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Formal names

For those who say is "American" is just slang and want to use "United States", it would be parallel to use the formal names of all countries, such as "Republic of Abkhazia", "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", and so on, as given in the list of countries. Maurreen 15:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Formal name abbreviated

How about Radiant!'s bracketed suggestion? i.e. Things of the U.S. (or, my preference, ...of the U.S.A.)?-Splash 15:56, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

"USA" without periods is more common. That would be a reasonable compromise. Maurreen 16:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Ok, no periods it is. By way of dealing with your other examples (and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), I suppose we mean to use the most common name for the country, or its most common abbreviation if that is more common than the most common name for the country (but nicely phrased!). So, I could live with "Things of the U.S.", too if that's the way the consensus flows. As for the UK...hmmm...I don't like the abbreviation, but that's a personal thing so it could be used for consistency (the UKoBGaNI is horrific). However, the IRA (for Afghanistan) would be overruled by the fact that "Afghanistan" is the most common name. -Splash 16:55, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm still in favor of using "of the United States", as it's not the formal name (United States of America), and it's not an abbreviation, but I think I could live with "of the USA" (either with or without periods). It's still not the formal name, so we could still do "Afghanistan", etc. No opinion of what to do with UK. --Kbdank71 17:10, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

For me, "... of Afghanistan", etc., is fine as long as "of the USA" is OK. Maurreen 17:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I would prefer "United States", but that not being the full name, a compromise of USA would be favorable, although naming conventions isn't necessarily for acronyms, it would be hard to argue that USA meant anything else, and is clearly known to mean "United States of America". This said, if we apply this here, I think it would be suitable for use on UK, as questioned below. ∞Who?¿? 20:59, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

• Same here - I would prefer it spelled out, but given its length I'd certainly accept USA (or U.S.A. - I don't care which) as a good compromise. Radiant_>|< 07:53, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

• U.S.A. is rarely used. Use "U.S." as the abbreviation, with periods. Postdlf 09:57, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Unless you go with "X of Foo", in which case use "United States." Postdlf 10:40, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Alright, so is this section drifting toward the compromise we came here to get? I'm happy to run with either "Things of the USA" or "Things of the United States"; the latter seems to be the more widely wanted in here at the moment.

We should be specific over the choice for the USA and the UK given our systemic bias since that will settle many of the discussions in advance. Then, we should draft things something like "...use the most common name of the country, or the usual abbreviation for the country if that is more common..." and then CfD can, occasionally, fight over discuss which is the more common when we come across an obscure or new country. We need to keep ourselves in a job, after all.

UK?

Is "of the UK" OK? I defer to people of the UK, as the style guide says, "Where known, use terminology that subjects use for themselves." Maurreen 17:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

• Being UKian, I can say that yes, "of the UK" is OK. Unlike with the US(A), there is no alternative abbreviation used. There's GB and NI (Northern Ireland) but they are obviously superseded by UK. Also, UK applies unequivocally to all the constituent parts. I don't know the appropriate rules for having periods or not in abbreviations: I seem to remember seeing a discussion of this somewhere; can anyone point me to it?-Splash 19:35, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Same thing as with USA above. Am I correct to assume that "UK" is more common than "U.K."? Radiant_>|< 07:53, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, I would only write UK out of laziness, but I think it probably is more common. I'm not sure what would constitute a good source for that though; most websites would probably use it without periods. I suspect, though am not sure that U.K. is more accurate but I also suspect there is a grammatical/linguistic convention on these things. -Splash 12:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
• Another Brit here. "Of the UK" - certainly not of UK - really is rather colloquial. U.K., if an abbreviation need be used at all, certainly would be the more formal approach. But first a question: when would U.K. be used over United Kingsom anyhows? Anadine 16:02, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

• In this particular context, it would be for consistency with a possible abbreviating of things like USA and USSR from their full names. See the discussions surrounding what do with the US/American cats elsewhere on the page. -Splash 16:27, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what the UK proposal is suggesting. I hope this isn't an unworkable suggestion that we should use absurd and clumsy titles like "Painters of the U.K." or "Actors of the U.K". That isn't common usage. JW 22:49, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

• • I would definately agree. Anadine 10:56, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Of the UK is actually rather complicated, given that certain categories such as British politicians will have to be split into of Great Britain and of the UK depending on the time at which they served, as the UK was created after many British institutions, which British foo would actually cover. Hiding talk 23:44, July 31, 2005 (UTC)