Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Origins of the names of cities in the United States

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 delete. Cirt (talk) 00:25, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Origins of the names of cities in the United States[edit]

If this article is any indication, there aren't very many cities in the United States. Just another hodgepodge list, randomly stitched together. Ecoleetage (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Too broad in scope; I wouldn't object to it by state, but this is too much. Couldn't we just mention the origins in the city articles? Also, fails WP:V. ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 01:20, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. -- TwentiethApril1986 (want to talk?) 01:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as noted per above. All US states have a page for county name etymologies (either a separate page or a part of the list of counties), so I think that the state-level idea proposed by Editorofthewiki is a good idea. If such be done, this page should be created, similar to the semi-disambiguation Lists of U.S. county name etymologies. Nyttend (talk) 05:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, for the exact same reasons mentioned above. This could be split up into state-level lists and this article makes the perfect starting point for that. Why delete the information in the first place then? --Reinoutr (talk) 10:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete because it's way too short — if we split up the current article by states right now, you'd see nothing for Phoenix, for example. Nyttend (talk) 05:08, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Way too broad in scope and not enough to tie the information together. This information is best served in the articles of the cities. Themfromspace (talk) 11:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The etymology of place names is certainly an encyclopedic topic, but this is unsourced and poorly organized. Mandsford (talk) 14:12, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - this should be handled on the Articles concerning the actual Cities. How a city got a name would be historical info about that city... ala ==History== section. Why create a second page about every city with info only on how it got its name? pointless IMHO Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 00:48, 18 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't have to be a choice between one format or another. One can have a table that shows the etymology of the names of cities, in addition to burying the information in some of the individual city articles. My only objection to this is that it's unsourced and poorly organized. However, there are occasions where readers are looking for information in one place, rather than searching one article after the next. Mandsford (talk) 14:16, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In my mind that one place would be the Article about the city your interested in. To list all on 1 Article would then be attempting to show trends in naming places ... that falls close to WP:OR territory, wouldn't it? Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 01:06, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see it that way. There are plenty of reference books that document the origins of place names, and its been a subject written about by authors such as Joseph Nathan Kane and Mario Pei, so there's no need for this to be original research (and, by the same token, no reason for this article to be unsourced). The reality is that there is no standardized format for articles about places, so not all articles are going to include a note about how the place got its name, even if one were inclined to look there. And yes, there are times when we want to know the origins of more than one name and a comparative table is a more efficient way of finding that information. If you learn that Chicago is a name of Algonquin origin, for instance, the question comes up about how many other places have Algonquin names; and a good table (this one is beyond fixing, even with sources) can reveal more than the copout that "It's an American Indian word" (as if there was one American Indian language). When done well, reference tables can be an excellent supplement to existing articles. Mandsford (talk) 12:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good food for thought (as usual, seeing whom its from) but, I personally still feel that this Article is not worth saving. I would have no objection against a Article written in the vein you describe (AKA "do not salt"). Is there anyone up to the daunting task of a userfication and rewrite though? Or do we let this one go and hope the next one is better? Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 23:51, 20 October 2008 (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.