Lionel GM

Could you explain where in the naming convention is the reason why one would change the french names of Quebec's francophone universities (I should emphasize official names) to english translations that are not common use anywhere (even in English media)? --70.81.13.192 03:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions : "article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize". Examples:

• University of Paris
• French Academy of Sciences

-- Lionel GM 15:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but those are much older and world renowned institutions which, just like old cities (e.g. Vienna, London, Milan, Rome) have different names in different languages. I do believe the official names of the Université du Québec universities are more easily recognized than unofficial English translations that are found almost nowhere outside of "wikiality".--70.81.13.192 16:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

If you disagree with the interpretation, then probably you should do a Wikipedia:Requests for comment to clarify it. Thank you. Lionel GM 16:43, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Moved pages

You should move back those pages you recently moved. Please note that WP:EiC#French_names and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) does indeed allow for French names when those names are more common than English translations. --Stéphane Charette 02:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest you come discuss things at Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/discussion#Names of Canadian unilingual Francophone universities in English Wikipedia article titles before you move any more pages with French titles. --Stéphane Charette 05:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Stéphane is correct: Wikipedia's general convention is that the title should be at the name that an English speaker would actually use in reference to the article subject; it is not that the title has to be in English even if that results in something nobody would ever actually say.

For example, the political parties are left at Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois, because in normal Canadian English the French names are used as is; they're never referred to in English as "Quebec Party" or "Quebec Bloc". Nobody ever says "Three Rivers" instead of Trois-Rivierès, or "Wolf River" instead of Rivière-du-Loup, or "Gold Valley" instead of Val-d'Or; they use the French names. Nobody says "City of Mary Place"; they say Place Ville-Marie. Similarly, nobody says "University of Quebec at Montreal" or "Polytechnic School" when speaking English; they say Université du Québec à Montréal (or even just "UQAM") and École Polytechnique.

The naming conventions page is quite specific about this: "what would be the least surprising to a user finding the article"? In other words, what name would an English speaker actually use? Bearcat 06:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, NEVER move an article to another title by cutting and pasting the text; this destroys the edit history, and Wikipedia's copyright licensing explicitly requires that the edit history be kept. You must use the move tab if you're going to move an article to a different title. Bearcat 07:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Universities

You need to check your facts. Searching for "université de montréal"[1] (remember the quotes when searching!) gives 7,460,000 hits on Google, and searching for "university of montreal"[2] gives 1,280,000 hits on Google. Without the quotes, your search for university would match New York University, University of Hard Knocks, etc... As for the "obscure" page you refer to, I wouldn't exactly call WP:EiC obscure, nor would that term apply to Wikipedia:Canadian wikipedians' notice board/discussion which is where this topic is being discussed. I suggest you come meet people where the topic is discussed. Your first stop before moving dozens of Quebec university and university-related pages should have been to come to Wikipedia:WikiProject Education in Canada -- linked to from the top of the university article talk pages -- to come let us know of your plan to move all these pages. This would have quickly identified the problem with your plans, instead of forcing many wikipedia editors to pick up the pieces you left lying around. --Stéphane Charette 21:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

My comments

On my talk page, as part of a larger comment, you left the following sentence:

Regarding your comment at User talk:Bearcat: Actually, no.

But I looked on Bearcat's talk page, and the only comment I ever left him (until just a minute ago) is the following:

I took a few hours off and now I see you finished off moving the articles back into place. Thanks. --Stéphane Charette 08:51, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

So what comment did you mean? --Stéphane Charette 21:47, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

What British, American and/or Australian media and/or people would say isn't really all that relevant; none of them have all that much occasion to refer to the institutions in the first place. The reason I cited the names that are used in Canadian English is because Canadian English speakers are the only ones who need to refer to the institutions on anything even approximating a remotely regular basis — so what they're called in Canadian English inherently constitutes the overwhelming majority of actual references to them in English conversation. "Most common name" isn't defined by theoreticals like "what would an American call it on that rare occasion that it actually came up in a conversation"; it's defined by the actual reality of what the place is called in the actual majority of actual references to it in English language works. So if Canadian English accounts for the vast majority of references to it, and Canadian English normally uses its French name, then its French name is, by definition, its "most common" name.

(And by the way, an RFC and a policy discussion have both already happened; you can't pretend they don't exist just because you don't agree with them.) Bearcat 22:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Again: the policy is "most common name actually in use when the thing is actually being referred to by a speaker of English". Canadian speakers are the only speakers who refer to the institution on a regular basis, so the name that Canadian English speakers use is the name most commonly used in actual English usage. We don't title articles based on theoretical abstractions like what English speakers who don't actually refer to it at all would say if they referred to it; we title articles based on verifiable facts like what the English speakers who do refer to it actually say when they refer to it. What percentage of global English speakers is constituted by Canadians is irrelevant; what matters is what percentage of actual references to the particular institution in question use which name, and in every single case, the actual references to the institutions in actual English contexts predominantly use the original French names. It doesn't matter what Australians would call it; they don't actually call it anything, because they have no occasion to refer to it, and frankly the vast majority of them probably don't even know that it exists.

The other examples you cited are invalid comparisons; speakers of English who actually refer to the university in Warsaw actually say Warsaw University, not Uniwersytet Warszawski. Speakers of English who actually refer to the university in Prague actually say Charles University, not Univerzita Karlova. Speakers of English who actually refer to the university in China actually say Peking University, not 北京大學. The titles are not translated into English because Wikipedia requires that; they're translated into English because the English names are what speakers of English actually say when referring to these institutions.

The bottom line is not what people who don't call it anything would call it if they called it anything at all; it's what the people who actually do call it something actually do call it.

(And by the way, you have already been pointed to both the Education in Canada WikiProject and the Canadian notice board discussion more than once. If you don't think those discussions are definitive enough, why don't you start an RFC to have them overturned, instead of putting the onus on other people to seek unnecessary permission to have your non-consensual changes reverted back to actual standing policy?) Bearcat 00:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

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