Talk:Oikonyms in Western and South Asia

Article scope
All of the article's current content (barring the recent addition of some spelling variants for qila) is about placenames in South Asia. I believe it should be renamed to Oikonyms in South Asia to reflect the current scope, but also because it won't be sensible to attempt to expand it to cover both regions. Yes, they share a significant Perso-Arabic layer in the vocabulary, but there are few commonalities beyond that, and I don't think it will make good encyclopedic sense to treat them together (the fact that no article exists at Western and South Asia is a good indication here). – Uanfala (talk) 13:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I wrote a long reply, but the browser died on on me, so here is the beginning and the conclusion: Uanfala incorrectly judged the scope of the article and the title by the creator was not a result of some Deep Thought, because IMO they just wanted a glossary-like redirect target for various terms which may cause curiosity, but do not warrant separate pages. My judgement is that the correct title would be List of oikonym affixes in Asia. Rationale:
 * it is basically a list
 * currently it covers South, Western, and Central Asia (despite title :-). It is easy to expand it with North Asian Slavic suffixes like -grad, -gorod, and for East Asia there is nothing to say, because for their languages the concept of suffix is meaningless. Lembit Staan (talk) 17:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Expand to cover the whole of Asia? But then the article will have even less coherence. The only viable expansion of scope I see here is to the world level: there's nothing that the various cultural zone of Asia will have in common that they won't also share with the rest of the world. – Uanfala (talk) 18:19, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * This is a list with a clearly defined scope. A list doesn't have to have any coherence beyond its definition. However I don't mind having List of oikonym affixes; it will still be of manageable size. Lembit Staan (talk) 18:24, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 12 May 2021

 * 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: No consensus to move after relist. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  06:52, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Oikonyms in Western and South Asia → List of oikonym affixes – See the discussion above: Rename and expand its geographic scope, but narrow down the linguistic scope: from "oikonyms" to "oikonym affixes". A broader article about oikonyms would be much larger, is you take a look at some refs cited. Lembit Staan (talk) 16:00, 12 May 2021 (UTC) Lembit Staan (talk) 16:00, 12 May 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. ~ Aseleste  (t, e &#124; c, l) 13:24, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
 * To re-iterate the opinion I expressed above: the encyclopepic topic here is Oikonyms in South Asia: a well-defined topic that matches the current scope of the article. It may alternative be retitled as a list, but then will need to immediately be moved back as soon as more content is added. I don't see expansion of scope to the world level as workable (too broad a topic, will need a totally new article anyway). – Uanfala (talk) 16:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No it does not match the current scope (as I explained above as well). Right now we see a list of affixes which are applicable well outside South Asia; heck, half of them even didn't originate there. You are welcome to write Oikonyms in South Asia article. It is an interesting subject indeed.  Lembit Staan (talk) 17:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The article, as written is about placenames in South Asia. Even the Perso-Arabic names are sourced to a text dealing with their use in Pakistan. As far as I can see, it's only your recent addition of 3 new entries to the list that shifts the focus. – Uanfala (talk) 18:01, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * False. Please take a look at the article title and article lede, starting from the very first version by Uncle G. Lembit Staan (talk) 23:49, 12 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, the article at creation had its present title, ant its lede had a single mention of West Asia – that has never been challenged. However – as clear from the revision you're linking to – all of its sourcing and all of its content is about South Asia. – Uanfala (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Wrong. Half of its content is applicable to other parts of Asia as well. Are you saying that, e.g., Khorramabad is in South Asia? Or are you saysin that -stan in afghanistan is not the same as -stan in pakistan? Lembit Staan (talk) 17:11, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to repeat what I wrote above, but just add a point: your apparent dissatisfaction will probably be allayed by the creation of Perso-Arabic oikonyms, which will cover the whole area where such a lexical stratum is found: not just Western Asia and the Indian subcontinent, but also Cental Asia, North Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Caucasus and the Balkans. – Uanfala (talk) 17:24, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was thinking about "Perso-arabic", but then I decided there is no need in a very small article, which can be just a section into the global list, which will be not that large. And your mentioning of North Africa and Caucasus speaks more in favor of the global list. Lembit Staan (talk) 17:30, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose proposal as the scope would be unreasonably broad, but instead  support move to Oikonyms in South Asia per above discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Please explain why it will be unreasonably broad. Lembit Staan (talk) 17:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * You would like me to explain why a single list can't reasonably cover placename affixes used by the thousands of cultures in the world? – Uanfala (talk) 17:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I see you point. But I don't think we have thousands of oikonym affixes all over the world. I would say about a hundred or two. Lembit Staan (talk) 18:25, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Tell me what: are you going to expand the article Oikonyms in South Asia in the next day or two, if I withdraw my proposal in favor of yours? If yes, then I will start a draft of the global list and see how it will go. It seems that nobody else, including the creator have any interest in this page. Lembit Staan (talk) 18:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't have plans to expand this article in the near future. A hundred or two oikonym affixes is probably the number that the average educated westerner is likely to have encountered in their lifetime, so a curated list of the most well-known such items (including -pur or -abad, but excluding for example majra or ganj) is in principle possible. Still, I don't think it will be workable, as most such global lists tend to be heavily skewed towards a certain region, or to turn into coatracks for passers-by's favourite obscure areas (the article Oikonym itself is a typical example here). If you would like to create such a list somewhere, I'm not going to stop you. – Uanfala (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Proposed split
I think this article's scope is too broad. It currently lumps together two distinct macro-regions that each have their own naming traditions. It's true that there has been a significant Iranian influence on Indian place names, so it's not like this grouping is entirely arbitrary, but they're still separate subjects (cultural and linguistic regions). So I propose splitting this one into two articles: This way, each subject can get its own dedicated article, without crowding names from Kerala in with names from Kurdistan. There would be some overlap between the two subjects, but I think that's fine. Note that Toponymy of Iran currently redirects to Iran (word), so that would need to be changed.
 * Toponymy of Iran
 * Toponymy of the Indian subcontinent

3 kids in a trenchcoat (talk) 05:29, 15 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Based on your proposal, it would be more appropriate to create separate pages titled "Toponymy of Iran" and "Toponymy of India". Importantly, it should be "Toponymy of India" as opposed to "Toponymy of the Indian subcontinent".
 * This approach would allow for a more focused and comprehensive exploration of the unique naming practices and cultural influences within each region.
 * Additionally, it would avoid redundancy and provide a more streamlined user experience.
 * Overall, I believe this is a positive step towards improving the organization and accessibility of our content. Seanmodj 20:34, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I think tis leaves out Toponyms of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Would not it be too cumbersome to prepare such pages countrywise at first step? Pakistani and Bangladeshi toponomys form a midway between Indo Aryan/Dravidian/Austroasiatic and Iranian/Semitic. I think keeping the Article as-is would do. And Why don't we include almost seamless extension of some Arabian and Malay place names there as well? And who would separate the examples countrywise off this page? 103.94.134.112 (talk) 16:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Seanmodj the reason why I specified "of the Indian subcontinent" is to make clear that the article's scope includes other countries, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, in addition to the one called India. There's a lot of overlap in naming practices between these countries (especially since some cultural/linguistic regions like Bengal and Punjab are split between multiple countries), so I think it makes the most sense to group them into one article that can discuss the general patterns and use examples from multiple countries. -- 3 kids in a trenchcoat (talk) 01:08, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Toponymy is part of linguistics. And the article must be split along the lines already in the article:
 * Indo-Aryan and Dravidian
 * Arabic must be merged into Glossary of Arabic toponyms, if anything left for merging
 * make Glossary of Persian toponyms for Toponymy of Iran, or even better, if someone can write something similar Place names of Palestine
 * Not to say that contrary the article title, the lede says "Oikonyms in Western, Central, South, and Southeast Asia...". - Altenmann >talk 21:39, 10 January 2024 (UTC)