Talk:Western Greece

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Central Greece Periphery - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 14:21, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 21 February 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: moved. Number 57 22:39, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

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• West Greece → Western Greece
• West Macedonia → Western Macedonia
• East Macedonia and Thrace → Eastern Macedonia and Thrace
• North Aegean → Northern Aegean
• South Aegean → Southern Aegean

– In an 2011 discussion it was deemed that neither of the two variants were dominant with "West Greece" etc. sounding "more official". In the meantime this however turned out not to be the case with "Western Greece" being both the official English name (see logo, homepage of the administration, but also University of Western Greece) and the clearly dominant name used by third parties (see for example the EU NSRF programme). It is therefore clearly the WP:COMMONNAME. Note that the relevant (sub-)categories have to be renamed accordingly. PanchoS (talk) 09:13, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

if this goes through, however, we'd also need to change West Macedonia, East Macedonia and Thrace, South Aegean and North Aegean, as well as a host of related categories, for consistency within the topic. This should be borne in mind when voting. Constantine ✍ 17:18, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support per sources, I guess Red Slash 16:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
• Support, as well, although to be perfectly honest, it's pretty much the same to me. Constantine ✍ 17:27, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment if this goes through, however, we'd also need to change West Macedonia, East Macedonia and Thrace, South Aegean and North Aegean, as well as a host of related categories, for consistency within the topic. This should be borne in mind when voting. Constantine ✍ 17:18, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I tried to edit the requested move box, it's supposed to notify automatically the other pages, I hope it works. As far as offical websites go: South Aegean does not have an English version; North Aegean does not have an English version but has a banner saying North Aegean islands; East Macedonia and Thrace does not have an English version; West Macedonia does not have an English version either. However, Invest in Greece uses Western Greece but West/East Macedonia, North/South Aegean and Central Greece/Macedonia. Place Clichy (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
• Support – I agree with the rationale provided by the nominator. RGloucester — ☎ 02:38, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
• Support At first I saw that the official website of the institution does not seem to have an English version, and that it should not be confused with the website of the pre-2010 unelected government administration though, which used Western Greece. Also, the University of Western Greece is not really related to what would be the English name of the region's administration, a bit like George Washington University is located in a city called Washington, not George Washington, or the French Charentes-Poitou butter produced in the Poitou-Charentes region. However, the region's website uses Western Greece on a subpage, with an English logo Region of Western Greece, full of contrast! Looking up the logo, I found two news pieces (el [1]) introducing the "new brand" and the logo, so I guess we can say it has official value. Place Clichy (talk) 19:42, 24 February 2015 (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.

Closure of Move discussion

@RGloucester, Cplakidas, Red Slash, PanchoS, and Number 57: Have we not been too quick in closing this discussion and moving all pages? The sources I linked (especially Invest in Greece, the most "official" English-language website found) uses Western Greece but West/East Macedonia, North/South Aegean. I may have done the mistake of changing the list of pages discussed after most users expressed a support vote for a move request for West->Western Greece only. My bad. Place Clichy (talk) 17:51, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

• I think all the moves were fine, and correct. RGloucester — ☎ 17:52, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Likewise. The issue is relatively minor and mostly one of personal taste since evidence on usage is limited. FWIW, I think I prefer the -ern forms. Constantine ✍ 19:01, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
• @Place Clichy: Hm, yes, I agree with you. While it's not totally your fault, I purposely only nominated West Greece→Western Greece. Because while I'm totally convinced that this one is the established WP:COMMONNAME, I'm not convinced for the others, especially not about "Northern Aegean" and "Southern Aegean". Given that the subsequent moves and edits are a large-scale work, I had hoped we'd consider the remaining cases one by one. Finally, these are names where accuracy not consistency has to be our primary aim. It might be perfectly fine to have Western Greece but West Macedonia. So I'm actually unhappy with the outcome to rename all of them. This is IMHO not a minor issue because our decision may be setting precedence in the English-speaking world, so we are bound to be objective and only favor what is already established. How to proceed now? --PanchoS (talk) 23:43, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

@RGloucester, Cplakidas, Red Slash, Place Clichy, and Number 57: In the meantime, I did some more research on comparable cases and thought over this issue again. To a certain point, the form (-ern or not) happening to be used as regional names is result of a historic coincidence, or remains interchangeable in English language. However there are some general rules beyond arbitrariness with the -ern suffix underlining a congruence with a geographic region compared with the suffixless form tending to be a two-tier disambiguator:
The notion of "Western Europe" might have become important as a political demarcation to the Warsaw Pact countries, but to some extent it corresponds to the continent's western region, so one could loosely say it's the westernmost area of Europe compared to "Central" and "Eastern" Europe. On the other hand, "West Germany" was called like that because it didn't match the geographic regions at all, stretching far beyond what would be called the western or even westernmost areas of Germany. Generally, I found no case where regions are called "Northern" and "Southern", or "Western" and "Eastern", when in the middle there is nothing central. All of this makes quite some sense because in most cases, it geographically doesn't make any sense to describe a region with its northern areas bordering the southern areas, unless there is a clear geographic distinction.
From this point of view, "Western Greece" is okay because it loosely contains the westernmost areas of Greece, especially given the Attica-centered mental map and the fact that Epirus clearly constitutes northwestern rather than western Greece. "Western" and "Eastern" Macedonia are fine because they loosely correspond to how a geographist would describe the parts of the region, with "Central" Macedonia being in the middle. "Northern" and "Southern" Aegean on the other hand don't work: unless there is something like "Central" Aegean, the division geographically would be far too arbitrary.
Yes, these findings are WP:OR, so I'm just using my findings to sort out whether my intuition might have been right. Probably there has been scholarly work on that issue that I didn't find. But the objective facts are that "Northern Aegean" and "Southern Aegean" are clearly less used than "North Aegean" and "South Aegean" both per Google search and Google Books Ngram (see for example this diagram. I will therefore ASAP start a new, hopefully final, move request on Talk:Northern Aegean. Regards, --PanchoS (talk) 18:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• An even better example of this naming custom is the notion of Northern America vs. North America. --PanchoS (talk) 18:22, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm, I had not considered the point you raised, which seems well thought-out, even if OR. As I stated previously, however, I really don't consider this a major issue, and the finer points you raise would be lost to most people (as, indeed, they were to me). I tend to favour consistency in such cases, but I am not going to oppose a move. Constantine ✍ 20:11, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

• • If anyone feels the need to move the others back (excluding Western Greece), then go ahead. A separate RM can be done on those if felt it is required. Number 57 23:17, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Like I said, I only added the other regions in order to have an automatic notification on their talk pages pointing here, following Constantine's correct mention of them. I agree with PanchoS that accuracy primes consistency here. The trouble at Ggl books/scholar is that a lookup on such terms returns a lot of hits about "West XXX..." in a geographical sense, not the actual administrative region. From Invest in Greece (the only cocnsistent source in English from the Greek government, which uses Western Greece but West/East Macedonia, North/South Aegean and Central Greece/Macedonia), and pvaigaiou.gov.gr (which has a banner saying North Aegean islands), I would be in favour of reverting the moves of West/East Macedonia and North/South Aegean. I may also revert my own edit where I chaged the original move request, if it makes things clearer for other editors in the future. Place Clichy (talk) 10:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

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