Talk:Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic

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Requested move 24 September 2015

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. The quest for what AjaxSmack calls the 'more accurate transcription' may never terminate, due to the indeterminacy of transliteration. We still have WP:COMMONNAME though. If at some point 'Kazak' takes a clear lead over 'Kazakh' in the best English-language sources then we may have to revisit. It seems we aren't there yet, and there is not enough evidence to give up the 'kh'. Two editors provided ngram searches. A naive search of Google books for 'kazakh' vs kazak' still gives 2:1 for the 'kh'. The root of the issue seems to be the different varieties of 'K' in the Kazakh language. The talk thread on the Russian Wikipedia is instructive. The spirit of COMMONNAME suggests we should be deciding this at the word level and not the level of phonetics. By accepting whichever word the authors of English-language works have chosen to use, we are accepting their decision on the phonetics. This appears to be what User:Ezhiki is saying in his comment. EdJohnston (talk) 21:02, 10 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic → Kazak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic – Per WP:RUS, which seems applicable since the entities non-English source names are only given in Russian and the entity was part of the RSFSR. 91.9.124.53 (talk) 14:47, 24 September 2015 (UTC) Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 00:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The move request has been made to end random renaming. 1) The article Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic has gone through ten moves already [1], but there was no discussion on the talk page. 2) There is Category:Establishments in the Kazak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic by year and user:BDD proposed to rename some of the child categories to "... Kazakh ..." [2]. 3) It is suggested to create Category:Kazak Autonomous Socialist Soviet or Category:Kazakh Autonomous Socialist Soviet, depending on the outcome of the move request. 91.9.124.53 (talk) 14:53, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for trying to sort this out. The lede and the categories are already using the "Kazak" spelling; I saw "Kazakh" in this title and later categories and thought "Kazak" was an error. I don't have strong opinions here. Either way, we should be consistent and follow usage in English-language sources. Since "Kazakh" is the usual English spelling, I think we should prefer that unless sources specifically refer to this state as "Kazak". --BDD (talk) 14:56, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed for consistency for all articles and categories related to the KazASSR, but not beyond. And here are 268 KB in ruWP [3]. 91.9.124.53 (talk) 15:07, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Pinging User:Ezhiki, creator of WP:RUS and User:Tobias Conradi, creator of the article under the title Kazakh ASSR. 91.9.124.53 (talk) 15:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WP:RUS isn't really applicable here. Its primary purpose is to help romanize toponyms which have little to no coverage in academic literature in English. For an entity of this scope, however, it makes more sense to research which variant is more commonly used in English, and at the first glance, Kazakh ASSR seems to be a lot more common. Both variants should be given in the text, of course. Note I'm not !voting, since I haven't done proper research and may be wrong in my interpretation of the ngram results.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 24, 2015; 15:25 (UTC)
Link to ngram for Kazak Autonomous,Kazakh Autonomous 91.9.124.53 (talk) 16:15, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are many false positives in this ngram for entities such as the Ili Kazak(h) Autonomous Prefecture of China. — AjaxSmack 01:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I encourage editors to peruse the ngram results and not just look at the numbers. Numerous false and semi-false positives (e.g., "Under Soviet rule the Kyrgyz (Qirghiz, i.e., Kazakh) ASSR was created") abound. After a brief look, I find that quality sources use both the k and the kh versions. In this case, go with the one that is a more accurate transcription. — AjaxSmack 01:28, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The current article title isn't a transliteration or transcription; it's a translation and "Kazakh" is more common than "Kazak" in English-language sources. DrKiernan (talk) 18:56, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per DrKiernan, whom I thank for articulating that. While I still want to reiterate the need for consistency within this article and with its corresponding categories, I don't see a compelling reason to prefer to the "Kazak" spelling, which is less common in English. Assuming the Cyrillic names in the ledes of this article and Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic are correct, we're looking for an English rendition of "Қазақ" in both cases. --BDD (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- An English rendition of Қазақ is Qazaq but that's not on the table here. — AjaxSmack 02:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.