Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of traditional Greek place names

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus &middot; Katefan0(scribble) 02:18, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

List of traditional Greek place names
This page is simply a list of classical Greek placenames, with demotic and English translations. I see no encyclopedic content here. The names are from all over the world (and since they include America and Oceania, I suspect copyvio from a Greek-English dictionary or gazeteer). This list is admittedly incomplete - and hundreds or thousands of lines could be added to it, and it would still be incomplete. It also massively uses non-compliant special characters. Septentrionalis 17:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete nominator vote. Septentrionalis 17:29, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * question Please define "non-compliant special characters." Are you talking about the IPA characters?  The polytonic Greek? - Gilgamesh 04:57, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep if it's incomplete, expand it. If it has something wrong (America surely is wrong), correct it. For the non-compliant characters we have templates. Therefore I strongly disagree with this nomination. MATIA 19:17, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment I've checked the history, and I doubt it has anything to do with copyvio - perhaps you want to check it too. While removing America, I've noticed that the editor uses the appropriate templates (I didn't even knew that there was a special template for IPA characters). MATIA 19:57, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * See also Lists. MATIA 07:57, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * comment I agree that there is not a copyvio issue here, at least under U.S. law -- see Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. Copyright does not protect facts. --Macrakis 19:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, WP:NOT a dictionary. Pilatus 21:01, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand, list is useful for synchronizing ancient, medieval and modern history (e.g. for questions like "what is the modern name of Greek colony X?"). Martg76 21:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment This information should be in the article on colony X, and a search within the Wikipedia should find it. If the name is unique (unlike say Nicaea), it can be a redirect. On the other hand, it is not at all clear to me why an English encyclopedia should mention the Greek Βρετανία -- should we also have the Arabic and Norse names of Britain? --Macrakis 19:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment Yes, we should, if they are relevant to the history. Britain is relevant to the history of seafaring Phoenicians as well as Greeks of Massalia and other deep-sea-faring cultures, as well as to the Roman Empire, where the educated elite preferred Greek over Latin by a wide margin.  As such, Greek toponyms from Roman times are more than appropriate for what was essentially a Greco-Roman imperial culture.  See also List of traditional Arabic place names, where there are old Arabic names even for places in Sicily and Spain.  There were even distinctive Arabic names as far north as France that are highly relevant to Arabic-speaking history.  As for Norse names, absolutely&mdash;an article like that would be just as invaluable as these articles.  Norse settlers had a heavy presence in the Danelaw of England's history. - Gilgamesh 07:29, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


 * If it has something wrong, correct it. &mdash; It does indeed have something wrong.  It's a Greek-English translating dictionary of placenames, complete with IPA pronunciations, in Wikipedia, contrary to our Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy.  And indeed we are correcting it.  We are deleting it.  There's a translating dictionary of all words of all languages that is ready and waiting for any and all translations that editors want to submit.  It's intended to be Wikipedia's lexical companion.  There's no need to be a Lost Lexicographer wandering the encyclopaedia in lonely fashion, when one can collaborate with a whole load of other lexicographers at the dictionary.  The dictionary has a group of editors doing far more than this mis-placed-dictionary-in-the-encyclopaedia can, with editors collaborating on giving individual words translations, pronunciations in at least three systems, declension tables, etymologies, and even audio files with example pronunciations.  It even already has a category for Greek proper nouns, with a sub-category for placenames, that can be filled to one's heart's content.  Please use it.  Delete. Uncle G 22:57, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, just as valid as List of Latin names of European places (or whatever that article is called, I can't find it right now). User:Zoe|(talk) 23:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment, excuse me gentlemen, but first of all the Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy refers to one-line articles that just have a dic-def (and they're not to be deleted but expanded). Yet, this is not the case here, and as far as I know we don't have a list deletion policy or a category deletion policy (if I'm wrong please let me know). Besides this is not a list with translations. It is a list that shows the present or the historical names of various places (with wiki-link, aka the articles for these places are present here on WP, and are named this way), and all these places have something in common. The place name derives from a greek word. This list is like a category, with a small comment for every article. I'm not sure what would be the purpose of moving it to wiktionary and I disagree with the reasons to delete it. MATIA 23:41, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep --F. Cosoleto 23:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. Wikipedia has many such lists that have survived vfd, and they are all sufficiently encyclopedic.  Besides, I wrote this article, and I used no dictionaries nor gazetteers for the names.  I used linguistic resources, as many modern Greek place names are very different from traditional ones, even in the ancient Greek language. Besides, I included names like Oceania because it actually has a Greek etymology.  So do Indonesia, Polynesia, Philippines, etc.  See also List of traditional Arabic place names, Hawaiian name, List of Hebrew names, List of Arabic names, List of Indo-European roots, etc. - Gilgamesh 03:49, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep as useful list as per Gilgamesh. Capitalistroadster 04:03, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, but separate Ancient Greek names from Medieval/Modern Greek ones... --MacRusgail 16:52, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment They're already separated. Ancient is non-italic, and modern is italic.  If the forms are the same, only the ancient form is shown.  The modern forms are to show how the name has evolved in extant Greek, therefore remaining traditional to this day. - Gilgamesh 00:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Interesting and useful. Adam 04:21, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Interesting and useful; a major help on a project. Only concern is copyvio. (Whoops, I did not read what Gilgamesh wrote.. durr.. well, not a concern now.) I agree with Gilgamesh on this. 65.96.44.49 12:06, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Wikipedia is not Wiktionary. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 11:08, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * This is a tough one:
 * 1) It's misnamed. Abydos is an Egyptian place name which happens to be listed in Greek. It should be List of place names in traditional Greek.
 * Abydos is a Greek name, it was a town on the Dardanelles near Troy. The name was borrowed for the Egyptian place, since the Greeks couldn't pronounce Egyptian placenames and gave them Greek names - cf Thebes). Adam 11:45, 22 September 2005 (UTC)


 * 1) Pronunciations belong in the article about about the place or in a dictionary.
 * 2) Same goes for Greek spelling, which I would limit to mention in articles on Greek placenames or Wiktionary.
 * 3) If all that is put in the correct place you're left with a list of towns which are undoubtedly categorized, and a list wouldn't really add anything.
 * That said. It is useful to have a list that helps in translating Greek placenames into English counterparts which ends up being the use of a dictionary. Transwiki to Wiktionary. - Mgm|(talk) 11:21, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment: Actually, there's Abydos, Hellespont on what is now the Dardanelles in Turkey. And, as is noted, this isn't a Greek-to-English dictionary, nor is it the geography of Greece or of Turkey&mdash;it's a linguistics article about listing traditional names, and includes modern Greek forms if the tradition still lasts.  Look at the locations of these places&mdash;they're all over the place, but still figured prominently in the Classical Greek world, the Hellenistic world, the Roman world (where Greek was considered the language of the educated elite), the Byzantine world, the Ottoman world, and the modern world as well.  This isn't a dictionary.  It's an annotated reference of extreme usefulness to deeper linguistics studies, and not strictly for the typical homemaker, or sixth grader doing his homework.  This is solid info. - Gilgamesh 13:24, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep. Dictionaries aren't really suited to providing this type of subject-based name-to-name mapping. Nandesuka 11:51, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Send it to Wiktionary. Leave a soft-redirect in it's place.  This is very good content but it is more lexical than encyclopedic.  I also agree with Uncle G's argument that Wiktionary has more experienced editors who can help with the multi-language spellings, character sets, pronunciations, etc.  This is, after all, the english-language Wikipedia.  Wiktionary, however, accepts words from all languages.  Rossami (talk) 19:41, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete This article is a list, not an encyclopedia entry.  Names of places which have Greek etymology should already have this information in the article itself (in fact, I have added it myself in many places),but I especially object to the link from individual articles to this list. I do find it interesting to have a list of all the names of Greek etymology, though: perhaps this should be a category, "Names with Greek Etymology".  The word "traditional" is also inappropriate.  As for names with non-Greek etymologies but which are used in Greek, that seems like straight dictionary material.  What is Βρετανία (Britain) doing here, for example?  Aristotle uses the word, so it belongs in a Greek dictionary, but not in an English encyclopedia.  --Macrakis 18:49, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment: The point is that Βρετανία is a distinct form in the Greek language, and not simply an adaptation to nor from a Latin form. It has significance to linguistic studies, and there are many other such linguistics list articles around Wikipedia with clear encyclopedic value.  Wikipedia is not a dictionary, but this is not a dictionary either.  If it were a dictionary, it would more resemble a gazetteer of every Greek name for modern places, and yet it doesn't.  Notice that many of these places are long since in ruins, and are part of history.  Yes, it is nice to put this information in each article, but it is also extremely helpful to a topical study to put these in one place, and placing a category in each relevant article raises its own issues for many an impatient editor who might think "This isn't a Greek place.  It isn't in Greece.  This category doesn't belong here," or those who are wary of having too many different topical categories stacked into one article, particularly when they don't see the relative significance of adding so much detail of a place's history for what may effectively be a dead culture for a place where it may not seem like a relevant topic to the region's modern inhabitants.  This is a linguistics article, and many of the things that make it important and useful as a linguistics article also make it an extraordinarily dry topic.  It may be college-level material and not well-suited to most Wikipedia users who just want to find a fact or an encyclopedic snippet, but that doesn't mean such rich topical academic detail doesn't belong here.  Wikipedia has many lexicon-style list articles that have long since survived vfd challenges, for the reason that a list makes the material easier to browse.  Another bad reason for categories in this case is that it complicates the effort it takes to make a detailed topical study like this.  The subject material is somewhere between lexicon and encyclopedia, and should not be ripped from one domain just because it resembles the domain of the other.  See how Hawaiian name especially survived a vfd challenge, and see how List of traditional Arabic place names, List of Hebrew names, List of Arabic names, List of Indo-European roots, etc. thrive in Wikipedia's environment.  To rid of any of them is inappropriate. - Gilgamesh 07:23, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
 * comment As I said before, I do find much of the content useful.  I also find the various dictionaries on my bookshelves useful....  And it's not so awful that this article appear in the Wikipedia -- my vote is really a weak Delete, because you can always ignore the article if you don't find it useful.  What I do object to strenuously is the introduction of the link "List of traditional Greek place names" all over the place. That, you can't ignore. And the word "traditional" is being misused here; perhaps what is wanted is "historical"? --Macrakis 23:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep&mdash;This is not a dictionary-anything. This has nothing to do with a dictionary, and is of great encyclopedic and reference value.  It definately DOES NOT belong on Wiktionary, or any other dictionary, unless they specifically desire to include tables.  What do you mean "massively uses non-compliant special characters"?  When people are naming articles with Unicode characters, there are bigger fish to fry!  My browser can display Unicode characters properly long before it and the server can do all the mangling associated with URLs.  HTML named or number entities could easily double the size (bytes) of this article.  It uses the necessary templates, too!  There is no reason this article should be deleted, hands down.&mdash;Kbolino 03:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep I think the article contains useful information which should be kept; but 'I'm also uncomfortable with putting this link everywhere. Wouldn't it be more sensible to leave the Ancient Greek name on the page without putting the link? Aldux 13:20, 21 September 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.