Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 August 25

= August 25 =

Sasana
I'm trying to figure out why Sasana is a redirect to England. I've read the note at Sasana which suggests it's an Irish word for England. Is that correct? All the pages that link to sasana look as though they should go to Śāsana, so I am inclined to change this to redirect to Śāsana.--Shantavira|feed me 14:59, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I've changed the redirect back to what it originally was (prior to an edit in 2015). I don't see any reason for having these foreign language redirects. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:06, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, the Irish language word for England is, in fact, Sasana, so maybe a hatnote is required: See here. This is related to terms like Sasanach, which means "English" (as in ethnicity) and is cognate with Saxon.-- Jayron 32 16:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Sasana is not mentioned in England, so maybe the hatnote should redirect to Saxons, where it is explained. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:14, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see why we need any such hatnote. We don't normally do redirects from random foreign language terms to English terms, except when the topic in question is closely associated with the non-English language in question, which is not the case here. The fact that England is called Sasana in Irish is of no more relevance than that it is called Ingilterra, ʻEnelani, Uingereza or Yingguo in some other languages. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:26, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's only a redirect. Why does it matter what language it came from? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:31, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It was a redirect that conflicted with a much more pertinent, alternative redirect target (which in fact it had been pointing to earlier, and which was also the intended target of its existing incoming links). If it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't bother about it. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:35, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This is where disambiguation pages come in. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:15, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * But that's the whole point: Disambiguation pages (or hatnotes, for that matter) are only for things which, in and of themselves, would make for legitimate article titles or redirects. Random foreign terms just aren't that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:50, 26 August 2020 (UTC)