Talk:Crimean Bridge

Extent of damage from special debridging operation

As can be seen from the videos and photos, one road span is down, as in with two sections in or tilting into the water, and the rail link is in dire need of repair. This means it is definitely "partly destroyed", and can be described as such in the lede. https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1578638416194912256?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet Johncdraper (talk) 07:06, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Nevertheless, the bulk of the structure still stands, so it can not be termed in the past tense. And as this is a Russian bridge, we should find official Russian sources for the media evidence. We really don't need to reference Twitter accounts here when you can just take it from the horse's mouth. 36.65.242.246 (talk) 07:17, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree re the tense and always have done. And, I have now added a BBC cite for the level of destruction. Johncdraper (talk) 08:12, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Why on earth should we preferentially rely upon Russian sources in the middle of a war when anything they say will be constrained by propaganda considerations? Are there any satellite or independently acquired photos of the damage? Sandpiper (talk) 21:15, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Renaming to Crimea Pier

As of 17 July 2023 the bridge has been converted into a pier. I'm requesting that the page name be changed to Crimea Pier to better reflect this. 2001:8003:E913:A300:16D:928D:8C11:2C93 (talk) 14:39, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 2 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – MaterialWorks 16:15, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

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Crimean Bridge → Crimean bridgeCrimean bridge – Capitalization according to single most WP:COMMONly used name.  —Michael Z. 13:58, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Updated Ngram link, with more names.  —Michael Z. 21:51, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

About 85% of sources consistently do not capitalize this name. This is the main evidence that it is not considered a proper name by writers and editors of RS’s. Commenters stating that it is a proper name ought to provide evidence to support the assertion.  —Michael Z. 00:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to ask, but how did you get your "proper name"? Just so we are on the same page with this? Smeagol 17 (talk) 07:53, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Let’s leave my mom out of this.  —Michael Z. 15:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I mean to suggest that even if most people call you "Hey, you" or "Sir", it would be unwise to name your Wikipedia article thus. Smeagol 17 (talk) 18:48, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, so how bearing does that have on this?. How people address someone in direct conversation is not how they unambiguously identify them, and has no relation to titles that satisfy the WP:CRITERIA.

But uncapitalized Crimean bridge, Kerch bridge, and Kerch Strait bridge are unambiguous descriptive phrases, just like “male who lives at 1 Elm Street,” and not proper names. And as seen below, it now looks like capitalization in sources is not easy to determine.  —Michael Z. 21:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

In context of their articles it may be unambiguous, but a mention in an article and a name of one are different things (and our style is different from RS articles, too). Smeagol 17 (talk) 22:13, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Quick survey of current news: I searched Google News for “Crimean bridge” in the last day, and dropped some results that referred to the Chonhar bridge.

• Crimean Bridge 6
• Crimean bridge 5

The results are 6 to 5, practically 50-50 considering such a small sample. There is no indication that the name is consistently treated as a proper name. One of those stories says “the Kerch Bridge, frequently called the Crimean Bridge,” indicating that it is not the sole name and not necessarily the primary one. This is reinforced by the use of other names:

• Kerch *ridge 13
• Crimea *bridge 9

Interestingly, the same wire story had the phrase “Crimean *ridge and ferry transport” capitalized two different ways in the results above.

Also relevant: now that Crimean bridges have been hit at the Chonhar Strait (2), at Syvash, Kherson Oblast, at the Henichesk Strait, and possibly elsewhere, there are references to other Crimean bridge(s) and Crimea bridge(s). So there is an argument for natural disambiguation by moving to Kerch Bridge/Kerch bridge or Kerch Straight Bridge/Kerch Straight bridge.  —Michael Z. 16:50, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Noting: Of the 5 sources cited above with lower case "Crimean bridge", CNN is the only one I'd take seriously as I've never heard of the others and they look dodgy. CAVincent (talk) 00:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Well, this is a fair comparison of the corpus, not a selection of reliable sources. It’s what we do when we count Google Books, Scholar, or News results. Are they actually dodgy, or just obscure?  —Michael Z. 01:13, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

What I mean is that I would trust a major news organization like CNN to have a style guide and have put thought into a consistent presentation, i.e. I might not use "Crimean bridge" as they seem to consistently do, but I'll respect that they've smart people who thought about it. I generally wouldn't trust that internet news organizations which I've never heard of are doing the same. I'm not making any major point. CAVincent (talk) 01:38, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I get that, but you can’t say there’s something wrong with a news organization’s editorial practices just because you haven’t heard of it, and more importantly, that has little or nothing to do with the criteria in WP:COMMONNAME: “the name that is most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable English-language sources).” It’s about frequency, not authority.  —Michael Z. 03:04, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Common sense says that this is a WP:PROPERNAME and should be capitalized. Most likely the lower case usage is for bridges in general. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 17:09, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

  Common sense also says that Crimean bridge, Crimea bridge, Kerch bridge, and Kerch Straight bridge are descriptive names. Where and when did Common Sense state that only one of those is the proper name? (And compare Kerch railway bridge.) —Michael Z. 17:25, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

  I'm pretty sure the answer to an article having multiple possible names is not to change it so it's as vague as possible. One name should be used and the others explained in the lede per WP:OTHERNAMES. This seems like a reasonable name for the article and it follows policy in putting the other common names in the lede. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

  I don’t understand. How is capitalizing it following most sources making it any more or less vague, much less “as vague as possible”?  —Michael Z. 21:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

  As said below, NGrams is not "most sources". It only tracks mentions in books which may or may not be related to the actual bridge. Don't mischaracterize it as being the sum total of what reliable sources call it. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Oppose This would make it sound like a generic bridge on Crimea or even some construction style but it's the proper name of a specific bridge. Killuminator (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn’t Krymsky Bridge be the proper name? Crimean bridge is a literal translation of What it’s called in Russian, whether that’s a proper name or not.  —Michael Z. 21:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

No, the place is called Crimea in English. Killuminator (talk) 22:43, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

If Crimea is the proper name of a place, then Crimean bridge is a descriptive name of a bridge to it, isn’t it? That’s probably why the vast majority of sources don’t capitalize it as a proper name.  —Michael Z. 23:56, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Park your concern trolling elsewhere. None of these detours you're making in the replies will affect the outcome. Killuminator (talk) 00:38, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Walt Yoder (talk) 23:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Based on looking at Google Book results, I think the ngram results give a false result due to War and Peace. For actual recent books covering the current bridge, it appears to be overwhelmingly "Crimean Bridge". The lower case "bridge" seems to be nearly entirely from dozens of editions/rebundlings/etc of War and Peace that are marked in Google Book as after 2014 since it contains passages like: "Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga road." and "Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a merchant's house near the Crimean bridge." (Apologies if there's a better way to directly see what sources ngrams is using.) But, of course, those passages don't have any bearing on the current bridge's article title. (Google News results also seem to be almost entirely "Bridge".) Skynxnex (talk) 14:11, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Articles about specific bridges usually capitalise the 'B', see e.g. Erskine Bridge, Tower Bridge. PatGallacher (talk) 13:22, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Clearly a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:33, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for reasons already cited, and this looks like a pretty firm consensus already. I wanted to note that without doing any searches, my recollection is that in Anglo-American RSs, I almost always see this as Kerch Strait Bridge (or maybe Kerch Bridge). It might be worth considering changing this article to one of those. I'll be explicit that I'm not proposing such a change and don't intend to do so, just that I think there may be valid arguments for it. CAVincent (talk) 01:11, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"The bridge was fully reopened on 14 October"

The introduction states that "The bridge was fully reopened on 14 October" - this should be amended to 14 October 2023, or better still be deleted. In fact the bridge is not "fully" open not even today since vehicle traffic is severely restricted as of today (no HGV or heavy freight trains, no EV or Hybrids, severe security controls, etc). In fact all heavy goods and military transports are now diverted over new rail lines and roads in the occupied territories of Southern Ukraine. Please note that this assertion has copied as such into the German WP with the wrong date given as 14 October 2015! Can somebody with sufficient editing privilege correct the statement? Txs Stauffen (talk) 18:37, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

If there is no year, the assumption is that it is the last mentioned year, that is, 2023. (And there is no mention of October 14 in German Wikipedia right now.) (Also, "fully reopened", in context, is that the damaged lane was reopened.) Smeagol 17 (talk) 19:05, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

@Smeagol 17 well Gemini told me it was "fully reopened in October 2025" and specifically referred to Wikipedia... German WP has since been amended Stauffen (talk) 16:16, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

That is the problem of Gemini, not Wikipedia. Smeagol 17 (talk) 16:28, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

"AI slop told me you're wrong" ~2026-36125-14 (talk) 23:43, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Transliterations

Something I noticed while looking at the Russian and Ukranian names and their transloterations that seemed odd to me, and I am unsure whether it's an error or not. The last two letters in the Russian and Ukranian words for "Crimean" appear exactly the same for both languages in their Cyrillic, with the same accent over the final letter for both; however, the latinization of the Russian has these letters as "iy" while the Ukranian has them as "yi". My instinct from looking at the Cyrillic is that the last two letters for both should be the same in latin, but I'm not knowledgeable enough on this matter. Bringing this to attention for anyone that is, in case it is an error, if is correct please disregard :). ~2026-39649-33 (talk) 02:00, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

See Kyiv/Kiev Smeagol 17 (talk) 06:09, 20 July 2026 (UTC)