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Archive 1

Name change?

Should the article be moved to the title "Urfa" per WP:COMMONNAME? Khestwol (talk) 09:52, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I am going to start a move request. Khestwol (talk) 16:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 30 September 2017

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: Moved. The consensus is that the WP:COMMONNAME is "Urfa", and the oppose !votes do not give any policy, guideline or evidence-based reason why that is not the case.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:05, 23 October 2017 (UTC)


– Per WP:COMMONNAME, also more WP:CONCISE. Google Books search returns 203,000 results for "Urfa", but only 17,000 for "Şanlıurfa" and 8,820 for "Sanliurfa". Also, Google Books Ngram Viewer (click here) confirms that "Urfa" is more common than "Şanlıurfa" or "Sanliurfa" to refer to the place in English language reliable sources, by a very big margin. Khestwol (talk) 16:52, 30 September 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. DrStrauss talk 13:39, 9 October 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. DrStrauss talk 19:23, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

In ictu oculi, did you check the Google Books and Google Ngram Viewer links? Also, did you check that even this article by itself mostly uses "Urfa"?! Khestwol (talk) 18:45, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
More correct according to whom? Andrewa (talk) 19:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
AusLondonder, actually "Urfa" is the modern name. Most of the book sources use "Urfa", as corroborated by the links from Google Books and Google Ngram Viewer. The historical name is "Edessa". Khestwol (talk) 06:23, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:COMMONNAME. "Urfa" is the most common modern name, the historic name is "Edessa". Also, the Britannica insult was completely uncalled for. Academicoffee71 (talk) 02:56, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as nom. The predominant norm in English language is to refer to the place as "Urfa". Even this article itself uses "Urfa" many times within its text, despite the current title. This is English Wikipedia, so we should use the English spelling, not the Turkish one, just as we are using "Istanbul" and not "İstanbul". Khestwol (talk) 07:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
It's permitted to support as nom and was once common but is now discouraged. Just makes it harder to assess consensus. Andrewa (talk) 19:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: Even this article itself uses "Şanlıurfa" only about 25 times, but uses "Urfa" about 31 times. So even this article's lede and body by itself seems to support the move. See for example the third and fourth line of the lede: "Urfa is situated on a plain about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. Urfa's climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters." Khestwol (talk) 07:22, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. I almost closed this as move as the two oppose !votes by AusLondonder and In ictu oculi are unconvincing in terms of the closing instructions. Maybe relist to allow these two normally reliable RM regulars to better state their case... it's a close one. Andrewa (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
I agree. No convincing argument from the oppose !voters. Khestwol (talk) 13:41, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Moving the article on the city makes sense, but should the province's article be kept as is? It seems more commonly to be called by its official title, and there often are such dichotomies between cities still called by a longstanding traditional name, and other administrative units that are called by the official names. —innotata 08:49, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
When one article is moved, I think the other must also be moved for consistency. The province is named after the city. Khestwol (talk) 09:23, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
Comment: As user:Andrewa pointed out, still no convincing arguments from the oppose !voters. Khestwol (talk) 16:17, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
No argument at all in this case. See wp:closing#not counting heads. Andrewa (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
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.

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Etymology of name

To add to article: the etymology of the name "Urfa." 173.88.241.33 (talk) 00:26, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Edessa be merged into Urfa. They are both articles about the same city, and quite a bit of the content is duplicated between the two articles (compare the "History" sections of both articles). I see no reason why we need two articles on the same topic. Chessrat (talk, contributions) 10:19, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

  • Support the merger. Both these names refer to the same city. Khestwol (talk) 17:27, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Neutral I understand the logic in this merger, but we also have to consider other cities, where long periods under different name have a separate article. For example Acre, Israel was know as Ptolemais in Phoenicia during Hellenic age, while Jerusalem was known as Aelia Capitolina during late Roman Era.GreyShark (dibra) 11:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Keep an independent Edessa article - Edessa was a Greco-Roman city, founded by one of Alexander's generals, Seleucus, in 302 BC. Edessa long stayed in Roman hands (under the Republic, under the unified Empire, and under the Eastern Empire), and eventually became capital of the County of Edessa, part of the the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its final fall to the Seljuks (not even the Ottoman Turks, who only took it four centuries later) only took place in 1146. All in all, Edessa was Edessa for 1406 years. One might think it merits its own article. XavierItzm (talk) 12:28, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Keep an independent Edessa article - the topic is undeniably notable, and both articles are too large to be merged into one without losing much information. We have multiple precedents for two cities from the same location having different articles, see Troy, Constantinopole, Londinium, Lutetia, etc, etc, etc Openlydialectic (talk) 12:14, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Keep for the reasons given above and the practical benefit to the project of having separate articles for historic and modern cities. Seraphim System (talk) 10:24, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 16 February 2023

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No such user (talk) 14:13, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Urfa → Şanlıurfa – restore correct name per Financial Times "Rescuers in battered Şanlıurfa work around the clock to free those trapped in the rubble" and other current news media). In ictu oculi (talk) 18:05, 16 February 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. BilledMammal (talk) 11:05, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

  • Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 01:37, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment: Şanlıurfa is the city's official name, not neccessarily the "correct" one .There does seem to be a definite preference for Şanlıurfa, especially in government and country-wide news sources, but more academic sources seem to use both names, sometimes interchangeably. I'm not Turkish though so I don't know which name people prefer for everyday use. – 3 kids in a trenchcoat (talk) 03:14, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Comment: The historic name for the city has a significant degree of potency to overcome. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Exactly, which is why we don't use history books for current world geo names. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:50, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
@SnowFire: it isn't a single FT article, all articles on the earthquakes have the correct spelling. Iskander323 is correct for the First World War no doubt, but this isn't a history article, if Iskander323 wants to make a history article he/she is free to do so, but till that happens it's a Geography article, which represents the city in 2023. @Necrothesp: have you done a 2023 newspaper search as I did? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:49, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Urfa Şanlıurfa just means 'Glorious Urfa' and it while it an official name change it is also essentially just a prefaced honorific, like if the UK renamed London "Awesomelondon". And not even all Turkish sources are going along with this. Here are some Turkish and Turkish language sources that still use Urfa throughout their reports: [1] [2] [3], or others which use it in headlines, presumably for recognizability and simplicity's sake, while using a mixture in the page content. [4] [5]. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:18, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
@Amakuru: are you including history books in your statement? What about in modern books about the modern city? have you checked? In ictu oculi (talk) 15:25, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
If you search for both terms at the same time, you will also see how many sources use both interchangeably, and how this interchangeability is often made explicit: "Urfa (as Şanlıurfa is called in common speech)" [7]; "Sanliurfa (often referred to as Urfa)" [8]; "Urfa (also called as Sanliurfa )" [9] before the sources precede to largely just use the shorter 'Urfa'. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:36, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
As noted here, it is, yes, the same situation as with Marash and Antep; it's just that, in this instance, Urfa's new name hasn't caught on quite as well as with the other two, and, particularly in English, 'Urfa' still looms large. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
Oppose: I suppose. Aside from the above, there is also the issue of the twin special characters - I'm fairly confident that most English speakers don't know to pronounce as "Ş" in Turkish as "sh" (or "ı" for that matter), making the fully Turkic-Latin 'Şanlıurfa' sub-optimal at best. 'Sanliurfa" is meanwhile just not that correct. "Urfa", aside from being more recognizable, avoids all of the alphabet trouble. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:27, 27 February 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The city vs. the region

@3 kids in a trenchcoat Your edits are valuable, but I think it would be best if we distribute some of the added material to the article about the province instead, because some of the things you added like folk dances and music may not necessarily belong to the traditional culture of "the" city but mostly the rural folk. Ayıntaplı (talk) 06:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Ayıntaplı: Yeah, you have a good point. It's tricky to discern between the culture of the city and the culture of the surrounding region. Especially since a lot of sources, in both English and Turkish, seem to refer to the city and province interchangeably, without being particularly clear which one they're talking about. For this article, I tried to specifically only include things that sources associated with the city itself, but I'll admit that some of them are rather weak.
I went and checked the sections to see if any of them could be kept:
  • Dice game: this is probably relevant to the city since the source says something about the winnings from the game being used to stay in local caves in the city. I don't understand what exactly that means, so I didn't add it to the article, but this is probably more of a city thing than a province thing. I probably need to do more digging for this one.
  • Playground games: this is a bit tricky. The source, Oyun ve Bugu, does refer to specific towns and villages, which would seem to imply that when it says Urfa it means the city. However, in the excerpt I had access to, I didn't see any specific villages and towns in Urfa province to contrast with, so I can't rule out that it's simply being imprecise. I would lean towards this being relevant to the city, but again more research is needed.
  • Mânis and hoyrats: nothing to indicate that these are specific to the city itself. Probably safer to keep on the province page unless something explicitly connecting them with the city turns up.
  • Folk dance ("Dörtlü Oyunu"): no solid evidence that this is specific to Urfa itself. Like the dice game, it appeared in a source about the Urfa halkevi which seems to imply that it was performed at some of the halkevi events, which does connect it to the city, but this is circumstantial. (It does raise an interesting question, though -- if this is rural folk culture that gets performed in or associated with the city, then is it part of the city's culture too?) I tried looking for other sources on this dance but I couldn't find anything to clarify this, only a YouTube video showing the dance being performed. I hope I can find something more informative here.
So overall, I would lean towards including the dice game and playground games in the article on the city itself, and the others in the article on the province. But I'll leave the choice up to you -- I agree with your point and I won't re-add anything to the city's article unless I find anything explicitly saying city.
Thanks always for your help,
3 kids in a trenchcoat (talk) 01:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I believe anything that we're not absolutely sure if it only belongs to the city should be in the article about the province. For the dice games, I think it may also be a general cultural product of the region. I wouldn't also regard caves really as a part of the city. There is another example of people living in caves, in Birecik. Apparently, there was a demographic difference between the town proper and the population living within the caves, which may apply to Urfa, too. It's hard to visualize city folk living in caves in older times. When it comes to the folk dances, they are definitely a part of the rural culture. Ayıntaplı (talk) 03:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
If I may step into this discussion:
I believe anything that we're not absolutely sure if it only belongs to the city should be in the article about the province.
I completely disagree with this; both on a logical and a pragmatic level. Logically, since if something is said to be part of a region's culture, it is likely that to some extent or another, both rural and urban folk participate in it. Or at least that's where the data lead us if there are no other sources. The city is not different from the region; the city is a part of the region. Pragmatically, more people visit city pages no matter what; and removing content that can belong on both pages to the less visited page is not ideal in my opinion. There are not many things, no matter what nationalists claim, in the post-Ottoman world, that sharply divide cultures/regions/cities, especially in a culture that had a long and rather mystical tradition of valuing the liminal and
For the dice games, I think it may also be a general cultural product of the region.
They are, and therefore they are also part of Urfa's culture. If somebody said that knafeh/künefe/whatever is not part of Turkey's culture because "it's a general product of the region", that would be nonsensical. We can keep it and specify that it's not exclusive to the city proper, ie. "Dice games are popular around the region."
Apparently, there was a demographic difference between the town proper and the population living within the caves, which may apply to Urfa, too.
Which is the type of sources I was talking about above. If we can find info that relates traditions to different demographics etc, we can take things out of the city article.
When it comes to the folk dances, they are definitely a part of the rural culture.
There is plenty of evidence of folk dances of urban origin. The largely artificial distinction between urban and rural music in general is due to the (frankly quite uneducated) speculation of Ziya Gökalp, who, as you likely know, had a large impact on modern Turkish ideologies. Uness232 (talk) 23:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I just noticed your reply. Urfa is one of the largest provinces in Turkey, and it is the last province we can generalize. The culture of the Bedouin tribes dwelling in the Harran plain is different from that of the Kurdish tribes of the Suruç plain, Karacadağ, etc., both of which differ from the urban culture of Birecik and Halfeti, which are closer to Aintab. These places traditionally spoke different languages and practiced different cultures. Just then I had added an article to Şanlıurfa Province from a local newspaper, which mentioned that çiğ köfte was a dish unknown to the rural people, while they cooked tırşik, which was also unknown to the urban folk. I have been creating articles for the villages around Gaziantep, and even then, I have encountered so many sources that describe rivalries and cultural differences between tribes of same origins, let alone different ethnic groups. On top of these, I can extend this list with personal examples as someone who is interested in the local culture, starting from food to folk clothes.
However, I believe you are right in that we may include "anything that may be a general cultural product of the region" in a more-visited article (in addition to the article for the province). Ayıntaplı (talk) 06:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Well, to a certain extent I agree with you. But the heart of this is a different discussion, one that needs to wrestle with what a 'different culture' is, which I will leave aside for now.
I am in no way trying to say that there are no differences between Urfa's many ethnic groups and peoples; that would be nonsense. However, we also have to not assume that there are strict, inviolable lines drawn between these groups (unless RS determines otherwise), and most importantly, when sources do not delineate between province/city, it is obvious that the city article is going to be the first place this information is going to be included. Unless we find sources that suggest otherwise, removing information like this is verging on WP:OR. Somewhat famously, we don't lead, we follow. Uness232 (talk) 05:27, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Well, the problem is many sources and even many Turks refer to the whole province as a “city.” So, unless the source explicitly points that out, adding all to the province is much safer and not at all OR. Ayıntaplı (talk) 15:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
I would argue that imposing such a requirement would make a lot of otherwise reliable sources unusable, even if it is not OR (which I would still argue that it is). How many sources in this article state "Urfa, the urban center, has x tradition?" Sources I've come across don't make that distinction, and sometimes Urfa does indeed mean "Urfa, the urban center". Uness232 (talk) 20:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
It wouldn't really make them unusable, because we would be adding some to a closely-related article. I didn't also necessarily mean that we should add "all" to the article of the province. One thing we haven't done yet but should have is to discuss the sources. I had transferred 3 sources to the article of the province in total. The source about the folk dances considers many villages far away from Urfa and different districts of the province. And that is alone enough to consider the source as representative of the province instead of the city (not in terms of a common cultural product). I can't comment on the next source (about children games), because it is a comparative piece and doesn't dive deep into the region, but it may be readded to this article on the basis of what you argued about "general cultural products of the region," which I later agreed. The last source about music also takes the villages into account. Ayıntaplı (talk) 21:46, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Another thing to note is that folk dances and music were collected by people touring the villages during the early 20th century. If these were readily found in the urban setting, they would just come and go limit their studies to the cities. Aintabli (talk) 22:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC) Combined with what the (aforementioned) relevant sources entail, these should indeed belong to the article of the province. Ayıntaplı (talk) 22:07, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
I know this is a dead discussion at this point, but about music; many of these pieces are connected over much larger areas than one city/province; it's not difficult to see similar repertoires halfway across the post-Ottoman lands (say Bosnia and Turkey). Almost no piece of music in these regions are static, urban or rural entities; while there are patterns in styles across large regions (and as I said even that got flouted frequently), urban/rural distinctions on music are more circumstantial than anything. I don't know what you mean by "if these were readily found in the urban setting, they would just come and go", but all of the traditions of Urfa were primarily orally transmitted (at least the repertoire, theory could be written down). Uness232 (talk) 15:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
If some cultural aspect is attributed to a larger region, it should be mentioned in that specific article, not a settlement within that region, unless explicitly mentioned to also be found in that place. Most sources about the culture in specific parts of Turkey refer to the provinces that are named after the cities. Using a source for something that it isn’t addressed to goes against the verifiability policy. Aintabli (talk) 16:54, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
If it is specifically attributed to the larger region, then yes of course. But most sources about the culture in specific parts of Turkey refer to the homonymous provinces as the cities goes the other way around too; sources often do not specify whether they mean city or province, whatever the direction or context, and it's also not great practice to treat the province as default. Either way, it's not that big of an issue I suppose, I apologize for bringing it up again. Uness232 (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
Sources may not specify what they mean, but we should easily be able to ascertain that by taking the whole source's context into account, which is what we have previously done here. I believe treating the province as the default is the best we can do, because it will yield the most accurate result, given provinces are much larger and in Turkey, they are frequently used interchangeably with cities and nearby smaller towns and villages. Nevertheless, I don't think we have to worry about what the "default" is much if we consider the whole context of the sources. I am planning to set up automatic archival of this page, since I don't really want to return to old discussions, I don't remember what I had commented in. Aintabli (talk) 22:56, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
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