Talk:Lyskamm

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Current naming

swisstopo, the Swiss Federal Office for Topography the coordinating (together with cantons and local authorities) and defining authority about geographical names (according the the GeoInformation Act GeoIG) calls the respective object Liskamm, not Lyskamm anymore. Therefore I will reverse, again, the move. -- ZH8000 (talk) 14:47, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 29 February 2016

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. Number 5 7 12:40, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Lyskamm → Liskamm
Western Lyskamm → Western Liskamm

– see Talk:Lyskamm#Current naming, officially called that way by the defining authority swisstopo. ZH8000 (talk) 16:45, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's Lyskamm in modern English – ZachG (Talk) 19:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wbm1058 (talk • contribs) [reply]
The French (fr:Liskamm) and Germans (de:Liskamm) have it at the requested title, but the Italians (it:Lyskamm) and Dutch (nl:Lyskamm) have it at the current spelling. Is there any official press release or news report we can reference to confirm the date of the name change? wbm1058 (talk) 02:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- On the 1:50'000 maps by swisstopo this happened between the edition of 1933 and 1941! For the scale 1:100'0000, it was adapated in 1965 (from the 1928 edition). Use the journey through time maps on swisstopo. -- ZH8000 (talk) 02:35, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  In other words, sources are mixed, so we need to survey them all and determine what is the most common usage. I don't know which maps might carry more weight than others. We should also look at books, not just maps.
  
  Looking at Google Ngrams, "y" dominates historical usage, and in recent years it's mixed between "y" and "i". I find a lot of recent books still spell it with a "y". – wbm1058 (talk) 03:35, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I know about the WP:RECOGNIZABLE criteria (which I personally do not subscribe to every extend, because it contradicts the ultimate goal of an encyclopedia: to provide correct knowledge, IMHO), of course, but swisstopo and its related agencies (swisstopo is the Swiss Federal Office of Topography by the Swiss Gorvernment, their maps are based on geographical information by geo.admin.ch; their work is based on the GoeIG, the GeoInformation Act and several acts, such as the GeoIV) are the only authority to decide about geographical names in Switzerland (by law: GeoIG/GoeIV). The swisstopo maps must reflect these definitions by Federal law and act. And they do! Please consider this. -- ZH8000 (talk) 12:57, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See:

ZachG, do you have anything more to say about this? wbm1058 (talk) 14:01, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As I already pronounced, I know very well about the WP conventions. And most of the time, they are very reasonable. But, IMHO, I am not so sure about obvious errors. It can't be the rationale to keep up an obvious error just for the sake of some "majority". And since the end of WWII, they changed it from y to i, which is also reflected even in some English sources, as you showed above. -- ZH8000 (talk) 14:24, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm combining the related request to move Western Lyskamm. These should be decided together. wbm1058 (talk) 03:53, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Currently English sources use "Lyskamm" four times more frequently than "Liskamm" (Google books: 34,000 to 8,000). So my sense is we shouldn't be too hasty to follow the Swiss agency's local name change. --Bermicourt (talk) 14:31, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see that this is on the border with Italy. In fact, Google Maps seem to place its coordinates slightly inside Italy. Do you have any links for an official Italian government geographical naming agency? As List of mountains of the Alps above 3000 m lists this as 4th highest in the Alps, I would like to see if we can get broader participation in this discussion. The links I posted are for everyone's benefit. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:43, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Google is indeed a very inprecise and notoriously erronous source (not surprisingly, and by far not official), and often simply wrong. The border follows exactely the "Kamm" (German(!) for crest/ridge!!); it is "defined" by this. Even the Italians call it Kamm, though Lyskamm. Therefore the glacier on the Italian side, the Lysgletscher is still written with "y" even though it has a German name!!! -- ZH8000 (talk) 14:55, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Right, Google gets some of their data from us ;) They show Western Lyskamm as slightly inside Schweiz so I figured it was just some technical imprecision and the border follows the crest. So, are you saying that the Swiss use "i" and the Italians use "y" – in which case our English-language wiki needs to pick one? Doesn't seem like an easy call if official sources disagree, we likely punt to the most common common sources. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:07, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

yes, of course, no problem with that. In Spanish it is written as "Liskamm". It very much depends on the respective language. And English usually/traditionally follows the French spelling/pattern for the naming/translation of German terms (such as Genève/Geneva instead of Genf (reasonably), or Fribourg/Friburg instead of Freiburg, Lucerne/Lucerne instead of Luzern etc.), no surprise about that. Besides, it is just a very recent development (less than 15 years?) to name local object by its local spelling (such as Bern instead of Berne, Basel instead of Basle, Solothurn instead of Soleur, St. Gallen instead of St Gall, etc). BUT both patterns, the traditional as we'll the recent one speak for my proposal. -- ZH8000 (talk) 15:47, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My view is that English wikipedia should always prioritise the use of mountain names employed in reliable, mainstream English sources about mountains, providing the information used did not come from Wikipedia in the first place. The spelling of a mountain's name by another non-English-speaking nation should be of lower priority, even if the topic relates to a feature located in that country. (cf Londres on French wiki, not London as the English seem to like calling it). (It is also my view that some Wikipedians would be better off employed simply joining the WP:Alps Project and writing some decent content for a change, rather than spend their time faffing around with pedantic re-naming and micro-editing to suit their particular agendas). That said, having made the traverse across what I thought were Lyskamm's twin summits some years ago, I now find myself surprised at veering towards reluctant Support for the renaming proposal to Liskamm. This is based mostly on reliable modern and printed English mountaineering literature. Here are my findings. I can supply the full references if needed, but if you don't know any of them, I dare suggest your views are not quite so valid on this question.

Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps (1860): Lyskamm

Baedeker's Switzerland (1895): Lyskamm

Vaucher's Walliser Alpen (1983): Liskamm

McLewin's In Monte Viso's Horizon (1991): Liskamm

Moran's Alps 4000 (1994): Liskamm

The Alpine Club's Valais Alps East (1999): Liskamm (and Silberblast for those who hadn't noticed!)

Goedeke's The Alpine 4000m Peaks (1991): Lyskamm

Dumler and Burkhardt's The High Mountains of the Alps (1994): Liskamm

Zermatt Tourism website (2016): Liskamm (and Silberbast)

Summitpost website: Lyskamm

British Mountaineering Council: Liskamm and BMC: Lyskamm

Merrick's Companion to the Alps (1974): Lyskamm

Collomb in Pennine Alps Central (the Alpine Club) (1975): Liskamm

Moran's The 4000m Peaks of the Alps (2012): Liskamm

Gressoney 1:50,000 Map Sheet 294 (Carta nazionale della Svizzera) (based on Italian mapping 1979): Liskamm

Mischabel 1:50,000 Map Sheet 284 (Landeskarte der Schweiz) (1977): Liskamm

In summary: Liskamm predominates in my book (literally), and what the Swiss 'officially' choose to call it really is not relevant, and ZH8000 should recognise that that his/her approach is potentially unhelpful, disruptive and time-wasting, though in this instance they do agree. However I would much prefer to see it stay as it is if, instead, we could see some real editing work done on some of our main alpine mountains and related articles which, in many instances, are still quite appallingly incomplete. Never mind how we spell them! Parkywiki (talk) 01:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose for now. NGRAM shows that Lyskamm was vastly ahead in book refs for many years, until around 1970,[1]. Since 1970 they've been more or less neck and neck,[2] with one or other leading at different times. From 2003 to 2008 there was a noticeable uptick for Lyskamm again. In short, I don't see strong evidence that Liskamm is the preferred option, so best to leave it as it is unless this changes significantly. — Amakuru (talk) 10:23, 8 March 2016 (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.