Talk:Río de la Plata/name

River Plate name[edit]

I think calling the body of water River Plate in English is incorrect. If you want to "translate" the name, I think maybe Plata River is better. River Plate makes it sound like "Plata" means plate, which it doesn't; it means Silver. So either keep the word Plata or change it to Silver. Using "Plate" completely changes the meaning of everything.

Cturc 22:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No, use common names. Dunc|☺ 22:53, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

River Plate IS the correct English name for the river. Whether is a result of a mistranslation or an intentional naming goes beyond our scope. Non-Spanish speaking wikipedians (the most) do not realize the "coincidence". It is not us who should point that out, much less changing an accepted name on behalf of a "correct" translation. Dunc is absolutely right. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 23:08, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Right. "River Plate" is the long-established traditional name for the river, and it is some 200 km (125 miles) wide at the point where the fresh water mixes throughly with seawater. Daniel_C

Prior to stumbling on this article tonight, I'd never heard it called the River Plate, only "Río de la Plata", and I live in Wisconsin. Is this "River Plate" thing perhaps a Britishism? I note that my Globemaster globes (©1991 and the other 1993), which call the river along the southern border of Texas the Río Grande (as opposed to the Spanish name Río Bravo), the Merriam Webster Geographical Dictionary ©1991 Third Edition, 1952 American People's Encyclopedia (which offers the alternative "Plata River"), 1902 and 1964 Encyclopædia Brittanica, 1967 Grollier's Encyclopedia International, 1936 George F. Cram Co. globe, 1982 2nd College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, all call it "Río de la Plata". The only source I have that calls it "Plata River" more frequently than "Río de la Plata" (which it also uses) is Harm J. de Blij's Geography: Regions & Concepts (John Wiley & Sons, ©1971, ISBN 0-471-20060-3). The only sources I have which even mention "Plate River" are the MWGD, which has it as a redirect to "Río de la Plata", and the Second College Edition of Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (note, published by the same ppl as the MWGD), ©1972, where it is mentioned as an alternative name at the end of the entry Plata, Río de la. It would seem to me from all this that "River Plate" is neither "common" (Duncl's argument) nor "the long-established traditional name" (Daniel_C's argument) for the river. While Sebastian makes the point that "the correct [sic] English name for the river" is "River Plate", the original issue, the real meaning of Plata (Ag) vs. Plate (a dish, or "flat" (cf. Platte)), it would seem that non-Spanish-speaking wikipedians are far more likely to be familiar with the river as the Río de la Plata, than they are as the River Plate, without knowing or caring what the name means in Spanish. Tom e r ^talk 08:10, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Even though it uses the Spanish name, Britannica says that the English name is River Plate[1]. Perhaps its a Britishism. I don't know if it would be better to have the article under the Spanish or English name, but if an English name is to be used, I think it should be River Plate. Mariano(t/c) 10:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

To state my position on the matter more succinctly, I think the article should be at either Río de la Plata or (less favorably, based on usage) Plata River. While it seems to be the case that River Plate is the "correct" English name, the most commonly-used name, even in English publications is actually the Spanish name, "Río de la Plata". My personal feeling is that the article should be moved to Río de la Plata, with a note in the opening of the article that the English name is "River Plate", along with an acknowledgment that despite the fact that it's the English name, it's very rarely used, even in English. Tom e r ^talk 11:59, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Tomer 100%.Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I note also that map of Argentina from the CIA World Factbook (as well as the Uruguay map therefrom) also both use Río de la Plata... Tom e r ^talk 05:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Tomer; as far as I can tell, the name most commonly used in English is "Río de la Plata", so that's what should be used for this article. Jayjg ^(talk) 06:21, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Accordingly, I have moved the article and removed double redirects...from what I can see, going through en:WP and changing everything to Río de la Plata is going to be quite a chore...hopefully someone else gets to it before I have time to... :-D Tom e r ^talk 13:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

WELL DONE! :) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Someone moved the article back, I've moved it back meanwhile, and begun the horrendously tedious task of changing all the relevant links to Río de la Plata. I note that the most common name for Battle of the River Plate is exactly that, not of the Río de la Plata, so I had to undo several of my changes... when I'm finished I will be changing River Plate to a {{disambig}} pointing to Club Atlético River Plate, this article and to the as yet unwritten Río de la Plata (Puerto Rico), rather than changing it to simply a redirect to the fútbol team...I foresee future linkings to River Plate that aren't meant to go to the fútbol article, so, "just in case"... Tom e r ^talk 06:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought: If we're redirecting River Plate to Rio de la Plata, why not restore "Rio Primero" which was redirected to "Primero River"? Some consistency is called for. All the best, elpincha 07:07, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Take it up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Naming. Tom e r ^talk 07:19, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, all done (whew!) Tom e r ^talk 08:37, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody feel like doing some research on the history of the name "River Plate" along with a discussion of the frequency of the usages of "River Plate", "[La] Plata River" and "Río de la Plata" in English? I think it would be a nice addition to the article (but frankly, I'm kind of burned out on this article for the time being...) Tom e r ^talk 10:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus? What both of you? You are violating both Wikipedia:Use English and Wikipedia:Use common names. And if you think that it's a Britishism it's against national varieties of English, in which case it's rude and uncalled for. At the very least River Plate deserves to be a redirect back here because pages link there. 2 people is not consensus. — Dunc|☺ 11:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus in the discussion, in which User:Marianocecowski, User:Sebastiankessel, User:Jayjg and I participated. Who are the "2" you're counting? You yourself said to use common names. I think I did a pretty good job of demonstrating that the common name is the Spanish name, even in English. If you want to make River Plate a redirect here, I'm not going to argue that strenuously against it, since as you'll see, I left the disambig prominently on the top of the article, although I'm inclined to agree that most people who see "River Plate" are going to think the Fútbol club, not the river (an opinion that's well borne-out by looking at other language Wikipedias). Tom e r ^talk 11:27, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are all those citations American publications? I've only ever heard it called the River Plate, and River Plate IS or at least was more common in English (British usage) mainly because of the large number of Scottish and Welsh settlers in the area - how do you think the football team got their name?!

This is English Wikipedia and we have articles at Dunkirk, Munich etc.. this is no exception.

River Plate is definitely not in use in North America (US, Canada). In fact, the few times I have seen it have been mostly 19th century works or early 20th century works from the UK. On the other hand, Río de la Plata is what is found in atlases, on globes, and in writing ranging from newspapers to scholarly works -- in North America. So if River Plate is the standard UK usage, then this should fall into a British vs. US usage rather than English vs. "language X" issue, and there are cleaqr guidelines for that -- leave it as it was originally done in the article and then keep consistent with that usage. BCorr|Брайен 20:55, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Debunked below. In the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Brittanica, the name "River Plate" is not mentioned. In fact, that publication reports that the treaty with England establishing the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, that's what it says the new country was called (in the treaty), not "United Provinces of the River Plate"...not even "es:Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata", the Spanish name. Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if it is interpreted as simply a matter of BrE vs. AmE, since the original article was at Río de la Plata, our "clear guideline" indicates that the article should remain at Río de la Plata rather than at River Plate. Tom e r ^talk 09:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761556103/Plate_River.html (UK Encarta == River Plate).
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761556103/Plata_R%C3%ADo_de_la.html (US encarta - Rio de la Plata)
- The British have a long association with the River Plate. Portable

Not in use in the US eh? Tell NASA - http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/debrief/Iss006/topFiles/ISS006-E-24987.htm Portable

HEY! PLEASE, SIGN YOUR COMMENTS.Tom e r ^talk 21:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is not in use in the vernacular anywhere in North America, which is the relevant issue wrt Wikipedia:Use common names. Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ever heard of "American Society of the River Plate" - http://www.asrp.org.ar/about.php ? Portable

HEY! PLEASE, SIGN YOUR COMMENTS.Tom e r ^talk 21:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is an Argentine organization, not a North American one. That this society believes people actually know what the "River Plate" outside of WW2 history buffs is is an indication of their infamiliarity with vernacular English, not an indication of the prevalence or "correctness" of "River Plate" in English. Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"This is an Argentine organization" all the more reason to use it then if argentine English speakers use River Plate. - you seem to be using the reverse of your argument below about the Buenos Aires Herald, you dismissed that because it was an English publication. Here you dismiss the usage of Argentine English speakers. Illogical caption. Portable 13:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The illogic here is that you are comparing my statement below with this one, and the two have nothing to do with each other. That this is an Argentine organization is relevant here, because it rebuts your incorrect statement that the organization's name reflects vernacular use of the name "River Plate" in North America. Tom e r ^talk 09:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have time to argue about this further until tomorrow night, but unless Encyclopædia Brittanica is now an American publication, no, it is not a BrE vs. AmE difference. From what I've seen it seems to be far more an "old name" vs. "modern usage" issue, which is why I left Battle of the River Plate w/ that name, since that's the only way I find it referenced in English, but, when discussing where it took place, it definitely took place in the Río de la Plata estuary. As for the argument that the British have a long association with the River Plate, I think a more accurate statement would be to say that the British have long coveted the Río de la Plata region, but have never successfully established themselves there. As for military presence, the US has long had a military presence there as well, and has managed to do so without trying to take anybody over in the process, so the idea that if it were a BrE vs. AmE issue the BrE version should prevail is disingenuous at best, historically dishonest at worst. As for the "this is English WP", note the location of the articles on Burma, Bombay, Calcutta, and Rangoon. Tom e r ^talk 21:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The places you cite have all had their names officially changed, which is why they have been moved. This is not the case here. Portable

Their names have been officially changed in their native languages, not in English, which not only does not have an official standard-setting or place-naming body, but over which the national officials who changed those names have have no influence except in the minds of a few Wikipedia editors apparently. If you wish to believe that your argument holds water, however, please explain why Czechia is still a redirect and why Moldova is arbitrarily a redirect to Republic of Moldova while Moldavia is arbitrarily a redirect to Principality of Moldavia. Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your straw man argument is completely irrelevant. This river has been known as the River Plate in English and Rio de la Plata in Spanish, since the 17th century. That hasn't changed. Portable

This is not a straw man, but your argument clearly is! Not only is it a straw man, but it's a false dichotomy as well. Especially in light of the actual rationale used for moving the page, your entire statement is not only useless, but utterly irrelevant, since it has nothing to do with the subject at hand...~~it is, in fact, as incorrect and irrelevant as the very first sentence in this whole discussion, to wit, "I think...", as though that were especially noteworthy.~~ Tom e r ^talk 09:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brittanica has been an American publication for at least ~~30 years!!!!!!~~ -- longer! Portable

The trademark and publication rights were sold after the 11th edition to Sears Roebuck and it moved to Chicago, Illinois, United States. The 12th and 13th editions each took the form of a three volume supplement or update, meant to be used in conjunction with the 11th edition. The 14th edition of 1929 marked a major shift, with fewer volumes and shorter articles, meant to be more accessible as a reference to a wider range of readers., Sears Roebuck offered the rights to the Britannica as a gift to the University of Chicago in 1941. William Benton figured as publisher from 1943 to his death in 1973, followed by his widow Helen Hemingway Benton until her own death in 1974., In January 1996, the Britannica was purchased by billionaire Swiss financier Jacob Safra. Portable

Great. So how do you account for the fact that the name "River Plate" never appears even once in the 9th edition? Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have the th edition to hand, but the 11th edition certainly doed (to paraphrase) "at least once" mention River Plate.

Article on Brazil - "The western part of

this plain is drained by the Uruguay and its tributaries, which places it within the river Plate".

Article on America - "The first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river Plate at Buenos Aires.. "
- etc.. etc..

The Buenos Aires Herald seems to have no problem using River Plate - http://www.buenosairesherald.com/sports/note.jsp?idContent=8707 Portable

This has always been an English publication, founded by a Scot, so their confusion is perhaps understandable.[2] Tom e r ^talk 10:36, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"This has always been an English publication" - This is ENGLISH Wwikipedia!! What do you mean by the word "confusion" - you think they are confused!? Portable 12:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

read Tongue in cheek. Tom e r ^talk 09:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And, as your reference makes clear, it was sold to an American the year after it was founded, so that rather undermines your argument. I also favour "River Plate" as the correct title of this article in the English Wikipedia. - Arwel (talk) 12:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and sold back to members of the original Scottish family less than 6 years later (see events marked for 1913), and again in 1925, sold to Brits of Italian extraction. Tom e r ^talk 12:17, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For almost its entire life it has been an American publication and the fact that is wasn't an american opublication was a key part of your original position "but unless Encyclopædia Brittanica is now an American publication ... " A fact your were obviously completely ignorant off the other day. Note that you said ".. now an American publication", and it certainly is NOW and american publication. Now you are just trying to find more and more excuses to defend your action with regard to moving this page. Your position is now outnumbered and there never was a consensus for the page move in the first place. This page should be moved back. Portable 13:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be careful in following the thread - we're talking about the Buenos Aires Herald here, not the Encyclopaedia Britannica. -- Arwel (talk) 18:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the other Portable "point", I mentioned the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica in my initial statement, so this statement is quite clearly just further blustering...especially since the core of the argument in it is based on an intentional misinterpretation of my original statement. Tom e r ^talk 09:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, has it occurred to you that the reason why you call it Rio de la Plata is because you are from a Spanish-speaking background? Most English-speaking people call it River Plate, if for no other reason than the popularity of The Battle of the River Plate (film) (a.k.a Graf Spee/Pursuit of the Graf Spee), which was on TV here in Australia a couple of days ago and is shown about once a year.

To examine the other examples you have mentioned, the location of the Burma article (at Myanmar) is an aberration which IMHO should be changed (and the same goes for Ivory Coast, cf Talk:East Timor). Bombay, Calcutta, and Rangoon are a little different in that they are in countries which have large numbers of native English-speakers, along with many others who use English every day, who have decided to observe indigenous names (albeit tenuous ones in the case of Bombay ---> Mumbai.) And if it is shown that official names do not enter popular usage among English speakers, then I think there is a case for moving articles to the commonly used English names. Grant65 | Talk 15:33, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, however it has occurred to me that some people might make the erroneous assumption that the reason I call it Río de la Plata is because I'm from a Spanish-speaking background. The fact of the matter is that I'm equally from an English-speaking background, having lived in the US for the past 30 years, (in St. Paul, Minnesota ages 4-7, and in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, from age 7 until now). Nevertheless, in case anyone might choose to cast aspersions on my claim that the name "Río de la Plata" is used far more frequently than "River Plate" in English language publications, especially those dealing with geography, I asked others whose background is not only not Spanish-speaking, but who couldn't speak five words of Spanish to save their lives.

The examples I've mentioned to which you refer deal with an inconsistency within Wikipedia, however, and a weakness in the argument being made by Portable and the various others who showed up here to argue about this, but didn't care enough to discuss it at all in the three weeks before. To be clear, there are two wikipedia guidelines here that are causing this loggerheaded discussion, to wit Wikipedia:Use common names and Wikipedia:Use English. There is a big problem (besides the fact that people would rather spit and claw after the fact than discuss it civilly beforehand) with this "simple" view, however:

Use common names says (in part): When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine? Wikipedia is not a place to advocate a title change in order to reflect recent scholarship. The articles themselves reflect recent scholarship but the titles should represent common usage.
Use English says (in part): If a native spelling uses different letters than the most common English spelling (e.g., Wien vs. Vienna), only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form.

The problem is that I am arguing that the most commonly used name is the Spanish language name, even in English, and others are saying "no it's not". From what I've been able to find, outside of the realm of mariners' history (which led to the name for the battle, the movie and the football team), almost nobody uses the name "River Plate". I rather doubt that walking down the street and asking random people and reporting my results back here is going to hold any weight (or I'd report to you that I've already done this, and nobody except my one history-buff cousin (from a spanish-Speaking background) has ever heard of the "River Plate"...not even, sorry, as a movie

, except for my cousin who knows it only from the name of the battle). So, what I recommend is that you pull out a few text books, not history text books, but geography textbooks (people don't learn geography from history books), as well as world atlases and globes and do like I did up near the top of this section of discussion: honestly tally up how many English language geography texts and maps call it "Río de la Plata", how many "[La] Plata River" and how many "River Plate", and report back. By "honestly", I mean "don't discard sources that don't reflect your POV". [Incidentally, until the other day when I read the article here in WP, I'd never heard of the movie either...must be a British thing!

] As for "most English-speaking people" calling it the River Plate, I think that's quite a stretch. All English-speaking people who have ever heard of it call the movie by its name: The Battle of the River Plate, and all English-speaking people who have ever heard of it call the battle, named by naval historians, "The Battle of the River Plate", and all English-speaking people who follow soccer call the team by its name, "River Plate", but that's a far far cry from saying that most English-speaking people actually call the estuary the "River Plate", and especially that they do so because of the purported popularity of a movie of which I rather suspect the vast majority of English-speakers have never heard!

As I've said previously in this discussion several times already, and as you touched on briefly, I'm not saying that the English name of the estuary is not "River Plate", what I'm saying is that the English name is very rarely used outside of one specific context. I'm not on a PC crusade here as Portable seems to believe, to Argentinize the English WP. To allude to the ridiculous statement made below about the Falklands, it would be ludicrous for me to assert that Falkland Islands should be moved to Islas Malvinas. Yes, I know their Spanish name, and yes, I'm well aware of that nasty little war between Argentina and the UK, but I can conceive of no argument in favor of naming the article "Islas Malvinas" in the English WP. By the same token, I can see only one argument in favor of naming the present article "River Plate", and that is that some English speakers call it by that name. I look forward to those who support renaming the article back to "River Plate" to come over to Talk:Rio Grande and argue in favor of moving that article to Big River (Texas).

Tom e r ^talk 09:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me? the argument being made by Portable and the various others who showed up here to argue about this, but didn't care enough to discuss it at all in the three weeks before - that could be because we were unaware of this debate until you started messing about with the links on the battles' article. Anyway, looking at Google (I'm searchng from google.co.uk) "Rio de la Plata" shows up 454,000 articles, "River Plate" shows 2,210,000; trying to exclude the football club, the battle and the film with "River Plate" -"Battle of the River Plate" -fútbol -football -Atlético -soccer -atletico brings up 713,000 including such diverse sites as the U.S. Government Export Portal entitled "Argentina and Uruguay, the South American River Plate Region"!), welcomeargentina.com which extolls the virtues of fishing "The River Plate in Winter", The River Plate And General Investment Trust Plc, one of the oldest investment trusts in London, Lutheran World whose directory includes the Evangelical Church of the River Plate (Iglesia Evangélica del Río de la Plata), the River Plate Adventist University, the River Plate Bunkering Corporation of Buenos Aires, the Hapag-Lloyd shipping company's Brazil and River Plate Express Service, UFO sighting reports from March 2004, the Brazilian Center for Documentation and Studies of the River Plate Basin Countries, the European Space Agency ("This image of Buenos Aires and Montevideo on the River Plate was acquired on April 17 2004 by ..."), the University of Prince Edward Island is advertising a conference next July on "la Insularidad en el Río de la Plata / Inlandness in the River Plate" (which blows the assertion above that it's not used in North America), and many more. It is plain that "River Plate" remains the principal name in the English language, despite your protestations. -- Arwel (talk) 10:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll quibble with you more about this tomorrow when I've had some sleep (it's 5:30 AM here presently). Meanwhile, the U of PEI thing is hilarious, since "Insularidad" certainly does not mean "inlandness". That alone casts a bit of doubt on their strength as a source. Additionally, as the main university for the smallest (population-wise) 2nd level political division in English-speaking North America, and for an insular population at that, I don't think you'll have much success arguing that they are exactly representative of vernacular usage among the other 300+M English-speakers on the continent. Tom e r ^talk 11:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arwel has just picked out links at random there, but if you don't like his U of PEI link then I might replace it with this Notre Dame link [3] or I quite like this one where http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1554_reg.html a Professor of Latin American Culture and Literature at The Johns Hopkins University reviews a book using the words "This is a richly documented study of a much neglected period in the history of the River Plate" - and where the publisher's blurb says "[Gustavo] Verdesio [, the author,] reads the key texts relating to the struggles for possession of River Plate's northern shore—present-day Uruguay." also I don't like your tone describing Arwel and I as "others who showed up here to argue about this, but didn't care enough to discuss it at all in the three weeks before" - we didn't know about your proposed move till after that fact. So that is hardly fair comment. Jooler

The fact that the estury is off the coast of a Spanish speaking country is of no consequense for English Wikipedia. What they call it in Argentina is entirely irrelevant. It's what the place is known as in English (and clearly Rio de la Plata is not English, River Plate is. There are dozens and dozens of precedents for this. Lake Victoria, Mount Everest, the Matterhorn, dare I say the Falkland Islands. The examples given earlier about Burma, Rangoon, Calcutta and I might add Peking don't really hold any weight on this issue as they are countries and cities which have a government and are recognized as using a specific name by the UN and other official bodies. What we are talking about here is not a city or a country it is a natural feature, a stretch of water in the south Atlantic. The British have called this River Plate for nearly 400 years, and that is the name that has appeared on British sea charts, note that it was the British under Francis Beaufort who was first commissioned with fully charting the estuary when he was sent to outh there by the Admiralty. It is called the River Plate in English and that is why the battle is known as the Battle of the River Plate. Enough of this political correctness with using regional names, it might apply if you're going to offend some people of a country by using a name associated with colonization or oppression but here we are talking about a body of water. Can some admin please come and sort this out and move the page back. Jooler 17:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above "Rio Grande" isn't exactly "English" either. Your two arguments above not only don't address the issues I've raised, but are actually themselves irrelevant. I have not argued that the name is not "River Plate" in English, simply that the "English name" is used even in English far less frequently than the Spanish name is. As for getting admins to come and sort this out, several have been involved in this discussion from the beginning. Tom e r ^talk 09:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We have many places in Britain with French names Herstmonceux and Ashby-de-la-Zouch spring to mind, I wouldn't suggest moving these to translations because the translations simply arn't in use. The US has a long tradition of retaining Spanish names, El Paso, Las Vegas, Sacremento etc etc etc.. and as far I know the Rio Grande has never been called anything but that by English speakers. Your suggestion that I take the argument to Rio Grande is therefore frivolous. Jooler 00:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's an easy resolution to the current line of argument, since both names are in use. What I find more appropriate to this situation is the guideline in Wikipedia:Use_English#Borderline_cases: "consideration should be given to the correctness of translation, rather than frequency of usage". "River Plate" may be common and historical, but it is hardly correct. Since no correct translation sees widespread usage, we should fall back on the Spanish. - mako 22:54, 9 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would debate that guideline, but it doesn't apply here anyway. Whether the origin of the name is a mis-translation or not is entirely irrelevant, because whatever the river is called by the Spanish or Argentineans is entirely irrelevant for the reasons given above. I wonder how many other names have been brought about through mis-translations. Under that guideline - "consideration should be given to the correctness of translation, rather than frequency of usage" - we should move Canals of Mars to Channels of Mars and Virgin Birth to Young woman birth. The Englsh name for a particular mountain on the Swiss Italian border is Matterhorn and whatever the translation for the Italian and French name is. Jooler 00:16, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the two paragraphs? I didn't want to quote it over, but some pertinent points: "There is a trend in part of the modern news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if there is a long-accepted English name." "in a typical example of testing the usage by counting google hits, if one version gets 92 hits, while another one gets 194 hits, it can hardly be decisive". - mako 07:35, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked at that page (Wikipedia:Use_English#Borderline_cases) and I notice you left out the highly relevant prefix to that sentence At the same time, when there is no long-established history of usage of the term more consideration should be given to the correctness of translation, rather than frequency of usage. There is clearly a long established history of usage, thus making the second clause irrelevant. Jooler 07:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, this conflicts with "There is a trend in part of the modern news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if there is a long-accepted English name." - mako 08:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how that conflicts at all. The sentence you just quoted is descriptive, whereas the other one is prescriptive. Jooler 13:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did a variety of Google searches of English language sites and came up with more or less the same conclusions as Arwel. It seems that the US government uses both "River Plate" and "Rio de la Plata", but the latter is more common on ".gov" sites. However, even if the soccer team and movie are excluded (and I'm not sure why they should be), River Plate is clearly far more common on English language sites than "Rio de la Plata". US govt usage is clearly not representative of English usage in general. Google may not be perfect, but there is no better way of demonstrating contemporary English usage. That is the clincher to me. Grant65 | Talk 04:24, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mm, I shouldn't have gotten into this. Some Google fun:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_qdr=all&q=+%22rio+de+la+plata%22+-club+-battle+-f%C3%BAtbol+-soccer+-football&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en

Used by NASA, Britannica, Encarta, UNESCO, UN, USGS, ?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_qdr=all&q=+%22river+plate%22+-club+-battle+-f%C3%BAtbol+-soccer+-football&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en

Used by US Export, ESA, ?

Even Google can't filter out all the Spanish and football, it seems. - mako 09:42, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What Mako's searches reveal is that even if you exclude references to the soccer team and the battle (and I'm not sure why we should, since the battle is the only reason why millions of people have heard of the river), the references to "River Plate" on English language sites still outnumber the references to "Rio de la Plata". If Rio de la Plata is normal usage in the US, it appears to be one of those cases in which US usage is aberrant. (e.g. Normal name in Canada appears to be River Plate, not just on Prince Edward Island: [4] & [5] .) Grant65 | Talk 13:07, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was hinting that (NASA, Britannica, Encarta, UNESCO, UN, USGS)'s usage of "rio de la plata" showcases the "trend in part of the modern news media and maps to use native names of places and people", and we should follow suit. (Neither of our searches revealed clear-cut differences in frequency. 148K vs 147K? <1%. 500 vs 700? Sample is too small. Google is an imperfect tool.) - mako 23:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And what I'm saying is that there is no reason to exclude the soccer team, the battle or the movie about the battle. Then there is no contest, because all of these emanate from the river; River Plate is the common name in English.Grant65 | Talk 02:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can give you a thousand examples where the placement of a Wikipedia article does not "follow the trend". We set our own rules, and among the rules are "use common names" and above all on English Wikipedia, use English. Furthermore we do not favour one variety of English over another, and this page was already well established at River Plate before it was recently moved, so even if you want to argue that in America Rive Plate is not used (and we have shown that in the US it is used on an almost equal footing) moving away from what is overwhelmingly (see below) used in Britain is just plain not in the spirit of harmonious Wikipedia relations. Jooler 09:11, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to Club Atlético River Plate, the naming was inspired by the corruption itself. The battle/movie has obviously created a mythos unto itself. However, what we are concerned with is what people call the geographical feature today. I do not see how allowing British usage to trump others reflects harmonious Wikipedia relations, as people like Bletch have never encountered that usage; there is a redirect regardless. I argue that "Rio de la Plata" is a correct name, and that it is used in English publications. Therefore the "Use English" argument is not so clear-cut. Furthermore, I argue that it is used and recognized by international organizations like the UN and UNESCO, and listed on English-language atlases and maps. Given the evidence of this usage, I argue that this page belongs at its current location. - mako 03:10, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So the Club was named after the English name for the River, talk about stating the bleedin' obvious. "I do not see how allowing British usage to trump.." - excuse me, this page was living quite happily at River Plate for some considerable time before it was moved. There appeared to be very little discussion before it was moved and I and the others who have come to comment were not aware of the move until after the event. It is firm Wikipedia not to favour one usage above another and to leave pages where they are if there is a dispute between American usage and British/Commonwealth usage. Jooler 08:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try this

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_qdr=all&q=%22river+plate%22+-%22rio+de+la+plata%22+-club+-battle+-f%C3%BAtbol+-soccer+-football+-%22Puerto+Rico%22+-wikipedia+-stadium+site%3Auk ("river plate" -"rio de la plata" -club -battle -fútbol -soccer -football -"Puerto Rico" -wikipedia -stadium site:uk) - hit count = 61,000
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_qdr=all&q=-%22river+plate%22+%2B%22rio+de+la+plata%22+-club+-battle+-f%C3%BAtbol+-soccer+-football+-%22Puerto+Rico%22+-wikipedia+-stadium+site%3Auk&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en - (-"river plate" +"rio de la plata" -club -battle -fútbol -soccer -football -"Puerto Rico" -wikipedia -stadium site:uk) -hit count 559
- No contest. Jooler 13:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We've already determined it's a Britishism, so that's no surprise. - mako 23:39, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a Britis'ism - it's the ENGLISH name of the river. Like the English name of the River the Italians call the Tevere is the Tiber. Jooler 09:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any particular reason that those two Google URLs both contain "site:uk" in them? When the search is expand to be inclusive of sites outside of .uk, the results are very different. --Bletch 00:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes because I can limit it to UK and show that it is overwhelminlgy (not just slightly) by a factor of roughly 100:1 in use in Britain. Unfortunately because of the way the internet works it is not possible to limit to US sites, the .us suffix is not representative. You don't think a factor of 100:1 is signficant? Jooler 09:03, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do think that a 100:1 factor is significant; it demonstrates that "River Plate" is overwhelmingly the first choice in Britain. You are right in that the dimwits that invented DNS did not make it easy to search US sites the same way. But when I search without restricting to any particular domain, at first glance the results do not appear to be innundated with non-English language sites. --Bletch 13:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

People GOOGLE matches are moot, they don't prove anything and they are Original research. The spanish dialect spoken in Argentina and Uruguay is called Rioplatense Spanish, not Riverplatish Spanish, that has to count for something. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From http://www.stanford.edu/~aananda/8HLSFinal.PDF - "This dialect is also called Porteño Spanish or River Plate Spanish in the literature. It is spoken in a wider area than Buenos Aires, hence my choice of “Rioplatense”." - the document cites Masullo, Pascual. 2003. Cliticless definite object drop in River Plate Spanish, paper presented at LSRL XXXIII, Indiana University. Jooler 23:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean with this quote? The writer refers to the "River Plate" but still calls it "Rioplatense" (even in the title, no less). I haven't read the whole thing thoroughly but it seems to me that it is indistinct for the writer. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 00:28, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm quoting from the footnotes, the author says that the dialect is also known as "River Plate Spanish" and one of his citations is from an article that uses that term. So It's not Riverplatish Spanish, but River Plate Spanish. Jooler 00:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Reset tabs) True, but he still chose to use "Rioplatense" for the title, and that should count for something. I'm not disputing the validity of "River Plate" as a true way of referring to the river, I just argue that "Rio de la Plata" is more common. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 00:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

He may do but what of it? I am pointing out that you were half right and that River Plate Spainish is in use and indeed he cites a document that uses "River Plate Spanish" and there are plenty of others on the web that use it For example ([6] & [7] etc). For Goodness sake if the Uruguayan tourist board are perfectly happy to use "River Plate" on their English page ([8]) I don't understand why we can't use English on this English Wikipedia page. How do you account for the 100:1 preference for sites in the UK? How can that be less common? We are not talking 5:1 or 10:1 but 100:1 and that is after cutting out as many references to the battle and the football club as possible. Jooler 00:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even the University of Buenos Aires use the "Rive Plate Spanish" [9] & [10] (note here it is given as a direct translation of rioplatense ) Jooler 01:07, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you can PROVE the 100:1 reference please do so (no google, please), otherwise, stop citing it since is Original Research. What are we trying to accomplish here? The real name of the river is the one the page has, we discussed this here for a few weeks, nobody complains but they do so after the move. I don't really see any difference between River Plate and Rio de la Plata and would be comfortable moving back if it didn't generate needless confusion with the soccer team. We agree that BOTH names are fine. One generates a conflict, the other doesn't. Why the big deal? Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 03:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So at the end of the day your only excuse for having it here is that there is a football team with the same name!? So should we move Arsenal to some other word that means the same thing? Shoud we move Liverpool? What about river in Puerto Rico? Jooler 07:51, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The real name of the river is the one the page has - what does this mean - real name? Because it's in Spanish? If that is your point then I've already pointed out why that is a completely bogus argument. What the Spanish, French, or Italians call the river is completely irrelevant. Jooler 19:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's no need for any confusion with the football team. The team is Club Atlético River Plate, which has a redirect from CA River Plate – it's no different from a myriad of other football clubs which share the name of a city or other feature, e.g Liverpool F.C. -- Arwel (talk) 04:50, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and has been mentioned before, nobody complained about the move when you were discussing it because we didn't have this article on our watchlists. We only became aware of your activities once you started changing links on other articles such as the article on the battle. We came here as soon as we noticed what was going on, and we're certainly giving our opinions now. As far as I can see the evidence still points strongly toward River Plate as the correct English name for the article. -- Arwel (talk) 04:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For whatever it is worth, all of the maps, textbooks and so on that I've seen growing up have always said "Rio de la Plata." It wasn't until I came to Wikipedia that I've ever seen "River Plate." --Bletch 20:52, 10 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sebastian, your argument about Original Research is misplaced, I'm afraid. This is a talk page; many things are allowed here which are not acceptable in articles.

Also, some people here seem to be arguing that because US usage is split between Rio de la Plata and River Plate, we should go with the local (Spanish) name. This is a red herring because English usage as a whole (US English + British English + Canadian English + Indian English + Filipino English + Australian English + the many other varieties of English) clearly favours River Plate. Grant65 | Talk 08:42, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I argue that OR can't be used to substantiate an argument that will swing a page name. Whether it goes to the article or not. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 04:08, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not? The OR rule is about article content. Grant65 | Talk 05:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's not what people look at when differentiating between varieties of English: see American and British English differences for an example. They're more concerned with grammatical and lexical evolution. The Wikipedia guidelines also address themselves more to these issues of differences in spelling. Our situation is unique, I daresay.

Anyway, we're talking about a river here, a geographical feature. We should be looking at references, seeing what atlases and encyclopedias call the river, not popular usage which may or may not be related to geography. Sebastian's argument is still relevant because the discussion here impacts the article itself. - mako 02:18, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure where you are going at with your first paragraph, Mako. There appears to be a popular misconception that there are only two varieties of English (i.e. "British" and "American"). That is incorrect. In fact there are many varieties.

Second, as has been previously stated, we do not use official names, including official geographical names if they conflict with common names: Wikipedia:Use common names. River Plate is the common name among most English speakers. Grant65 | Talk 03:23, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, I tend to write elliptically. My comment was directed toward your dramatic (x English + ...) listing. When people talk about varieties of English, they don't look at what people are calling obscure foreign geographical entities, because it doesn't come up very often. What they are concerned with is, say, the use of 'lah' in Singlish.

There is no clear guideline to use the "common name" in this situation. There was no consensus in this previous discussion, and clearly people have strong feelings on the subject. - mako 22:58, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, as you know very well, there is a guideline to use the common English name. I'm sick of this obfuscation. We do not need consensus, as the proponents of Rio de la Plata are clearly in breach of English Wikipedia naming policy (and this is not the Spanish Wikipedia or a "US Wikipedia"). Can someone with the necessary powers please move the page back to its original and correct position at River Plate? Thank you. Grant65 | Talk 13:04, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then why is there a "Borderline cases" section in the guideline? Are we not allowed to use discretion? - mako 04:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't a "borderline case"; River Plate is the common name in English. Grant65 | Talk 05:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then it appears we have an irreconcilable difference of opinion. - mako 08:47, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I would, but having been involved in the debate I can not. I'll ask if someone on the Administrators Noticeboard will review the debate and move the article if they agree. -- Arwel (talk) 13:20, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I hope you list the page in WP:Requested moves. Especially, since the CIA Factbook lists the river as "Rio de la Plata". I don't see a "...breach of English Wikipedia naming policy..." here. Just a disagreement on what we believe is the "Common Name".Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 15:25, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, first the page should be moved back to River Plate, and then YOU may put it on requested moves. It is unworthy of you to suggest that AFTER the controversial move that was made earlier, that this foreign name should now have the balance of any vote weighed in its favour rather than the Enlish name that the page had been living at for quiote some considerable time before. Jooler 16:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WRONG. The page is here, any move without stopping there first is vandalism. I won't hold you accountable for not participating in the discussion before the 1st move, but the name is this and if you want to move it back it'll have to go through the process.

Now to your comment.

a) "unworthy"? I am not worthy of moving a page? What do you mean???

b) "Controversial"? When the page WAS moved there was NO controversy and a proper talk about it happened HERE first.

c) The name is not foreign, as you say, the CIA even shows the name to be "Rio de la Plata". It can't be too foreign if American agencies use it with such liberty. From your user page, I see that you have something against AmEnglish (or foreign words), but it's not my problem.

d) The move was legal in the first place and I am smart enough to realize when I am outnumbered, but I won't condone a travesty like starting an edit war (which is what it will be if you move w/o consensus) and then discussing from the point where YOU feel comfortable.

I won't oppose a move back if that's what the majority wants, and I haven't quite seen that... So far is very close. As you can see just by scrolling up I first defended the original name but later decided to support a fellow user who wanted to move it since I felt the name of the river was clearer in Spanish, but I feel your approach to be unappropriate, bullyish and borderline aggressive.

Finally, Polls are evil, but I'd like a chance to take one and see what editors who haven't intervened in this argument think, and we'll see what happens then. I'll let you create the poll and state your arguments in the header, so you can have an "opening statement" of sorts. As long as you explain the situation neutrally, I will limit my intervention in the poll to a vote. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 00:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So this is how we should operate in the future is it? If we want to move a page, we move it first and then have a discussion about moving back to what it was before and if we get slighly move than 40% of the vote we can keep it at the new name? Is that how we operate on Wikipedia now is it? Is that a sensible way to behave? Is it? Jooler 17:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I Rv'd some contributions by 88.109.40.130. I put a proper summary pointing here and letting people know that the revert is only pending the discussion here. I will help rv again should the discussion end favoring a move back to "River Plate. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 00:57, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What does the CIA have to with it?! Yes, we've established that Americans are as likely to use Rio de La Plata as River Plate. But English usage as a whole favours River Plate. Please move the page back to River Plate.Grant65 | Talk 02:24, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have listed it on WP:RM. However, this raises the interesting question of when the original move was listed there. This renaming first started on 25 October at a time when there was no discussion on the issue here at all; it was reverted, and renaming started again on 29 December. I have looked through old versions of WP:RM in detail since 23 December, and cursorily for late October, and can find no mention of a request to rename this article at all and can only conclude that this whole renaming exercise has been conducted improperly ab initio. It is not surprising that the original discussion was so limited if there was no publicity. I conclude that I would be perfectly justified in summarily moving this article back to the original name – I will however hold off to allow discussion to continue. -- Arwel (talk) 02:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate your willingness to compromise. Plus you are absolutely right, we should've listed the page in WP:RM before we moved it, I accept that (although I disagree on the fact that it justifies moving it summarily). Having said that, let's wait for the voting results before touching anything. I will gladly help with the "restoration" if the vote requires a move.

PS: Please don't forget to vote if you feel to do so, Nomination for voting shouldn't be a vote in itself. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 03:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was no consensus to move this page from the universally accepted English name for the estuary i.e. River Plate to the foreign language name Río de la Plata. The status quo should be restored and the page moved back to River Plate. 88.109.40.130 10:20, 14 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you want to go by precedent, the original title for the article in edit history appears to have been "Río de la Plata" [11] as of March 8, 2003. It appears that it was changed to "River Plate" on November 10, 2004 [12] -- and the only discussion here from that time is the comment "River Plate should redirect to the football club methinks 90% of people think of the club........". So if we want to talk about repairing moves done without consensus or discussion, the original name seems most appropriate. older ≠ wiser 03:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not quite so clear cut as that. The original (or at least previous) content of the page at River Plate was deleted in November of 2004 (see here) and it is impossible to say what the original content was or when it was created. Jooler 17:12, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Sorry, I somehow unclicked "Watch this page", so I haven't seen the discussion here of late until tonight. Holy crap, I think this is the longest single discussion thread I've seen on a talk page anywhere in Wikipedia without someone filing an RfC or even an RfAr. :-p Since, in my absence, this section of the discussion has become almost irrelevant, for those who aren't just here to push their POV and actually care about my rationale for excluding the movie and the football team from searches it is this: I never claimed that the movie is called "Battle of the Río de la Plata", nor did I claim that the battle itself was (in fact, I've said the exact opposite several times), nor that the football team is called "Club Atlético [del] Río de la Plata". Since, quite clearly, this article is not about a football team, or a battle or a movie named after that battle, those results are irrelevant to any discussion about the proper URL for this article. I have said from the very outset of this discussion that my move had nothing to do with the "English name" for the River, but rather, everything to do with what most people are likely to enter in a search engine when looking for an article about the river, to paraphrase Wikipedia:Use common names. I think the preceding discussion, as well as that following the voting below, definitively shows that not only are those whose preference for "River Plate" familiar with the Spanish name for the river, but that I'm not the only one who, prior to coming to this page, had never heard of "River Plate" (and before I changed my major to Physics as an undergrad, I was a Geography major!!)... That tells me pretty definitively that, as I said from the very beginning, while the English name is certainly "River Plate", "Río de la Plata" is far more commonly used, even in English. Tom e r ^talk 01:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well I, for one, never claimed you did say that the battle, film, or football club used "Rio de la Plata", which is why I deliberately attempted to exclude them from my Google searches when trying to get some figures for the relative frequency of the two names when referring to the stretch of water. I am, however, persuaded by the figures that "River Plate" is still the most common name for the place in English-language usage. I think that it may be significant that so far every person who has voted "oppose" below and identifies their location on their user page is located in the USA, and that all those who claim to have "never heard of "River Plate"" may simply be reflecting an aberrant US educational bias. Note that those of us who support the move back include people from Australia as well as the UK, so "River Plate" is certainly the geographically widely spread term. -- Arwel (talk) 03:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sierra del Plata[edit]

Why is there a reference to "Sierra del Plata"? Tom e r ^talk 17:13, 25 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Because the Sierra del Plata article, short as it is, does a good job of explaining how this place got its name. Jonathunder 03:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that wasn't the question...the question was why "del" and not "de la". If I can find it, I'll post SK's cogent response here, in case anyone else comes along and has the question. Tom e r ^talk 05:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sierra del Plata says it is an archaic Spanish form. Perhaps someone familiar with the evolution of the Spanish language can expand on that? Jonathunder 15:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is an archived debate 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.

The result of the debate was don't move due to lack of consensus, slight majority against even. —Nightstallion (?) 07:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is arrogant and unwarranted. A consensus is not necessary, the present name is against Wikipedia policy to use the most common name in English. The article should be moved to River Plate and I urge anyone with the requisite powers to undertake the move. Grant65 | Talk 08:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly is arrogant about this? There's sound arguments in favour and against the move, common usage isn't clear (either form is used), and the vote wasn't decisive, either, so the article stays where it is. WP:AGF and WP:NPA, if you please would. —Nightstallion (?) 08:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

Río de la Plata → River Plate – {Restore to original title which appears to be the majority English-language usage - Arwel (talk) 01:59, 15 January 2006 (UTC)} copied from the entry on the WP:RM page[reply]

Voting[edit]

Oppose: Río de la Plata appears to be much more common, even in English. Jonathunder 03:22, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I've never seen it as the River Plate before coming across discussion on this page. older ≠ wiser 03:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 03:39, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support: It has been demonstrated conclusively (see above) that River Plate is the common name in English.Grant65 | Talk
- Furthermore, if does not revert to River Plate it should be moved to Río de la Plata (South America) to disambiguate from Río de la Plata (Puerto Rico), in accordance with Wikipedia policy. Grant65 | Talk 05:19, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - The Puerto Rican river is a minor stream, so this would be a primary DAB. Jonathunder 07:00, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - In an arbitrary hierarchy of relative significance, the South American river is the best known one, and should occupy the primary place, in my opinion (i.e. without qualifier in parentheses). //Big Adamsky 07:26, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    - My understanding is that in such cases we don't make "arbitrary" distinctions aboutr "major" or "minor", we disambiguate. Or we call one of them something else, like River Plate :-) Grant65 | Talk 07:57, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      - Mildly funny, if incorrect. It doesn't take a judgment of whether or not one is "majorer" than the other. PR could fit inside the South American estuary, so it's not exactly a fair contest... Tom e r ^talk 16:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Ditto. The evidence quoted above is quite conclusive that "River Plate" is by a long way the commonest term in English. -- Arwel (talk) 03:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Per Tomer's referenced evidence and my arguments above, this is the preferable article location. - mako 04:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Both names would seem equally accurate and valid, but since the article can have only one title, the traditional English/anglified name is preferable to one that can sound akward in a spoken English sentence ("Plah-duh"? Or "Plattah"?). Unlike cities, rivers are usually not referred to by local names in WP (the Yellow River is one exception). //Big Adamsky 04:16, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- It doesn't sound even mildly awkward (nor does it sound like particularly well-spoken Spanish) in a spoken English sentence... To quote the pronunciation given in my dictionary here, [rē' ỏ de lä plá' tä], in the MWGD, \'rē-ō-,thā-lä-'plä-tä\, although I can tell you, in IPA, in Wisconsin, where nobody's ever heard of the "River Plate", no doubt as a result of our "aberrant" educational system, it's /ˌriʲ oʷ deɪ lʌ ˈplɑ: ɾʌ/. Tom e r ^talk 17:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is English Wikipedia. The English name is in everyday use, even by the Uruguayan tourist board (see above). The Spanish name is irrelevent, we use English names for geographcal features like Lake Victoria, Mount Everest or the river Tiber. This is also a protest vote. This page was moved illegally, without due process or publicity to its current name, therefore the normal consensus rules should apply in reverse. Jooler 11:05, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support The name in English, and hence in the English Wikipedia is River Plate. Mucky Duck 11:10, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Both names are both very well established in English; and the original title of the article was "Rio de la Plata". This is obviously not some simple case of using a name that is never used in English. --Bletch 15:52, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. As per Jonathunder and Bkonrad. Río de la Plata seems much more common, even in English, and I'd never even heard of "River Plate" before seeing this page. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, obviously, per everything I've said above and below. Tom e r ^talk 01:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, RIo de la Plata is the English version. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:05, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. I don't care. There's a lot of uncoherencies regarding foreign languages naming, and as long as there's a redirection from one to the other, it's fine by me. Mariano(t/c) 09:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support for changing it back to River Plate. This is not es wikipedia so we should avoid using Spanish where possible at all times, SqueakBox 13:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose River Plate is fine as it is: a useful disambiguation page. User:Ejrrjs says What? 19:40, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support; noting moved without due process (1) btw, River Plate is now an awful dab page and should atleast redirect here since what links there is what was pointing to this page in the first place anyway. — Dunc|☺ 16:41, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- It was not moved w/o due process as has been well-covered already. A proposal to rename at WP:RM would have been just as ignored by opponents of the move as the discussion about it here was. Tom e r ^talk 16:56, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Philip Baird Shearer 02:11, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because Rio de la Plata is a pretty well known name. Thumbelina 18:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that this vote is now closed. A second poll can be found in the #Final naming poll section.

Strong oppose - Name should be Rio de la Plata. I have traveled extensively through South America and other countries, and used a variety of English-language maps. I never once saw a reputable atlas that listed it as "River Plate", which isn't even a correct translation anyway -- the most common usage was always "Rio de la Plata". Insisting on English in this case would be as inappropriate as renaming the "Los Angeles" article to "The Angels". Elonka 14:23, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

Add any additional comments

Why are we even having this vote? The present name is clearly in breach of Wikipedia naming policy.Grant65 | Talk 03:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clearly the consensus rules should apply in reverse as there was no consensus to move the page in the first place. Jooler 11:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rio de la Plata is the original original name for this article. Several editors in the long discussion above do not agree it violates the naming conventions, or at least that it is not quite so clear. Jonathunder 16:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is impossible to say that with any certainty. The page at River Plate was deleted by user ALoan in November of 2004 (see here) - the purpose of the deletion was presumably ahead of a page move by Chameleon (see here). It is impossible to say what the original content the page at River Plate was or when it was created. It may well have been a duplicate page. Nevertheless this current process and conventions regarding the moving of pages was AFAICR not in place in November 2004 and as far as I can see the move did not generate an undue amount of discussion. The page remained unmoved (or at least without any proposal to move it) at River Plate for over a year and was well established and developed in that name. Jooler 17:06, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is speculative. There is a clear edit history that shows an article at Rio de la Plata that was later moved to River Plate. And although it is not conclusive, the Internet Wayback machine does not show anything at all for River Plate in October 2004. Starting in November 2004, it only appears to be a redirect to Rio de la Plata. older ≠ wiser 18:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's no more speculative than making an absolute claim about where the article began life when some of the evidence has been destroyed. Whether this should influence the choice of where the page should reside is debatable. It is the current move from River Plate that was taken without a consensus and in the face of opposition that we are discussing we are discussing. I don't believe treating this controversial move as a fait acompli and starting from here is very fair. A whole year had taken place since the previous move. Jooler 19:23, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I made no absolute claim about where the article began life (though others may have drawn their own conclusions). There is no requirement on WP:RM that every move must be discussed first and there is no provision for reversing moves done in good faith pending the outcome of a subsequent discussion and straw poll. While some think there is a clear priority for the name "River Plate", for others it is not. BTW, here is my purely conjectural reconstruction of what happened: back in November 2004, River Plate was probably originally a redirect to the athletic club and that redirect was altered to redirect to Rio de la Plata and that redirect is what was deleted so that the article at Rio de la Plata could be moved to River Plate. After the redirect was deleted, someone made the comment at the top of this page about the athletic club being the most likely meaning. But that is long ago and is only tangentially relevent for the discussion at hand. older ≠ wiser 19:53, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

your words - "Rio de la Plata is the original original name for this article" - italics yours. Jooler

Bzzzt. Wrong answer. Please get your attributions straight. You apparently are refering to a statement made by Jonathunder. older ≠ wiser 22:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize to you, but nevertheless my point stands as a rebut to the original point made by him, whoever said it. Jooler 22:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So this is how we should operate in the future is it? If we want to move a page, we move it first and then have a discussion about moving back to what it was before and if we get slighly more than 40% of the vote we can keep it at the new name? Is that how we operate on Wikipedia now is it? Is that a sensible way to behave? Is it? Jooler 17:18, 15 January 2006 (UTC

These are my thoughts on geographical renaming on WP: I think, in general, that the whole mass movement of unrelated instances of changing geographical names from traditional/historical English names to native ones is an expression of misunderstood political correctness. It might be a positive gesture to abandon use of a name that has aqcuired pejorative connotations (such names of many stateless and/or indigenous peoples) and instead consciously choosing to use the corresponding autonym. But on the whole, we could go on forever if all terms used in English to refer to people or places outside the so-called Anglosphere were to be altered to accomodate non-English usage (Iceland should then logically redirect to Ísland because Iceland is incorrect, etc). A rule of thumb to follow would be to stick with established English names and spellings, unless such usage can be deemed grossly offensive. //Big Adamsky 17:56, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All that has been established so far is that BOTH terms are in common use. One is by far more common in British usage and the other is by far more common in U.S. I have checked a 1916 The New Practical Reference Library encyclopedia and the primary entry is under Rio de la Plata with a note about alternate use as River Plate. So this is NOT a recent contrivance of political correctness. There is long-standing use of Rio de la Plata in U.S. reference works. older ≠ wiser 18:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, there are more than two varieties of English, in fact there are many. Google searches show that US usage is aberrant in that both Rio de la Plata and River Plate are commonly used. However, most English speakers, worldwide, use "River Plate". Grant65 | Talk 18:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You might call this an "aberration" and that "most English speakers, worldwide, use 'River Plate'", but the UN has links to their OWN works here where they call it "Rio de la Plata", and here, where they call it "La Plata River". "River Plate" also returned some, but much less, results. I don't contend that "River Plate" is not used, I just argue that is as preponderant (not more, not less) as other names for the river.

Also, since we love google searches so much. I just ran this query "river plate" site:*.au (you have to leave the quotes on, since the river name doesn't change). It returned 612 results, some from the football team. Of the first 2 pages, 7 out of 20 are from football. Extrapolating that to all results and taking the 35% soccer results off, we have 397 results. And that is COUNTING several hits related to the name of a movie. The query "rio de la plata" site:*.au will return 183 pages, around half. That analysis says that 66%-33% preponderance.

If we take another 30% (6 out of 20) hits of the "River Plate" results because of the movie then instead of 398 we end up with 275 results so the proportion is now around 60-40. If that's an indication of the rest of the english speaking world, I think can hardly consider that "River Plate" is as preponderant a name as we're being led to believe.

In Summary, the conclusion of my very little and very empiric experiment (not very scientific, I have to admit) will just prove that there is no "common english name" and that both are widely used, not only in the US. The only thing I am trying to accomplish here is validate the alternative on the names, not to push for one or the other in the above voting. I already said that I will support whichever name is preferred by the voters.

Since the other issue seems to be the "level of consensus", I would be willing to accept a 51% vote either way as consensus to either move or keep. If the rest of my peers agree, that would take out the whole "I move and then I debate" thing out of the equation. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:44, 15 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're more forgiving than I am on the matter. Regardless of what the contents of the original "River Plate" article might have been, this article [i.e., the relevant article] was created as "Río de la Plata" and moved, without discussion, to "River Plate". The only discussion about the matter, in fact, has been people coming along and saying "what's this 'River Plate' business?", and getting circular-logic replies. (And yes, I realize I'm paraphrasing rather wildly... :-p) When I came along and asked about it, I didn't get any response. Two weeks later, when I spent 4 hours implementing the change I proposed here, which was supported by everyone who participated in the discussion, all of a sudden people pop up to oppose it, claiming that it was never discussed. The assertion that I operated under some "move and then discuss" MO is not only incorrect, it's insulting and bordering on defamation. Not only was it discussed here, but I also sought input at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Naming. There is clearly no consensus at this early stage that the article should be moved back to "River Plate", nor does a simple majority in a vote constitute consensus. That said, claiming that what I did was a violation of any wikipedia policy is disingenuous, especially when it is claimed that it was wrong because it was done without consensus. Particularly insulting to the intelligence is that this argument is made when there was no consensus for it to have been moved to "River Plate" in the first place. What's really irritated me the most in the discussion that led to this vote, however, is that as yet, only one person who didn't openly support my actions has even partially addressed the rationale I stated for having moved the article, and s/he wasn't even arguing for moving it back! It's incredibly frustrating to try to discuss something when the counterpoints are straw men invented in the imaginations of your opponents, and then projected onto you as though they had anything to do with the subject. Tom e r ^talk 01:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The bottom line for me is that (somewhat paradoxically) the Spanish name appears to be the more common English name. Combine that with other precedents (e.g. Leghorn is a re-direct to Livorno), and it seems clear that the article should stay here. By the way, any claims that this article was moved improperly by TShilo12 are completely unwarranted, given the discussion that went on, and consensus that was reached. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:29, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Leghorn has been an obsolete name for Livorno in the English language for many decades now (probably since WW2) - even back when I was studying Italian geography back in 1973-4 we were told not to use the old name. A Google search, apart from being swamped in references to the breed of chicken and the ubiquitous cartoon character, appears to show that many of the references to "Leghorn" are actually on the English versions of Italian-based sites (notably the "Port of Leghorn"), so it may be mainly the Italians themselves who are keeping the old English name going! Anyway, that's besides the point, "River Plate" certainly has not been superseded in general English language usage. Notice that all the people who have voted to oppose the move back, who have identified their location, are based in the US - perhaps this is an artifact of the US educational system? Food for thought. Regarding whether the move was improper, I quote the opening of WP:RM (emphasis mine): "Requested moves is the place to request and vote on article moves that are not straightforward, or that require the assistance of Wikipedia administrators. Normally, logged in users can do uncontroversial moves themselves..." – the move from River Plate on 25 October, and its move back again 20 minutes later (ironically by Sebastian Kessel) should have been a reasonable indication that this was not an uncontroversial move, and so should have got wider publicity and greater participation via a posting on WP:RM. -- Arwel (talk) 03:18, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for the others, but I'm pretty sure Jayjg would be shocked to learn he's based in the US. Tom e r ^talk 04:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you won't accept the Leghorn example, how about Rangoon or Peking? Jayjg ^(talk) 19:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have yet to hear a good reason why we should exclude the name of the soccer team, the battle or the subsequent movie from consideration in terms of usage.

Sebastian, as an Australian, I can guarantee you that "Rio de la Plata" is not the common name here. Even though I don't agree that we should exclude the team/battle/movie, the search "river plate" -football -soccer -battle -movie -film site:.au gets 467 hits.[13] and "rio de la plata" -football -soccer -battle -movie -film site:.au gets 233 hits.[14]

And in New Zealand, which had a ship in the battle, River Plate wins by 319 hits to 74.[15] and [16]

Even US military web pages prefer "River Plate" by 250 hits to 183, and I doubt that they're talking about the movie or the soccer team.[17] and [18]

In summary, the idea that "Rio de Plata" is more common among English speakers worldwide is ideological, rather than having any basis in fact. Grant65 | Talk 02:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, I responded regarding my rationale for excluding the battle, the movie and the football team here. Tom e r ^talk 04:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, I did my searches on google.com instead .com.au which probably account for the differences. Having said that, 4-5 out of the twenty first and seconde page results in your query are from the soccer team or "a" soccer team (local tourney) or just names unrelated to the river (there's a "Lockhart River plate" and a racing car). The stats seem still to favor this name but they aren't overwhelmingly so. OTOH, that's why I hate google comparisons, they are very very very flawed. If me and my friends live in the UK and have a football team named "River Plate", it may show up no matter how I write my query... In the end, I think there's evidence that BOTH names are in use and choosing one over the other is a matter of preference. In that case (and personal preferences aside), I would choose what I call the "real" name of the river, which is the name given to the river by a) its discoverers and b) the local people. Again, I do understand that this is an eye-of-the-beholder thing but we need to be flexible and not see this as an US vs "The World" thing, which is not. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 02:45, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"River Plate" has always struck me as a Britishism. I have only known it as Rio de la Plata. User:Zoe|^(talk) 03:03, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zoe, please check my comment above from 10:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC) which cites English-language web sites from Argentina (several), Brazil, Germany, Canada, the USA, and the European Space Agency which all refer to the area as "River Plate". It most certainly is not a Britishism. -- Arwel (talk) 03:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that there are only two kinds of English (British and American) dies hard I see. Or is the presumption here that we are all Americans and/or should adopt US usage of words? Grant65 | Talk 03:46, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's results of my nonscientific Google Test: "river plate" -futbol -fútbol -soccer -club -ATLÉTICO -battle = about 168,000 English pages; "río de la plata" -futbol -fútbol -soccer -club -ATLÉTICO -battle about 216,000 English pages; "rio de la plata" -futbol -fútbol -soccer -club -ATLÉTICO -battle about 150,000. Once you exlude all the myriad soccer and futbal links, and the battle links, there does not appear to be any great preference for River Plate over Rio de la Plata. And even without excluding "battle" in the searches, you get 227,000, 234,000, and 182,000 respectively. older ≠ wiser 04:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And you don't call a factor of 227:182 (almost exactly 5:4) a "great preference"? In any "two horse race", especially one with such a large sample (comparable to a national election), a 25% margin would be a landslide. Or is there some rule that we need a margin of 50%? Any higher bids? Grant65 | Talk 04:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's an 11% (1/9) margin, not a 25% margin. Tom e r ^talk 05:14, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a 25% difference. Asumming 9 (5+4) is 100%, then 1 (difference) is 11%. That is not a landslide, is actually close enough to determine that there is not ONE common name, there are at least more than one. And, for last, this is not a two horse race. I found "La Plata River" in several places, which would make this 11% difference even smaller. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 05:15, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was referring to the second set of figures posted by wiser. Even 10% is still a landslide in a two horse race. Grant65 | Talk 06:02, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The way I see the numbers, it is 227:234 in favor of Río de la Plata over River Plate. I only included the non-diacritic Rio for comparative purposes. That particular diacritic is pretty familiar in the English language (and I've argued against numerous articles titles with non-English diacritics--but this seems a non-issue for me here--í is not like a thorn or eth or other diacritical marks that relatively unfamiliar to English readers). older ≠ wiser 11:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I seem to have moved Río de la Plata to River Plate in November 2004 (Here is the request on WP:RM in a much simpler time). From a British standpoint, I still think it is the more widely recognised, and more distinctive name (used by the football team based nearby; not used by the smaller river in Puerto Rico). -- ALoan (Talk) 17:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well said ALoan, the Puerto Rican river gets 28,000 English language hits on Google. [19]

More killer facts: I have long argued against excluding from the Google searches the soccer team, battle, and movie. Apart from the Puerto Rican river, there are many other things also called Rio de la Plata, apart from the South American estuary. For example, I found in Google searches the historical Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, a brand of yarn called Rio de la Plata, and companies called Molinos Rio De La Plata SA, Compania de Transportes Rio de La Plata SA, RIPLEG Rio de la Plata Eiffel Group, Banco Rio de la Plata SA, and so on.

Then it is 542,000 to 196,000 in favour of River Plate, a ratio of about 11:4. Which is more than a landslide; if it were a game played by Club Atlético River Plate, it would be a crushing defeat. Grant65 | Talk 17:53, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A much less sloppy search[20] turns up far fewer results for the puertorrican rivulet. Tom e r ^talk 17:21, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever. My points remain: a lot of things are being included in searches for "rio de la plata" which have nothing to do with the South American estuary (since you guys wish to to arbitrarily exclude the soccer team, battle and movie from "river plate" searches) and while Rio de la Plata just pips it in the US, River Plate is the norm in English worldwide. Sorry. Grant65 | Talk 17:37, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, some "rivulet": http://www.solboricua.com/hurricane3.htm Grant65 | Talk 17:45, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've seen it in real life. :-p And even flooded as it is in the pic on the right, it's still a rivulet by comparison to the one in S.America. :-) Tom e r ^talk 18:54, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As continuous efforts have proved (including mine), Google searches are imperfect and can't be trusted since the way you write the query affects its results. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 18:15, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yep. All the more reason not to exclude words from the "River Plate" searches. Grant65 | Talk 18:56, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, the problem here is that excluding is imperfect and not excluding counts unrelated items... It IS very hard to get an accurate count, either way. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:12, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The football team, battle and ~~movie~~ film should be included in the search as the names are related to the river. --Philip Baird Shearer 02:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's now clear from the evidence presented by ALoan, that this page was legitimately moved to River Plate in Nov 2004 after it was nominated on Requested Moves, and that the move of this page to Río de la Plata contravened the normal procedures, reversing the previous legitimate move. Therefore we should not be accepting the controversial move to Río de la Plata as a fait accompli and should really be discussing a move from what was the status quo - i.e. River Plate to Río de la Plata. As a consequence the 60% majority normally required for a move to River Plate should be ignored and only 40% of the vote should be required to restore this page to what was the status quo. I cannot believe anyone with any sense of fair play could legitimately defend the position of making a controversial move and then having a vote on whether to keep the new name where the balance lies in its favour, it is just not the Wiki way. Jooler 07:47, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto, especially when River Plate is far more common in English worldwide. Every once in a while, someone says at talk:football or relatd pages that football is the rightful home of American football or football (soccer). It isn't and this is similar. It's ironic that we seem to have a rare alliance here between US insularity ("I call it Rio de la Plata") and political correctness ("we should use the local name"). Must be a first, and none of the arguments/reasons given above for the article to be called Río de la Plata are in accordance with Wikipedia naming policy. I appeal once again for someone with the requisite powers to move it back to River Plate. Grant65 | Talk 19:55, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article did not start at "River Plate", it began at "Rio de la Plata". There is an honest debate over how to apply naming policy to this article, with arguments and evidence presented for both options. Jonathunder 20:20, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The multiple assumptions of bad faith by the opponents of my having moved this article are appalling to say the least. That said, the "evidence" Jooler cites as presented by ALoan indicates several things, none of which support ALoan's previous claim based on that evidence, ALoan's neutrality on the issue, nor anything Jooler seems to think it does. First, simply looking at the cited page indicates that ALoan did not comment on the requested move in question, although s/he did oppose a different one, and appealed for further input on the other two proposals. Further input, curiously, was not sought for the Río de la Plata→River Plate move. Moreover, it was Chameleon who agreed to the move, requested by Duncharris, and who, in fact, made the move! Now, over a year later, I don't expect ALoan to remember why he didn't comment on that particular move, nor why he said above that he'd made it, but I do consider ALoan's not soliciting further comment to be curious. What's ridiculous tho, is that that requested move page is being used to justify protesting my move. What that page indicates is that the article was moved from Río de la Plata to River Plate because one person (Duncharris) requested it and 2 hours later someone else (Chameleon) agreed to do it, and went ahead and did so, after a 3rd user (ALoan) had deleted the redirect at River Plate in order to make it possible. This is called "proper channels" eventhough no note of the requested move was EVER made on this talk page, while my initiating discussion on this TALK page was discussed here, everyone who participated in the discussion agreed with my rationale, I implemented the decision a WEEK later (not 3 hours later like the "proper channels" move), and a full week after THAT is when people showed up to complain. What's particularly disingenuous about this claim of legitimacy for the "proper channels" move as opposed to mine, is that from what I can see, the only reason the request was made at WP:RM is because User:Duncharris was not yet an admin and consequently could not move the article on his own, since there was already content at "River Plate". In light of this fact, this edit takes on a whole new light. What's funny about the whole affair is that with a little more patience, Duncharris could have implemented his goal himself, since his RfA closed about 12 hours after he requested the page move he couldn't make w/o being an admin himself, which happened later that day[21]. Tom e r ^talk 22:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Funny how the words "bad faith" turn to ashes in ones mouth ... anyway:

(i) I am sorry, but you are mistaken if you think a request has to stay on WP:RM for a week before an admin can use their discretion to make the move (think of this as WP:IAR in action, if you like, although the "rules" of WP:RM are nothing like that prescriptive in any event). WP:RM was created not many weeks before November 2004 to give a central place for non-admins to ask for assistance with tricky page moves. I used my discretion in this case because I thought the requested move was justified. I did not need to comment - you may take my "speedy move" as agreement with the request.

(ii) If I deleted River Plate to facilitate the page move, it is almost certain that I moved Río de la Plata to finalise that move, even if I did not edit the page to swap the emboldend words in the first sentence.

(iii) I am not neutral and have never claimed to be - I made the original move in November 2004 because I thought it was right. It is notable that no-one complained for over a year after the move (slightly more than the "few weeks" between your move and this debate kicking off).

As for where the page ends up: well, we are deciding that. I was not aware that Río de la Plata was so widespread in the Anglophone community: as UK person, the Battle of the River Plate (the actual battle and the war film) loom quite large. I have never heard anyone call the river "Río de la Plata", just like I have never heard anyone call the Río Grande "Big River". As has been noted, the football team is also called "River Plate", apparently after the English name for the river. -- ALoan (Talk) 23:15, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(-i) I taste nothing

(i) I'm not sorry, but you are mistaken if you think I was implying that a request has to stay at WP:RM for a week before it's moved, etc. ... I know what it's for, and clearly I don't think WP:RM is even necessary for non-controversial moves (which, given the paucity of opposition to the move prior to my having done it, I had no idea it would be). I can't take your speedy move as agreement with anything since, as I said, you didn't make the move.

(ii) Page moves show up in the edit history as edits. I am certain your deletion of River Plate was to facilitate the move, the point I was making is that you didn't make the move so I'm unsure why you'd say you did, when even Jooler pointed out near the beginning of this discussion that it was Chameleon who had made it.

(iii) I never said, nor did I imply, that you had said you were (or claimed to be) neutral, I merely pointed out that the Arwel-Grant-Jooler camp is making the argument that I'm a POV-pusher for having moved the article, while your move was as free of POV as Bo-Peep's sheep was of chromatic blemish. I'm not calling your having made the move (eventhough I don't see any evidence that you actually made it) "wrong", I'm simply pointing out that there was no great loud cry for it to be done with great discussion in support of it at the time as is being implied above. Your assertion that no one complained for over a year after the move is, in a word, patently false, as a cursory examination of this page and the article's history demonstrate, not only have people challenged the name, but the article was moved back in October by User:§, albeit without any discussion. It is notable that no one complained about the name "Río de la Plata" on this talk page in the 1.75 years between its creation and the time it was moved (although it was actually only about 5 sentences long at the time) to "River Plate", nor was the move ever even proposed here, much less notice given that it had been moved nor rationale explained. Incidentally, I moved the article when I did because (a) I thought it was right and (b) all the discussion about it here and on several user talk pages actively encouraged the move--even from people who previously had argued in favor of "River Plate"

I was not aware that "River Plate" was used outside the context of nautical history. As for the battle and the film looming large, those are both under the rubric of "nautical history", and they don't loom quite so large in the world as they seem to in British and Australian history (NZ apparently also had a boat in that war, so maybe they've heard of it as well). The soccer team's name also is related to nautical history, not because the English name was adopted for the River, but apparently because it was seen on shipping cartons. If you go and look through everything I've written here and on other relevant talk pages, you'll notice I distinguished very carefully when I changed things from "River Plate" to "Río de la Plata". The article on the battle remains at Battle of the River Plate, for example. If you dig through the early parts of my contribs when I was implementing the move (and believe me, it was no small undertaking to do a decent job of it), you'll find, in fact, that I reversed a number of my changes because I had changed a number of occurrences of "River Plate" to "Río de la Plata" when doing so was inappropriate in my [of course, "correct"! :-p] view. As has been covered previously, a number of us here had, prior to coming upon this article, never heard of the river being called the "River Plate" (including me, and as I pointed out, before I changed my undergraduate major to Physics, I was a Geography major). Sloppy google searches notwithstanding, the colloquial preference in the US [and Canada] is for "Río de la Plata". Even if this is, as the claim has been made by several ppl here, it's a BrE vs. AmE issue, the "preference for the English name" still rings hollow, since the AmE name is quite clearly "Río de la Plata". Further, this means that, according to the MOS, to prevent warring, the initial standard is to be maintained for the article which, again, since the article was begun at Río de la Plata, means that's where it should continue to reside. An open-minded reading of my arguments in favor of "Río de la Plata" all along, however, will reveal that this is not what I regard as the strongest rationale for "Río de la Plata".

A further point…the assertion has been being made here by the pro-River Plate editors that "Río de la Plata" is some sort of American aberration. I recommend that people who honestly believe this to be the case go look at the name of the article for this river in other languages, and reconsider which is the "aberration". I rather suspect that the adoption of the name "River Plate" in England postdates rather than predates the earliest divergence between BrE and AmE, making "River Plate" (despite the fact that it has no doubt been used for quite some time now) a neologism by comparison. Note, for example, that in the Dutch and German articles, the river and the article are called "Río de la Plata", while the Dutch articles for the Thames and Yellow River in China use Dutch names for those articles. German articles for the Thames and Yellow River in China use German names for those articles. The "The English have a longer history in the area" claim is wrong, unless you're counting histories of aggression, since the Germans weren't aggressors there until the Battle of the River Plate. OK, we'll use different examples then. The Italian articles are at it:Río de la Plata, it:Tamigi, and it:NULL (although it is listed as "Fiume Giallo" in the Italian article on China); French at fr:Río de la Plata, fr:Tamise and fr:Huang He; Spanish at magical easter egg link, es:Támesis and es:Río Amarillo; Portuguese at pt:Rio da Prata, pt:Rio Tâmisa, and pt:Rio Amarelo; and in Polish at pl:La Plata (estuarium), pl:Tamiza and pl:Huang He. Why the English article for the Yellow River (in China) is at Huang He is beyond me, especially in light of the fact that the sources I used to support my moving this article to "Río de la Plata" could not be used to similarly support Huang He over Yellow River. Shall we continue to entertain silly theories about the confluence of political correctness and American linguistic imperialism? Tom e r ^talk 06:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. 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.

Post-closing discussion[edit]

Please do not presume to tell me what I did and did not do. Page moves now show up automatically in the edit history, yes; but before the software upgrade in December 2004 (IIRC) they did not - see Wikipedia:Page_move and look at my page move log, which has no entries before 23 December 2004 despite my having been an admin for several months by then and having made many moves suggested on WP:RM. As I said above, if I did the delete then I am almost certain that I would have moved the page, even if the edit history does not say so. If you look at the edit cited by Jooler, (a) it has the edit summary "Río de la Plata -> River Plate", which is not the standard edit summary that is generated automatically for a page move these days (and in those days there was no box for adding extra commmentary on a page move); and (b) that edit actually changes the content of the page, tidying the lead section to reflect the new page name: you may have noticed that it is not possible move and edit at the same time. I suspect that that edit was made shortly after I deleted the page and made the move.

It is abundantly clear from the discussion above that there is no consensus on what this article should be called, and that both "River Plate" and "Río de la Plata" are widely used. I think you accept that the move in November 2004 was entirely valid (although I was wrong to say that it was not challenged for over a year: the first substantial negative comment I am aware of is the move in October 2005, almost one year later). Given the lack of consensus above for one or the other, I think it should be returned there as the last place where there was a consensus for it to be. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:23, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Continued discussion after the move was closed[edit]

Tom, a few points: (1) I don't doubt that you had never heard or River Plate until recently. Personally, when I come across something which I have't heard of, I don't automatically assume that it doesn't exist or is some kind of error. I try to entertain the possibility that it's simply a deficiency in my knowledge. (2) I accept that Rio de la Plata is widely used in US English, but River Plate is also reasonably widely-used in US English. For example, it is far more commonly used on ".mil" sites than "Rio de la Plata", no doubt because of the military history. So the assertion that "Rio de la Plata" is standard US English is false; there are two rival names for the estuary in US English. (3) It is simply incorrect to say that Rio de la Plata is more common in Canadian English, if searches of ".ca" sites are any indication, and we have nothing better to go by. (4) What happens with articles about other rivers and articles about this one in other editions of Wikipedia is irrelevant, since the rule is to use the common name in each case. Grant65 | Talk 08:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(0) it's Tomer, not Tom. (1) When I came across "River Plate", I was curious. I didn't automatically assume that it didn't exist, nor that it was some kind of error. I honestly entertained the notion that there was a deficiency in my knowledge. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gone to all the work of looking it up in all the sources I cited waaaaaaaaaaaay up above. For the doubters in the crowd, I didn't exclude any sources I looked up when I presented my findings in the discussion that preceded my moving the article. (2) I also, conversely, accept that "River Plate" is widely used outside US and Canadian English, even that it is used within US and Canadian English academic publications. The fact of the matter is, however, that in the vernacular, as testimony from US and Canadian residents attests, the name "River Plate" is completely unknown to us beyond the context of the WP article which first introduced us thereto. I never made any claim about Río de la Plata being "standard US English", I claimed instead that "Río de la Plata" is the way the river is referred to in vernacular US and Canadian English. The stuff about the military history strengthens the points I've made here previously, on numerous ignored occasions, in fact. The simple fact of the matter is, however, that the vast majority of society does not view geography or history in terms of military or nautological history. I'm not disputing the fact that many people in the UK and Australia and NZ know of the Battle of the River Plate as a result of some [from a North American perspective, where reside 75-80% of native English speakers] obscure battle of WW1 (we're taught more about the Battle of Gallipoli)...by the same token, I'm sure Brits in general are far more well-informed about the Bombing of London than about the far more historically important (as a turning-point in world events) Battle of the Bulge and the (gasp! Americo-centric) attack on Pearl Harbor and battle of Midway, for example. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denigrating the British when I refer to British interests in the Río de la Plata basin as "aggressive"...that's how I view them, but not any more negatively than I view Spanish interests prior thereto. The fact of the matter is that, without prejudice, British editors are attributing a higher import to their interpretation of historical events than is actually warranted. Any claims about "standard US English" are spurious, and if based upon anything I've said, misinterpretations, since there is no such thing as "standard US English", although such a thing, if it mean open and defiant expression of opposition to the Crown, "[is] a consumation, devoutly to be wish'd", to quote the Bard. It's interesting that after this long dialog battle you should finally concede at the end of your point (2b), that there are, in fact two rival names for the estuary in US English. This is the point I've been making from the very outset. There are two different names, one of which, in my view, is an attempt at acceptance of the British neologism "River Plate" vs. the traditional name "Río de la Plata" which, although it is, obviously, the Spanish name, the pre-existing appellation in English as well. (3) My claim regarding Canadian English is not based on google searches, neither on rampant idle speculation, but rather upon the 3 Canadian WP editors with whom I've communicated on the subject, one of whom has voted here, indicating that he as well had, prior to running into the name here, never heard of the name "River Plate". For what it's worth, the other two are huge military history buffs, and are very well familiar with the name because of the WW1 battle (and rather than foisting their views about the issue, agreed to remain neutral in light of my vehement support of retaining the Battle of the River Plate article (and several related articles) where they were). That said, both of those who referred to the river by the name "River Plate" were quite familiar with it by its Spanish name, and neither considered referring to it as such as an encroachment upon the English name, nor in any way an offense against the history of the Universe (nor the minisculely less-important British Empire) for the article to remain at Río de la Plata. (4) I couldn't agree more. You seem to have misunderstood my intent with demonstrating that "[Río de] La Plata" is the universal name for the river in other language Wikipedia articles. What I neglected to mention when I was making that argument is that those languages which don't use the Spanish name use a direct translation (rather than a miscognatelation) (Esperanto, Portuguese and Latin, for example). That "minor" point (that the Spanish name is almost universal, and that the "correct English name" is actually the aberration) aside, is not an argument in favor of my having moved the article as you seem to be interpreting it, but rather a refutation of the assertion that the AmE/CanE usage of "Río de la Plata" is a result of some grand aberrant educational-system-induced conspiracy between the forces of Political Correctness (which, as an anti-leftist-academic-anti-elitist you'll never find me arguing in favor of) and American Imperialism (which, as a Puerto Rican, you'll never find me arguing in favor of). In short, opposition is being lodged by spitwadlobbers who imagine a target in me who doesn't exist. No wonder they keep missing. If you're interested in resolving this in the spirit of compromise, stop trying to address me as an opponent and instead try addressing me as a fellow intellect w/ whom you have a minor disagreement. Tom e r ^talk 11:54, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a ******** disgrace. Jooler 22:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For us nominalists it is rather a matter of convention. User:Ejrrjs says What? 23:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is an absolute ******* travesty. I DO NOT ACCEPT this vote. This page was moved without a ******* consensus to a page that is not even in ******* English for **** sake here we have a vote that has not acheived 60% neccesary to move it from what was the status quo at River Plate and yet the page remaines at this foreign language name. *** you all ought to legislate at elections in China. It's an absolute ******* disgrace. This is it I have ******* had it with Wikipedia it's a load of **** dominated by a ******* an Americo-centrist view of th world GOODBYE and so long and thanks for the fish. I give up DuncHarris was right the ******* lunatics have taken over the asylum where our language ENGLISH is usurped by a foreign language on our own ******* site because of politcal correctness, US American ignorance and an Argentinean agenga, I bet it won't be long before we find Falkland Islands moves to Malvinas. what a buncgh of *****. Jooler 23:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Very revealing. On occasion in the past I've been mildly distressed to find out, after voting, that some of the most vocal advocates for the position I supported were actually rude and boorish (to put things mildly). ~~In this poll, I'm happy to see that is not the case.~~ older ≠ wiser 00:06, 20 January 2006 (UTC) -- sorry, I'm actually not happy to see Jooler's outburst above. I agree with Thumbelina -- in the Wiki world, sometimes things go the way you think they should and sometimes they don't. There are plenty of articles with titles that are not very familiar in the U.S. (or even in the English language), but life goes on and Wikipedia continues. older ≠ wiser 00:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Calm down and please don't curse. The world will not end if this place in the Americas continues to be titled what most people in the Americas (both North and South) call it. Relax. OK? Thumbelina 00:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If this guy had looked things properly, he would've seen that myself (and Argentine) supported the move to erase the word "Malvinas" from the Falklands's articles (exept to mention it in passing). Plus, he cursed at me in my talk page and got a block (from myself) for it. I am really sorry that it had to come down to that. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 00:34, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fully support Jooler's anger, if not the method of expression. It is a disgrace when a relatively small number of Wikipedia editors collude to impose a name on an article that merely reflects their personal backrounds/preferences, rather than the most commonly-used English language name. I will be taking further action regarding this matter.

Tomer (the colours threw me), I will answer your last post shortly. (BTW the battle was in WW2.) Grant65 | Talk 04:20, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, I neither think of it as a disgrace nor I believe that the number is small. Numbers-wise, the vote was either 50-50 or with a slight advantage towards "Rio de la Plata". While your arguments were valid during the discussion, I don't really believe that you are being reasonable now.

Finally, let me say what I hope is my last post regarding this matter. I made a query in the CIA factbook database, where it shows the following numbers:

US Pop: 295734134

Aus Pop + NZ Pop + Uk Pop + Canada Pop (20090437 + 4035461 + 60441457 + 32805041) : 117372396

According to these stats, US has 71% of the total native english speaking population (not counting 2nd languages and I probably forgot some countries here and there, especially in Africa, but I counted the most common ones.)

Assuming 70% of the Americans say "Rio de la Plata", that would still be a 1 million "advantage" over the rest. And this is counting Canada with the "other" group and all of them as 100% "River Plate".

My little empiric experiment only shows that both names are preponderant and whatever we choose will be recognized by both sides. In that scenario, I'd be inclined in choosing "Rio de la Plata", per all of Tomer's arguments.

Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 04:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Empiric?!" Sebastian, you do yourself no credit with that bit of "research". In the first place, usage of the name/s has absolutely nothing to do the distribution of English speakers on a national basis. Second, we are writing not only for native speakers, but also for non-native speakers who read English. Third, you have overlooked many countries in which English is the spoken by a large minority of the population. For example, India, where the number of English speakers is estimated at 350 million,[22] "equal to the combined English-speaking populations of Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand." India is just one example, but I'm not going to post an exhaustive list. Grant65 | Talk 06:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sebastian, I have to point out that Wikipedia has never accepted the argument that US usage prevails because of number of speakers, otherwise we would use American spellings, punctuation, date formatting, etc., exclusively for everything. Plainly Wikipedia doesn't. -- Arwel (talk) 23:49, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the sentiment, if not the expression, although one important variable is that the page was originally created here. However, I think we should take to the WP:RM talk page, if it is not already being discussed there. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is. Tom e r ^talk 16:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

While not approving of Jooler's phraseology I can understand his sentiments. It is disappointing to see so many "oppose" votes from people who appear to have taken no notice of the posted evidence that "River Plate" is used by local people when writing in English, and appear to have simply voted their personal preference. I also notice at least one oppose voter whose user page declares him a native Spanish speaker and en-3 English ability, so it's hardly surprising his vote was cast as it was. -- Arwel (talk) 23:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view[edit]

This seems to have gotten out of hand, with move wars and hot tempers flaring. I've not even looked at this article before, and come at it totally from the outside.

It is my view, having read all of the above comments and studying the history, that this article should be located at River Plate. That name was chosen by a (small) WP:RM quite a while ago and stood for a long time without complaint. I don't think that moving it back was particularly bad, but once that had been reverted discussion should've taken place, not an ongoing war.

There is no consensus to move from Río de la Plata to River Plate, and thus no consensus for either name. It is therefore down to a just a few policy issues:

We should use the common name, to which they both seem to have a roughly equal claim
We should use the English name, which is River Plate

I believe that this WP:RM should've been formed in reverse (asking to move the article to Río de la Plata) as River Plate was the accepted name for such a lengthy time. Obviously though that would've appeared odd given that it was already there.

The battle of the River Plate, which appears to be the most major historical reference to the river, is the common name of that encounter and, for me, also lends weight.

My view is that we should move this to River Plate to restore the balance. Please realise that this is not a situation whereby everyone can be pleased and that, while you may disagree with my decision, it is one that comes from a neutral position. I will not move it immediately in order for all parties to read this comment. violet/riga (t) 21:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We all went from neutrality to a decision, and I would say most commentators came from the "outside" as well. Plus you're no longer neutral if you've taken a position, as your arguments are pretty much the same as Grant65's, to which I have said: it's not a policy issue, because these naming conventions are Guidelines, not Policy. I hesitate to bring up Admin Tyranny, but please respect the process which has taken place. Join in the debate if you wish, but don't act unilaterally. - mako 22:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but saying that I'm not neutral is simply absurd. violet/riga (t) 22:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't dispute that you came into this neutrally, but now you've formed a decision and taken up previously voiced arguments. As I said, your reasoning is the same as the one advanced in the original debate. - mako 22:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a neutral decision based on policy and process. violet/riga (t) 23:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can see where you are coming from, but like I've said, the naming conventions are Guidelines, not Policy. - mako 23:43, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The breakdown articles are guidelines - the main one (Wikipedia:Naming conventions) is a policy. violet/riga (t) 23:48, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and we have mostly been concerned with the breakdown articles Wikipedia:Use common names and Wikipedia:Use English. - mako 00:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, violetriga, the "balance" that needs to be "restored" here has nothing to do with the article's name. The supposed weight of the name of the Battle of the River Plate is only historically important to World War 2 history buffs. A great number much more important historical events are tied to the estuary (for the love of Pete, two national capitals are located on its shores). The fact that the only one of those events that has the name "River Plate" tied to it should lend weight to "Río de la Plata" rather than to "River Plate". The assertion that the article stood for a long time without complaint at "River Plate" is untrue. It went for a long time w/o anyone requesting that it be moved at WP:RM, but that's a very different thing from the name going unchallenged. What's more significant is that it went a substantially longer time prior thereto without any dissent. I'm not prepared to question your claimed neutrality at this point, but your judgment, if it is truly neutral, seems to be based on a rather poor understanding of the facts. Tom e r ^talk 22:24, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"A great number much more important historical events are tied to the estuary (for the love of Pete, two national capitals are located on its shores)." – How does that have any influence on the name commonly in use? I don't see an event using that title, such as the great flood of Río de la Plata.

"I'm not prepared to question your claimed neutrality" – good job too.

I've read the facts - just because they don't match up with your own interpretation does not mean that I am wrong. You really ought to try and see past your own bias. violet/riga (t) 22:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am also very familiar with page naming conventions and RM processes. I would strongly caution against saying the majority of voters in the just-concluded poll are wrong and moving the page despite the conclusions they reached independently. Jonathunder 23:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The majority is negligible, hence reverting to "use the English name" violet/riga (t) 23:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict) With respect violet/riga, I think you are inventing policy and process here. First, your second point above "We should use the English name, which is River Plate" is not policy (unless it has been revised recently--which seems to happen more and more frequently). The naming convention is to use the most common name. As you indicate there is no agreement about this. Second, there is precious little precedent for making an arbitrary decision in a contested move -- especially where even the matter of whether or not it was moved properly to begin with is contested.

Rather than one admin making an arbitrary decision in such a closely contested matter (and there's no reason not to assume that you did arrive at your conclusion with neutrality--but you are just one other editor with an opinion now) -- I think a more appropriate course of action would be to construct a proper straw poll on the matter, something along the lines of What should the name of this article be: Option 1: River Plate Option 2: Río de la Plata (and perhaps an Option 3: Rio de la Plata for those who dislike diacritics). I think the poll should be a simple approval voting, such that whichever option garners to most support votes is the winner. Might want to have a disclaimer directed towards sock-puppets, like no accounts newer than 3 months. And the poll should be widely advertised in the usual places, WP:VP, WP:RM, WP:RFC, and WP:CS. older ≠ wiser 23:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC) PS and any discussion should take place in a separate section so that the poll remains easy to follow.[reply]

Since the initial 11 February 2002 creation of Wikipedia:Naming conventions there has been mention of "Use English words", which today reads "Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the English form". violet/riga (t) 23:41, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, of course, that convention has been it place practically forever. However, there continues to be much disputation about exactly what it means. Río de la Plata is arguably a naturalized English form, at least in the Americas. Words of Spanish origin complete with diacritical marks are readily accepted as unremarkable in standard English. older ≠ wiser 23:56, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense. It means what it says: we use the most common name, not the local name and not the most common name in US English. The most common name in English, by a huge margin, is "River Plate", as illustrated repeatedly by Google searches.Grant65 | Talk 20:28, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And as has also been repeatedly demonstrated ad nausem is that the Google results are highly unreliable in this case because of the huge number of links related to the athletic club and to historical battle. The debate here has amply demonstrated that there is no clear and unambiguous "most common name". The "use English" convention does not clarify things. Words of Spanish origin complete with diacritical marks are readily accepted as unremarkable in standard English. older ≠ wiser 22:42, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Unreliable" because they use the phrase "River Plate"? If there was a body that conducted scientific surveys of English usage around the world, then we could refer to that. But there isn't. In this case there is no better way of assessing usage than Google. The opinions of Wikipedia editors, and internal polls of Wikipedians, are meaningless and hopelessly biased when it comes to the common usage of words, because we are such a small and unrepresentative group of people. Grant65 | Talk 05:28, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

From Wikipedia:Google test: It should be stressed that none of these applications is conclusive evidence, but simply a first-pass heuristic or rule of thumb. That's all. In a situation like this where there are so many muddled variables, the Google test is not a reliable guide. older ≠ wiser 13:05, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, except that the "first-pass heuristic"/"rule of thumb" says that River Plate is more common to an overwhemingly degree. Grant65 | Talk 16:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Um, no it really doesn't if you attempt to take into account all the other uses of the term. And that is precisely why the Google Test should not be taken as the last word in making decisions. older ≠ wiser 20:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(moved comment after page doubling due to edit conflict)

What I see here is that some people feel that Wikipedia has been taking over by an Americo-centrist view of th world and that the lunatics have taken over the asylum. It seems also that in the wikiasylum [their] language ENGLISH is usurped by a foreign language on [their] own site because of politcal correctness, US American ignorance and an Argentinean agenga (sic). There is something about betting online that may or may not be legal according to local legislation. Some people express it very rudely. Some other people not only share the sentiment but go and pick an external witness of their choice. So let me how *I* feel: "además de cornudo, apaleado" (not only cheated on, but beaten out). No, I don't. I was joking. I'm not part of any Americo-Argentinean conspiracy with a hidden ajenjo. Do as your please, but take into account practical considerations:

Club Atlético River Plate will certainly be what an average user will be looking after in River Plate, which is a nice disambiguation page. Let's be honest, nobody really cares about the rivers of the Río de la Plata basin, but Argentines and Uruguayans. If you move the one that concerns us about, you'll also have to move the current River Plate to River Plate (disambiguation) and indicate that there are alternate meanings (i.e. the football team). Or you can leave things as there are, with an useful disamb and let this very same page under the common name Río de la Plata stating that is also known by the English name River Plate.

Oh, regarding the historical significance of "Río de la Plata", the Spanish Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata was after the independence declaration called Provincias Unidas del Río de la Plata, which is still a valid (but not used) name for Argentina. And do not forget about Rioplatense culture and dialect of Spanish, which links both shores. Or is there a separate demonym for River Plate?

Thanks for your attention. User:Ejrrjs says What? 23:35, 20 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Demonyms do not have to derive exactly from the geographical feature concerned. And I strongly disagree when you say "Club Atlético River Plate will certainly be what an average user will be looking after in River Plate...". If I can be allowed to indulge in anecdote/idiosyncracy — and why not, since this seem to be what a lot of the arguments in favour of "Río de la Plata" seem to amount to — being a non-soccer-playing Australian, I can assure you that I'd never heard of the club until this debate. And the knowledge of "River Plate" in the US is further reduced by soccer's relative obscurity in the US. I knew that the Spanish name was Río de la Plata, but always knew it as River Plate in much the same way as I referred to Roma as "Rome", or München as "Munich".

The large number of Spanish-speakers in the US makes it an unusual case when it comes to the translation/non-translation of Spanish names/words. I accept that that speakers of US English are aberrant among speakers of English as a whole, in that a majority of people in the US refer to the estuary as Río de la Plata. This is probably why Powell and Pressburger's movie was re-titled Pursuit of the Graf Spee for US audiences. But I think sufficient evidence has been presented for the most common name in English, worldwide, being "River Plate". No unscientific, straw poll of Wikipedia editors, will convince me otherwise. We are all biased, but somebody please shoot me if ever I resort to "that's what I've always called it" as the sole reason for naming anything. Grant65 | Talk 16:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed this debate here from the moving requests. I have no connections to the river or the countries or anything. As purely an outside viewpoint, I tend to think that Rio de la Plata is correct. I have heard of River Plate as well, but I never made the connection that River Plate and Rio de la Plata are actually the same thing, until I saw this article. I don't know if my comments helped, I hope a little... Gryffindor 13:38, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Me too - I'd heard of the Battle of the River Plate but I had no idea where this took place. Having found this debate, I've also found out that the mysterious "River Plate" is actually the Río de la Plata. Rhion 16:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jooler was drunk[edit]

Jooler was drunk when he wrote his last posting on this page. He apologizes to everyone concerned. He is still considering his future on Wikipedia - On behalf of Jooler. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jooler (talk • contribs) 00:33, 21 January 2006

Another naming poll[edit]

The naming dispute has gone on too long, and consensus is clearly unreachable. The following poll is the deciding vote on the name and, when it closes, should be accepted without further move wars.

This is an approval vote, meaning that you vote for the names which you find acceptable (there is no object/oppose vote). You can vote for more than one choice if you wish. The result will be determined in seven days of the vote starting (28 January 2006 at 1pm UTC), whereby the article will be located at the name which has a majority. In the event of a draw the vote will be extended for 48 hours.

The current name of the article and the history of its naming should not be influential on your vote - it is what is most appropriate that counts. You should also refrain from adding comments to this section - use the above discussion sections for that. violet/riga (t) 12:58, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Río de la Plata[edit]

Support - LordAmeth 13:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support First choice older ≠ wiser 14:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Bletch 15:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:39, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Rhion 20:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support User:Dave 21:00, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support User:Ejrrjs says What? 22:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support ShiningEyes 22:50, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. First choice. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - mako 02:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I've never heard of it under any other name. --Carnildo 02:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - (As though anyone had any doubts...) Tom e r ^talk 03:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias 03:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - OneEuropeanHeart 03:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - COA 03:52, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Malepheasant 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support //Big Adamsky 06:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Circeus 14:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, better known by this name. Palmiro | Talk 15:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, Mukadderat 19:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. —Nightstallion (?) 19:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support First choice. User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 21:43, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Kaldari 04:51, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support first choice -- Astrokey44|talk 15:09, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Stefán Ingi 16:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Rmhermen 00:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nkcs 03:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I would argue that this is the most common name used in English - Spaceriqui 05:24, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rio de la Plata[edit]

(note the lack of diacritic)

Support - LordAmeth 13:43, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Elonka 14:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Second choice older ≠ wiser 14:31, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Bletch 15:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support User:Ejrrjs says What? 22:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Second choice. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:08, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - mako 02:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I've never heard of it under any other name. --Carnildo 02:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - (As though anyone had any doubts...) Tom e r ^talk 03:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Malepheasant 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support //Big Adamsky 06:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support, 2nd choice. User:Zoe|^(talk) 21:32, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a 2nd choice. Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 21:44, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support since this is where the article started. CDThieme 00:21, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support 2nd choice -- Astrokey44|talk 15:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Rmhermen 00:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Very weak support as my second choice - Spaceriqui 05:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I hope we don't have to vote thrice. Thumbelina 17:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
SupportSeptentrionalis 04:40, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

River Plate[edit]

Support -- Arwel (talk) 14:29, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- ALoan (Talk) 16:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Thanks in part to the Battle of the River Plate and Club Atletico River Plate, this is the best known name worldwide. Grant65 | Talk 17:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC) And the Powell and Pressburger classic The Battle of the River Plate (film) (US title: Pursuit of the Graf Spee). Grant65 | Talk 15:30, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Mucky Duck 22:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Proteus (Talk) 23:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support My first choice. //Big Adamsky 06:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Jooler 18:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support Correct version under most common name used by English users rule. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 19:46, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support We should not stop using our own language for place names. The main effect is that people simply acquire less geographical knowledge because it becomes harder to remember. Words written with diacretics are not in English. CalJW 04:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Support Philip Baird Shearer 11:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support--Lagarto 02:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC) Vote was posted after poll was closed. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 23:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Plata River[edit]

La Plata River[edit]

Result[edit]

The result of this poll is that this article should be known as Río de la Plata. While some people may see this as against the "use English" policy, the overwhelming majority view is that the commonly-used named for this river, and thus the correct one to use given the "use common names" policy, is Río de la Plata.

Thanks to all that voted and discussed this issue. violet/riga (t) 17:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

We should not stop using our own language for place names. The main effect is that people simply acquire less geographical knowledge because it becomes harder to remember. Words written with diacretics are not in English. CalJW 04:35, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So I guess we should rename Coup d'état to Blow of state... (Sorry! can't deny it was funny) Mariano(t/c) 08:22, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And "Rio Grande" to "Big River", "Los Angeles" to "The Angels" and so on and so forth... :) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 15:41, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
And Roma and München and Mockba, eh? -- ALoan (Talk) 16:50, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ridiculous. There shouldn't even be a redirect from Mockba. It should be from Москва instead. :-D Aahahaha. I see that it already is. :-p Tom e r ^talk 17:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ALoan, I was just following that train of thought. :) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 18:39, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am not clear on one point, if the name is not "River Plate", then how does one call the river in other texts. Is it the "River Río de la Plata" or the "Río de la Plata River?"Philip Baird Shearer 11:42, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is the "Rio de la Plata", same as the "Rio Grande"... I would say. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What a travesty of democracy. Rio de la Plata wins, thanks to the preponderance of US editors on Wikipedia and several Argentines who think we should use the local name, instead of following standard naming policy. Grant65 | Talk 18:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to be so blunt, but democracy is democracy. It wouldn't have been a travesty if you had stood in the other side of the fence. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A real democracy accurately reflects the wishes and interests of all of the people on behalf of whom it speaks. This is a democracy full of malapportionment, gerrymandering and bias. It has acted in the names of some English speakers, namely those from the US and South America, rather than all of them. Grant65 | Talk 00:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." - mako 04:38, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, If the "rest of the people" had cared enough to vote (and to vote your way) then it wouldn't have been a problem. The problem is that the people who voted did so in a way that you don't agree with. Since we can't poll every single english speaker, we need to go by what we have here. And what we have is people who prefer "Rio de la Plata". Don't be a sore loser. We voted twice (with the same result), let's move on. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 02:32, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What a completely irrelevant turn in the discussion. Of all the many things WP is, one of the many things that is quite clear is that Wikipedia is not a democracy... Tom e r ^talk 03:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I dont like this "americans vs non americans" argument being pushed here. For the record Im from Australia and think it should be named Rio de la Plata based on all the modern sources (including British sources) where i've seen it mentioned as such. "River Plate" is the historic name for the river - the soccer team was founded in 1901, the battle was in 1939 and the other references are from Francis Drake and from 1807. All modern sources, from anywhere in the world, list it as Rio de la Plata -- Astrokey44|talk 05:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All sources except common usage, and that's what we go by. Do a check of .au websites, or .uk, or .ca, or .in, or anywhere else in the English speaking world. Grant65 | Talk 06:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This is what you believe. Wikipedians mostly disagree. Why don't let it go. Morover, what's the harm if people calls it any other way? Or if common usage changes? Or if non native speakers of English coopt the language for their own communication purposes? Do you really think that there is a real connection between the string of letters "River Plate" and the physical entity? Or perhaps to the Spirit of the Waters? Enough is enough. User:Ejrrjs says What? 07:12, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is no more "connection" for Rio de la Plata. Why should I let it go? Everyone needs a hobby :-) Anyway, we Wikipedians do not represent common usage, which is what this is all about. We should be voting on our perception of common usage in English, not our personal preference. I also believe the preponderance of US editors on Wikipedia has led us to a "non-NPOV" result. People in the US do not seem to be highly aware of Club Atletico River Plate or the Battle of the River Plate, which is presumably why the name of the movie was changed to Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the US. (Why wasn't it called Battle of Rio de la Plata? Rhetorical question.) Clearly neither Rio de la Plata or River Plate have much cultural or historical significance to people in the US. So I wonder why they care what it's called. As for common usage changing, I think that is exactly what some people are trying to do here. Wikipedia is reasonably influential, I'm sure usage will change to some degree as a result of this outcome. I don't know if it will ever overshadow knowledge of the battle or the club among non-US English speakers. As for "non native speakers of English coopting the language", what can I say! That is decidedly not NPOV and not in the spirit of Wikipedia. I'm amazed that anyone would admit to such a thing. Grant65 | Talk 11:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ridiculous[edit]

We just had a WP:RM move vote. The second vote is ridiculous and unnecessary. If we call it Río de la Plata, it should be with the diacritic since we're choosing the "local" name. Redirects can take care of the possible problems. This poll is just bowing to the pressure of some readers expressing discomfort with the results of the 1st and there is no need for it having finished one less than a week ago. Are we going to have a new poll every time somebody doesn't like the outcome of the first? Besides, I assume we WILL merge together the votes for Río de la Plata and Rio de la Plata against River Plate. Otherwise 5 votes for River Plate may win against 4 for each of the other two options.

Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 17:44, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is not "ridiculous" - it is the only answer to a vote that, for various reasons, didn't reach an acceptable solution. The votes for the ones with and without the diacritic will not be merged as this is an approval vote. violet/riga (t) 17:52, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the page should have been moved back to River Plate before the WP:RM debate. However, I think this is the best way to resolve the situation. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Sebastian's assumption about combining the votes for Rio de la Plata and Río de la Plata -- that's not how it works. It is a simple approval poll. People can vote in support of whatever name they would find acceptable. If someone were so inclined, they could vote in support of every one of the proposed names. older ≠ wiser 19:37, 21 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I want to state my objection to this poll. How can the official Wikipedia naming policy be overriden by a vote? As I have just said above:

If there was a body that conducted scientific surveys of English usage around the world, then we could refer to that. But there isn't. In this case there is no better way of assessing usage than Google. The opinions of Wikipedia editors, and internal polls of Wikipedians, are meaningless and hopelessly biased when it comes to the common usage of words, because we are such a small and unrepresentative group of people. Grant65 | Talk 05:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, the entire point of Wikipedia, at its core, is that we are not a small and unrepresentative group of people. Wikipedia has only grown to the size and quality that it has because we have many many people from all around the world, with different interests and specialties. In terms of this particular debate on this page, I could practically guarantee that the users who've opined here represent the US, UK, and Australia, if not many other places, as well as quite a number of people who do and do not speak Spanish. Google is a computer program, and not prone to the kind of linguistic or social knowledge or common sense that users have. Wikipedia is founded on community contributions and community consensus, and so the results of this debate should be determined that way as well. Just for the record, if I haven't said it already, I had never ever seen the term "River Plate" before coming across this debate here. LordAmeth 12:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Community consensus will be used to clarify this conflict, just as community consensus sets Wikipedia policy. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually Sebastian, the accent is really a side-issue. If it were a matter of "local name" vs. "English name (in common usage)" I'd have sided with "River Plate" from the outset. The fact of the matter is that the Spanish name, which is used more commonly for the river (a point the "River Plate" crowd consistently ignores), is spelled with an accent, while it is found in English both with and without the accent...in fact, because of typesetting configurations and keyboard layouts prior to the US-International keyboard, I'd guess without the accent is the more likely way you'll find it in English publications--not because people think it's "right", but because they don't have (or don't know how to use their computers or typesetters to implement) a í. Tom e r ^talk 06:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry - are you saying that you think the "English name (in common usage)" is "River Plate", but you still think the page should be at Río de la Plata? -- ALoan (Talk) 08:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, but it's not even remotely surprising you'd choose to blindly misinterpret my remarks that way. You seem to be hung up on a hypothetical situation referred to the parentheses in sentence 2 when the relevant part for this discussion is in sentence 3. Tom e r ^talk 08:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand why ALoan read it that way. Before having a go I think you should consider that what you wrote might not be as clear as you intended. violet/riga (t) 09:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, given that one of the key criteria for deciding on the right name for an article is the English name in common usage, I really don't understand what

If it were a matter of "local name" vs. "English name (in common usage)" I'd have sided with "River Plate" from the outset.

means. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:51, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's a hypothetical (see conditional mood#Third conditional). If I believed the parenthetical part, I'd support a change to reflect it. Since I don't, I'm not. Cheers, Tom e r ^talk 14:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I see - sorry for the confusion. You are saying that you think the river is called Río de la Plata most commonly in English, and the fact that the English version of that is River Plate is irrelevant (yes, it is a poor translation of plata, as is kangaroo of gangurru; on the other hand, "plate" is occasionally used in English to refer to articles made from precious metals such as gold or silver - Church plate, for example - which presumably derives from Latin or Spanish: the etymological difference is actually quite interesting - see this link). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a translation of any sort, really. It's simply an anglicisation (as, indeed, is kangaroo of gangurru). Mucky Duck 17:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bingo. In fact, I'm pretty sure (I wish I could find more history about it) that the the toponym "River Plate" is a relative neologism coined in the British Empire (esp. in England) perhaps as little as a century or so ago. My guess is that familiarity with that as the toponym would be even less widespread were it not for some battle that was apparently turned into a movie. I say "some battle" because as the article itself even says, not only did neither side win a decisive victory, but from the viewpoint of "important turning points in the war", it was, the movie notwithstanding, rather irrelevant. That said, while it apparently shows quite frequently in Australian and perhaps England, it shows so infrequently in the US (if ever) that I note that I'm not the only one who has mentioned here already that I'd never heard of it before 3 weeks ago, and then only becase of this naming business. I'm not saying, however that the fact that the English name is "River Plate" is irrelevant, I'm saying that in this case, it's used less frequently in English than the Spanish name (hence my "use common names" argument), especially outside the context of nautological history, as I've covered previously on this page, several times. (The etymology article, btw, is rather cool...) Tom e r ^talk 16:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What about Río Uruguay and Río Paraná? This is currently the only entry under a Spanish name in either Category:Rivers of Argentina or Category:Rivers of Uruguay (apart from Río Negro (Argentina) which has its own disambiguation problems, Black River and Río Negro being what they are). -- ALoan (Talk) 15:33, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am unaware of anyone proposing to move Uruguay River or Paraná River. I wouldn't even throw a big fit if Philip Baird Shearer came along and started griping about the "funny French squiggle" [sic] on Paraná. Most people who know of the river refer to it in English as the Parana River, note that not only does it not have the "funny French squiggle", it's also mispronounced (and I'm not even talking about the retroflex "r") as "Parána" (as though it were spelled Piranha (which they also horribly mispronounce ;-)). Tom e r ^talk 16:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am still somewhat surprised that this is the only river in Argentina or Uruguay (ignoring Rio Negro, as mentioned above) that is commonly given its Spanish name. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Then it's not the only one. :) Río Grande is another spanish original name used for a river, of course this one is in the border of Mexico/USA, which makes the choice of a spanish name very curious indeed... or not at all since a lot of USA geographic places kept their spanish names (ie.: Los Angeles)... But I don't quite understand what that has to do with anything... :)

Again, I couldn't care less about the diacritic. Redirects will point one to the other anyway. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 18:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"I'm pretty sure (I wish I could find more history about it) that the the toponym "River Plate" is a relative neologism coined in the British Empire (esp. in England) perhaps as little as a century or so ago. " - You're surety is misplaced. The British have been calling it River Plate since Drake. With the barest minimum of research I counter your assertion with the fact that a book entitled "A narrative of the operations of a small British force, under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Auchmuty, employed in the reduction of Monte Video on the River Plate, A.D. 1807. By a field officer on the staff. Illustrated with a plan of the operations." - was published in 1807. See Samuel Auchmuty (note that this article was originally taken from the 1911 Britannica and referred to the River Plate before Tomer changed it to Rio de La Plata). Jooler 18:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Got a citation for the Drake assertion? Tom e r ^talk 18:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Re-opening a requested move so soon after one has been conducted is not a very helpful way to proceed. It will lead to more page move wars, not fewer. Jonathunder 19:07, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry but I don't see your logic there. violet/riga (t) 19:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This reminds me of the Florida elections where the democrats kept insisting on recounting the votes...at the time, someone suggested that the rationale was to keep recounting the votes until Gore/Kerry won. I initially thought this TALK section title was rather inappropriate, but the more I think about it, the less convinced I am. I can't help chuckling. (less depressing than crying, and more appropriate given the subject matter...) Tom e r ^talk 20:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

::Grant, as a very short side note, all Argentine Wikieditors (most living outside Argentina, and including yours truly) that voted, did it for "Rio de la Plata" or "Río de la Plata". Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:19, 24 January 2006 (UTC) sorry, wrong place. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Votes[edit]

After my gaffe in failing to notice the availability to vote for more than 1 name, I thus request again that votes for both alternatives of "Río de la Plata" be added together but obviously counting duplicate votes (such as mine) as just one. This is to avoid other readers like me not paying enough attention and just voting for one incarnation. It would be a shame if "divide and conquer" changed the outcome of a poll. Luckily, there is only one instance of this happening, by User:Elonka. My argument here is that if somebody votes for "Rio de la Plata" (no diac) and not for "River Plate" it would be safe to assume that they'd like "Río de la Plata" (diac) more than "RP". I wish I could've argued this point BEFORE the voting opened. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or they could just add their name to the non-diacritic version. The votes will not be added together. violet/riga (t) 19:01, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's not for you to say, is for a neutral admin to decide. Which by participating in this discussion you're not. (and of course neither am I) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:09, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but you're simply wrong about that. violet/riga (t) 19:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First you threaten with RfCs and now you pretend to have all the answers? Cool. If you want to start an RfC you might find that sometimes you're not right. Or you will, since I don't plan to participate on it, seeing that i'll probably be threatened with RfAr. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you were to go against this poll then I would go through the correct processes - that's simply all I'm saying. violet/riga (t) 19:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, violet/riga is correct here. We should not be second-guessing what we think people might have intended with their vote. Anyone can change their vote at anytime up until the close of the poll. The only restriction really is to not vote more than once for any one option. older ≠ wiser 19:17, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And I am contacting those users so they at least are aware of that. OTOH, the lack of discussion on the options is disturbing, they are arbitrary and none of those was at least posed for talk before polls opened. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:19, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The options are the ones discussed throughout this talk page. As for contacting previous voters that have not yet voted for this poll, I was planning to do the same thing myself (but later in the week). I hope you have the courtesy to notify all such people though, not just those that support your preference. violet/riga (t) 19:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody argued the diacritic (or lack thereof). I only contacted the ONE that voted already, another that I know has a view and may not know about this new vote and posted it in a Noticeboard. I am under no obligation to contact people I don't agree with, but if you check my contribs you'll see that what I just wrote is what I did. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:29, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The diacritic (or lack thereof) was mentioned as a more Anglicised version. I didn't claim that you had contacted anyone, just replied to your comment and asked for you to show good faith by not just contacting those that support your preference if you were going to mass-message people. No, you're under no obligation but it would clearly be the nice thing to do. violet/riga (t) 19:40, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And I hope you don't mind my changes to the intro. Is just bolding. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:21, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. violet/riga (t) 19:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To - Tomer - NARRATIVE BY FRANCIS PRETTY, ONE OF DRAKE’S GENTLEMEN AT ARMS - "From hence we went our course to 36 degrees, and entered the great river of Plate" http://www.aol.bartleby.com/33/41.html - this took me literally less than 30 seconds to find. Jooler 23:18, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's pretty clear that what we have here is a divide between those on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean and those on the western side (with a notable exception of a person from Israel with an understandable leaning towards usage in North America) and that due to systemic bias inherent in the system that the western side is going to win out, despite nearly 500 years of history. What really gets me though is the mantra from some people who say "I've never heard it as anything but Rio de La Plata", as if that ignorance was something to be proud of. I'm out of here. Jooler 23:25, 22 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should stay as Rio de la Plata, which seems to be more widely used nowadays. River Plate seems more a historic term. All the maps I looked at used Rio de la Plata, besides my atlas there is also [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28] -- Astrokey44|talk 14:10, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Those all appear to be US or Latin American sources. I think it's safe to say that majority usage in both places is on the side of Rio de La Plata. But not, I suggest, among English speakers as a whole. I wish people would at least attempt to take in the preceding debate before becoming involved. Grant65 | Talk 18:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly since it is located in Latin America, Latin American sources should take precedence. I would bet that the British Times Atlas of the World and any other modern British atlas has it listed as Rio de la Plata. The online Britannica also lists the article as that here. My 1974 edition of the britannica (book) also lists it under Plata, Rio de la with a "redirect" to that from Plate, River. Can you find any modern map where its listed as the River Plate? I havent been able to find any -- Astrokey44|talk 04:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, Latin American sources do not take precedence. Maps/atlases don't take precedence either. Common usage in written and spoken English worldwide takes precedence. Thanks to the soccer club, the battle and the resulting movie, River Plate is the most widepread name among English speakers.

For what it's worth, and since anecdotes seem to be popular, an Argentine friend of mine said he refers to it as River Plate when he is speaking/writing English, and this is part of the reason why I feel so strongly about this. Grant65 | Talk 08:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The name of the soccer club, movie and battle are irrelevant to a discussion about what people call the river (the topic of this discussion), regardless of whether or not they were named after the river. We don't say "Englophone" instead of "Anglophone" because we want to clarify that the English name of England is England not Angleterre "regardless of what the French call it". English has a number of quirks. The fact that most Anglophones call the river "Río de la Plata" despite its English name "River Plate" is relevant, despite the fact that it's being consistently ignored here by proponents of "River Plate". Maps and atlases do take precedence in a discussion about the name of the river, especially over the name of a battle, soccer team or film, since people learn geography from maps and atlases, and last I checked a river is a geographic (as well as hydrological) feature, not a historical one, not a filmographic one, and not an athletic one, from none of which is geography learned. Tom e r ^talk 19:14, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Following Tom e r's argument, I tried to filter out websites that were not related directly to the river (ie. soccer club, war, etc) I found that Río de la Plata had 209k hits (which includes sp. "Rio"), Rio de la plata had 151k hits, River Plate had 107k hits. Removing "battle" does not change the order (226, 163, 150). I would expect that if "River Plate" were the more popular term, the above results would be reversed. I know this could be considered manipulating the results, but I'm just trying to illustrate this point. Spaceriqui 21:03, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As I have stated previously, the Rio de la Plata searches includes a whole lot of Argentine/Uruguayan businesses with "Rio de la Plata" in their name. That being the case, why then exclude things which include River Plate in their names, when doing the parallel search? And don't say "yes well, Google searches are imperfect." Grant65 | Talk 00:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see what you are saying, but please note that I only tried to filter football related websites (or in spanish) to illustrate that fact that not counting them dramatically reverses the results. If River Plate were indeed the more popular term for the river, filtering these out would have no effect. But you are welcome to run your own tests to support your point. Spaceriqui 19:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh don't worry, I did, many days go. You obviously didn't read the whole debate, and who can blame you, considering the volumnious obfuscation, denial and sophistry posted by one or two members of the US English-hispanophone camp.Grant65 | Talk 18:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, as a very short side note, all Argentine Wikieditors (most living outside Argentina, and including yours truly) that voted, did it for "Rio de la Plata" or "Río de la Plata". Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 19:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we should ask them the name of the Falkland Islands... -- ALoan (Talk) 21:05, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doing so would be an indication that you haven't been following the discussion. [29] Tom e r ^talk 22:31, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As Tomer says, just go to Talk:Falkland Islands and see my opinions. You might be surprised. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 23:43, 24 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, I find it incredible that Argentine/Uruguayan editors would not be aware of the "River Plate" name. Second, I don't believe people in Argentina or Uruguay would have any idea about the common name in English-speaking countries. Third, I suspect that if one asked someone going about the their business in Buenos Aires or Montevideo what the English language name of the estuary was, they would either say they didn't know or answer "River Plate". Grant65 | Talk 00:59, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You likewise find it incredible that Americans/Canadians would never have heard of the "River Plate" name. As for what they would say in response to your proposed question, that's irrelevant. How would you respond if I asked you what the Spanish name is for the River Humber (without looking it up)? Tom e r ^talk 17:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This could be just me, but I've been to the countries in question, and have taken a ferry ride across the estuary in question. And I've never seen the name "River Plate" at all until stumbling across this article. If my English language travel guides used "River Plate", I somehow never noticed it. --Bletch 01:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Grant, You can't have it both ways. Either you trust your Argentine friend or you don't believe that people on Arg and Uru would know what the common name is. You better believe that Argentines and Uruguayans have no clue about the "River Plate" name. I lived in Buenos Aires for 24 years, I hope you don't mind me saying that I know for a fact what Argentines know and what they don't. Actually (if informed), most of them will find amusing that english people mistranlated the name so badly. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 02:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mistranslation, schmistranslation. Who cares? Monaco di Baveria is a laughable Italian translation of München, but so what? It is what it is.

So Argentines have no knowledge of "River Plate"? *Cough* You are stretching my presumption of good faith to breaking point. A simple Google search of with "river plate" on .ar pages turns up 10s of 1,000s of pages which have nothing to do with CA River Plate, the battle, or the movie. Many of them in English. Grant65 | Talk 04:33, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Monaco di Baviera is not a translation, that's the name, quite an old one, in fact, and the one most commonly used in Italian. Monaco di Baviera, as opposed to il Principato di Monaco in la Provenza. Tom e r ^talk 17:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And River Plate is "the name" in English. The only real difference between "Monaco di Baviera" and "River Plate" is the fact that all Italian speakers use the same (Italian) name for Munich, whereas some English speakers chose to use a non-English name for River Plate. Grant65 | Talk 04:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. The issue is prevalence of preferrence. Tom e r ^talk 06:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you "break" WP:AGF is on you. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's upon you, if it's clear that you are being disingenuous. I note that you don't deal with the issue of River Plate being well-known in Argentina and Uruguay. Grant65 | Talk 04:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First, it is not a mistranslation, it is an anglicisation. Second, what does this have to do with the price of fish? The discussion is as to whether it is the common name, not whether it reflects the Argentine name. Mucky Duck 09:33, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Someone who kind of understands the issue...although it would demonstrate a serious lack of understanding to assert that the common usage of Río de la Plata has anything to do with Argentina... Tom e r ^talk 17:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the translation for "Rio de la Plata" is "River of Silver". Obviously, for whatever reason that it happened. I am not holding this against anybody, but I can assure you that most Argentines look at it as an error rather than an anglization. that's what I meant in my post. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 16:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And there lies the rub. Whether Argentines see it as an error or not is neither here nor there: It's the fact that it's the English name that matters, not how it is seen by Spanish speakers. Perhaps we should rename the "Fútbol" page on the Spanish Wikipedia since that's a "mistranslation" of football. Mucky Duck 16:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Fútbol" It's not a mistranslation, is a misspelling (instead, "River Plate" would be "Río Plato" where a translation should mean "Río de la Plata"). OTOH, I NEVER argued against the validity of "River Plate" and I NEVER said that it was an invalid name. Actually, just scroll up the screen and you'll see me stating that both names are used and common. I have NOTHING against "River Plate" and I will never propose that the name is invalid or wrong. I also never implied that the mistranlation had anything to do with my arguments, my sentence ONLY came as a trivia fact on how non-english speaking Argentines (or those who only know a few words) view this name, regardless of their level of knowledge and that bit is indeed irrelevant to our discussion. I hope I was clear to avoid further argument in this issue. Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 20:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(de-tabbing) When I was a child, and learning (other people's) English as a foreign language, I thought that River Plate was a mistranlation of the club founders. Really, I cannot think of an English-speaking Argentine happily calling the river River Plate (unless (s)he is a hen, of course). Manure ones would never do such a thing. User:Ejrrjs says What? 19:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC) (and no, I'm not drunk!)[reply]

Note for Non-Argentine editors: Club Atlético River Plate fans are called "hens". Boca Juniors (CARP's arch-rival team) fans are called "manure eaters". Neither nickname is particularly flattering. :) Sebastian Kessel ^Talk 20:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As has already been pointed out, "plate" is an archaic synonym of silver, so it's not a mistranslation at all. You might as well say that Argentina is a mistranslation of "Terra de la Plata". Grant65 | Talk 04:43, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Terra Argentorum or Tierra de la Plata, but the point is well-taken. That said, if people used either of those over "Argentina", I'd be campaigning to use one of those instead of Argentina. Tom e r ^talk 06:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not paper (neither silver)[edit]

It takes a certain amount of manual gestures in a book to find a word, and some more if there is a written note like : see ... (somewhere else).
It takes one click with html.

Wikipedia allows multiple redirects and the original article is nowhere : the title and URL may vary and the content stays the same.

Let us think about the difference between common usage and rules. Common usage may vary with time and places ; rules need to stay a little longer, but they need to evolve smoothly too. Then let us admit that both can live together without sad feelings.

In French, London has been fr:Londres for centuries. But I won't shed a tear if this changes. Chinese names did change many times, and it makes me a little dizzy, that's all. See also Mozart's name. Did you know ? It was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. --DLL 21:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As a non-Hispanic, college-educated American, it's obvious that a ninth grade Spanish student would translate RIO DE LA PLATA AS SILVER RIVER. That to a first year college student would go hand in hand with the name of the country:ARGENTINA! LAND OF SILVER!

The Brits have always mutilated the pronunciation of Spanish, even though Spain is very nearby! If you want 10 to 20 examples a week, simply tune in to BBC.

They brought us NIKERAGIUA OR NIK Ah RAH GWAH, CHE GUAYVARRA,

I taught along side a supposedly professional soccer-playing Brit who claimed to be well travelled in Spain. The principal was looking through resumes for potential teacher candidates. She showed us one on her screen. I saw the Hispanic surname was missing the final -n. That corrected, I pronounced his first name: German, i.e., Herman. The Brit looked at me like I should be committed. Sure enough, he was hired and I had pronounced his name correctly.

It's better and more respectable to simply ask: How is this pronounced. Otherwise, if you presume that your pronunciation is more proper than everyone else's, you look pompous and idiotic.