Talk:イリノイ州

This is a blanket request for discussion over how to treat all entries for place names with 市 (city), 州 (state), etc. intact. A name like イリノイ州 literally means "Illinois State" and is usually used when plain "Illinois" would be used in English, yet they are not inseparable: "Illinois University" is イリノイ大学, not *イリノイ州大学. Searching for イリノイ州に行く ("go to Illinois State") yields ten times as many results as イリノイに行く ("go to Illinois.") I suppose a case could be made for including イリノイ州, but I think it's a weak case, and such a page raises a question: should there also be an entry for plain イリノイ? Having both types of entry makes thousands of duplicate entries and that's not fun.

Most of the translations do not have 市, 州, etc. For example, I just created ブカシ from a translation at Bekasi. The title of the corresponding Japanese Wikipedia page (see w:ブカシ) is ブカシ, but the title of its infobox is ブカシ市. I propose moving all place names like イリノイ州 to forms like イリノイ, or at least encouraging new pages to be of the latter form. --Haplology (talk) 06:07, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. I was going to create カムチャッカ but wasn't sure if our rules demand カムチャッカ半島 instead. Often unsure with translations, so added both テムズ川 and テムズ as translations for Thames. 利根川 (Tonegawa river) would sound incomplete without "川", though. The English name includes "gawa", so "Tonegawa river" is "Tone river river" :) --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 12:40, 8 April 2013 (UTC)


 * My favorite example from the Department of Redundant Geographical Place Names Redundancy Department was a sign in Tokyo labeling a waterway in romaji as the Shin-sen-gawa River -- where "Shin-sen" was spelled in kanji as 新川.
 * So it's the New River River River.
 * Brilliant.
 * -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 01:07, 9 April 2013 (UTC)


 * It may be still difficult. Most Japanese Category:ja:Islands end in 島 or 諸島. Should they become redirects? What about Category:ja:Seas. 黄海 or 北海 without 海 are not sea names, like Yellow Sea or Black Sea without the word "sea". --Anatoli (обсудить/вклад) 01:22, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, now I'm leaning toward keeping this page because it's very helpful to learners, although why Illinois should have that privilege is another question. I still want to suggest keeping place names, especially foreign place names, as short as possible.  Maybe an entry for a city like　ブカシ should have a usage note about 市.  Perhaps the fact that something is a geographical feature makes the issue more complicated?  --Haplology (talk) 04:17, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think Japanese text (and Chinese too?) almost always indicates what kind of thing a place name is, by suffixing with or  or  or  etc. etc.  For that matter, folks often append these suffixes in speech as well.  As such, it might behoove us to have entries for both  and .  -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 18:50, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok. I can accept having both pages.  If that is the case, there ought to be some difference between them.  Something to the effect of イリノイ being an abstract place name, and イリノイ州 referring to a specific place in the world?  On a page like イリノイ, the gloss would just be Illinois without any mention of a state, and there would be a ====Compounds==== section that included a link to イリノイ州?  I don't plan on adding a compound section to every page like that at least initially, but ideally, in its most complete form, it would look like that? --Haplology (talk) 05:25, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * We should keep both イリノイ and イリノイ州. In this particular case, the latter is much more common. In Japan, Illinois is less known than, say, Kansas and you usually need 州 to indicate it is a state. — T AKASUGI Shinji (talk) 15:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll bite: why is Kansas so much better known than Illinois in Japan? —Angr 18:42, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Kept and closed. --Haplology (talk) 13:59, 9 August 2013 (UTC)