User talk:January First-of-May/The Great Russian Graticule Name Project

For any automatable tasks, FippeBot can assist in this project. If you provide names for the graticules, I can probably get the bot to move the unnamed graticule page to the right page and replace links accordingly. --Fippe (talk) 06:03, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! It's going to be a while before I start, because I'm currently embarked on a different, if closely related, project (essentially, a 5x5 degree box version of this map). --January First-of-May (talk) 17:59, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Where is the correct place to complain about non-working footnotes? (By which I mean the References tag.) --January First-of-May (talk) 14:05, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

You can ask DanQ, he is in charge. --Fippe (talk) 17:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Had a bunch of naming convention questions that I'm not sure what to do with...

• Should it be "Lake X" or "X Lake"? I currently have names with either.
• Similarly, should it be "Mount X" or "X Mountain"? I currently use the former, but looking at graticule names elsewhere (outside Russia), maybe I should have used the latter.
• Should "Губа" translate to "Guba", "Bay", or something else? (Perhaps "Inlet"?)
  • I currently use "Bay" for both Губа and Бухта (Залив is "Gulf"), but I recently encountered a graticule that had both a Guba and a Bukhta of the same name (fortunately they were both in the same graticule).
• Should I even translate the natural feature terms at all? Maybe I should just use "Gora" (mountain) and "Ozero" (lake) and "Reka" (river) and so on.
  • Compare the existing graticules of Ostrov Kharlov, Russia and Kunashir Island, Russia; I currently use the latter precedent (though I kept the former name, as it was technically a settlement).
• For (most of) the Franz Josef Land graticules, I tried to search for English names of the capes and islands, especially when the Russian names were clearly transliterations (e.g. Cape Mary Harmsworth, not "Cape Meri-Kharmsuort"). Was this a good thing? Should it be extended outside Franz Josef Land?
• Should I focus on settlements (even abandoned and/or very minor ones), or on natural features? My reference maps tend to have both (and they're old enough that it's not always clear when a settlement is abandoned).
  • Specific example that (again) brought it to my mind: 68,59, which is dominated by the Khaypudyrskaya Bay, but also happens to contain the village of Sin'kin (pop 1 as of most recent data I'm aware of, was much larger when the maps were made) near the eastern edge. I want to call it "Khaypudyrskaya Bay, Russia" (or similar). Would that be dishonest?
• Should those remote Arctic graticules even have names? (Silly question. If Cape Colan, Nunavut has a right to exist, then so do those.)
• Kind of a corner case: 71,158, where I had to cheat. My name for it is "Nauynadanu Coast, Russia", where Nauynadanu is a feature (river, IIRC) in a different graticule (actually several) but close enough for this one to be (part of) its closest coast. Is that an acceptable option, or would you suggest something else?

There are probably many other similar questions. Just wondering what your opinions are...
(Incidentally, is there a geohashing-themed Discord server? Sounds like that could be a good place for all of those discussions.) --January First-of-May (talk) 21:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I think you should go with the Russian name of the features, but use the Latin transliteration. Graticules are usually named after the local name, for example Roma, Italy (not Rome) or München, Germany (not Munich). Moscow, Russia should be renamed to Moskva in my opinion, but I will leave that decision to Russian Geohashers. Губа should be Guba, Бухта should be Bukhta, Big Diomede, Russia should be Ostrov Ratmanova, Russia.

The order ("Lake X" or "X Lake") should depend on the Russian term, when in doubt use the version that Russian Wikipedia uses.

I agree that the foreign name should be used when the Russian term was transliterated from a foreign language, like Cape Mary Harmsworth.

Generally I think that populated places should have a higher priority than natural features, but you can make exceptions if you want to. Khaypudyrskaya Guba is a good example of a graticule where I think naming it after the enormous bay instead of the one hermit living in Sin'kin is acceptable.

Every graticule should have a name, if possible. Unnamed graticules only exist because nobody named them yet.

71,158 is difficult, I think that your solution is acceptable.

There is no discord server that I know about. There is an IRC channel but I have never been able to hold a conversation there because nobody ever seems to be online. If you want to make a discord server, you can make one, but I don't know how many people will use it. I think the Wiki is a good place to discuss these questions. --Fippe (talk) 21:43, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! So "Bukhta Natalii" instead of "Nataliya Bay" or "Natalii Bay" (that last version always sounded weird to me, though names like this are official in some cases, such as Voronina Island).

I'll ask the other guy about Moskva; in retrospect it does make sense. I don't think there are many other active geohashers from here at the moment, though others show up sporadically.

It's usually Lake X in Russian, I believe, though there are exceptions. It should be clear enough in most cases.

The problem is distinguishing "named in foreign language" from "named after foreign name" (e.g. Zaliv Nordenshel'da). Also, would it be "Cape Mary Harmsworth" or "Mys Mary Harmsworth"? And what should I do with Lütke Island?

With populated places, the big question is what to do with formerly populated places (i.e. abandoned villages), which Siberia is littered with, and which are typically labelled on the maps (if often only because the maps are so old that the villages were still around). Would they take precedence over (usually not very big) natural features?

For 71,158 - thanks! (I would probably keep "Coast", as well.) I did the same thing for 71,154, for similar reasons; all the other no-named-feature graticules I encountered so far got an [island name][compass direction] label (e.g. Mezhdusharskiy Island SW).

We'd definitely need to do a round of deduplication at some point. Some of those names are extremely generic, and there's often a less generic (but also less major) option in the same graticule.

And yeah, kind of unfortunate that there's no Discord server... it's just that I've recently moved the work-in-progress parts of the project to a Google Spreadsheets table, but I'm not yet comfortable linking it openly where any random passerby (or bot) could find it. I guess I'll just share the completed(-ish) sections for now. --January First-of-May (talk) 22:36, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

In my opinion: Mys Mary Harmsworth, Ostrov Lütke.

I lack the local knowledge about how "famous" a formerly inhabited place is compared to natural features, maybe this is something you know better than me. If you would describe the location of a geohash which is halfway between a formerly inhabited place and a mountain, would you describe it as "10 km south of <abandoned village>" or "10 km north of <mountain>"? The lines here are probably fuzzy. --Fippe (talk) 22:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that in a lot of those graticules I'd say something like "5 km west of <lake>", where <lake> isn't actually the slightly bigger lake that the graticule could have been named for. But realistically the abandoned village would at least be on (some approximation of) a road, which probably makes it more likely to be a useful feature just because of that.

Any comments on Zaliv Nordenshel'da/Zaliv Nordenskiöld? (It is, in fact, my current choice for 75,57.) --January First-of-May (talk) 23:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it may be better to name the place after the abandoned village then. For 75,57 I would suggest Zaliv Nordenskiölda. That way you keep the original spelling of Nordenskiöld's name in the Latin Alphabet but also put it into the genitive. Polish, a Latin Slavic language, calls the place Zatoka Nordenskiölda. Zaliv Nordenskiöld is just wrong without the genetive -a, and Zaliv Nordenshel'da is a bad double transliteration, the equivalent of Mys Meri Kharmsuort or Edvard Dzhozef Snouden. --Fippe (talk) 08:49, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I just realized that the previous graticule namers were a lot less fussy about the areas that they named a graticule for being actually located within the graticule. (Not only is Akkeshi not in Akkeshi, Japan, that graticule's land area is not even in Akkeshi at all, but in fact entirely part of Hamanaka. If I was naming this graticule, it would've been "Namida Cape, Japan".)

So yeah, I probably shouldn't be too fussy as well (and my previously common choice of a small river that happens to fall entirely within the graticule probably isn't always a very good idea). --January First-of-May (talk) 10:33, 9 August 2020 (UTC)