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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.‎

The result was no consensus. at the heart of the disagreement here is the current state vs. the potential of these articles & lists. What I would suggest before a return to AfD is whether these can be improved editorially to address some of the issues raised by those arguing against retention Star Mississippi 15:15, 25 April 2026 (UTC)reply

Cornish exonyms

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Cornish exonyms (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This is a bundled nomination of the following nine articles:

There is a category of seventy articles, Category:Lists of exonyms, which each list the names of 50–200 cities in a given language. Some have accompanying explanatory text while others are standalone lists. Some are curated lists (e.g. only cities where the name is different from the native name) while others seem to include every city the authors could think of.

I think that the standalone lists are unsuited for Wikipedia and should be deleted. They are indiscriminate collections of lexicographical information that better belongs in a dictionary. Many of the lists are too long to read or navigate easily, and all are liable to keep getting longer because there are no criteria for which cities should be included aside from a general geographic area. Some of the very specific ones dodge that particular issue but then have major notability problems. In addition, most of them do not have any inline citations – that last one's not a reason to delete in itself since citations can in theory always be added, but it's an extenuating factor since if no one has added those citations in the last twenty years it's unlikely someone will any time soon.

I think many of these could be good articles if they were primarily written about the rules and techniques a given language uses to adapt foreign names, and if only a few notable or unusual examples were given for each. But such articles would basically need to be written from scratch, since the ones I'm nominating here contain no such information or curation.

Because previous nominations to delete these articles have been criticized for being too large, I'm doing this in batches. If this passes, I'll submit two or three more for the rest. Also unlike the past nominations, I'm not planning to nominate the entire category – only the ones that have no stated inclusion criteria and little to no explanatory text (I'm omitting the few that do clear one of those bars).

Justin Kunimune (talk) 01:11, 11 April 2026 (UTC)reply

Keep – I strongly oppose the deletion of these articles. Saying these lists are just dictionaries misses what toponymy is about. Toponymy is a serious area in encyclopaedias, and these pages are not just lists of words, since they actually show how languages and cultures meet and leave traces in place names over time. If we delete them, we lose historical context that standard articles cannot provide because of limited space. These lists help us see how place names changed and how different cultures adopted or altered them. They help readers understand connections between regions and their stories. For example, anyone studying old texts or historic maps needs to know why both Danzig and Gdańsk appear in different records.
The claim that these lists count as "Original Research" does not hold because these place names are known and can be checked in linguistic books, gazetteers, and trusted sources like the UNGEGN. If a name is missing a source, we can add one or mark it as needed. There is no reason to delete a whole article for this. Since that Wikipedia is always growing and not complete, we do not remove pages just because information is not complete or perfect now. Since space is not an issue, deleting useful content because someone sees it as "too much detail" unhelps the project.
These lists also help readers move between topics. Deleting them would make it harder to understand many terms, which affects research about battles, travel routes, and classic books, along any other possible source of information. It is not correct to say this is only for dictionaries, since that they only give meanings, but encyclopaedias show how things connect. If these lists move to Wiktionary, they would lose their informative links and context. If people truly thought this belonged in Wiktionary or any other dictionary we would see them building it there, not just pushing to remove it here. Redirects only help with finding one specific place, not the larger story of name changes across regions.
We also have to think about less common or non-English languages. Deleting information about languages like Cornish, Finnish, or Croatian removes their space online. Wikipedia aims to be inclusive and global, not to cut out minority cultures. Thus, we should seek to work together and improve them instead of deleting pages just because they lack details or perfect form. Deleting them runs against how Wikipedia usually grows. The better way is to keep these articles and make them stronger.
Cantrusthestory (talk) 09:20, 16 April 2026 (UTC)reply
But these articles don't "show how languages and cultures meet and leave traces in place names over time". They just list pairs of translations. There could be a set of good articles explaining why there are multiple names for some cities and where those names come from, but that would require explanatory text and/or curation, of which these pages have neither.
Also, for the record, I never said that these are "Original Research" or that the problem is that the "information is not complete or perfect now" (quite the contrary, actually – I think there's too much information). Justin Kunimune (talk) 11:27, 16 April 2026 (UTC)reply
Thanks for explaining that. However, I don’t think deleting these lists is the right answer. They aren’t just basic pairs of translations. These lists actually show how languages and cultures have shaped certain places. They act as historical and geographical records, which fit exactly with what you expect to find in an encyclopedia. These aren’t just dictionary entries. Instead, they point out real connections between different cultures and regions.
If the problem is that these pages need better explanations or editing, then the best course of action would be to improve them instead of deleting them. Wikipedia isn’t in a hurry, and we don’t remove articles just because they are incomplete or could use more work. Lists are a valid way to present information here. It makes more sense to keep the data we already have and build better articles from it than to delete everything and start again.
About the idea of having too much information, being thorough actually benefits a reference site like this. We aren’t limited by space like print books. If a list gets too long, we can use tables or break it up by creating more sections, not just delete it. Throwing away lots of well-sourced data because it needs editing wastes the effort already put in. We should keep these pages and work toward making them the kind of detailed and high-quality articles you want to see. Cantrusthestory (talk) 14:50, 16 April 2026 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: More participation is required to reach a clear consensus on this bundle. The discussion is currently split between WP:NOTDICT concerns and arguments for toponymic significance.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, EmilyR34 (talk) 03:56, 18 April 2026 (UTC)reply
  • Delete I find no encyclopaedic value in these indiscriminate collections. D4iNa4 (talk) 16:16, 19 April 2026 (UTC)reply
    If you find no encyclopaedic value for these articles, where do you suggest us to move these lists? Cantrusthestory (talk) 22:40, 19 April 2026 (UTC)reply
  • Keep. I agree that the state of these pages is not good, but there is potential for them to become meaningful. The aim of the lists should not be a complete list without context, but rather a list of commonly used exonyms (=> remove the obsolete ones) with the circumstances of their origin and/or the specifics of the given language (e.g. lead of Czech exonyms – romanization of Chinese names). As for Czech exonyms, sources exist, see these articles (1, 2) in the Naše řeč magazine of the Institute of the Czech Language and the literature cited therein. FromCzech (talk) 12:37, 20 April 2026 (UTC)reply
    With regard to the obsolete exonyms, I would suggest that we should perhaps consider retaining them, as they do contain historical and linguistic content on how any society interacted with each other. If I may make another suggestion, it might be a good idea to create some Wikipedia articles whose title is "[INSERT LANGUAGE NAME HERE] toponymy". These articles could explain the general etymology of any target language's toponymy, both in the present and the past, along with other topics.
    I agree with the rest of your opinion. Cantrusthestory (talk) 17:41, 20 April 2026 (UTC)reply
  • Keep: I strongly disagree that there is "no encyclopedic value" in this lists and that they are "unnecessary". In Croatian Studies and Croatian linguistics, Croatian exonmys are very researched topic (comprehensive lists by geographer Ivan Čanjevac: part 1 and part 2, lexicographic - , methodical - etc.), Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography even published two refference books/lexicons (Hrvatski egzonimi I.: imena država, glavnih gradova i njihovih stanovnika in 2016, and Hrvatski egzonimi II.: Popis suvremenih i povijesnih egzonima in 2018, source). There is a plenty of scientific literature on this topic. Exonyms are also learning subject in education (Croatian, foreign languages, geography, history etc.) and they have societal impact - for ex., there were big public discussion wheter the genitive case of the Katar (Qatar) is 'Katra' or 'Katara' during World Championships in handball and football in this country. This lists are also of a great educational value for learners of this languages, as well as for comparative research, having linguistical, historiographical, geographical and diplomatic implications.--Ivo Lendić (talk) 10:41, 22 April 2026 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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