Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of national capital city name etymologies


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. -- Cirt (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

List of national capital city name etymologies

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

The scope of this list is too broad to provide useful information as an etymology list. Unlike other pages in Category:Lists of placename etymologies, this list attempts to discuss information about worldwide capital cities, most of which don't share a common cultural or linguistic origin, and the result is a page simply duplicating content properly located in other articles. Paul_012 (talk) 09:03, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- Paul_012 (talk) 09:04, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak keep It's sourced, and the etymology of place names is an encyclopedic topic. It's also way too long.  At most, one line is all that's necessary to tell the story of a place name's origin, and a link is provided to people who want to know the rest of the story.  The paragraph devoted to Tirana, for instance, would be no less interesting if it simply said "From the Greek "tyros" (Τύρος) which means dairy", and a link for people who are curious about why the capital of Albania would be named after a dairy. Mandsford (talk) 17:02, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There are 203 countries in the world, its hard to keep a list incorporating them all short, although yes some of them really should be much shorter than they are. Outback the koala (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:NOTCASE. There is nothing in common about them that seems to make it worthwhile to bring the names of all the capital cities from around the world onto a single page like this. It makes more sense to have the etymology of any given city name in the article on that city. Dew Kane (talk) 04:03, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. A well-written list can tell a good deal of information at a glance, such as List of current heads of state and government or List of national capitals.  In addition, not every article about a place mentions the etymology of the place name.  However, I do feel that this list is too long, and scrolling through it is almost as slow as clicking on the article name for each city on the list.  Mandsford (talk) 21:47, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep although its missing a number of states and their capitals. Keep it, expand it, and source it better. But don't delete useful content like this. Outback the koala (talk) 23:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep per Outback the koala. Str8cash (talk) 03:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, while it's way too long, and contains multiple cities (I don't see how they all can be the capital), I think it's a useful and interesting list with an overarching themeDavid V Houston (talk) 23:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, could use a serious copy-edit (some etymologies are plain wrong, many seem copy & pasted from other articles) but I don't see the problem with keeping it. I can imagine an interested someone reading the page. — what a crazy random happenstance 15:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.