Category talk:Native American toponyms

Category:Native American toponyms
This category and its subcategories are not very well named; for one thing, the name implies that the category contains Native American toponyms (like the Yurok toponym Hop'ew Pul 'We-Roy), but the description says it's actually for [English] placenames derived from Native American languages. I suggest it be renamed "Placenames of Native American origin". It could have both place- and language-based subcategories, e.g. "New York placenames of Native American origin" and "Placenames of Abenaki origin". - -sche (discuss) 22:06, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * We'd end up duplicating the whole tree of derivation categories that way.... 22:19, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, what would you suggest instead? Just deleting the category and its subcategories? Or moving the main category but not giving it (language-based) subcategories? I'd be OK with either of those courses of action... - -sche (discuss) 22:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There's really nothing special about this category. Many countries have place names that got their names from people who used to live there. France, Belgium, the Netherlands and England have a Celtic substrate, Germany has its many Slavic names, Swedish and Norway have names of Sami origin, and so on. And of course the various American countries have many many more of these names. So we should be aware that having this category creates a precedent for having lots of other categories like it too. I don't know if we want that? Another thing to consider is names like "London". It's an English name, but it came into English via Latin. Other languages have their own versions of "London", though, so French "Londres" is technically a "French toponym of Latin origin"! 22:43, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If users would like to add those categories and entries for them they certainly may. I see no reason why the absence of universal interest in a class of categories has any negative implications for creating a set for those who are interested. If the category succeeds in some way, others may imitate it. If it fails than it can be deleted.
 * Imposing universal structure prematurely is a sure way to kill experimentation. In any event what happens in English in English Wiktionary need not be copied at all, ever, in any language. We can hope that we will have richer coverage of many things in English and continued creativity and experimentation.
 * The effort to prematurely create categories in every language whether or not there is interest or capability to support it is what leads to things like the long list of wanted Appendices for pronunciation in scores (hundreds?), now filled by nearly-as-ridiculous appendices that are merely soft redirects to WP. DCDuring TALK 02:58, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand. If we want to allow this to be expanded as people decide it, then we have to at least make it possible. So that means, at the very least, renaming this category so that "English" is in the name. How else would we create them for other languages? We can't just put words for lots of languages together... 03:29, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * As it stands, I'm totally fine with deleting those whole category tree. I don't think lumping all these languages together is a good idea, isn't Category:English terms derived from Dakota (and so on) good enough? Mglovesfun (talk) 12:55, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
 * One problem is that there tends to be a relatively high percentage of "and so on": names that are obviously of indigenous origin, but without good information about which language. In some cases, there are languages that have disappeared without enough information to even guess at their identity/classification, since only a few toponyms survive.
 * More importantly, in places such as the Americas and Australia, where indigenous languages have been completely replaced by completely-unrelated modern ones, the mere fact of a term's derivation from such a substratum is of interest for non-linguistic reasons, and our derivational-category structure tends to obscure it: in my area, Topanga and Malibu are neighboring communities with names of Native American origin, but they won't ever appear in the same derivational category because Topanga is from the Uto-Aztecan Gabrielino-Fernandeño/Tongva language (the locative suffix -nga is a dead giveaway), but Malibu is from an unrelated Chumashan language. Chuck Entz (talk) 19:50, 25 December 2013 (UTC)


 * There are also Aboriginal and pseudo-Aboriginal names used completely divorced of their native context. A rural-residential area in Manitoba has Kenabeek Street crossing Hiawatha and Minnehaha avenues. And there is a place called Camp Wannakumbac. So we should use such categories with care not to be creating false etymologies based on unfounded assumptions. —Michael Z. 2013-12-26 21:12 z 


 * If the category stays, I repeat that it should be renamed "en:Placenames of Native American origin". The current name implies—actually, it explicitly states—that the category contains Native American toponyms like the Yurok toponym Hop'ew Pul 'We-Roy, and yet, as the description clarifies, it actually contains English placenames derived from Native American languages. - -sche (discuss) 21:48, 26 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've moved the categories using ; the misleading old names can be deleted after some period of time. - -sche (discuss) 06:51, 14 January 2014 (UTC)