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Move To Sondrestrom

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By far the most common name. OttomanJackson (talk) 14:26, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Google hits:
"kangerlussuaq greenland -wikipedia": 565,000
"sondrestrom greenland -wikipedia": 70,200
    ←   ZScarpia   15:01, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Ngrams disagrees

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Sondrestrom%2C+Kangerlussuaq&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3

OttomanJackson (talk) 14:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Indeed, Google Ngrams jives with my own anecdotal experiences along west Greenland as well, even the Danes on the ship I was on used the term, and Sondrestrom seemed to be limited to specific reference to the military base. I'm a civilian, military usage might be different. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:18, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Try it using "English" instead of "American English" and remember that there are probably other Sondrestroms in the world: Google Ngrams search using "English"     ←   ZScarpia   18:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
WP: Use English OttomanJackson (talk) 16:40, 21 July 2012 (UTC) EDIT: There aren't any other Sondrestroms in the world.[reply]
? Did you try following the link I left on the 19th?     ←   ZScarpia   18:49, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless of what is most current in English, an English exonym, even a barely used one, is more English than a endonym, even if it is more common. However, I do not make Wikipedia's policies, and I am willing to accept the current policy, though I may begin an effort to change it. However, Sondrestrom is more important to America than any other Anglophone nation, due to it's history. Therefore, shouldn't the fact the Sondrestrom is used exclusively in American English (Kangerlussuaq is nonexistent, according to ngrams) count for something???
Thanks,
OttomanJackson (talk) 02:18, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, appears I misread the ngrams data, which may have made my point unclear. Let me try again: I believe and continue to argue that modern usage in English-language sources strongly weighs toward, not against, Kangerlussuaq. Try site:nytimes.com Sondrestrom and site:nytimes.com Kangerlussuaq, and for Brit Eng try going to "The Times" and checking their search results (the Kangerlussuaq results are a 6:1 superset of the Sondrestrom results). This doesn't appear to me to be a UK vs. US ENGVAR issue. Instead, it appears to be an issue of currency, perhaps related to the increasing political independence of Greenland. --j⚛e deckertalk 03:09, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a conflict between American versus British English usage. Note that there is a separate "British English" corpus in Google Ngrams which returns zero results for either name, a result which is even more bizarre than the zero results returned for the name Kangerlussuaq in the "American English" corpus. As far as which group of English speakers have the closest connection to the place, I think that you'd find that Greenlandic and Danish speakers of English would object to US claims of priority. As a matter of interest, how do American guidebooks (such as the US edition of the Lonely Planet one) refer to the place?     ←   ZScarpia   11:13, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Neither Greenland nor Denmark is an Anglophone nation. I was referring specifically to native speakers. Virtually all English speakers there learned it in school. If I, for example, learned German, and I decided to rename Cologne, to Koeln (approximately pronounced Curln) would that be okay just because I am American? However, isn't ngrams a better source than Newspapers, which are inherently biased? We should use English exonyms unless almost no one will understand them. (ex. I do not think we should move Kyoto to Meaco, or refer to it as such except in a historical context. (like Tokyo and Edo)). Also, why would the increasing independence of Greenland involve removing English place names, and not just Danish ones. I am not suggesting we call it Soendre Stroemfjord, the Danish name.
Also, here is a link to a modern agency that calls it Sondrestrom.
http://isr.sri.com/
Here Is a link to a recent news story.
http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=Sondrestrom&oq=Sondrestrom&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i400.34559.37604.0.38213.11.7.0.4.0.0.410.410.4-1.1.0...0.0...1ac.yQMgiAi0I70
OttomanJackson (talk) 13:44, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note that the Sondrestrom Research Facility, whose homepage your first link points to, refers to Kangerlussuaq on that homepage. Also, on its About page, the SRF says: "For historical reasons, this research station is known around the world as the Sondrestrom Upper Atmospheric Research Facility in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland."
On the English Wikipedia, we refer to Cologne because that is the long-term and almost universal way that the city is referred to in the English-speaking world. If native German speakers were speaking or writing in English, they would probably use the English name too. Similarly, if native English speakers were speaking or writing Spanish, they would refer to Londres, not London, or native Italian speakers speaking or writing English, they would refer to Rome, not Roma. Kangerlussuaq, though, has no univeral long-term English name. The native Greenlandic and Danish speakers I know refer to it as Kangerlussuaq when speaking English and the English-language literature for companies such as Air Greenland does likewise. Also, doing a normal Google English-language search returns more results for Kangerlussuaq than Sondestrom. A Google Ngrams search also returns more results for the former if you use the "English" corpus. Bizarrely, using the "American English" corpus, no results are returned for the term Kangerlussuaq, while, for the "British English" corpus, no results are returned for either term. Therefore, I doubt that those corpuses are a reliable indicator of how popular each of the terms are in the American English and British English worlds respectively.
    ←   ZScarpia   14:20, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Re. ZScarpia's question concerning Lonely Planet, Google Books indicate that they use Kangerlussuaq, see for instance this chapter header from Scandinavian Europe. They give the Danish name (Søndre Strømfjord) in parenthesis, but don't mention the garbled "English" version except to denote the former United States Air Force base. Favonian (talk) 14:50, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Looking at other guidebook series to try to gain some indication of American usage, I can find reference in the Frommer's and Fodor's guides to Kangerlussuaq, but not Sondrestrom. The CIA Factbook page for Greenland shows a map which labels the town with its Greenlandic and Danish names, but doesn't mention the name Sondrestrom.     ←   ZScarpia   21:47, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My copy of Lonely Planet's "Greenland and the Arctic" (2nd ed, 2005) uses Kangerlussuaq in the map and headings and text, sometimes with (Søndre Strømfjord) in parens on headers, but without the parenthetical in general text. Just as Favonian indicates. (pages 5 (map), 165ff. (text), and index). No index xref for Sondrestrom, nor could I find any other usage, but I'm working from a paper copy. --j⚛e deckertalk 22:39, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Favonian How is Sondrestrom garbled. It is simply an Anglicization of Soendre Stroemfjord, just like Copenhagen is an Anglicization of Koebenhavn (ker-bin-HOWN) and like Warsaw is an Anglicization of Warszawa (var-SHOV-ah)
@ZScarpia Another possibility is that Kangerlussuaq is not used in American English.
@Joe Decker That's odd. Regardless of that, this place was clearly called Sondrestrom From Jan 10, 1952 to Sept 30, 1992, which is over 40 years. Also, Lonely Planet is travel oriented, so it is more likely to include native names instead of English names, because signs are more likely to be in the native language of the country, and not in English.

Thanks,

OttomanJackson (talk) 13:37, 25 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of note User:OttomanJackson appears to have been blocked a few months after this for arguing about English localisations. And Michael Jackson, for some reason. Wikipedia continued fine without him. For the record I've just come back from Kangerlussuaq, and everybody I spoke to - a mixture of Danish and local people working there, a tour guide, fellow guests, all of the signage etc - called the place Kangerlussuaq. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 21:52, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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