Talk:Lys (river)

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What's the more common English name?
disagrees. Google Ngram favors Lys. That's a disambiguation page, so our options are:
 * 21:03, 3 October 2008‎ moved Lys River to Leie River over redirect: is more common in English
 * Lys (river)
 * Lys River (American form)
 * River Lys (British form)
 * Lys (tributary of the Scheldt) (Scheldt, is what the French Wikipedia titles this, translated to English)
 * given Lys (Dora Baltea) is another river, then Lys (river) is a WP:PDAB, which should be avoided

Given that the river is in Europe, maybe we lean towards the British form if we don't use the parenthetical (river). The spike in usage circa 1920 is due to its significance in World War I, or something else? wbm1058 (talk) 14:23, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Also note that commons:Category:Leie soft-redirects to commons:Category:Lys. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:51, 28 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi all, really looking forward to feedback from Flemish or Dutch friends/editors/compilers, without which this cannot be resolved. It seems that River Lys with no brackets is distinctive enough, compared to Lys (Dora Baltea). It's logical to have to qualify the smaller one, while qualifying the international river would be clumsy, e.g. River Lys (France and Belgium) David-waterways (talk) 09:57, 30 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It should be Lys (river). There is no reason to prefer British or American spelling, as the river is not in an English-speaking country so WP:TIES does not apply here.  The term Lys (river) has the additional benefit that it can be easily shortened using the pipe trick so that when you want to refer to "the Lys" for the umpteenth time in an article without spelling it out as "Lys River" or "River Lys" every time, you can do so without piping, which gives a better accounting of in-links.


 * I want to disagree in the strongest possible terms with the statement about a perceived need for feedback from Flemish or Dutch friends/editors/compilers, without which this cannot be resolved. Feedback from editors of any background is always welcome, but this is English Wikipedia, and we rely here on the common name as determined by authors writing in English in reliable sources.  There is no special advice needed from Flemish or Dutch speakers, and in fact any comments about usage in Dutch or French sources is 100% irrelevant in determining the outcome of this discussion.  Naturally, comments by Dutch or French speakers, or Zulu speakers, about how these terms are used in English is most welcome.


 * As far as the ngram, anything before about 1985 is pretty worthless for determining this, and in addition, the most common form in English was omitted from you graph. This is a better indicator of usage.


 * WP:PDAB is a failed guideline, now an essay. But in any case it doesn't apply, because the French/Belgian river is clearly the primary topic for this disambiguation, and the glacier runoff creek that nobody ever heard of is already disambiguated differently. There is already a hatnote concerning the tributary of the Dora Baltea, or I would have recommended we add it. Cordially, Mathglot (talk) 01:07, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Created a RM below, to find a consensus for renaming...Jokulhlaup (talk) 07:39, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Partially disambiguated page names would seem to apply here. It is all about whether there can be a "primary topic" for a disambiguation. If the river is the primary topic for Lys, then the river article would be at Lys and the disambiguation would be at Lys (disambiguation). But, you're right, there was no lasting consensus to outlaw PDABs. We allow certain high profile exceptions, and if the RM below passes, then Lys (river) could be added to the list at Partially disambiguated page names. Right now, the list only shows pop-culture items such as albums and songs. Beware that there is a significant segment of editors who generally dislike partially disambiguated titles, and that such titles tend to be a target of move requests. But at the moment, there are no blue-link fully disambiguated parenthetical redirects to this river.

Lys River (natural disambiguation) was the title for this from the April 2004 article creation until the October 2008 bold move to the current title Leie. – wbm1058 (talk) 19:59, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

But even Lys River is a partial disambiguation. I suppose Lys (Scheldt) would be the logical title for full disambiguation, that's shorthand for tributary of the Scheldt. wbm1058 (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 3 August 2017

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 14:16, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Leie → Lys (river) – as per discussion in previous section Jokulhlaup (talk) 07:37, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Ngrams shown above make a strong case. No such user (talk) 13:56, 3 August 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move reasoning
Jokulhlaup, No such user, Wbm1058, Mathglot: I'm not necessarily against it (both are used depending on the country), but the only source used was the Ngram information spike in the 20's. This was directly related to the Battle of the Lys in WW1 and probably shouldn't be the deciding factor in what it's called now, a century later. It would be like using early 20th century Ngrams—or even modern ones—in an Istanbul/Constantinople discussion. Even in the 21st century, "Lys" often appears in connection to the battles in WW1 and WW2. The exact wording "Battle of the Lys" alone gives 185.000 results and "world war Lys" (which includes sources like this) gives 543.000. Sadly, Google itself is bad with minuses and calculating results so the exact numbers remain vague. "Lys river" gives 1.080.000 results while "Lys river -battle" gives 712.000, but Leie river gives 392.000 hits while "Leie river -battle" gives 1.970.000. Trends shows that even without filtering out the battle references, the results are not as bad as the ngram shows. Note: I had a lot of goo.gl shortened urls to show the Google results but those are on a blacklist for whatever reason. Prinsgezinde (talk) 09:50, 27 November 2017 (UTC)


 * You've misread the data I'm afraid, or perhaps missed the link entirely? It's nothing to do with a spike in the 20s, and to that extent I agree with you, that old data is worthless on this question now, but the ngram showing recent data shows overwhelming support for this move. Also, battle names can be shortened forms or otherwise vary from location names, so those searches have no relevance here, though they might be decisive in determining the name of an article about those battles. Another thing to know about "minuses" in searching, is that they exclude the appearance of that word anywhere on the web page, and not necessarily in the same expression as the other search terms. Mathglot (talk) 10:15, 27 November 2017 (UTC)