- The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: No clear consensus to move this title, either name is appropriate for the article and no one made compelling Commonname arguments for either name over the other. Mike Cline (talk) 16:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Kolkata → Calcutta – relisted-Mike Cline (talk) 17:36, 23 January 2012 (UTC) Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2012 (UTC) This is the common English name. Kolkata may have been made the official spelling in 2001, but it has not yet caught up with Calcutta in English usage worldwide (cf. 83k hits at GBooks since 2002[1] vs. 244k for Calcutta[2]), and it is unfamiliar to most English speakers outside India, to the extent that even Indian authors continue to use Calcutta when addressing an international audience (Samaren Roy, 2005, Calcutta: Society and Change 1690–1990; Krishna Dutta & Anita Desai, 2008, Calcutta: A Cultural History; etc). As with Orissa/Odisha, Burma/Myanmar, or for that matter United States rather than locally preferred America or official United States of America, the consensus has been that we follow common international usage rather than official dictates or local forms. See WP:COMMONNAME, WP:OFFICIALNAMES, and WP:COMMONALITY. In the past, arguments have been made for local forms along the lines of "we have the right to decide what to call our own city", but that is not the business of Wikipedia. — kwami (talk) 01:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support. Wikipedia's policy on names is clear: WP:COMMONNAME. We don't follow local government dictates when English usage supersedes it. If search results were close, then "Kolkata" would be an appropriate version. But when the unofficial form is overwhelmingly the one in use in English, it must take precedence over any local government dictates. --Taivo (talk) 02:30, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support: "Kolkata" is a recent, unaccepted innovation that is totally unfamiliar to non-Indians, and many Indians too. Shrigley (talk) 05:03, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
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- Then this is the way to get familiarized with the changes that happen in the world. Welcome! -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. Stats here are dominated by ages of history, and it will take decades to revert the ratio. Britannica [3], UN [4], CIA World Factbook [5] (see map and "people and society"), US Dep. of State [6], IMF [7], Library of Congress [8] support the Indian Government change to Kolkata (haven't looked for other reliable reports). Actually, it is quite the same situation for Chennai (Madras) and for most city names in the Soviet Bloc countries. (say, Leningrad is a ghost name, yet it gives many millions of hits on Google books, comparable with St. Petersburg). Materialscientist (talk) 06:27, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
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- That's why I restricted the search to after 2002, the year after the change went into effect. — kwami (talk) 06:30, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- I understand, but believe such stats can't be a strong reason when a city changes name. It takes years for people to readjust, and with millions of hits it is impossible to tell which period do they cover. Try with Leningrad and see. Materialscientist (talk) 06:41, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- I am uncomfortable with this move. If this goes forth, the implications across articles on other Indian cities which have also changed name recently promises to be a move-warring nightmare. Is there really anything more than sentimentality driving this change? Walrasiad (talk) 07:55, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- There is no need to envision a vast renaming throughout India because of this one change. The situation for Ukrainian cities is a good example. Prior to 1994 all cities in Ukraine were known by their Russian names. But in the English-speaking world there were never really more than two or three placenames in Ukraine that were widely known and used--Kiev and Odessa, and perhaps Sevastopol and Crimea. Thus, when it came time for Wikipedia to reflect usage on Ukrainian placenames and decide whether the Ukrainian forms or the Russian forms would predominate, it became fairly easy to sort them out. All placenames were changed from Russian to Ukrainian except for Kiev and Odessa. When doing searches for these names, it was clear that the number of hits for any place in Ukraine other than these two was tiny, so there was no "common English name" for any of these places other than Kiev and Odessa (which have remained at their Russian variants per WP:COMMONNAME). You mention Leningrad. But Leningrad was known as St. Petersburg for centuries before it became Leningrad, so changing the name was not really a case of going to something new and unfamiliar, but simply restoring what was already a common English name for the city. It's not relevant to this case. City names across India are virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, so there is no pressure to either change or not change the majority of place names in Wikipedia. But Calcutta and Bombay, and perhaps Delhi, are the only cities that the majority of English speakers are familiar with and the only ones that truly have "common English names". Thus, we have to ask, what factors does Calcutta share with Bombay and what factors are different? The new name for Bombay is actually quite commonly found in English language sources now. Indeed, it has been a very long time since I've heard or read the name Bombay. It is found in the news media and elsewhere quite commonly. But Kolkata is still virtually unknown in the English speaking world. This city is still known most commonly as Calcutta. Wikipedia has a principle, WP:OTHERSTUFF, where we don't draw parallels to other articles. In this case, there is a very real difference between Mumbai and Calcutta in terms of common English usage. But there is a linguistic reason why Mumbai and Calcutta are different situations and why Kolkata has not caught on in the English speaking world. Bombay > Mumbai is more like Leningrad > St. Petersburg because the "new" name is phonetically different than the old name, so replacement is much clearer. Kolkata is more like "Moskva", "Praha", "Warszawa", and "Roma", simply a different transliteration scheme and not fundamentally different words from their common English forms "Calcutta", "Moscow", "Prague", "Warsaw", and "Rome". Shifting a name to something different catches on much more easily in English than simply changing the spelling of the old form. Mumbai and Calcutta are different situations and that is evidenced in how commonly they are really found in English. --Taivo (talk) 08:33, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Also, Walrasiad, some of them really have caught on. I would oppose changing Varanasi back to Benares, for example, because I expect your average reader would think, "Benares? Oh, they mean Varanasi". So the new name would win out. But this is the opposite: your average reader will think, "Kolkata? Oh, they mean Calcutta". So we should just say 'Calcutta' to begin with. There might be a couple other cases where we'd want to move back, but there can't be very many of them. As Taivo points out, most Indian place names are too obscure to most non-Indians for there to be a conventional form, whereas Calcutta is a world-famous city. — kwami (talk) 09:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
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- That's a strawman: 'Beijing' is now well established as the dominant form in English. And no, they do not sound the same, any more that 'Beijing' and 'Peking' do. — kwami (talk) 12:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Official spelling in a given country is not relevant for English Wikipedia. There can't be any official ENGLISH SPELLING as English is a non-regulated language. Instead, Wikipedia policies do apply for the the English Wikipedia, and in the present case Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources.. Based on WP:COMMONNAME both Beijing (see here) and Calcutta (see here) should be preferred.--Pseudois (talk) 13:11, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Well yes, but English is widely spoken in the second most populous country in the world, and there they universally refer to the city by the name 'Kolkata'. That really ought to trump any armchair research. --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 08:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. I have to oppose this, this is an official name since 2001 like (Bombay → Mumbai), (Cawnpore → Kanpur), (Madras → Chennai) and (Pondicherry → Puducherry). I remember Bangalore would change to Bengaluru and it is not officially changed by Indian residents. ApprenticeFan work 14:31, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. The government of India has changed the spelling in English "to match the Bengali pronunciation" (quote from article). I support "Kolkata" because I see it as respecting the local culture. I was not aware of the spelling change, which has been in place for 10 years, until I read an article in Wikipedia. Therefore, I think that using the "Kolkata" spelling in this Wikipedia article will speed up the process of acceptance of the new name. As to those who say that the old name is better known and change is confusing, imagine that a city in your country decided to change its name. Would you think maps and articles about it should continue to use the old name because people know it as that? I think you would agree that you wouldn't. On the other hand, I agree that "Kolkata" goes against the WP:Commonname policy ("Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources.") In this case, I disagree with the policy. That's my two cents, rupees, whatever. :) DBlomgren (talk) 16:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
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- "Speeding up the process" is not Wikipedia's function. This is an encyclopedia, not a manual of usage or style. We report the facts, not the local desires of what should be. Take, for example, Waurika, Oklahoma. The local government contacted me several years ago to find out what their name meant in "Indian" (since I'm a specialist on a group of Native American languages). I told them the truth--it means "Worm Eaters" in Comanche. (It's funny to a Comanche, not so funny to an Anglo.) They didn't like it and decided to look elsewhere for a meaning. Now, if we constantly took "local preferences" into account in Wikipedia, we would have to delete that etymology from the entry on Waurika and enter whatever false drivel they found elsewhere or invented for themselves. Wikipedia isn't a travel brochure, it isn't an arm of local government, it isn't an agent of change. It is simply a reporter. That's why we have policies like WP:COMMONNAME in place. "Calcutta" is still the most common name of that city in English. --Taivo (talk) 17:06, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Here is some relevant data from English language media:
- New York Times, 2005-present, Calcutta (without Kolkata) 403 results; Kolkata 94 results: Calcutta is four times as common
- The Economist, last year, print only, doesn't count findings, but there are three results from Calcutta (without Kolkata) and two pages with just Kolkata: Kolkata is virtually only form
- The Times (London), 2005-present, Calcutta (without Kolkata) 1189 results; Kolkata 243 results: Calcutta is four times as common
- Washington Post, 2005-present, Calcutta (without Kolkata), 2 results; Kolkata, 46 results: Kolkata is virtually only form
- This limited search yields two facts. First, in these English media that refer to Calcutta in any real volume, "Calcutta" is the preferred form four to one. Second, in these English media that rarely refer to Calcutta, "Kolkata" is the preferred form. So what we're really dealing with is two situations. Where Calcutta is rarely mentioned, "Kolkata" is carefully used, but where Calcutta is much more often the topic, "Calcutta" is much more commonly used. It seems quite clear then that "Calcutta" is still more commonly used. Materialscientist uses the wrong sources for discussing WP:COMMONNAME. He uses style guides and official decrees. These are immaterial. All that matters is usage, not declaration. We don't measure common English usage by its occurrence in style guides or official declarations. We measure it by actual occurrence. I've given four examples of measuring actual usage here, kwami has given another above. --Taivo (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- A lot of people have switched from "Calcutta" to "Kolkata" in just the last year, including New York Times and AP. Kauffner (talk) 02:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support; the new name has not yet supplanted the old in common English usage. Powers T 20:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support: The Franch call London Londres and Dover Douvres, which is fine. In the same way, Kolkata in English is Calcutta and that is the way it should stay. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.170.59.109 (talk) 22:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support. Wikipedia's policy on names is clear: WP:COMMONNAME. We don't follow what local government dictates when English usage supersedes it. The unofficial form is overwhelmingly the most used in English, it must take precedence over any local government dictates. Urbanus Secundus (talk) 01:19, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
- Comment The presnet location for the atticle reflects its official name, which applies to Indian English as well as Hindi. The VJP government indianised a lot of names and they have not officially been changed back. It does no one any harm for the article to stay where it is, as long as Calcutta remains as a redirect and that name appears clearly in the lead of the article. Please remember that English is an ofifcial languiage of India, so that the French spelling of Londres is not a good precedent. Peterkingiron (talk) 01:47, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- Strong oppose: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia after all and it should be always be updated, no? If we move Kolkata to its older name, then there are a lot of Indian cities which should be moved: Mumbai to Bombay, Chennai to Madras and so on. DdraconiandevilL (talk) 05:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support. I am an Indian, and have stayed in Calcutta/Kolkata for a couple of years. Like others have mentioned here, English is a popular language in India and is one of the official languages recognized by the government. From what I have personally seen in India, while usage of "Kolkata" has gained traction over "Calcutta" in the past few years, many people (including myself) still usually refer to the city as "Calcutta". This is just inside India, I suppose most people outside refer to the city as "Calcutta". I support the renaming of the article, with the alternate name mentioned prominently in the opening section. I agree that this opens the door for similar changes to other cities like Bombay and Madras - but each case should be discussed separately. Aurorion (talk) 18:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
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- It sounds like this is a bit like Ganges, then, with usage within India divided, though Kolkata is probably more widespread than Ganga outside India, due to official promotion. Yes, Madras would have to be a separate case, argued on its own merits. Bombay has probably been discussed to death.
- As for Kolkata being mentioned prominently, I would expect the opening of the lead to read s.t. like "Calcutta, officially Kolkata, is the capital ..." — kwami (talk) 05:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose. Per Materialscientist. It is not quite easy to filter out old results from the new. I agree "Kolkata" may not be as popular as "Chennai" or "Mumbai" in the English speaking world, but India is a major English speaking country, and most Indian news agencies (barring The Telegraph) use "Kolkata". (Note: I don't agree to the "Its my city, I will call it what I want" logic). Lynch7 17:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support per WP:COMMONNAME/WP:OFFICIALNAME. (WP:COMMONALITY might also apply.) I have stayed out of previous discussions but Wikipedia is having a case of crystal ball blues here, hence the continual move proposals. Calcutta is still the most common name in English. If this changes in the future, the issue can be redressed then. — AjaxSmack 02:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose As per all the guys who have opposed. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose An argument based on common name could go either way. Kolkata has reasonable amount of traction in usage and in RS, and it's an official English language spelling in a country where English is an official language. If common isn't overwhelmingly persuasive, go with the trending and official. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)
- Support, per kwami and others. Undoubtedly the most common variant. Rennell435 (talk) 03:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose No convincing evidence has been offered that "Calcutta" is the most common contemporary variant - people have either simply asserted it, or relied on old Google searches going back 6-10 years. The fact that style guides such as AP, the Guardian and the New York Times now prefer Kolkata shows that mainstream usage in 2012 either is there already, or is at least heading that way. A Google News search (which will only bring up very recent media usage) backs that up, revealing a ratio of 4:1 in favour of Kolkata just now. If we were still at Calcutta, a just-about-but-barely-convincing case could be made to wait a bit longer to switch; but now we're here at Kolkata, it seems perverse to suggest swimming against the rather obvious tide and go back when everyone is moving the other way (ps: despite some people pushing this as a reason, the fact that the official name is Kolkata should of course count for nothing in itself. - WP:COMMONNAME is the key. It just happens that they meet on this occasion). N-HH talk/edits 14:55, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose - First, it is not a new name, it was always pronounced Kolkata/Kolikata by the locals for the generations. It was pronounced as Calcutta, to suit the tongues of our Colonial masters, who could not pronounce it properly. The word Kolkata has been accepted by most of the media, both local and international in recent times. 06:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support per nom. This is the English Wikipedia. JonCTalk 15:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
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- No, this is the English-language Wikipedia. And can you or anyone else provide hard evidence - or even vague evidence - that Calcutta is still the preferred spelling/name in English in 2012? No one above has yet, even though they make broad claims to that effect. N-HH talk/edits 00:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- Check ngram or Insights. Kauffner (talk) 02:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks .. those appear to suggest (albeit perhaps by differing criteria) that Calcutta was more common up to 2008, and that Kolkata is now more common, as of 2012. What other conclusion can be drawn from that than that WP is 100% correct to have moved at some point recently from Calcutta to Kolkata? N-HH talk/edits 10:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- You're misreading the stats. They do not show that usage has changed between 2008 and 2012, they show only a 12:1 preference for "Calcutta" in 2008. — kwami (talk) 11:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Oppose I believe that the usage of Kolkata exceeds the usage of Calcutta in English language sources and, as Jonchapple points out, this is the English Wikipedia. Sodabottle has an exhaustive analysis in the move request of 4 months ago that is persuasive and I note that The New York Times uses Kolkata exclusively, without even a "formerly known as" explanation.(cf. this)--regentspark (comment) 13:43, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
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- Can you provide a link for that? — kwami (talk) 18:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- For the NYT, the link is above. For the majority of English language sources, see Sodabottle's analysis from this move request. --regentspark (comment) 21:49, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- That's an analysis of Indian media. Yes, Indian media prefers Kolkata, but WP prefers a world view and international forms. Calcutta is more widely understood than Kolkata. — kwami (talk) 23:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- The 'world view' is provided by the fact that The New York Times prefers Kolkata. Since the Times doesn't bother explaining that Kolkata is Calcutta, I don't think the statement "Calcutta is more widely understood than Kolkata" is a valid one. --regentspark (comment) 00:10, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Yes, the NYT results support your POV. However, when you said that "Sodabottle has an exhaustive analysis", I was expecting to find an exhaustive analysis, and there isn't one. — kwami (talk) 00:34, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- I wouldn't call it my 'POV'. I personally prefer to use Calcutta (and Rangoon for that matter). However, it seems to me that Kolkata is the policy way to go on this. But, que sera sera. --regentspark (comment) 01:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Comment: Search results Ngram 2001–2008 (the year of the name change to the most recent year available) shows an overall decline of 25% for the two names together. That is, while use of "Calcutta" has declined, "Kolkata" has not made up the difference. In fact, "Kolkata" itself declined 60% from a peak in 2005. As of the cut-off date, "Calcutta" outranked "Kolkata" 11 or 12 fold. Now, the Insight results from the US linked by Kauffner differ substantially, with the two terms about even in 2008. That is, although "Kolkata" is minority usage in published sources (at least in books), it is disproportionally the subject of web searches. This is the skewing effect you get from a term that readers do not recognize—what DBlomgren summarized as seeing "Kolkata" in an article is disconcerting. Oh, Calcutta is what they mean. By analogy, the words that get looked up the most in a dictionary are not the most common words, but the ones which most commonly cause difficulty. — kwami (talk) 04:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
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- Anything from 2012, which is the year we are at now? A Google News search for today - yes, limited to online news, but a good starting guide to very recent, contemporary, general use - has, for me at least in the UK, 4,240 for Kolkata and 1,260 for Calcutta. Anything from style guides from major news or publishers, which offer us explicit judgments rather than stats we can make our own guesses about in terms of what they might mean or, even it would seem, of what might be supposedly going on in other people's heads? Again, media-biased, but we already have cited above AP, the Guardian and NYT, which all use Kolkata. The first of those is pretty crucial, given how widely it will be followed by others. Even if the usage ratio is close (which I'm not sure it is anyway), any evidence that the trend is moving back to Calcutta, such that we should too? Cheers. Time to close this one? N-HH talk/edits 10:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- One doubt! I dont know what this Google Ngram exactly uses. If a book uses a term XYZ, does it count this book as one entity or does it actually count how many XYZs it has used and then use those as n-enteries for graphing. Because if it does the later, i dont think its wise to use this Ngram for justifications. A book that calls the city Calcutta once will keep on calling it so throughout n number of times. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 10:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- Actually, just the opposite. A book may use both "Calcutta" and "Kolkata" in the first mention, and then settle down for one or the other. Such a book should count most heavily for its preferred form, not equally for both. Also, a book that mentions the city once in 800 pages won't be weighted the same as a book about or set in the city, which is how it should be. — kwami (talk) 18:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- If you want a number of books, you can search Google Books for "Calcutta" and "Kolkata", with post-2010 English-language deghosted counts of 313 for Calcutta and 216 for Kolkata. I think the ngram is goofed up somehow. It shows six to eight times more results for "Calcutta" than for "Kolkata", whereas every other measurement shows this as a close call. This can be correct only if there is a longstanding pattern of a small number of books using the word "Calcutta" a whole lot, which seems unlikely. Kauffner (talk) 05:53, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- GBooks hits over about 700 are meaningless, even when deghosted. You can use them to compare usage, but not frequency; the raw figures are unreliable estimates, and deghosting introduces its own biases. (If you are going to use Google estimates, the raw figures, both inclusive and exclusive, have "Calcutta" at about 4× the usage of "Kolkata", with surprisingly little overlap.) — kwami (talk) 06:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Our guidelines recommend determining common name based on searching Google Books or News Archive (not ngram). If you know better, you can rewrite them. Kauffner (talk) 09:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Last I read them, they said those are useful for comparing usage, but not for hit counts, and in fact linked to a discussion at LinguistList about how meaningless hit counts are. — kwami (talk) 09:50, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- The distinction that you are making eludes me. You compare usage without looking at the hit counts? It sounds like a magic trick, or perhaps a Gestalt technique of some kind. Perhaps what you mean is that if the number of results is too high, it won't deghost properly. But these results did deghost properly, so that's not really relevant. Kauffner (talk) 10:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
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- What I mean is that GBook searches are good for seeing which kind of texts use which terms, but they're basically worthless for absolute frequency. For example, if most of the hits are in technical books, we might conclude that it's jargon; if they're mostly from one country, we might conclude that it's local, etc.
- How did you determine that these results deghosted properly? — kwami (talk) 10:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- I agree that this is getting far too technical and speculative. Not only that, but it's arguing the toss over usage from years back. As I asked above - where is the statistical evidence specifically in respect of 2012? Are you aware of other style books that contradict the three high-profile media ones already highlighted, that all use Kolkata? Even if the split remains close as of 21/01/12, is there any evidence that the direction of travel in the rest of the world is back towards Calcutta, such that we should revert back to it to? N-HH talk/edits 10:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- We don't need to argue that usage is trending back toward Calcutta. That's not WP convention. What we need to show is which form is dominant in international English. Yes, it's possible that the ratio has gone from twelve-to-one to even in three years (Dec 2008 – Jan 2012), but that has not been demonstrated. — kwami (talk) 10:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Precisely, and you haven't shown that Calcutta is dominant in international English in 2012. You're the one asking for the move, show the evidence to support it - those of us supporting it staying as it is don't of course have to demonstrate anything, even though we have. And the point about the direction of travel is the secondary, practical one that we are at Kolkata now, for better or worse - even if we made that move a little prematurely in that international usage is still, say, evenly split, there is no point reverting to Calcutta if usage is nonetheless about to tip from balance into Kolkata-as-dominant. Now, my three questions? If you can't answer them - especially the first two - I suggest you withdraw this request and save us all some time. N-HH talk/edits 11:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Okay:
- BBC News: Kolkata 419 hits, Calcutta 1639, 4× in favor of Calcutta
- Christian Science Monitor: K 38, C 315, 8× in favor of Calcutta
- LA Times: K 15, C 28, 2× for Calcutta
- Chicago Tribune: K 187, C 1120, 6× for Calcutta
- The Globe and Mail (Canada): 68 to 412, 6× for Calcutta
- USA Today: 208 to 2530, 12× for Calcutta
— kwami (talk) 11:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
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- Um, why are you posting these results, which presumably aren't just for 2012? Looking at the BBC site, they go back to 1998, although current usage does appear to prefer the hybrid "Calcutta (Kolkata)". I's been pointed out above that a Google News search - which will look at very recent use, across all mainstream online meda, is 4-1 in favour of Kolkata; that the AP, Guardian and NYT style guides all prefer Kolkata. Now, for the fourth time - what evidence do you have that actually offers an alternative implication to those? Such as other 2012 search results, other style guides. N-HH talk/edits 12:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Could you point out the links to the style guides?
- Asking for results from 2012 is not reasonable, since that would only cover 3 weeks, and would not be statistically significant. Three years is more like it, and would pick up where ngrams left off; one year would be a snapshot. So, 2009–present and 2011–present:
- BBC: 3yrs 372:868 (233%), 1yr 326:777 (238%)
- Ch.Trib: 1yr 1:11
- LATimes: 1yr 0:8
- CSM, G&M, USA Today: (no date-limited search function)
- The Ch.Tribune & LATimes only allow searches up to a year, and are almost entirely 'Calcutta'. The BBC has stayed level over one year compared to three. Even going back five years (2007–present), the ratio is 396:975 (246%), hardly any change. The BBC it would seem is not trending toward "Kolkata". — kwami (talk) 13:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- The links are in the threaded discussions above. You posted this move request, it slightly behoves you - and it's in your interest - to read what arguments and evidence people cite against it. The key point as well is that the AP and NYT links very specifically name the point where they switched - in March 2011, I think from memory. Now, if we're looking at what name we have this city at in 2012, we have to look at what other people call it in 2012; not some kind of averaging out going back even only one or two years, however little of 2012 we have had so far. That's basic accuracy, surely. And your suggestion that looking at the 3 weeks of this year in any individual media source would not allow a statistically significant spread, and your comment about the BBC trending or not, betray a fundamental misunderstanding about how media and publishing work. They will follow their style guides, full stop (with exception for editing error etc). An individual media source won't start increasing the percentage of term Y it uses over term X once they decide to prefer it - when the style guide changes, that's it. It'll go from 100% of term X to 100% of term Y from that date onwards. Not only does that mean that any switch is definitive for that media outlet, but it further exposes the flaw in going back years for searches when there has been a recent change, since in effect that merely offers more and more weight to old, outdated use. Your links above suggest that some media are indeed still at Calcutta, including the BBC. That's fine, and to be expected (FWIW I'd guess they'll move eventually). But AP, the NYT and the Guardian are all pretty big-name media brands (especially AP), arguably bigger than most you've named. As is Reuters, which I can now add to the list, along with AFP it would appear. And, like I say, try a Google News search, which gives you what nearly all media have done just in the last couple of weeks. That's 4-1 to Kolkata. So, the main big-name media, including the two/three biggest international English-language newswires, and the majority of all online media, as of 23 January 2012, have demonstrably fixed on Kolkata. In the absence of any counter-evidence to that, from the media or the wider publishing world, why would we want to move back to Calcutta? N-HH talk/edits 14:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- No, they don't "follow their style guides, full stop". That's horse manure. I'm not so emotionally vested in this particular move to spend several hours on the issue, but when I've done this in the past on other moves where I was more highly motivated, I've found dozens of examples where "style guide changed on X date", but "old usage still prevailed on X + one year or more". Style guides are not the end of the issue any more than government pronouncements are the end of the issue. Only actual usage prevails. These discussions (and I've been involved in many) always come down to the evidence, one way or the other. And style guides are not evidence on the same level as actual usage in media. In the end, the evidence of usage always prevails over evidence of style guides or official pronouncements. And Kwami is right, you cannot base evidence of usage on three weeks of January. You have to look at a year's worth of evidence (at least) from each media outlet in order to determine. If the style guides say X, but the usage figures for at least a year don't reflect it, then the style guide is just someone's opinion. If the style guide changed in January or December, then it has not had any time to change actual usage and you can't cite it as evidence. You are bound by usage figures here, not pie-in-the-sky wishes of what you would like to be true. No matter which way the usage evidence goes, style guides are poor evidence in these discussions. WP:COMMONNAME isn't about style guides, it's about actual usage. --Taivo (talk) 15:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Of course there will be editing errors, news websites will cross-post copy (especially wire copy) from elsewhere and in some more diffuse organisations (eg the BBC) there are various bits that do different things. In that case, there may not be 100% consistency with the style guide, or separate style guides for separate parts, but to assert that - within that individual publishing organisation - style guides are "just opinions" shows you really do not know what you are talking about. Editors, sub-editors and proof-readers edit to their house style guides - that's what they do; that's what the style guides are for. AP usage will follow the AP style guide; and AP usage will change when the AP style guide changes. In a broader context, yes, they are only the opinion of that individual organisation - that's why I highlighted the prominence of the ones that have been cited, and asked for alternative ones in a bid to assess the overall view; but no one's presented any that contradict the pro-Kolkata line in 2012. I also pointed to a Google News search for recent overall use evidence. As for how long we go back, of course we don't go back, even just to 2011, to judge usage in 2012. We don't need to. And when there has been a recent shift in usage, it's actually misleading for precisely the reasons that I have explained, but which you have chosen to ignore. N-HH talk/edits 15:33, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Again, you don't seem to understand what WP:COMMONNAME means. It means that we don't judge style guides or government dictates. We judge usage. That's the part you don't seem to understand completely. I know very well what role style guides play in an organization and know very well that they very rarely are the straightjackets that you think they are. I've done the research and know what I'm talking about, so don't give me that "you don't know what you're talking about" crap. I've worked as a professional writer and know exactly what they are and are not and how writers and editors do and do not use them. For example, the AP Style Guide is over four hundred pages long. Are you actually implying that if one word (Calcutta > Kolkata) is changed, that every editor using that style guide will uniformly be aware of it? That's some fantasy world you've created. No. It doesn't happen that way. And more often than not, when I've worked on these name change issues in Wikipedia, it takes years for usage to catch up to some name change in a style guide. And again, you think that three weeks of usage is indicative? Again, you don't understand the importance of volume in statistical issues of usage. You're not going to get a reliable measure of usage after three weeks. Period. One year's worth of usage statistics is the minimum for a valid judgment. Style guides are just one piece of less reliable information when dealing with usage. No, there have not been a lot of usage data presented by either the supporters or opponents of this move. Your style guide evidence is unsatisfactory unless it's coupled with actual, focused usage numbers. So far, neither side has presented the hard evidence necessary for a comfortable or factually-reliable conclusion. --Taivo (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- I understand wp:commonname completely thank you. In addition, style guides within an organisation very much are a straitjacket and do drive usage very strictly within that organisation; and I am very much saying that if AP's guide prefers Kolkata and has done since March 2011, we know that all AP copy posted since then will (or at least should) use "Kolkata" and will continue to do so. However, of course, they do not dictate other usage and I am not taking AP and other style guides as definitive here. I'm saying they seem to be pointing us, prima facie, in one direction and asking if they seem out of kilter with others or with evidenced use elsewhere. I've also pointed to Google News as a more broad look at actual, recent usage - which seems to offer the same conclusion in favour of Kolkata - and asked for reasons why we should discount all that when trying to establish what standard use is in 2012. Neither you nor Kwami have offered any serious rebuttal or counter-evidence to ANY of those points, other than pulling spurious theoretical reasons as to why certain evidence should be ignored entirely and arbitrary "minimum" periods of review for "valid judgment" out of your back pocket; while at the same time insisting, oddly, that we should review usage going back to 2008 or even 1998 in order to find out what usage is as at January 2012 in a situation where the terminology is very definitely, if nothing else, in flux. I wouldn't usually mind being accused of peddling "horse manure", "crap" or "pie-in-the-sky wishes of what I would like to be true" or of living in a "fantasy world" or of not understanding the role of volume in statistics, but it galls a little when that cap seems to fit far, far better on the other head. And, as it happens, I personally baulk slightly at Kolkata - Calcutta seems instinctively more normal and comfortable to me. But I have learned to put preference and prejudice to one side and look at, and assess, the evidence that's available and has been presented. Regardless of what I might or might not "like". N-HH talk/edits 18:24, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- The personal attack in your edit summary is noted. You still seem to think that editors and writers automatically march lock-step when a 480-page style guide changes one word. That is, indeed, your fantasy. But you shifted your comments to attacking me for not providing evidence. You will also note if you read my comments carefully, that I very clearly said that neither side had really presented sufficient evidence to make their case. My sole point in this exchange is to get you to realize that style guides are an inferior level of evidence to satisfy WP:COMMONNAME. I said absolutely nothing about your Google News searches. Both sides have presented some appropriate evidence, but neither side has yet made a convincing case for common English usage. And you are still wrong if you think that three weeks of 2012 is a sufficient data base to judge usage. You do, indeed, need at least a year's worth of data. That should not be a very hard standard for either side to meet. But keep your personal attacks to yourself. I have been very focused in my comments--your argument was horse manure, not you; your understanding of WP:COMMONNAME was misguided, not you in general; your understanding of the role of style guides is a fantasy, not your pursuit of your chosen profession. While our rhetoric often gets blunt, it should always stay focused on the issue and relevance to the issue. You want me to start impugning you personally? I didn't think so. So keep personal attacks out of this. --Taivo (talk) 19:25, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- Your personal attacks and suggestions that I don't really know very much about anything I am saying - now repeated in a battering-ram list - are noted too, however much you try to weasel out of them with the old "they're not aimed at you, they're aimed at what you write and think". I also noted your specific comments just above about the inadequacy of either side's evidence - as I did your explicit support for the move back to Calcutta, as the very first post-proposal commenter. Regardless of whether you are indeed a "professional writer" or an "associate professor", as you claim here on and on your home page respectively, the most egregious piece of nonsense written by anyone contributing here recently is that AP will not follow its own style guide when it gets updated because it's quite long and AP editors might not remember or notice it's changed; of course that will happen due to occasional error and oversight, as acknowledged, but that's a marginal point. If AP's style guide says use Kolkata, then we can safely conclude that is what AP uses for this city from the date that was changed - as with Reuters and AFP, the New York Times and the Guardian. Can you also perhaps point us all to the rule, or statistical standard, that says we need to track use for a year? If we have a ratio of 4 to 1 based on a total sample of 4-5,000 instances of recent use in online media - which we do - in what way is that not comprehensive evidence of common use as of now? What would extending the time frame back further actually do other than bring in older usage of terminology that we know has recently been updated in several outlets? And if there's no clear evidence either way, as you claim, isn't this move request pointless because, in the absence of it, no one would approve the switch to Calcutta and hence we'll likely default to staying where we are now anyway? N-HH talk/edits 20:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- You have a serious problem with knowing what a personal attack is ("you're lying about who you are", "you're not qualified to be who you are") and what I wrote ("you don't understand X policy", "you have a mistaken notion of Y concept"). I don't have to justify why I voted the way I did. I haven't been participating in this discussion other than to point out that you have based your opinion too heavily on style guides. And I demonstrated why that was so. I haven't put forth very much effort at all to change anyone's mind about the move, it will succeed or fail on the evidence. But the existence of style guides is simply not good evidence. I have seen too many cases where writers simply ignore the style guides, and even when "middle section" writers conflict with the "front page" writers, to simply fall over blindly to the argument that the style guide is the end of the matter. It simply isn't. A good example was at the move proposal for "Kiev" to "Kyiv". Several style guides were dictating "Kyiv", and had been for over a year, but the evidence was that the writers and editors were continuing to use "Kiev" overwhelmingly, no matter what their style guides said. That's just the way it is. Sometimes the writers and editorial staff pay attention to the style guides and sometimes they don't. Therefore you simply can't state categorically that style guides demonstrate usage. They may try to dictate usage, but that is a very different matter than demonstating usage. --Taivo (talk) 22:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, it seems I really don't know anything about anything then, and we can now add linguistic semantics and the subtleties of barely concealed personal attacks and bizarre accusations of all-round ignorance to that list. Oh well. I have, rather clearly, never said style guides were the end of the issue, not least for the reason that they are all different. Hence, the Google News search stats. However, the idea that the fact the style guide of the world's major English-language international newswire - as well as several other major news organisations - uses Kolkata is not probative as to common use, including as defined in wp:commonname, at least as a starting point that needs rebuttal by specific counter-evidence rather than spurious argument, is absurd. The fact that you may have seen poor editing to their own style guides within some random publisher or other is neither here nor there. Any serious publisher will follow its own style guide, albeit with the inevitable exceptions and errors of the sort that I have long pointed out and acknowledged. Those errors will be small in number and/or can and should be discounted as errors - in the context of that publisher's output - just as we would genuine spelling mistakes. Anyway, I'm done - this page is at Kolkata. The burden of evidence is on those - including yourself apparently - who are seeking to change it back to Calcutta. Good luck. N-HH talk/edits 16:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
- Comment: I dont understand how published books of years gone by can be used for finding out what the "current" status is. Using News search seems reasonable. But i myself did a weird search. Ofcourse there are flaws in it as it was a sample survey. But i can conclude from it that "Kolkata" is a better title for this page.
I went on the websites of few International Airlines to find out what they use because i consider that they would surely put in the name that their customer's understand now, & not what they understood 30yrs ago or what government calls for. I also wanted to compare it with Mumbai/Bombay. Here is the table. Surprisingly all of them use "Kolkata" (if they at all use) but some still use only "Bombay". That was weird of US Airways. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 10:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
| Airline |
CCU |
BOM |
| Delta Airlines |
--- |
Mumbai - Chhatrapati Shivaji Intl, IN |
| United Airlines |
Kolkata, India - Netaji Subhas Chandra Airport (CCU) |
Mumbai, India - Bombay (BOM) |
| Lufthansa |
Kolkata, Kolkata (CCU), India |
Mumbai/Bombay, Mumbai - Chhatrapati Shivaji Intl. Airport (BOM), India |
| American Airlines |
CCU Kolkata, Netaji Subhas Chandra, India |
BOM - Mumbai - Chhatrapati Shivaji, India |
| Air France |
--- |
Mumbai, Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM) – India |
| KLM |
Kolkata - Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (CCU), India |
Mumbai/Bombay - Chhatrapati Shivaji (BOM), India |
| US Airways |
Kolkata, India (CCU) |
Bombay, India (BOM) |
| Qantas |
Kolkata, India (CCU) |
Mumbai, India (BOM) |
| British Airways |
Kolkata, India, CCU, Kolkata |
Mumbai, India, BOM, Chhatrapati Shivaji Intl |
| AirAsia |
Kolkata (CCU) |
Mumbai (BOM) |
| Emirates Airlines |
Kolkata, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, India (CCU) |
Mumbai (Bombay), Chhatrapati Shivaji International, India (BOM) |
-
- Those "years past" are the years since the name change. That's why they're relevant.
- Like consulates, it's common for airports to use official names. I don't think that has much to do with common usage. (Though yes, "Bombay" certainly stands out there.)
- But remember the comment above, that it doesn't matter because they're pronounced the same anyway? That shows that that editor was unfamiliar with "Kolkata" in speech—he only knew it from print. That's not assimilated into English. How many people here are comfortable with using "Kolkata" in a conversation? Unless they also speak an Indian language, almost everyone would say "Calcutta", which means that's the preferred form in English. — kwami (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
- Airports should use the official names. But the websites from where you book tickets need not use any official name. They, for their customers, should use the names that customers are familiar with. They could very well use both names. Like Lufthansa uses for Mumbai/Bombay. After all the code CCU is of relevance to them. But when you start typing Calc.... nothing appears in the dropdown. You have to start with Kolk..... And someone did point out how it doesnt make sense to revert a page's title that is now trending to something that was used in past. Few months would go and someone will again request for reverting it back to Kolkatta. And just like how non-Indians started using Mumbai, they can start using Kolkata too. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- "Should" has absolutely no value in Wikipedia. Zero. Only actual usage counts here. And Kwami is right, people may see "Kolkata", but in an English conversation, they are vastly more likely to say "Calcutta". --Taivo (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- & things like "likely to" are called Original Researches in WP. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 09:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Indeed. This whole discussion features a lot of evidence-less assertions about what is or is not "common usage" (as well as some statistical evidence going back 10 years). In addition, as a genuine question, does it matter what people say? Even if the assertion here is correct, should that affect the written name we use here? N-HH talk/edits 10:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
- Relisting comment for this RM to be closed with anything other than a No consensus decision based on the discussion todate, editors both supporting and opposing must work together to develop a clear, collegial consensus around using either the current name or proposed name.--Mike Cline (talk) 16:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Support. The Telegraph, the city's largest-circulation English-language daily,[9] uses "Calcutta". (A look at the paper's Metro section leaves no room for doubt.) The proposed form is preferred by Merriam-Webster, the authority on American spelling, as well as by BBC, by A Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names (2005), and by Random House (2012). It is the "conventional" spelling given by GeoNames. I note that the local spelling and the GeoNames conventional spelling are specifically recommended by WP:NCGN. I get 11,700 post-2008 English-language Google Book hits for Calcutta city, 4,470 for Kolkata city. Kauffner (talk) 15:21, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
-
- Perhaps oddly, the Telegraph appears to be pretty much out on a limb when it comes to media, including other English-language Indian media, where Kolkata seems to be much preferred (stats above and elsewhere). Whether we would place more weight on it as a local paper, or work on the assumption that they wanted to maintain the historic name/masthead of their paper and, hence, could hardly change their spelling when they refer to the city in articles, who knows? Certainly a Google News search done in the UK the other day for Calcutta reveals the name coming in at a third of Kolkata; with most of what does come up in the early pages either coming from the Telegraph or via references to the Calcutta Cup. N-HH talk/edits 11:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
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