorno-Badakhshan" or "Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region". "Autonomous region" is in lowercase because it is a reference to the type of subnational division Gorno-Badakhshan is, and not a part of the region's name (officially, or commonly in English). Yue 🌙 05:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:54, 28 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Another option is to use the official English translation of the region's name provided by the Government of Tajikistan, "Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region". However, it is worth noting that, despite being official for around 15 years, this name has not seen much use in English language scholarly sources or media. Yue 🌙 05:28, 21 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Note: WikiProject Tajikistan has been notified of this discussion. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 05:53, 28 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment I support moving the title to "Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region". 2001:8003:9007:8201:472:4992:F1C:C5BD (talk) 04:55, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support original proposal. Moving it to the more WP:CONCISE title seems sensible in this context, and I wouldn't support "Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region" since it's not something found in English sources. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 10:12, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Extension of the existing article
Dear all,

I plan on extending the existing articles in two ways:


 * 1) Expanding the history section, especially around the pre-imperial time, the time of the Soviet Union (very important, because the Pamir was perceived as frontier region => much material and ideological investment) and the Civil war (right now the sources are too limited and the existing description is confusing)
 * 2) Adding a new section on the contemporary conflict in Gorno Badakhshan - the article right now tends to represent only a government perspective, whereas the UN and several human rights actors have highlighted the massive repressions in the last years. I think this is important to cover. (There are also academic sources on it)

If you have any comments on this please let me know so I can incorporate your feedback right away:) CatsWithSocks (talk) 09:42, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help. Yue 🌙 22:25, 25 April 2023 (UTC)