Talk:Vlissingen

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Opening heading[edit]

A Winner of the September 2005 West Dakota Prize

This entry, one of an unprecedented 52, has won the September 2005 West Dakota Prize, awarded for successfully employing the expression "legend states" in a complete sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetman (talk • contribs)

The town title[edit]

I know the article is in English, but shouldn't we be using the Dutch title Vlissingen for their own town? "Flushing" is almost like saying Wipers for Ypres - and even that has changed to Ieper!!! Peter Shearan 20:08, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd rather have this redirect to Vlissingen, Netherlands too. There does appear to be some precedent for using the English form though, see Antwerp (and List of European cities with alternative names) for some. This might require some policy discussion. --fvw* 20:13, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
Thankyou - I suppose all these things take time!!! Peter Shearan 09:38, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
How about The Hague? The more interesting question to answer in the article: why is this Dutch town important enough in English culture to have its own English name? --Wetman 04:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would guess it has nothing to do with the town's importance. Alot of cultures give their own names to foreign things, it is, or atleast used to be quite common(just look at the link Fvw has given). I would like to support a move to Vlissingen. Generally, when another country uses a different name for a village or city, the name tends to be so similar to the original name that its very easy to understand what village or city they are referring to. However, with Vlissingen, this is not the case. Flushing is an english word, so it is very easy to mistake it for an english town. When i saw a mention of Flushing, i wondered to myself where this town was because i had never heard of it before. Seeing the name, i thought it was somewhere in the UK. Imagine my surprise when it showed Vlissingen. So i support the move to Vlissingen. Omegastar19 (talk) 05:00, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would disagree. This town has an english name because it was an important trading destination 400 years ago.Eregli bob (talk) 07:29, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is the English wiki. The English name for the town should be used or are we going to rename Munich München?Jatrius (talk) 17:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


"Petrus Johannes Van Dierendonck was born here." Can't find him through Google. No Dutch Wikipedia article either. If you can fiund a clue, and maybe his birthdate, put him back. --Wetman 04:36, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article title[edit]

I've considered this in light of the above old discussion from 2005, and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places), and am fairly convinced that this article really ought to be renamed to Vlissingen, for the following reasons:

  1. "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature." I'd contend that "Flushing" is a mostly old-fashioned and imprecise name, and that nowadays Vlissingen is equally well-known and commonly used. It is also less ambiguous than other meanings of Flushing.
  2. "Generally, use the official English name for the place and its type." I have seen no evidence that "Flushing" is in any way an official English name, just a traditional one (as "Rheims" is for Reims or "Lyons" for Lyon). Hence, Vlissingen would, by default, be the usual English name.
  3. "Determine prevalent usage." Going on Ghits, flushing +holland gets 801,000; vlissingen +holland gets 1,260,000. However, flushing +netherlands gets 823,000, whilst vlissingen +netherlands gets slightly fewer at 736,000. Vlissingen still wins overall though.
  4. "Use English but foreign and historical names can be acceptable in some cases." I'm not convinced that this is one of those cases where the traditionally English name is better than the modern local and international name.
  5. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) provides no country-specific guideline for the Netherlands, but generally for Europe the rule is, "In absence of a common English name, the current local name of the city should be used." Again, I'm not convinced that the traditional English name is sufficiently common and well-known to be used in preference to the local name.

Therefore, I propose a requested move. Cheers, DWaterson 17:15, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Allow me to comment:
  1. What is it precisely that you contend? That Flushing is old-fashioned and thus less known than Vlissingen — or that it is equally known and commonly used? The most relevant other meanings are derived from the English name for the Dutch city; the inherent ambiguity might thus be very informative.
  2. Obviously Flushing cannot be official. How does it follow from this that Vlissingen is more usual?
  3. Why didn't you use the UK pages only? On these Flushing wins. Remember that Holland and The Netherlands in general are called "Holland" in many languages, all of which but one do not use "Flushing"; most have no common name for Vlissingen.
  4. The rule is equivalent to: "Use English in preference to foreign and historical names, except for some special condition to hold". Flushing is English. Flushing is not a foreign name. Vlissingen is. Flushing is not an historical name, i.e. the former name of a place. What is the special condition? That there is a modern local name — and international imitation of it — is not sufficient. A special case has to be made for this.
  5. The only empirical evidence you give contradicts your personal conviction, because according to the rule it must be shown that the traditional common name is so fallen into disuse that it can be considered "absent". Yet you have discovered hundreds of thousands of uses of it!--MWAK 17:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Your google usage of "Holland" is faulty as you assume that "Holland" is only used in English, when in fact Holland is the Dutch name of part of the Netherlands, specifically the provinces of Noord-Holland (North Holland) and Zuid-Holland (South Holland). Therefore any google search including "Holland" is bound to turn up many Dutch pages and not only English as you appear to have assumed. See Holland. Koekemakranka (talk) 16:10, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The English are not the only people who commonly refer to the whole of The Netherlands as "Holland". So do many other languages, for example, Chinese.Eregli bob (talk) 07:31, 9 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2007[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Flushing, Netherlands → Vlissingen — See above, move from old-fashioned English name to more common local name. Cheers, DWaterson 17:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Survey[edit]

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this is not a vote; comments must include reasons to carry weight.
  1. Support as nominator, for the reasons given above. DWaterson 17:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support per nominator. I'm not sure if ferries still run there from the UK, but in the past I remember adverts for the Sheerness-Vlissingen route, and I'd argue that Flushing is an obsolete name and Vlissingen is in common enough use in the UK. -- Arwel (talk) 00:07, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose per WP:UE and no evidence otherwise. The Google Hits (a poor test anyway) mentioned above were not limited to English-language pages. —  AjaxSmack  05:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - well, WP:UE does cover precisely this situation in the 'borderline cases' section. :-) DWaterson 10:23, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Much as I generally favour using the native forms of names, it doesn't seem to be justified by policy in this case. The Google hits above are flawed; searching for "Flushing Netherlands -Wikipedia" or "Flushing Holland -Wikipedia" gives 692,000 and 1,090,000 results respectively, while "Vlissingen Netherlands -Wikipedia" and "Vlissingen Holland -Wikipedia" give 220,000 and 249,000. Also, the town does seem to self-identify as "Flushing" in English [1]. It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 20:54, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.


Oppose move. Like Stemonitis says, this article was improperly moved on the day requested, without the proper requested moves discussion period. Gene Nygaard 15:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Eh? No it wasn't... it went through the RM procedure. DWaterson 17:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support move. "Flushing" is occasionally British English, the article says. Well, that's two limitations on English; should be enough. Nethency 11:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support move - per Nethency. --Antiphus 18:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support move - and I am British! Vlissingen is MUCH better. 81.153.111.9 14:23, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Following the above further debate, I have re-proposed this requested move. Please see the above debate for reasons for moving. I think we can reasonably carry on using the above poll and the additional comments added afterwards, rather than needing to create a new poll. Support move as proposer, as previously. DWaterson 18:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose The town's official website uses "Flushing" as the English name [2]. TJ Spyke 23:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Move requests are not polls; evidence is required, which must be placed in the context of our naming conventions and common practice. No new evidence has been presented. Whether or not the article says it is "occasional" is irrelevant; a Google-search shows that it is quite frequent, and the town's self-identification as "Flushing" probably trumps everything else. I would recommend that the request be withdrawn. --Stemonitis 07:54, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They might not be polls, but there's no harm in relisting to generate further debate. DWaterson 11:49, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The town itself says "Flushing" is the English name, that alone pretty much ends the debate. TJ Spyke 23:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've just had a look at that website in more detail, and I'm not sure we can use it as convincing evidence at all - it's totally inconsistent. It does indeed use "Flushing" on that page, and also on this and this, for example, but elsewhere it uses Vlissingen equally prevalently: [3], [4], [5], [6]. Although it looks like slightly more than half of the pages do prefer "Flushing", important pages such as the History article use Vlissingen exclusively. Therefore, due to inconsistency, I'm not sure that website represents a reliable source. Cheers, DWaterson 00:19, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose barring any profound linguistic shift that might have occurred in the month since the last proposal. —  AjaxSmack  17:29, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 17:51, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A year later and an editor moved the article from Flushing, Netherlands to Vlissingen, Netherlands without discussion (not by me). If people feel it should use the Dutch name instead of the English one, I'd recommend dropping Netherlands. There are multiple Flushings, but I don't think there are multiple Vlissingens. --Stomme (talk) 17:54, 24 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I also noticed this had been moved without discussion. Personally, I still consider that Vlissingen is the correct title for the article (not Vlissingen, Netherlands as it now is), but I won't make any changes myself given the above discussions. DWaterson (talk) 11:13, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2011[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Flushing, Netherlands → Vlissingen, Netherlands — Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC) Schildewaert (talk) 06:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was really surprised to see this town categorised under the name "Flushing". I can see that there has been some debate about the use of "Flushing" in English. I'm afraid that I need to revive this debate because it seems so wrong to me to use "Flushing". The name "Flushing" is not used in modern English. At the very least it's a minority usage. The name "Flushing" will not be understood by English speakers as referring to the Dutch town of Vlissingen.

For the record, the town itself is primarily using "Vlissingen" in English, if you go by their website. I've written them to find out what their policy is.

Also, careful googling shows that in the UK, "Vlissingen" is by far the preferred name.

"vlissingen, netherlands" site:uk - 9010 hits http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAN293&q=flushing%2C+netherlands&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v6&aql=&oq=#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAN293&q=%22vlissingen%2C+netherlands%22+site:uk&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=192b3650e03511a3

"flushing, netherlands" site:uk - 338 hits http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAN293&q=flushing%2C+netherlands&aq=f&aqi=g1g-v6&aql=&oq=#sclient=psy&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAN293&q=%22flushing%2C+netherlands%22+site:uk&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.1,or.&fp=192b3650e03511a3

I've carefully read the debate above, but the arguments in favour of "Flushing" do not outweigh the fact that "Flushing" is not used by English-speakers themselves and will not readily be associated with the town of Vlissingen. I suppose what'a happened here is that the old English name for the town has fallen out of use in English. Same with "Leyden".

I don't want to change the name willy-nilly, but I will if no-one responds to this request. For those who prefer "Flushing" in the face of common usage, could you please explain in more detail why you think the Wikipedia article should bear this anachronistic name? This request is made on the basis of sheer practicality. English speakers do not use the name "Flushing" (unless of course prompted to do so by Dutch speakers).

Schildewaert (talk) 06:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've received a response back from the communications department at the municipality of Vlissingen. There is no official policy to use "Flushing" in English. Schildewaert (talk) 06:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to add that all the references to Flushing should be removed from the article as well, except of course in any text that discusses the historical use of "Flushing" as an English term for Vlissingen. I would welcome anyone who knows the history of this usage and is prepared to expand on it in the article. Some of the references to Flushing in the article are rather unusual. For example, it is surely highly misleading to refer to the train station of "Vlissingen Souburg" as "Flushing Souburg". Schildewaert (talk) 07:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No responses so far unfortunately. I'd like to add that I've been reviewing various English-language reference works to determine how modern writers refer to Vlissingen in English. It seems that the some writers, including prominent modern writers, primarily use "Flushing". Others primarily use "Vlissingen". Tellingly, my Michelin and Rough Guide prefer "Vlissingen". My impression is that "Flushing" is a British localism. And only some British writers use it. I also found an odd reference on the "Flushing, New York" page to the effect that "Anglophones still today refer to Vlissingen as Flushing", a statement that I've marked as dubious as I'm quite certain that the great majority of English speakers out there would never connect "Flushing" to "Vlissingen". If anyone has specific information about the use of "Flushing" in English, please feel free to share it. Schildewaert (talk) 10:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—can't seem to get useful results on Google News due to conflicting meanings of "Flushing" (even "flushing netherlands OR holland" is a bit wobbly—and Paul van Vlissingen is skewing results a bit too). BBC News has four hits to two in favour of Vlissingen: hardly a decent sample. 137.205.222.193 (talk) 19:37, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support move It currently sounds like the article is about a toilet for gods sake. Tentontunic (talk) 12:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The place is called Vlissingen. This seems to be in the same bracket as Shakespeare's wrong form Elsinore for Helsingör, which continued in use. The form 'Flushing' likely got into English via sailors and the waterfront in old days when there was much less literacy than now. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:18, 10 March 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

I changed the references in the body of the text from Flushing to Vlissingen. I also repaired the broken links and did some minor editing. I added a section on the Englsh name "Flushing" and added a few comments that I hope will appease those who feel strongly that Flushing is the right name in English. They are welcome to explain this usage in this section if they want. It's a shame none of them came forward to defend this usage. In the end, this seems to be the best way to proceed. Schildewaert (talk) 01:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, you're just going to impose a Dutch usage upon the English language wiki. Why not remain on the Dutch wiki, instead of vandalising the English one?Jatrius (talk) 17:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Jatrius, I think you've misunderstood. The English usage (using the correct name "Vlissingen") has prevailed here. I instigated this change and I'm an English speaker. The incorrect usage promoted by several Dutch speakers here (ie the mistaken belief that "Flushing" is still used in English) has not prevailed. This is all explained above, but in general the convention in English is to refer to Vlissingen by its correct Dutch name. "Flushing" is primarily historical. Schildewaert (talk) 22:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 2[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to Vlissingen. Favonian (talk) 13:48, 24 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Vlissingen, Netherlands → Vlissingen – 'Netherlands' is not necessary. Wikix (talk) 16:48, 17 August 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Dutch misspellings[edit]

I've seen at least three (there may be more) typically Dutch misspellings of English words: 'marketbuilding', 'marketsquare' and 'shoppingstreet' (photograph caption) should all be written as two words. And no, this is not optional, or an American/British difference, but a Dutch writer carrying Dutch spelling conventions over into English.213.127.210.95 (talk) 15:44, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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