Talk:Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line

Requested move 16 March 2019

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved(non-admin closure) Mrbeastmodeallday (talk) 07:44, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

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Kanagawa Eastern Line → Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line – This article was presumably created by Google translating '神奈川東部方面線', but this does not qualify for WP:COMMONNAME, not being used by the construction authorities nor by the press. For its operation this line has been named Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line [1], and that is the name passengers will call it by. Arguably most readers outside Japan will have little interest in what the Shin-Yokohama Line was called during construction, the name that will be used during its servicing is more appreciated. Hms1103 (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

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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.

Requested move 26 December 2022

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. per consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) echidnaLives - talk - edits 06:17, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

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Sōtetsu and Tōkyū Shin-Yokohama Lines → Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line – The current title covers two topics and is somewhat confusing. As the article Tōkyū Shin-Yokohama Line has been created, this article's title should have an matching title, Sōtetsu Shin-Yokohama Line. Once completed, the two lines will be run separately by two different operating companies, have different rolling stock, and there actually will be trains that terminate at Shin-Yokohama Station,[2] which means they will not be through services between the two lines. Hms1103 (talk) 16:07, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

• Support and close per WP:SNOWPRO - obvious improvement. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 20:21, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support per nom, consistency with ja-wiki (despite presenting a weaker argument. Exp691 (talk) 05:51, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
• support per nom. Nyamo Kurosawa (talk) 13:10, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Capitalization

On 23 March 2023‎, this article was moved to "Sōtetsu Shin-yokohama Line" with a lowercase "y" with the rationale "officially Tokyu and Sotetsu decapitalize the letter after hyphen". However, Wikipedia operates on the basis of WP:COMMONNAME, not "official" names, and using lowercase letters for place names (like Yokohama) is ungrammatical; MOS:HYPHENCAPS specifically notes that proper names (like "Yokohama") should be capitalized after a hyphen. Unless there are strong objections, I will move this back to the previously agreed name. @Sameboat FYI. Jpatokal (talk) 06:42, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Since there were previous move discussions on this page, the move to a lowercase title should not have been treated as uncontroversial. It should have been reversed at the time, but a long period has passed since then, so it might be best to continue with a full move request. There are several other stations and lines in Japan with similar problems, e.g. for Hankyu in Keihanshin: Kyoto-kawaramachi Station in Kyoto, Ishibashi handai-mae Station in Osaka, or repeated references to "Osaka-umeda Station" in the Umeda Station article. Dekimasuよ! 07:28, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't really think there is a "common spelling" to begin with. The main issue with the hyphen in Japan is that, as with other punctuations, it is not being employed in the conventional English way in most cases. As for proper names with prefixes such as Shin (new), Naka (central), Kita (north), etc., the hyphen is arguably redundant. If you believe the de-capitalized names are wrong and these names should be changed to conform to proper English grammar, I believe the hyphen should go (so the prefix and the root join together) or be replaced with a space. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 09:15, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Since there is a distinction between a prefix and a word, the hyphens make sense to me (particularly for "Shin-"; even in Japanese dictionaries this will be listed as 接頭 with the clarification that it always precedes a noun). In English, terms with the pattern "Shin-Yokohama" are much more common formations than either a "Shin Yokohama" or "Shinyokohama" pattern. ("Kita-", etc. are different because they may either be appended or an integral part of the place name; this is rare for "Shin-".) Dekimasuよ! 10:22, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure about your logic with connecting a ja:接頭辞, which literally means "prefix", with a hyphen. In morden English practice, while not completely dominant, prefix generally doesn't require a hyphen to connect to the stem. It is a different case with "Kyoto-kawaramachi" when none of the components serve as an affix, and both are proper names, despite the ambiguity "Kawaramachi" may raise. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 23:33, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

It is common practice in English to write "Shin-X" for any station of the form "新X", see eg. Shin-Yokohama Station, Shin-Ōsaka Station, Shin-Fuji Station. Why would we not do this for Shin-Yokohama Line as well? Jpatokal (talk) 00:01, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

This is unfortunately a circular argument. The "cap-after-hyphen" is really employed primarily by JR, and this is clearly not a common practice in Japan, not only are Sotetsu[3], Tokyu[4] and Yokohama Municipal Subway[5][6], whatever government department responsible for road signs in Japan use "Shin-yokohama"[7] as well. I must come clean that I do not necessarily endorse their practices, but JR, being a non-anglophone Japanese organization, should not be treated as an authoritative entity in terms of English grammar. My second argument is that the hyphen really makes no sense in anglophone locales such as "New York", "New Zealand", "Newfoundland" etc., because like Shin Yokohama, the "New/Shin" part is an inseparable part of the name, adding a hyphen and followed by a capitalized root gives the wrong impression that the "New/Shin" part had been a separate location but was later merged with the second part.

Another less relevant issue is that if we are adhering to Wikipedia naming conventions, all railway line and station articles should have their "line" and "station" part decapitalized as with all United Kingdom railway articles.

I really want to bring this discussion to Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains for more comments. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 07:19, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

It is a very basic rule of English spelling that proper nouns are always capitalized, even after a hyphen, and JR is correctly following this convention. Your analogy is false: "Shin-Osaka" does not mean the city of "New Osaka" as in "New York", it means a new station for Osaka, within Osaka.

Hyphens aside, though, we have even more blatant cases of incorrect capitalization like Hazawa yokohama-kokudai Station, where there's no sane reason to make Yokohama lowercase. Jpatokal (talk) 11:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Shin-Osaka isn't really a good comparison with Shin-Yokohama, the latter is more than just a new station, but a designated district with its own postal code (222-0033). My point is, the second parts of "New York" and "New Zealand" predate their "New" counterparts, which is a valid analogy for all the "新" proper names in Japan. I also fail to find any proper name in anglophone countries which uses a hyphen to join "New" with the stem. Hyphenated proper names usually use hyphen to connect proper names with preposition, not adjective, and "New/Shin" is not a preposition but an adjective grammatically in English and Japanese respectively. Anyway, I am largely in favor of replacing the hyphen with a space and keep all the proper names capitalized which would ease all the troubles associated with the hyphen. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 12:56, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

See MOS:JAPAN. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 03:30, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

This MOS does not address the hyphen issue with prefixes like "Shin-", unfortunately. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 03:43, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

MOS:JAPAN explicitly states that standard English/MOS rules of capitalization apply, and MOS:HYPHENCAPS says proper names after hyphens should be capitalized. So the current "Shin-yokohama" is unambiguously wrong.

You seem to be proposing "Shin Yokohama" as an alternative, but while occasionally seen, this does not seem to be the WP:COMMONNAME. Jpatokal (talk) 04:01, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Of course, I have been suggesting "Shin Yokohama" all this time. I also have to stress that I am not convinced that "Shin-Yokohama" is a common name. To establish its common name status, you must provide Anglophone sources (i.e., sources not originating from Japan) that indicate a preferred spelling by the majority of English-speaking sources. On the other hand, "Shin-yokohama" appears to be equally common in Japan based on the sources provided by me. And this is the main reason why English Wikipedia did not change the spelling of "Kiev" to "Kiyv," which had been preferred by Ukrainian sources for a very long time. We only made the change when the majority of Anglophone sources switched after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 05:30, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, no, you're the one trying to overturn convention here, so it's your job to provide references indicating that "Shin Yokohama" is the most common form. I think you'll have a hard time demonstrating that, since the only source I've found that uses that form is Shin Yokohama Prince Hotel, but a) the article is already under that name and can stay there as far as I care, and b) this is a "source originating from Japan" and thus invalid by your logic (which, I must note, is not supported by any WP policy I'm aware of). Jpatokal (talk) 13:06, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

You are the one claiming "Shin-Yokohama" is the common name, and you bear the burden of proving that "Shin-(capitalized root)" is the common name. So far, your sole strongest source of "Shin-Yokohama" is JR, while "Shin-yokohama" is preferred by multiple railway organizations and government entities responsible for road signs. WP:ESTABLISHED does recommend use "English-language sources (...) no matter what name is used by non-English sources". WP:MLN acknowledges the difficulty in determining a single common English name, so a middle ground is picked which is not biased towards either side, in this sense, I believe "Shin Yokohama" is the closest one in conforming to English naming convention. And no, I don't suggest "Shin Yokohama" on ground of "common name", but "English naming convention" when "New/Shin" is an inseparable part of the name. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 01:38, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

(undent) We're a week in and so far only the person who moved the article wants to keep it there, with everybody else wanting to move it back. Unless there are new voices in the next day or two, I will declare WP:SNOWBALL and move this and other train/station related articles to Shin-Yokohama. Jpatokal (talk) 13:08, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Moved ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 02:21, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I have also moved Tōkyū Shin-Yokohama Line and Shin-Tsunashima Station, as well as requested a move for Hazawa Yokohama-Kokudai Station. Please chip in and fix up links in these articles and others. Jpatokal (talk) 22:28, 14 May 2024 (UTC)