User:Iammissnobody/sandbox/draft1

Mythical figure tmp
Introductory Summary: Who? When lived? Where origin? Why important? Are their existence debated?


 * Who the figure is (name + titles).
 * What actions or qualities they are famous for.


 * Acknowledge the uncertainty around their existence.
 * BOD and DOD (if known).
 * cultural/geographical origins and association with specific stories.
 * may or may not need infobox. check dulu.

Core Myths & Legends
the most prominent stories associated with the figure. the most influential, considered as canon.

maybe put link (see also) to "evolution of the myth" if they feel want to skip to that part, mention detailed analysis

Historical Accounts
Discuss what little verifiable information exists (archaeological evidence, mentions in other historical records, etc.).REMEMBER LIMITATION. THIS ESPECIALLY NEED CITATIONS A LOT

Possible origins

 * can the myth be traced to a particular time period or author?
 * Why stories about them might have emerged, even if the person themself is unclear.
 * Consider potential purposes: explaining historical events, cultural values, propaganda, etc.
 * (to strengthen/backup claims) Theories on how it may have begun (e.g., oral tradition, explaining natural phenomena, propaganda).

Cultural significance

 * What values or ideas does the figure embody for the culture it comes from?
 * explore how the figure and their stories are understood and used within the culture they originated from, regardless of historical accuracy.
 * reasons why the figure/their stories have staying power.

Evolution of the myth and modern interpretations

 * How the figure's portrayal has changed across time and how it continues to be interpreted in modern scholarship and popular culture.
 * variations of texts put here, changing in translation, plot points, char portrayals, themes, symbolism, etc. (check if passing down knowledge by what medium e.g: arab to persian to malay in jawi script)
 * variations can be early oral/written/modern translation (X defeat naga, and these variations comes from oral transmission and later interpretation(s).
 * source criticism comparing version. reliable or not? got citation or not?

Historiography
got lots of scholarly work analysing the work? put it in. got some some? no need. can skip to. ..

"Le Fin"

Proposal for Wikipedia Page Name Change
Current title: Malacca

Proposed title: Melaka

Previous discussions result: Declined (2 December 2012)

Previous discussion participants:(I hope this is okay, as I am still a noob at Wikipedia):


 * opposing: Hellboy2hell, Chipmunkdavis, Necrothesp, Mkativerata, Chongkian, Hzh
 * supportive: Two_hundred_percent, Orhanghazi
 * constructive/others: Bukhrin, Shahrulazwad, Pakbelang, In_ictu_oculi, Bluerfn, Kawaputra, InfernoXV

In 2017, the Melaka State Executive Council formally adopted "Melaka" as its official English spelling. This decision reflects the state's desire for internal consistency and a strengthened cultural identity. Since then, "Melaka" has seen increasing usage within government bodies, media outlets, and throughout the state itself.

This proposal outlines the reasons for aligning Wikipedia's naming conventions with this official designation. It will explore the historical usage of both spellings, consider precedents set by similar name changes, and address potential counterarguments. The emphasis is on Wikipedia's commitment to accuracy and respecting official naming practices.

The official name change by the Melaka state government is the catalyst for this shift. Major media outlets, and increasingly the public, are aligning with the state's current official designation.

Wikipedia's role here is to reflect current realities, as well as mirroring the past.

Media shift
This trend extends beyond government entities and into the wider media landscape. Major English newspaper outlets has been adopting Melaka name.

Here are the latest updates in 2024:


 * 1) Melaka has been used in Al Jazeera interchangeably with Malacca. Malacca now usually referred to the Strait of Malacca or Malacca Strait. latest news about Melaka as state was back in 2022.
 * 2) BBC (bbc.co.uk) has referred Melaka as state as early as 10 Nov 2002 and has never used Malacca to refer it as a state (or maybe they have updated it but I can't find it after 2000), meanwhile BBC (bbc.com) persistently using Malacca. This is slightly confusing as despite BBC.com, the result from search it gave me led me to BBC.co.uk. the redirection between .com and .co.uk can understandably to make people only making one stance on it. Here is the archive from latest BBC website showing the search bar leads to co.uk (on top right). Despite BBC.com Malacca usage, BBC UK's has a tv show called Great Asian Railway Journey: "Melaka to Johor Bahru" (imdb here)
 * 3) New York Times used Melaka about a twinning college between Malaysia and India that is located in Melaka.
 * 4) The Australian wrote "Melaka" in several stories to refer to the state, but results may vary.
 * 5) Many main English daily newspaper in Malaysia no longer use "Malacca", be it The Star, Malay Mail, The Edge, The Borneo Post, New Straits Times, or Focus Malaysia, with the exception of  Bernama news agency (but Melaka has more results), The Sun, Daily Express, and New Sarawak Tribune who used it interchangeably.
 * 6) Google Scholar 2024 version of Melaka (the state) which yields 559 results, while Malacca (not necessarily specific to refer to state), yields only 202 results.
 * 7) Google books search results that were referred to are truncated at 2019, so I made a manual search and I found that recent journal publications (2023-2024) in other fields seem to favor the "Melaka" spelling over "Malacca" below:


 * https://doi.org/10.1163/24522015-17020003
 * https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.53032
 * http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol9iss1pp121-138
 * https://ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/server/api/core/bitstreams/a24f3080-315c-4d73-b027-63f0ed28a1cd/content
 * https://ojs.istp-press.com/jait/article/view/421
 * https://doi.org/10.17576/jkukm-2023-si6(1)-22
 * https://doi.org/10.22452/jummec.vol27no1.28
 * https://doi.org/10.4028/p-bSXZp1
 * https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-196-8_25

However, I have tried to contact some who used Malacca in their English publication, to ask their reasoning in using it, despite Melaka has been used in many English newspapers and continue to increase in its presence post-2017's announcement.

The Evolving Usage of 'Melaka' and 'Malacca'
While the current trend clearly favors "Melaka," the name's usage has a more complex historical background. To understand this evolution, let's take a look at findings from archives on Google Books about Melaka and Malacca.

The Telegraph-Herald and Times-Journal from 1930 references 'Melaka ,' while 'Malacca  ' can be found as early as 1766 in The Halifax Gazette. This timeline suggests a more complex history of usage than a simple 'English vs. Malay' distinction. If there is evidence from other historical sources (particularly private or registered archives) that further clarifies or nullify this history, I welcome their consideration(s).

"(...)Talk by Miss Della Olson, missionary from Melaka, Malay:(...) 

"''The language that is spoken among all there people, from what place forever they originally came is the Malay (...) and probably it is a corrupt dialect of that spoken at Malacca. Every little island indeed has a language of its own and Java has two or three, but this Lingua Franca is the only language that is now spoken here, and, as I am told, it prevails over a great part of the East Indies. A dictionary of Malay and English was published in London by Thomas Bowrey in the year 1701." ''

Page of Melaka Historic City Council uses "Melaka" while not denying the old name "Malacca" in the speech of current Mayor.

Further, UNESCO recognizes the distinction between "Melaka" (the state) and the "Strait of Malacca". This was also announced back in 2008 in the Malaysia Tourism government website.

The Melaka state government has formally adopted the name 'Melaka', as seen on their website (https://www.melaka.gov.my) and in their tourism campaign 'Visit Melaka 2024' (https://www.visitmelaka.com.my) which is this has already started and was already announced in March 2023.

MELAKA.gov.my has been recorded of its name in Wayback Machine as early as 21 Apr 1998 and using Melaka in its English version. This was way back before the official announcement. There is no malacca.gov.my has been found in any web archive websites so far.

if you search "visit malacca 2024", it will ask "Did you mean: visit melaka 2024" in Google. Same goes with other search engines, for example Bing or DuckDuckGo.

"Malacca is the dominant term due to historical search results from a search engine"
The reliability of numerical search results is questionable. Google's search filters appear to produce inconsistent totals. Notably, in Google Books, "Books" and "Any documents" often yield identical results for both "Malacca" and "Melaka." or any search results. But there are few additional numbers when you select "Magazines" or "Newspaper". This makes the 73 magazines and 11,300 newspaper results obtained for "Malacca" seem impossible, as they should be included within the 'Any documents' total.

While historical Google Books data might favor "Malacca," focusing solely on the past ignores the present reality. Even within 21st-century publications, "Melaka" (excluding "strait(s)") has a significant presence with 176,000 results, as shown in table below.

In a spirit of data transparency, and taking only 21st century search results from Google books are: Google News results clearly demonstrate a substantial shift towards "Melaka." A search for "Malacca" currently yields 598 results, while "Melaka" yields 11,100 results. This reflects a rapidly changing landscape in how news outlets refer to the state. Before you say "but wait, that's not all in English", I just would like to remind that this is to show if the word is being used globally, NOT just English.

However, do note that this is not the matter which spelling have more in the news, or which spelling is "historically completely dominant", but to show that the media as of date has already using Melaka to denote it as a state in English mediums.

". . . -an older English name that is still used is preferable to a pushed official name-. . ."
Wikipedia's commitment to accuracy aligns with using official names designated by governing bodies. Some of the examples:

1. Mumbai/Bombay (India): This is evident in the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) example by Shahrulazwad

2. Aceh/Acheh (Indonesia): Aceh (sometimes referred to as 'Acheh') examples, demonstrating the importance of reflecting current designations regardless of historical usage.

3. Rhode Island/Rhode Island and providence plantations (United States): Similarly, U.S. states like Rhode Island maintain their official names despite historical variants within their constitution, reinforcing their autonomy in how they are represented.

4. Porto/Oporto (Portugal): Both "Oporto" and "Malacca" are older, anglicised spellings rooted in the colonial era. "Porto" and "Melaka" are the official names, reflecting Portuguese and Malay linguistic origins respectively. This change, although smaller, shows a shift toward respecting the native-language designation.

5. Jakarta/Batavia (Indonesia): Batavia was the Dutch colonial name for the capital of Indonesia. After independence, the official name shifted to Jakarta, the native Indonesian designation. Wikipedia even have Old Batavia which is now commonly known as Kota Tua Jakarta. How amazing is that?! (btw, kudos indo wikipedians, those pages are very thoroughly written)

6. Yangon/Rangoon(Myanmar): The former capital of Myanmar was known as Rangoon under British rule. In 1989, the military government officially changed the name to Yangon, a closer representation of the Burmese pronunciation. Does this imply that Wikipedia allows a name change as long as it happened before the existence of Wikipedia site?

7. Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon (Vietnam): While both names are now used, this example is more complex. Saigon, the name associated with the French colonial era, remains common in everyday speech. Ho Chi Minh City is the official name, declared after reunification to honor a revolutionary leader.

Many of these cases involve a shift from an exonym (a name used by outsiders) to an endonym (the name used by the people who live there). This concept is relevant to "Malacca/Melaka." Some changes involve significant spelling differences (Batavia/Jakarta), others are more about pronunciation (Rangoon/Yangon). The Malacca/Melaka shift is somewhat in between the two.

As highlighted by @Chongkian, the swift global adoption of 'Burj Khalifa' (formerly Burj Dubai) and 'Willis Tower' (formerly Sears Tower) demonstrates precedent for embracing name changes led by  official bodies . It underscores that widespread public awareness is not a prerequisite for a Wikipedia page name change.

@Chongkian "Burj Dubai was unanimously changed to Burj Khalifa, thus the whole world followed Immediately. Sears Tower was unanimously changed to Willis Tower, thus the whole world followed Immediately. They didn't wait until everyone realizes/knows the new name change or when the whole world agree to accept it.

This proposal aligns with Wikipedia's core principles of accuracy, reliance on verifiable sources (WP:RS), and using official names (WP:OFFICIALNAMES). Adopting "Melaka," the official name formally established by the Melaka Historic City Council , reflects these commitments. While "Malacca" might have greater historical usage, Wikipedia's policy on common names (WP:COMMONNAMES) and WP:NCGN acknowledges cases where official names superseded previous common ones. Precedents like Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and Aceh further illustrate this. Prioritising the official name "Melaka" supports a neutral point of view (WP:NPOV), ensuring Wikipedia reflects current realities rather than solely emphasising historical usage. If I am wrong with this statement and the links to the Wikipedia guideline pages, kindly inform me.

Anyway, in light of these principles, the shift towards 'Melaka' as evidenced both by the state government and reputable media sources warrants its adoption as the Wikipedia page title. A redirect from ‘Malacca’ ensures accessibility while prioritising the current official name.

"Melaka" is the Malay name for the city, made into an English
It's misleading to claim that 'Malacca' is inherently an English name while 'Melaka' is exclusively Malay as shown in earlier examples of name mention found in Google Books archive above. Melaka is the state's official name and is used in English-language communication by the state government and major media outlets. To uphold 'Malacca' in the Malaysian constitution while other states such as Johor (then Johore) have standardised English spellings undermines this principle and creates internal inconsistency. Applying the same respect for self-determination shown in these cases strengthens the argument for adopting 'Melaka.'

Changing the Wikipedia page title to "Melaka" reinforces its alignment with the state's official name, promotes consistency throughout Wikipedia, and avoids potential confusion for readers.

The goal is to prevent future confusion. Using the official name provides long-term clarity for researchers, regardless of how common the spelling is at this exact moment. While Wikipedia acknowledges the historical significance of the term “Malacca,” respecting the current official name adopted by the Melaka state government takes precedence. A redirect from "Malacca" to "Melaka" again will ensure easy access for all users. As evidenced throughout this proposal, this change is increasingly reflected in media and institutional usage.

While some might argue that historical usage is sufficient, a lack of standardisation can create confusion for future researchers. Imagine a researcher or an archiver in the future encountering both spellings in documents without a clear understanding of the state's official name change.

For example: A researcher 50 years from now might encounter documents from the early 21st century using both "Malacca" and "Melaka."

Without standardisation, this could lead to uncertainty about whether these refer to the same entity or potentially different locations.

It's understandable to value the historical resonance of 'Malacca' or its usage on specific entities like the 'Malacca City Council'. However, languages evolve, and official recognition by a government/council carries weight. We can acknowledge the past while embracing the current and future direction of 'Melaka' as the state's official name spelling as being shown with the welcome message by the current Melaka mayor. While the origins of 'Malacca' are linked to a colonial past, respecting the current official name 'Melaka' reflects the state's right to self-determination in the present.

Melaka and Malacca Strait
Ultimately, adopting 'Melaka' promotes clarity (avoiding confusion with the Strait), demonstrates respect for the state's decision, and creates a more consistent global image for Melaka. Melaka is indeed a currently used state name in Malaysia, while Malacca is an old name that no one wants to erase from the history be it "English origin".

The Strait of Malacca will be the same function as "Strait of Gibraltar" or "English Channel", (at the current moment) so there should not be Malacca Straits Mosque but it's Malacca Strait Mosque. It's akin to say in Malay instead of Masjid Selat Melaka, and because of Wikipedia, it turned to plural ("Masjid Selat-Selat Melaka"), which does not make sense.


 * Masjid = mosque
 * Selat = Strait
 * Melaka = Malacca (for now)

Therefore, in English it would be Malacca Strait Mosque. Not Malacca Straits Mosque.

Precedent in Wikipedia: Despite there are people using the "Straits of Gibraltar ," Wikipedia recognise Strait of Gibraltar and allow "Straits of Gibraltar" to be mentioned as the old name. Again, I hope this is not due to "how much the results in search engine(s)" but after thorough discussion. People who are writing it as Malacca Straits in the past may or may not equate the usage of "Straits" in newspapers (namely New Straits Times or The Straits Times) which is a brand proper noun now more than a place. It's either Malacca Strait or Strait of Malacca, and neither should use plurals in it. "Strait" is one and "Straits" is many. We can all minimise these confusions.

Some of the related page using Malacca, Melaka, or finally changed and redirect from Malacca to Melaka in English, and it's not a special name. I also will cite the proof of latest local news media that named it as "Melaka" despite/if the image said Malacca instead: User:Hongqilim's extensive history of changing titles and moving pages to 'Malacca' between February 2021 and August 2023 highlights the urgent need to align Wikipedia's content with the official name change. Since the 2012 proposal rejection and the state's subsequent 2017 formal adoption of 'Melaka,' these changes were made without current official backing. Since this editor has been banned, it's crucial for the community to review and address these inconsistencies.

Other move by others:


 * Melaka to Malacca: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melaka&oldid=254146623


 * Melaka State Legislative Assembly move: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melaka_State_Legislative_Assembly&oldid=1058318760
 * Melaka International Airport redirect: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Melaka_International_Airport&oldid=833461338
 * Melaka International Airport move and rename: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Malacca_International_Airport&oldid=833461336

This name change is about more than a location on a map; it's about respecting the right of a state to define its own identity. The evidence is overwhelming: from the state's official declaration to the shift in how it's represented in the media, "Melaka" is the name it has chosen for itself. Wikipedia has a responsibility to reflect the world as it is, not just how it was. By adopting "Melaka," with a redirect from "Malacca" to preserve historical context, we uphold Wikipedia's core values. This isn't just about accuracy; it's about acknowledging that names hold power, and places, like people, deserve the dignity of being called what they call themselves.

TL;DR:


 * Melaka's government officially changed the state's English spelling to "Melaka" a few years back.
 * News and official websites are mostly using "Melaka" now, which makes sense!
 * Old search results can be misleading, so forget relying on those for what's current.
 * We can still keep the history of "Malacca" with a redirect – best of both worlds.
 * Wikipedia should use official names and stay up-to-date. That's basically how this place works.
 * Other name changes (like Mumbai/Bombay) have happened before, so this isn't some crazy idea or a wishful thinking.
 * Proposing to vote to change it to "Melaka". That way, Wikipedia will be accurate and respectful of the state's official name.
 * Visit Melaka this year for Visit Melaka 2024 (optional)

I believe this is a decision that needs votes and a good discussion once and for all.

Thanks.