Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of places named after people


 * 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. -Docg 01:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

List of places named after people

 * — (View AfD)

uninteresting, incomplete, potentially enormous... It may be tilting at windmills to try to get rid of this, but this list has such vague and sweeping criteria for inclusion that it could potentially grow to literally tens of thousands of entries, or more, and still be incomplete. And to what purpose? The result would be of mild interest, at best. I think this sort of thing is better served through categories. Brianyoumans 10:14, 1 January 2007 (UTC) Oh, and there are presently NO sources or references in the article. Not every town named "Washington" was named after George. --Brianyoumans 10:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Arbitary, useless, indiscriminate, (i.e. what's famous?) unsourced listcruft. MER-C 11:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. I have just added Melbourne to the brief Australian list and then I realised that I could probably name several dozen Australian places named after people. Indeed with a bit of research I could probably name hundreds. My suburb in Melbourne, Spotswood, is named after a person. This list is unmaintainable and therefore useless. --Bduke 12:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. The "uninteresting" field is called placename etymology. If there are problems breaking down the lists when it gets too long, I'd happy to help you with this. BTW Categories were deemed unsuitable to group, e.g. "places named after US Presidents". -- User:Docu
 * Conditional keep. Keep, but limit to capital cities and major centres, and not suburbs (such as Spotswood mentioned by the previous user). Chrisch 13:54, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Conditional keep per Chrisch. Also highly recommend making sure that each individual article actually mentions this stuff. --- RockMFR 17:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that as presently constructed the article includes not just cities, towns, and "administrative divisions" but also other named stuff: stadiums, train stations and even a section on "former airports". Brianyoumans 18:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak keep as a list of lists- eg. List of cities in South America named after people- which would require only a simple cut and paste. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 22:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete A cursory search on Google turns up the frightening future of this page: "in Busseto, Italy, every street is named after a composer..." " In the market quarter of Athens, every street is named after a classic ancient Greek playwright..." "the village of Cesiomaggiore is really into bicycle racing, every street is named after a famous Italian racer..." Bourne 23:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. The current article is completely unreferenced, and this is a subject area where a certain amount of digging is required. I suspect the present list is full of plausible but unresearched guesses. For example, is the District of Columbia really named after Christopher Columbus, or after the iconic figure, Columbia? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:54, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. I find Bourne's preview of what this list is destined to become particularly compelling regarding its lack of manageability.  Compounded by the OR problems noted by Dpbsmith, I find it unlikely that this list can be retained, at least in its current form.  Serpent&#39;s Choice 03:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Grossly arbitrary and incomplete article. Edison 06:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Some people are interested in seemingly useless knowledge, but nowhere else will you get such a survey. Wikikiwi 10:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Potentially endless, badly referenced list containing too many dubious items. Romania named after Romulus? Erm, no. Neither, most probably, was Rome. The list fails to distinguish between mythological etymologies made up later in an attempt to explain place names ("Europe" from "Europa") and bona fide toponyms from real historical characters (Washington). This gives the page a nice mediaeval feel, but if you want that kind of encylopaedia you're better off sticking with Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae. Not for Wikipedia. --Folantin 10:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. I reworked the list. In addition to a short summary about countries (from List of country name etymologies), it's now limited to cities and towns named after people. -- User:Docu
 * Comment. This really does not work. For a start, you have missed out places between countries and towns such as Australian states. Secondly you have not defined what a town or city is. A complete list would be very much longer and it is still impossible to get complete. Everywhere there are hundreds of towns that are not on the list. Also every entry will need a reference so they will be as long as the list. It is monster that serves no usefull purpose. --Bduke 11:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment, to be more precise, Docu split up the article in a couple of different ones, including one about country subdivisions: List of country subdivisions named after people. See also: List of railway stations named after people, List of islands named after people, List of lakes named after people, List of eponyms of stadiums, List of eponyms of airports, List of convention centers named after people, List of eponyms of stadiums in the United States. As this is a good faith effort for improvement by Docu, I suggest we do not simply judge them all as one, but decide for each of the articles on their own merits. As smaller articles, some might be more worthwhile than others. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 11:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. For now, see my comment above. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 11:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I think the list still has the potential to grow unmanageably. It would help if, as suggested above, it was limited to capitals and major cities. It still has no references and apparently contains many inaccuracies. Why don't we discuss the utility of this list here, and leave the calved-off fragments for another AFD? --Brianyoumans 18:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sounds fair to me, I was just afraid that people would want to include all the newly created articles in this AfD, which just seemed not right to me, giving the diversity of subjects. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 20:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - theoretically acceptable, practically unmaintainable. Moreschi Deletion! 20:43, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * comment''' - I'm not putting a debate in for either position here, because this might be salvagable, but as it stands, with *any* place being listable, it's potentially massive. For instance, my university campus alone has a dozen such sites (IE Lubar Hall, Merril Hall, Curtin Hall, and so on) at least, all named after people.  Criterion for personal notability might help that though, so if may not be a fatal flaw. Wintermut3 23:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep The potential for the lists to become too long is the only problem that troubles me. But it should be a straightforward job to move the very long lists into pages like "List of places in Brazil named after people", and keep the length of the lists per country to < 10 or so. Tintin (talk) 16:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Wikipedia has a bunch of useless (and incomplete) lists, so why do you have to single this one out? I have contributed to this page and have made sure to check that the actual article of the placename mentions who it's named after.  Besides, I have learned some cool tidbits (Russia does not name airports after people, while most of Mexico's major airports are named after military leaders or political figures).  And how else will people find out about Lake Strom Thurmond, Bob Hope Airport or Hitlersee? Nutmegger 21:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC) Also, I think a lot of people wonder about this kind of stuff – it's not totally useless. Nutmegger 21:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * "Wikipedia has a bunch of useless (and incomplete) lists, so why do you have to single this one out?" "...it's not totally useless"? Ringing endorsements indeed! :-)  If you point me to the other useless and incomplete lists, I would be happy to AFD those as well. --Brianyoumans 22:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * "And how else will people find out about Lake Strom Thurmond..." Obviously, someone interested in knowing the origins of the place name "Lake Strom Thurmond" can find out by typing "Strom Thurmond" into the search box. As for people interested in origins of place names, I think anyone interested in such things would do far, far better to go to the library and check out a copy of George Stewart's Names on the Land than to look at a completely fortuitous and arbitrary list of, perhaps, 0.0001% of all the places named after people. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:22, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * P. S. George R. Stewart's Names on the Land was published in 1945 and is still in print, ISBN 093853002X. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You are assuming that this book, or any book on the same subject for that matter, is accessible to all wikipedia readers :-) Tintin (talk) 02:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A good reason to delete this list is to prevent people from arguing in the future that some unencyclopedic, unreferenced list ought to be maintained because it is not as bad as List of places named after people. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Dude, that book was published more than 60 years ago. I think a few places might have been named after then. Nutmegger 01:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't bite my finger, look where I'm pointing. If you're interested in place names, and you don't know the book, get it, you'll like it. My local public library has a copy, yours probably does too. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as indiscriminate collection of information. Even if limited to towns and villages, this would be both huge (if complete) and pointless. Sandstein 11:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete indiscriminate, open-ended list which would include a sizable fraction of all toponyms. Would never be complete, and would be difficult to reference. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:05, 5 January 2007 (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.