Talk:Rhode Island

Rhode Island Dialects

Several areas (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore) have separate articles regarding the local parlance. Research into Pittsburgh English and Philadelphia English are treated in a scholarly fashion, by Barbara Johnstone of Carnegie Mellon University and William Labov of the University of Pennsylvania. Is there similar treatment of the "Craaaanstanah" accent? As unusual as the accent is, it deserves its own article. If scholarly research has been done, it would not only make the article more straightforward to write, it would not run the risk of being original research--a problem with the Baltimore English article.Weyandt (talk) 14:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Total area vs. bays and inlets

I found near duplication of material at the end of the lead and the end of the "Origin of the name" section. In the lead it is stated that "Rhode Island's official nickname is "The Ocean State", a reference to the state's geography, since Rhode Island has several large bays and inlets that amount to about 14% of its total area. Its land area is 1,045 square miles (2706 km2), but its total area is significantly larger." In the "Origin of the name" section we are then told that "Rhode Island's official state nickname is "The Ocean State", a reference to the state's geography (since Rhode Island has several large bays and inlets that amount to about 30% of its total area.)." I was going to remove the note from the name section as it does not actually bear upon the origin of the name, but wanted to make sure of the accuracy of the figures first. Since I don't have the areas of the bays and inlets I cannot make the comparison. --Khajidha (talk) 18:51, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Prominent Figures in the History of Rhode Island

The gallery of prominent figures only includes rich white men. Are there no women or people of color who have been important in RI history? It's also very arbitrary in terms of who it includes. If you're going to feature RWMs, then surely you need to include John Brown. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.182.74 (talk) 13:27, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

For much of the history of the US, women and people of color did not make large numbers of contributions because they weren't allowed to by society. That is sad, but true. It makes no sense to complain about a lack of coverage of something that wasn't there in the first place. --Khajidha (talk) 18:19, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

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origin of Rhode Island name

Rhode Island's namnesake origin is not unknown as stated in this article. I believe the "Rhode" in the Rhode Island name was originated from a prominent land owner's sur name of 'Rhode". What is now Aquidneck island,was once known as Rhode Island and when statehood was formed it reflected the joining of Providence plantations.i'll provide more accurate facts soon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzderry (talk • contribs) 18:52, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty well up on my RI history and have heard various theories explaining the origin of the state's name ... but never this one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.50.240 (talk) 03:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The common surname is "Rhodes" to be exact, but I've never seen a source that cited this as the origin of the name. LTC (Ret.) David J. Cormier (talk) 21:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization

Something went haywire with the editing system for me: I opened the art icle, and it began "the state of...", rat her than the correct "the State of...". Looking at the article's history, I compared the revisions by Rreagan007 and RjwilmsiBot, which re --184.5.162.130 (talk) 15:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)Italic textvealed that Rreagan007 had removed the capitalization. Up on undoing his revision, the capitalization was still not there, and the history now showed that the capital ization had been added back in my Rreagan007 that was removed previously, the opposite of how it was before. Upon reverting my own edit, the capitalization appeared correct.

I didn't know that could happen.Dogdogs.org