Talk:List of biblical place names in North America

Untitled
Salem ? Why is Salem a biblical place name in several other states and not in Virginia ?

And Damascus Virginia is certainly a biblical place name also. More so than Athens.Eregli bob (talk) 16:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup needed
This article needs some cleanup. Some of the links to "biblical places" don't even exist (ex. Beulah), and just lead to a disambiguation page. Richard Apple (talk) 13:24, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

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unsourced claim since 2011 about West, and Book of Mormon
"While most of them are in the eastern United States, very few are in the west..." appeared in the 2011 creation of this list-article. I don't believe the claim, offhand, and there is no source.

One big category of omissions is all the place names in Utah, Idaho, neighborhing states where there are places with names from the Book of Mormon, which is a bible. The Mormon church recognizes Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon; it is inappropriate/argumentative/whatever to omit the Book of Mormon ones here. For example I am pretty sure that the following are from Book of Mormon: Nephi, Deseret, Moroni, Lehi. From Manti, Utah article: "Brigham Young named the new community Manti, after a city mentioned in the Book of Mormon."

Also Old and New testament names in Utah are omitted from this list-article. Glancing at a map of Utah, i see Jericho, Utah, South Jordan, Utah, Ophir, Utah, Zion Canyon, Zion National Park not mentioned in this list-article. While i see that places named Jericho, Ophir, Zion in other states are listed.

Also I think Orem, Enoch, St. George might be either from book of Mormon or from Old Testament. Hmm, Orem's article suggests not, but says it was originally named Sharon.

It appears to me that the claim is ignorant; the author might have just been familiar with places in the eastern U.S.  And it appears this list-article is very incomplete. Not sure if it is worth fixing or if it should be deleted altogether, perhaps. --Doncram (talk) 16:49, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've been cleanup up this article for over a year, and I also have a few issues:
 * Many of the places listed were not named after the Bible. For example, the author may list all places named "Eden", without realizing that one of the Edens may have been named after some guy name Fred Eden.
 * North America includes Canada and Mexico, but the article is mostly US place names.
 * Why the need for two different sections? The "North America List" seems to duplicate the "United States extended list".  Magnolia677 (talk) 17:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)


 * Addressing one issue, I have gone ahead and started List of Mormon place names as a separate list-article. By the way it is turning out that Enoch and St. George are indeed Mormon names. --Doncram (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

issues and ways forward
Hi User:Magnolia677, thank you for doing the cleanup you have done. Actually I do think this a valid topic for a list-article, or as part of a series of them, but I think we agree this is done poorly so far. In Category:Biblical places, there is List of biblical places, created 30 September 2005‎ by Pcb21, and also List of minor biblical places, on 14 February 2011‎ by User:Moswento, in the same year (2011) this list-article was created by another editor. I don't see any other related list-articles. Back then, the technology of sortable lists was new or non-existent, by the way. Can we maybe discuss what could/should be done from a bigger level, about what should be done from a top-down approach say, about what Wikipedia should cover?

There are other devout peoples who named lots of new places after old places covered in their religious works. I happen to be struck by the Mormons, my having some familiarity in part from working on National Register of Historic Places listings in Utah a lot over the last year or so. I also happen to have worked on some worldwide big list-systems, e.g. many indexed from Template:Lists of religious worship places, covering notable places of worship in many religions, although completely omitting some others so far. Which subsumes Template:Lists of religious worship places in the United States.

Maybe discuss in terms of a few subtopics? --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

list-article titles
"List of biblical place names in North America" isn't great, IMHO. "Places named for Old Testament places"? There is an art to naming list-articles; there are bad examples where the title doesn't properly emphasize the focus. Maybe use term Namesake or phrase "named for" somehow. Check out titles used for other types of "named for" lists. --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

organization/structure
I kinda dislike the current table. I kinda like the non-table sections for each Biblical placename, but that is obviously not sortable by geography, i.e. where the namesake places are located, by country or state/province. Maybe organization by geography can be dropped within the list-article, just handled at the list-article definition level, by "List of biblical place names in Canada" vs. "List of biblical place names in United States", with "List of biblical place names in Texas" split out only if there are too many, etc.? --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

sourcing about names
The Fred Eden problem. Inline source for each assertion of "named for" is needed. How handle the multiple situations where one big thing like a river or mountain or city is first named for a Biblical place, and then other places nearby (subplaces?) might be named for the river or mountain or city, so only indirectly named for the Biblical place? Maybe only if a source states the subplace is named specifically for the original Biblical place. --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

scope of geographic coverage
It's not proper to be limited to just the U.S. or North America. Probably there are scattered places in Antarctica and Oceania and Korea and wherever, that are named for biblical places. At least start a world-wide list-article to accumulate more examples, and allow for later split by geography perhaps if more sections get too big. --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

what about the originals
What about the original Biblical places, those are places too. Some are known, continue to today. Some are covered in Old or New testaments, while their actual locations are unknown. Maybe List of minor Biblical places serves, but I think there must be room for improvement. Anything covered in a list of new places should be covered in a corresponding list of original places, anyhow, with a link from the new places of a given name to the corresponding spot in the original places list (on its own, or in addition to a link to an article about the original place alone). --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

scope of religious texts covered, and categories
About the Mormon-named places, probably cover in a separate List of Mormon place names or such. It's not proper for the encyclopedia to cover just places of one religion, and I think a top-down approach is needed, else we are too obviously biased, United States-centric, whatever. There must be new places named for historic places in the Quran, in the Hebrew Bible, in others among Category:Religious texts. With some overlaps of course, because Jerusalem and other places are holy in more than one religion. The Islamic name for some places might be different than the Christian name though, and it may be clear Make a point to start a list for each of several really big religions, with at least a few examples to start in each one. List of religious populations suggests important religions. There is Category:Wikipedia categories named after religious texts. Probably there are some categories of "places named for"; there should be a correspondence between coverage in a list-article vs. category of those places. Maybe a start could be made for each of several big religions, then post over to WikiProject India, etc., towards involving others more knowledgeable in different areas/religions. --Doncram (talk) 22:14, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm missing Gilead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead

Valleyofdawn (talk) 19:48, 24 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Gilead, Connecticut, a village in the town of Hebron
 * Gilead, Illinois, an unincorporated community
 * Gilead, Indiana, an unincorporated community
 * Gilead, Iowa, an unincorporated community
 * Gilead, Maine, a town
 * Former Gilead Railroad Station, Maine, on the National Register of Historic Places
 * Gilead Township, Michigan
 * Gilead, Missouri, an unincorporated community
 * Gilead, Nebraska, a village
 * Lake Gilead, New York, a reservoir
 * Gilead Township, Morrow County, Ohio