Talk:North Aegean

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Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:West Greece which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:44, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 5 March 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move. Cúchullain ^t/c 13:55, 9 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Northern Aegean → North Aegean
Southern Aegean → South Aegean

– These two articles have been moved after a slightly overhasty discussion on Talk:Western Greece#Requested move 21 February 2015. In the meantime I did some research on general naming customs pointing to the form with the -ern suffix stressing the geographical significance (one could loosely say "northernmost" and "southernmost"), regularly being used if there is something central in between. The form without the -ern suffix however is regularly used as a two-tiered disambiguator between North and South or between East and West (see the cases of Germany, Korea, America). In the case of the Aegean regions, while both versions are colloquially used, this translates to North Aegean vs. South Aegean being the more appropriate names.
While these findings might be seen as WP:OR (someone might find literature on this though), here's now the objective facts: "North Aegean" in literature is clearly more common (~4:1) than "Northern Aegean". Also, "South Aegean" is more common (~3:2) than "Southern Aegean", although less clearly. While in the case of the other administrative regions of Greece, our recent move was absolutely justified, these two articles need to be moved back. While consistency might be considered a nice thing, general naming customs and WP:COMMONNAME IMHO leave us with no other option. PanchoS (talk) 18:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See also this English page and English tourist guide on North Aegean region's official website. --PanchoS (talk) 20:30, 5 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As I said, I am neutral on this question. I only want to point out that the usage results in GBooks do not concern the administrative regions, but come from all sort of other historical and geographical contexts. So the only thing they attest to is usage of the respective forms across the board, but I do not feel that they are necessarily a reliable indicator on the present issue. Constantine ✍ 08:39, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bit of I like it opining: the -ern suffix sounds awkward to me but not for the rationale that the nominator provides. To me, "Northern Aegean" sounds like the northern part of the sea itself and not an admin region of islands in the northern part of the sea. — AjaxSmack 05:27, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support - yeaaaah, I might not have examined this carefully enough the first time. "North X" is how we refer to the northern part of basically any body of water. It would seem likely to me that the region would be named after that body of water. Red Slash 21:09, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.