Talk:Lyamin (river)

"Lyamin" or "Liamin"?

From Template talk:Convert § Protected edit request on 31 March 2015:

Dear Sir / Madam I am conservatively confident that spelling for the name of this river in English language is incorrect (as well as in French). Sofore I would like to ask you to change the of way how it is written on Wikipedia from Lyamin to Liamin. If you would like to get more information about grounds of my request please do not hesitate to contact me any time. Best regards costamara — Preceding unsigned comment added by Costamara (talk • contribs) 05:40, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Without any supporting evidence presented, I'm not so sure.

• A Google ngram shows "Lyamin" is far more common than "Liamin" (by about 5:1), although it is unclear whether these results solely relate to the river.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it Lyamin River.
• A Google search for Liamin River returns spelling corrections but no reputable encyclopedia entries (other than the Wikipedia article).

What is the basis of your claim that Liamin is preferred? —sroc 💬 07:04, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Dear sroc.

Well.. OK, I will disclose that my surname IS - Liamin (and Lyamin at the same time), and for reasoning of my request I will give you some more information.

Russian is my native language and I am the one who perfectly knows how miserable can be misspelling.

I was born in Russia and I have been visiting the river Лямин and the small village Лямино in 1989.

At later stage it happened that I have emigrated and for many years now I residing in London UK.

Saying that I should mention that in my foreign documents issued by Russian authorities my surname was spelled Lyamin. Even now my Russian drivers licence written with Y.

Very soon being abroad and having unpleasant experience of hearing my surname mispronounced [lai'e'min as with word lie) on the daily basis I have worked out that if it was written Liamin it could sound much closer to the Russian version ([l'a-min] with very soft L, and A like ya in the English word yard).

In the mean time I was digging my family tree knowingly that my ancestors came to Russia from France.

And now I am very happy to say that I have discovered my very remote French relatives with the same surname and what is more important this discovery brought me to understanding that Liamin is the only way of correct spelling of our surname.

Probably now you can guess that all this reasons pushed me to bring corrections to my personal data on every official level.

And by the way - of course Encyclopedia Britannica is very reputable source but not always preceding well checked information due to the various reasons.

The same we can say about many other institutions in the web and not only.

Also I know few more Russians living now in Europe, America and other places and they have changed from Y to I for the same reason of unpleasant misreading of the surname.

I have particular reasons to try to link origination of the name of the river Лямин and the village Лямино to our ancestors who gave big input into Russian Siberian geographical expeditions and cartography.

But this is a far more complex task which brings many Russian authorities to action.

However I am very keen to get it done and as soon there will be documented proofs I shall create an article in Wikipedia about it.

If you have further more questions I will answer them with my pleasure.

Best regards

P.S. I am new to Wikipedia so please forgive me if I not placing some particular necessary things like brackets, comas etc.

I will try to learn the specifics of this by the time of my use of this fabulous source of the internet.

((costamara)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Costamara (talk • contribs) 13:27, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

@Costamara: Thank you very much for this detailed and personal insight. I'll try to offer some guidance to familiarise you with some aspects of how Wikipedia works.

Regarding whether the title should be Lyamin River or Liamin River, Wikipedia has a policy at Wikipedia:Article titles which sets out the principles for deciding the appropriate title for articles. In particular, the section § Foreign names and anglicization says:

Names not originally in a Latin alphabet, such as Greek, Chinese, or Russian names, must be transliterated. Established systematic transliterations, such as Hanyu Pinyin, are preferred. However, if there is a common English-language form of the name, then use it, even if it is unsystematic (as with Tchaikovsky and Chiang Kai-shek). For a list of transliteration conventions by language, see Wikipedia:Romanization. ... In deciding whether and how to translate a foreign name into English, follow English-language usage. If there is no established English-language treatment for a name, translate it if this can be done without loss of accuracy and with greater understanding for the English-speaking reader.

There is more specific guidance at Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian which provides a key to transliterating Russian characters into English romanisation, which would be as follows:

Russian spelling	Л	Я	М	И	Н	ЛЯМИН
English Wikipedia romanization	L	ya	m	i	n	Lyamin

All of this, together with the links I provided earlier, indicate that the appropriate spelling for the Wikipedia article title should be Lyamin.

Although the information that you provided from your experience is interesting, Wikipedia also has a policy Wikipedia:No original research. This essentially means that editors cannot simply add in their own thoughts, personal research or anecdotal evidence into articles. Content needs to be verifiable by citing reliable published sources. For example, your personal experience with your name and family tree would not be a valid basis for changing the spelling or the Wikipedia article, but if you found reliable sources (e.g., encyclopedias, newspapers, etc.) using the Liamin spelling for the name of the river, then this might be persuasive.

A couple of other things may be useful here:

• I have set up a redirect so that anyone going to the page Liamin River will see the article located at Lyamin River, so readers will find the same content whichever spelling they use;
• It might be a good idea to include the original Russian spelling and/or pronunciation in the article, e.g.:

The Lyamin (/lˈɑːrmɪn/; Russian: Лямин) is a ...

What do you think? Is that pronunciation correct?

Finally, whenever you post on a talk page, you should finish your post by typing four tildes (~~~~) which will automatically sign your post with your username and the date and time of your post.

Thanks again! —sroc 💬 15:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello sroc Sorry about slightly delayed response. I really appreciate your understanding and the explanation about how things work in Wiki according to certain rules. It makes perfect sense to me and I agree with everything . There is just a small correction wich is I think you just occasionally miss typed : |l|'|ɑr|m|ɪ|n - it should be no R letter, - just |l|'|ɑ|m|ɪ|n. However it is a bit strange that this Romanisation rule does not reflect the way English speaking people pronounce. At least the story with my surname is the evidence of that. And by the way I can tell you that once I already had a discussion with Russian passport issuing authority over Y and I and they showed me the same table with rules of writing. Of course I have no intention to fight against the system so for let it be the way it is. Just a question regarding French version - why there is E in the end - Liamine? it does sound again different from the original like in case with Lyamin. Can you explain please. Thank you costamara — Preceding unsigned comment added by Costamara (talk • contribs) 10:01, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

@Costamara: Right, so is that "a" as in "spa"? Judging from the list of symbols at Help:IPA for English, the correct introduction should be:

The Lyamin (/lˈɑːmɪn/; Russian: Лямин) is a ...

I'm afraid I don't know anything about the French spelling. This is the English Wikipedia anyway, so that doesn't really matter here. —sroc 💬 10:56, 3 April 2015 (UTC)