Talk:Praha hlavní nádraží

Name (part 94)

How about "Praha Hlavní railway station"? This has the advantages that it

• includes the words "railway station" for people who don't like "nadrazi".
• includes the key part of the official name,[1] which will be needed by anyone who wants to find out more about the station, or to actually use it
• is unambiguous.
• reflects the English-language WP:COMMONNAME we can WP:VERIFY from WP:RS in industry,[2] books,[3] local English media,[4] and international media.[5]
• matches the local common name.
• avoids using a contrived description instead of a name
• avoids creating a Wikipedia-only neologism
• is consistent with the approach taken for similar railway stations in Germany (all those Hbfs), Italy, Slovakia, Poland, France, Hungary etc.
• is intelligible for English speakers (OK, so English-speakers who have never been to the Czech Republic might not know what "Hlavní" means, but they won't know what "Holesovice" or "Masarykovo" mean either. Southern Cross is less than obvious to outsiders, while countless London commuters survive without knowing much about Dominican friars.

Wheeltapper (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I certainly like this name, at least in the sense that if I was chief naming dude for Czech Railways I would be partial to it. If you have seen other station names, you can figure out that the first word is the city name, even you have never seen the word "Praha" before. This represents a big improvement on the current name. You link to a guidebook that use Praha-hlavní nádraží and to railway schedules that use "Praha hl.n." But neither of these support the idea of splitting "hlavní" and "nádraží", treating as one as an integral part of the name and the other as a translatable descriptor. However, I did find an example in Google Books here. Kauffner (talk) 07:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• Thomas Cook's European Rail Timetable uses "Praha hlavni"
• Railway Gazette International uses "Praha Hlavní station"[6]

A name that some wp:rs use strikes me as a better choice than one that none use. Wheeltapper (talk)

• The worst suggestion so far. It fails to use the English term for the city and fails to treat the station as a proper noun. Either we use the Czech name for the station, or we use an applicable English name which follows English grammar. Arsenikk ^(talk) 23:33, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Surely it is hardly going to surprise anyone that something in a non-English speaking country has a non-English name? I'm not sure why it fails to treat the station as a proper noun - can it get more proper-noun-like than using its name? It also seems to fit with (British) English grammar; <location> <specific title> is a common format for station names (London Victoria etc). Who would actually benefit if we did invent a new name which only Wikipedia uses? 22:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I can agree that a non-English speaking country has a non-English name. However we are not living in that country, we are using (living in) the English wiki. The non-English name used by the non-English country is under normal circumstances translated into an English version. An example would be the 'Česká republika' which was translated into 'Czech Republic'. Go figure out why. Flamarande (talk) 01:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting sick of these patronising messages in these discussions constantly reminding us that "this is en.wiki". Yes, we're aware of that. We're aware that Česká Republika has an English name. I have no idea what this has to do with this discussion. Just because a name is foreign doesn't mean we have to translate it. We could comfortably translate Háje to "Groves", Łódź to "Boat" or Divoká Šárka to "Wild Charlotte", but we don't, because those names don't exist. - filelakeshoe 04:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Good work Filelakeshoe. Keep it up.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:51, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Use of tourist guidebooks as sources for naming RS?

There may be (I'm not sure that there is) a problem with over-emphasis of tourist sources in showing that the name in English is Hlavni Nadrazi. Such sources inevitably must give the Czech name for disambiguation to avoid people going to the other station, Praha-Holešovice railway station, and I know from personal experience that the metro doesn't (didn't) have English on the metro Hlavni Nadrazi name. Yet the other approach per Frommer's Prague & the Best of the Czech Republic Hana Mastrini - 2006 "There are four express trains from Prague's main station for 224Kc ($9.30) (trip time: 2 hr... " is simply "main station" no caps. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:32, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Naming conventions (geographic names) says not to use guidebooks to establish an English-language name since they may be attesting to local signage. Foreign-language names need to be translated, according to WP:UE. Kauffner (talk) 03:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)