Category talk:en:Exonyms

RFM discussion: October 2015–December 2023
Per Votes/2011-04/Lexical categories, move:
 * Category:en:Exonyms -> Category:English exonyms
 * and also all the language variations (Category:es:Exonyms -> Category:Spanish exonyms, etc.)

Rationale: This makes these categories nominally consistent with all other categories that describe the words ("Category:English blablabla") rather than their meanings ("Category:en:blablabla"), such as all categories listed in Category:English terms by etymology.

In fact, I believe Category:English exonyms should be a subcategory of Category:English terms by etymology.

It's interesting to note that Category:English terms by etymology was once called Category:en:Etymology before it was moved multiple times. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 23:22, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Being an exonym is not a matter of how a word was created. In fact, terms often don't start off as exonyms, but become exonyms as the languages diverge and evolve. So it's not appropriate to put it under etymology. —CodeCat 00:11, 12 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose: Exonyms should remain as a category and English exonyms should be a subcategory of it. Pur ple back pack 89  20:15, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I nominated specifically "Category:en:Exonyms -> Category:English exonyms", you mentioned "English exonyms should be ", so I don't see how this would work as an oppose vote to my nomination. I don't suppose you wanted the category to remain named "Category:en:Exonyms", right?
 * In any event, the format that other umbrella categories use according to Votes/2011-04/Lexical categories is "Category:Exonyms by language" -> "Category:English exonyms". Like "Category:Nouns by language" -> "Category:English nouns". --Daniel Carrero (talk) 00:16, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry, I missed the "en" in there. Retracting my vote. Pur ple back pack 89   00:22, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No problem, thank you. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 00:26, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This should not be controversial, but it's wise to check. DCDuring TALK 23:32, 14 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Support per nom. - excarnateSojourner (talk|contrib) 03:11, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This would be a good bot job. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 00:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I was going to move these categories as proposed using excarnateSojournerBot, but I discovered that Category:Exonyms's data in Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Places lists  as one of its parents, which (because it is a topic cat) makes e.g. Category:en:Places a parent of Category:en:Exonyms. I expect if I move the exonyms code from Module:category tree/topic cat/data/Places to Module:category tree/poscatboiler/data/names it will then try to make e.g. Category:English exonyms a child of Category:English places when we instead want Category:Places to remain a topic cat. So I think changing Category:Exonym's parent to something like Category:Terms by etymology subcategories by language will be a necessary part of this operation (but see CodeCat's objection above). Category:Places also currently contains improper nouns such as  and, which should not be descendants of Category:Names. &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 06:32, 27 December 2022 (UTC)


 * The situation of all of our names categories is complicated, compounded by the unclear scope of some, e.g. the exonyms category seems to only contain place exonyms, not other exonyms like German or Xerxes. And suppose someone attests a foreign exonym of an English-speaking place [e.g. Japanese-derived "Rondon" for "London"] in English, the way e.g. Deutsch or are attested in English: would that go in the "English exonyms"/"en:Exonyms" category? It's been suggested that we need to revamp the system more widely, also doing something about e.g. transliterations of foreign names (Pyotr, Putin, Kaifeng, etc); even the question of whether and how Placenames should be a subset of Names has come up before, though I'm having trouble finding the discussion (I think there's more than just the discussion in the section immediately below this one, and Category talk:en:Place names and Category talk:en:Names and WT:Info desk/2013/July, but I can't find it offhand). On a balance, names are a lot more like a "POS" category than a "topic" category. I agree they aren't per se terms by etymology, since as noted above, they only sometimes originate as exonyms, sometimes they originate as endonyms and then the speakers of the language get forcibly relocated, or the language evolves into two. (Is Icelandic Rín an exonym for the Rhine? Icelanders do not live near the Rhine, but the name goes back to when their ancestors did...) - -sche (discuss) 16:36, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Recategorize into Category:Names by language
Pinging some editors from the discussion above: @User:Daniel Carrero, @User:Rua, @User:Purplebackpack89, @User:-sche

As I explained above, it seems infeasible to rename cat:Exonyms (and its subcategories) without also changing what its parent category is. So I propose we remove cat:Exonyms from cat:Places, add it to cat:Names by language, rename it to cat:Exonyms by language, and rename its subcategories to e.g. cat:English exonyms. Exonyms are not places; they are names. I realize this would extend the breadth of cat:English names and its siblings. I think this makes sense, but I would also accept cat:Exonyms by language being under cat:Terms by semantic function by language. &mdash; excarnateSojourner (talk &middot; contrib) 03:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Both of these changes happened last month, so I'm closing the thread. —Mahāgaja · talk 18:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)