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{{korean}}
Because of their length, the previous discussions on this page have been archived.
If further archiving is needed, see [[Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page]].
'''Previous discussions:'''
*[[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)/Archive01|Archive 1 (to September 1 2004)]]:
*[[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)/Archive02|Archive 2 (to July 2005)]]:
== Hyphen use ==
Forgive me that I am so picky and bored as to read through the [http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/korean.pdf M-R] and [http://www.korean.go.kr/eng/etc/rok_cont.html RR] guidelines, but in both schemes, such names as Hallasan and Kŭmgangsan really shouldn't have hyphens in them... Should those be changed to match guidelines too? Please do respond if you have any comment, because I am quite worried to change the above si/shi combinations already with no support/opposition, and I am not an expert! (I think I will leave alone mixing the use of ʻ (aspirated consonants) and ʼ (separating syllables that may be confused), because that may really be going too far...)
I promise when my summer holidays here in Sydney ends in a few days, I won't have time to be so picky... until July :-) -- [[User:KittySaturn|KittySaturn]] 05:43, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)
:I'm pro-hyphen. Hyphens disambiguate syllable boundaries, and provide valuable information to non-speakers of Korean. Of course, in the case of Hallasan and Geumgangsan, there isn't much to disambiguate. But even there, hyphens do clarify the internal structure of the name somewhat. [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 16:57, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:Whatever. Important is to have redirects for the other versions. [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 28 June 2005 23:22 (UTC)
Just a note that the North Korean government use ''Mt. X'' on Naenara, whilst the South Korean tourist board use ''Mt. Xsan'' (no hyphens). Well, I've engaged Google:
Name Xsan X-san Mt X Mt Xsan Mt X-san
Halla 6080 4390 4270 736 76
Jiri 6500 648 1170 395 7
Chiri 522 436 556 151 7
Sorak 4020 828 4530 389 9
Seorak 9060 1040 1820 4900 1
Kumgang 840 750 8920 75 251
Geumgang 752 259 4130 317 102
Baekdu 8110 102 626 281 8
Baektu 29 3 16 5 0
Paektu 691 3420 5700 85 4
Myohyang 459 223 511 17 3
Kuwol 839 590 518 4 0
[[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 2 July 2005 18:05 (UTC)
== Continuing with M-R standardisation. ==
At the risk of arousing disagreements, I have decided to continue standardising the McCune-Reischauer trasliterations on Korean articles. Basically, I am enforcing the following rules:
# ㅅ is "s" in initial position except 쉬, which is transcribed ''shwi'';
# Aspirated consonants due to adjacent consonants are '''not''' transcribed. Example, ''Chikhalsi'', not ''Chik'alshi'';
# Pronunciation takes precedence over M-R spelling rules (i.e. that table of rules). Example: ''Hancha'', not ''Hanja'', even though looking up the table would tell you ''Hanja'';
# However, -북도 designations are an exception to the above, transcribed ''-pukto'' instead of ''-bukto'', even though that is how it is pronounced;
# Hyphen use: use hyphen to separate name from administrative divisions '''only''', not to geographical features such as Kŭmgangsan. (This also applies to Revised Romanisation.) With names ending in 남도 or 북도, the hyphen is put '''before 남/북''', not before 도 (as is the case with Revised Romanisation);
# Where an M-R transliteration specifically refers to old South Korean transcriptions, I have not touched them, for example when mentioning a South Korean city that used to be called ''Chik'alshi'';
# Apostrophe is used in M-R for separating syllables where in RR the hyphen is used. -''ng''+vowel combination means ㅇ+ vowel; ''-n'g''+vowel means ㄴㄱ+vowel.
The above are clearly stated in both McCune and Reischauer's original paper (1939) and the recent Library of Congress guidelines. The Library of Congress guidelines also mention using ’ for separating ambiguous syllables and ‘ for aspirated consonants; however I have not seen this rule in the original M-R paper and I am leaving this alone. -- [[User:KittySaturn|KittySaturn]] 22:07, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
==Republic of Korea vs. slang/inaccurate South Korea==
:Clearly the Wikipedia articles have to start using the accepted name of the Republic of Korea and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea rather than the slang Americanisms "South Korea" and "North Korea" which are in common usage, but are not the real names of either of these countries.
Any almanac, fact book, encyclopaedia, or atlas has no citation whatsoever of the nation of Republic of Korea appearing as South Korea other than as a short form, and while we all know what we are talking about, it makes sense to make the Wikipedia more accurate as soon as we can.
Entries often include USA, US, America, United States, or even the US of A - but technically it is "United States of America". And we should give the same respect to both the Koreas. The Koreans also call their country by other names, which can be used within the next wikipedia if it moves into the Korean language.
Could we start tidying up the entries throughout the Wikipedia to reflect the real country names - otherwise we will start setting a bad precedent, and lead to massive mislabelling of other countries according to slang or unconventional names.
Can we get some sort of agreement to correct this before the Wikipedia gets larger and more inaccurate?
For those of you who intend to argue: look at the entry here:
United States Embassy, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
http://seoul.usembassy.gov/
We do not see the country called "South Korea" on the official website, or on the ambassador's credentials at the UN.
: Are you trying to say we should write the United States of America every time we talk about the US as a matter of respect? I doubt that any American would feel that the name US lacks respect so much as that they would prefer others always call them by the United States of America.
: Additionally, that very official web site you mentioned actually has lots and lots of places where it calls the ROK "South Korea". See for example [http://seoul.usembassy.gov/wwwh4544.html]. (There are over a hundred pages with "South Korea" in it.) I would not call "South Korea" an Americanism. Even in the UK or in Australia, it is "South Korea", in Hong Kong it is 南韓, even on the Korean peninsula there are such names as 남한 (south Han) (in the south) and 남조선 (south Joseon/Chosŏn)) (in the north). When the context is clear, it is called Korea, 韓國, 한국. It is just an accepted short form; it is not "inaccurate". Even the Encarta mentions the ROK name one single time (under the article titled "Korea, South") and proceeds to use "South Korea" in the rest of the article. In any case, the names in Wikipedia in general are mentioned by what people commonly call it, not official names. We aren't about to write "Commonwealth of Australia" every time we talk about Australia or "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" every time we talk about the UK. South Korea is a short name for Republic of Korea, so we will use it. -- [[User:KittySaturn|KittySaturn]] 00:24, 2005 Mar 22 (UTC)
Well, ''South Korea'' (etc.) is in accordance to the Manual of Style (use most common form). Nothing else to say. [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 28 June 2005 23:23 (UTC)
==Chosŏn'gŭl and Hangul==
I am proposing that "Hangul" be replaced with "Chosongul" in all name tables relating to North Korean subjects. Would this be feasible? --[[User:68.194.108.16|68.194.108.16]] 02:23, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
:Thanks to the template system, that would be quite easy to do, at least for most North Koreans. I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea, but I can't think of any good arguments against it right now. I will post a link to this proposal on the [[Wikipedia:Korea-related topics notice board]]. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 02:54, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::Sounds like a reasonable suggestion, but really should be Chosŏn'gŭl ;) [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 28 June 2005 23:09 (UTC)
:Done. See [[Template:Koreanname north]] and [[Template:Koreanname north image]]. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 13:19, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I apologize in advance for my completely ingnorant intrusion on a discussion between people who are clearly expert. I simply cannot find an answer to my question anywhere else.
I am exploring the history of the Korean alphabet for a paper I am writing on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's ''Dictee'' , and I want to know the literal definition of Chosŏn'gŭl. I can see that it must mean something like "Korean script" simply by looking at the spelling, but I was wondering if the word carried any other meaning or connotation, like Hangul. (It is my understanding (a la wikipedia, and likely your work) that Hangul means "Great script" in archaic Korean and "Korean script" in the modern.)
Also, when did North Korea begin using the name Chosŏn'gŭl? Also, are there any other names by which the alphabet is called, for instance casual or affectionate names?
Thank you. And again, sorry for butting in.
:Afaik, NK never ''started'' using Chosŏn'gŭl, that was the name of the language before (some old people still use it in the south). Cf. [[Joseon]] (Chosŏn). [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 09:13, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
How can we at the same time write "Chosŏn'gŭl" in NK articles and refuse to write "Hangeul" in SK articles, claiming that the Korean alphabet is called "Hangul" in English?
Please post replies to [[Template talk:Koreanname north]], not here. –&nsbp;[[User:Wikipeditor|Wikipeditor]] 04:07, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
==Alphabetizing South Korean Wikipedians==
Would it be a good idea to re-order the (few at this point) S.K. Wiks? I know there are always difficulties with alphabetizing Korean and Western names, but maybe it might be of use when the list gets bigger. By the way, at the top of the South Korean Wikipedians page, there is a note to also add to the gen. Wik'n page - but when I link thither, the only place I see to list is the SKW page that I just came from. [[User:211.225.34.177|211.225.34.177]] 01:27, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
== McCune-Reischauer: Yi or I? ==
[[User:Mr Tan]]'s adjustment of the name table for [[Sunjong of Korea]] leads me to bring this matter here. The question is: ''in the name table'', should the MR for 이 (family name) be rendered as ''Yi'' or ''I''? Mccune-reischauer.org suggests ''I'', and I can't find anything to contradict that. For that reason, I had been changing ''Yi'' to ''I'' whenever I ran across it.
Yi for 이 is common usage, but then again so is "Woo" for 우 and the aforementioned "Shi" for 시, neither of which belong in a name table. Can anyone find a reason to prefer Yi?
In any case, this shouldn't affect the way we spell names in articles, since Yi is the spelling preferred by most 이s who are not Lees. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 12:30, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:As you know, there are three main files on the MR site that guide our transliterations. The 1939 file seems to allow it, while explicitly prohibiting ''Ri'' and ''Li'' (p. 52):
::"Another very important example is 李, the surname of the kings of the last Korean dynasty and still a very common Korean surname. Actually it is pronounced in the standard dialect and should be Romanized ''I'', but some may prefer to retain the older Romanization, ''Yi'', because that is already the familiar form. In any case the other Romanizations of 李, ''Ri'' and ''Li'', should not be used."
:The 1961 seems to say nothing about it; and the Library of Congress guidelines use ''Yi'' (page 100):
::The surname 李 is always romanized ''Yi'', no matter how it is written (李, 이, 리).
: (However I personally usually do not follow the last file; for example it prefers putting spaces even before particles, which the original 1939 formulation doesn't.) I think ''Yi'' is one of the exceptions that has stuck. And we wouldn't write the "this" 이 as ''yi''. But in my opinion I think the surname ''Yi'' is allowable. On the other hand, 시 has never been ''shi'' in any of these three files, so there isn't much reason any more to write it as ''shi'' since South Korea developed their RR. -- [[User:KittySaturn|KittySaturn]] 04:54, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)
== Disputed names ==
''This discussion has been moved to [[Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Korean)/Disputed names]].'' -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 03:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
== Historical Periods: Colonialization ==
The article for the period between about 1900 and 1950 was changed into [[History of Korea (1900-1950)]], since (afaik) ''colonialization'' was not NPOV enough. Should we update the convention here accordingly? [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 28 June 2005 23:13 (UTC)
Can we have an open discussion about this section? Most of the convention came into existence by observing how we Wikipedians do things. Some of the issues have been discussed at some length, but there are three sections that have just stood here unchallenged. I hope we can discuss these sections in the light that [[Wikipedia:Naming convention]] is now official Pedia policy. [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
===Historical divisions as used by===
* ''Korean Cultural Insights'' by the KNTO: Old Joseon (Bronze Age) - Buyeo (Iron Age) - Samhan - Three Kingdoms (Silla, Goguryeo, Baekje; Gaya) - Unified Silla - Goryeo Dynasty - Joseon Dynasty - Daehan Empire (proclaimed; overlap with Joseon) - Japanese colonial rule - SK/NK
* ''{{History of Korea'' template: Gojoseon - Samhan - Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla) - Unified Silla and Balhae - Later Three Kingdoms - Goryeo - Joseon - 1900-1950 - Divided Korea
:The change to 1900-1950 is a problematic one, particularly since it obviously overlaps with the Korean Empire and Divided Korea periods. I'd like to see us discuss that further. The move was well-intentioned, but the Talk page suggests that those who did it didn't really know what they were getting into. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 23:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
==Names of monarchs==
This is another section that was never really discussed, afaik. I believe it is modelled after articles on monarchs elsewhere in the world? [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
:Yes. See [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (monarchs)]]. Originally the two were in disagreement, with this page calling for (title) (name) of (kingdom), but this was changed a while back to be in compliance with the general standard. This change was proposed, although not really discussed, on this page -- see the first archive. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 23:26, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
==Korean article template==
Another such section. Do we really need the standard link ''See also'' [[List of Korea-related topics]], now that we have categories? [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 16:25, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
:I like it, and would like to keep it, although I guess we don't really ''need'' it. AFAICT, we had categories when the template was created, hence the [[:Category:Korea]] link, but I wouldn't really know about that. ;-) Basically the link is just a reciprocal one; since all KRT's should be linked from the LKRT, a reciprocal link to the LKRT seems reasonable. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 23:32, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
== Re-evaluating the Revised Romanisation policy ==
It has been quite a while since the policy to adopt South Korea's Revised Romanisation (RR) for Korean names (apart from North Korean names) was introduced. I recognise that to change policy now would be cataclismic, but I find it surprising that there seems to have been little discussion about the apropriateness of the policy all these years. My guess is that relief about having a set policy and a set convention and the fear of opening a can of worms again won out. Well, at the risk of opening that proverbial can, I claim that we should at least stop at think whether it was a good idea to adopt the RR.
I have my own issues with both RR and [[McCune-Reischauer]] (MR), and so do most people, it seems, that care about the topic of Korean romanisation. Neither of the two is inherently superior to the other in my opinion. So the considerations should be that of convention and usefulness.
The inescapable fact is that the vast majority of existing scholarly work on Korea uses MR. This includes encyclopaedias, library catalogues, the US Library of Congress... Universities continue to use MR, and I personally have consistently used MR for academic papers all my life, not because of my personal preference, but because that was the accepted academic standard. Koreanists dealing primarily with English-language material are going to be much more familiar with MR.
On the other hand, many native Korean speakers today find RR generally more natural and easy-to-use than MR—it's the reason it was developed in the first place. Sceptics doubted RR would take hold outside of South Korea, though, which is why the policy decision to use RR on Wikipedia was so significant. I assume native South Korean Wikipedians played a large part in the adoption of RR as Wikipedia policy, and doubtless many of them were motivated by a certain zeal to spread RR outside of Korea. I initially dismissed the attempt to replace MR with RR a quixotic quest destined to meet a lot of resistance from most scholars of Korea.
Well, a few years on, we already have a considerable body of knowledge accumulated on Wikipedia about Korea following the RR convention. It's too early to say if RR will keep gaining momentum. I cannot think of any large-scale, well-known English-language reference source besides Wikipedia (and those sites) that uses RR. Thinking that the decision of a handful of Wikipedians is going to bring about the international acceptance of RR is obviously somewhat delusional. But it's clear that we bear a certain responsibility in setting standards of usage, so at the risk of sounding like I'm anti-RR, I urge people to stop and deliberate on the pros and cons of the current policy informed by the past few years of experience and on whether there is any justification now for revising the policy. --[[User:Iceager|Iceager]] 07:55, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
:Hmm... Well, personally I like RR because it's easy to use, even though I'm not a native speaker. If you can read Korean, you can write in RR. That's certainly not the case for MR, which has all sorts of arcane rules and exceptions, as well as a maddening number of diacritics. One consequence of this is that it's almost never used consistently -- in fact I've read pretty widely and have yet to find a work that doesn't have glaring inconsistencies in its use of MR... Another consequence is that it's a real pain to type. I wouldn't relish writing an article and having to scroll down for diacritics several times in each paragraph.
:RR hasn't yet overcome the inertia of the KS community, but I don't really think that needs to concern us. Our work should reflect scholarship and research, but Wikipedia's goal is to make information available, not to participate directly in the academic discourse. Of course, that isn't an argument ''for'' RR per se, just an argument against accepting MR on academic-usage grounds.
:There are some creditable reference works out there now that use RR; presumably there will be more in the future. These include ''Korea Annual'', the ''Handbook of Korea'', and ''Korean philosophy: Its tradition and modern transformation'' (possibly all volumes of the ''Anthology of Korean Studies''). All such works I'm aware of originate in South Korea, but they shouldn't be rejected out-of-hand on that basis.
:In sum, I think the existing policy works well. It's not perfect, but I can't think of any good reason to change it. Thanks for bringing this up, however. -- [[User:Visviva|Visviva]] 13:19, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that neither MR nor RR is superior to the other - and I tend to think that there really can be no romanisation that people have nothing to complain about.
:MR is seriously hard to use, though. It's firstly difficult to type, and secondly difficult to get it right. For me, when neither system is better than the other in terms of how they are transcribing Korean, I tend to go for the easier-to-use RR. How difficult it is to type MR is probably less of an issue with academic papers, but I have the thought that if Wikipedia's policy were to use MR, people would be less willing to contribute, simply because there are so many lazy people, you know :P ''"Damn, if I correct that bit in the article, I have to somehow dig the o and u out with the weird thingies above them, so I can't be bothered. I can't be bothered figuring out what the complicated MR is for this mess either. I think I'll just leave it."'' -- [[User:KittySaturn|KittySaturn]] 14:26, July 18, 2005 (UTC)
::Thanks for bringing this issue up, and also thanks for the way you did so. I remember the debate over how to spell 한글 some time ago (we agreed that it was an ''English'' word and thus did not have ''this'' discussion before). The reason we settled for RR, I believe, was largely/purely <strike>its ''ease''</strike> our familiarity with RR. It is quite important to have a convention in terms of avoiding duplicate articles (I believe we did root these out just over a year ago), but whatever the convention, we'll always need ''redirects''. Korean romanizations are a mess, and its not our task to resolve this. However, we do need some form of platform to work on. [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 15:28, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
Just as a thought: The [[Oxford Manual of Style]] (2002) suggests the use of McR, but without ' and ŏ, thus ''Pyongyang'' rather than ''P'yŏngyang''(; and as a consequence no difference between North and South Korea). [[User:Kokiri|Kokiri]] 10:01, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
----
I'll contribute my two-cents' worth. When I started editing Korea-related articles in 2003, the practice of using Revised Romanization was already in place. The reasoning was that that is the official system in use in South Korea, so at the very least for articles on South Korean topics, that system should be used. Now, there are arguments both for and against such a line of reasoning, and I personally feel that McCune-Reischauer probably does a marginally better job than the Revised system of representing the Korean sound system to non-Korean (at least English-speaking) readers in such a way that they can produce a plausible approximation of the Korean pronunciation of words and names. So from a point of view of authentically representing the Korean sound system, McCune-Reischauer might be a better way to go. But there are at least two reasons to stick with the Revised system:
#It's the system used to spell South Korean place names. Switching, say, all articles on SK place names to McCune-Reischauer would needlessly introduce a fair amount of confusion.
#As Kokiri pointed out, it is very easy to screw up McCune-Reischauer. I agree with Sewing.Even papers and articles written by KS scholars are often rife with M-R spelling errors, such is the rigour and meticulousness demanded of people using the system. The Revised system has the advantage that it is probably marginally more difficult to screw up, and easier to get right. This is a consideration for Wikipedia, since anyone can edit any article, and going through and fixing romanizations is painful (believe me, I've done it).
All that said, please keep in mind that Korea-related articles already show the article title rendered in both romanization systems in the Korean name table. When reading article A, if the user sees B mentioned and a Wikilink to article B and clicks on the link, the user can then see the M-R romanization for B.
-[[User:Sewing|Sewing]] - [[User talk:Sewing|talk]] 23:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
From my experiance the RR is used by new books in the west, too. My tour guide "Moons Handbook South Korea" (from January 2004) uses it and so does my German Korean language book "Koreanisch für Anfänger" (from 2005). -- [[User:IGEL|IGEL]] 00:20, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
I agree with what Sewing has written and would like to add a few arguments against giving MR precedence over RR.
If you want a tradeoff between simplicity and accurate reflection of pronunciation, either Yale or RR seems better than MR to me. As far as I see, while MR might have been widely used in many areas before RR was devised, Yale rather than the other two seems to establish itself as the romanisation of choice for linguists.
South Koreans always used their own romanisations made to resemble English spelling ("Hankook") for names. MR's awkwardness to learn and use hasn't been helping much with this. If we don't allow RR some time to gain popularity, chances are high this won't ever change.
While I find RR's official definition a bit vague and – concerning hyphen usage – too lenient, at least there is one authority for it. With MR, you have not one but many romanisation traditions in different institutions each calling theirs MR and all with slight differences, e.g. whether to soften the consonant after a hyphen.
If I'm not mistaken, you are fairly free in deciding where to set hyphens or even spaces in words, which renders it less usable for search. Is the spacing in "Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk" arbitrary? Are "Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmingonghwaguk" or "Chosŏn Minju-juŭi Inmin Konghwa-guk" allowed? As soon as you decide to insert a space, the letter after it also changes, e.g. g→k, which might confuse some.
As long as MR was the only thing in town, the majority of publications didn't care to use it and made up their own romanisations, or got McR wrong. The worst thing about it is that when there's no diacritics on vowels, e.g. in a newspaper, you must guess whether there weren't supposed to be any, or whether they have been dropped. This won't happen with RR. Likewise, if a newsreader who does not know how to pronounce Korean reads RR eo, o, u or eu, it's easier to guess what he meant compared to his reading MR o or u. – [[User:Wikipeditor|Wikipeditor]] 17:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
== Korean names of provinces ==
Hi! I made this suggestion a few minutes ago on the German wikipedia. Why are the names of the provinces not written the korean way? For example [[Jeollabuk-do]] instead of [[North Jeolla]]. I guess, most provinces of other countries are written in the original way, for example [[Vest-Agder]]. Outside of the Wikipedia, the complete Korean names are also more common, at least according to this [http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Jeollabuk-do&word2=%22North+Jeolla%22 google fight]. What do you think?
* South Korea: North Chungcheong -> Chungcheongbuk-do, South Chungcheong -> Chungcheongnam-do, Gangwon -> Gangwon-do, Gyeonggi -> Gyeonggi-do, North Gyeongsang -> Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Gyeongsang -> Gyeongsangnam-do, Jeju -> Jeju-do, North Jeolla -> Jeollabuk-do, South Jeolla -> Jeollabuk-do,
* North Korea: Chagang -> Chagang-do, North Hamgyong -> Hamgyong-pukto, South Hamgyong -> Hamgyong-namdo, North Hwanghae -> Hwanghae-pukto, South Hwanghae -> Hwanghae-namdo, Kangwon -> Kangwon-do, North Pyongan -> Pyongan-pukto, South Pyongan -> Pyongan-namdo, Ryanggang -> Ryanggang-do
-- [[User:IGEL|IGEL]] 00:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
:Agreed. I've hardly ever heard anybody use the English (or even German) translated name. buk/nam-do seems to be as common as it is official. – [[User:Wikipeditor|Wikipeditor]] 17:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
::South Korea is done. -- [[User:IGEL|IGEL]] 17:06, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
== hanja in placenames ==
how about reconsidering the need for hanja in korean templates? for royalty, i think hanja is relevant, since they are historic figures & historical records are in hanja. present-day personal names, i think could go either way, since they are still sometimes used in south korea, although fading away.
for south korean city and district, & especially university names, i don't think hanja is helpful for english readers, as they are generally not used anymore. in north korea, hanja is not used, so i don't see why it would belong in wikipedia. if hanja is relevant (in disambiguation or some history contexts) they foboxes for 2 or more names) for those rulers whose birth names are not known? for some korean ruler articles that used the generic infobox, hanja is relevant but will be lost. i was going to replace them with the ruler infobox, but there isn't one i can use, & i'm a relative newbie. it's a lot of work, but i feel strongly that we should use hanja only when relevant, not as a default in all korean templates.. if nobody else does it, i will learn to make the needed templates. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 05:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
:Where Hanja is remotely used (like romanization), then I think it should be included. The decision has already been made to push this off to a box on the side, so I don't see the cost of adding it in. Hanja should be included in the very least for historical figures, South Koreans, and historical places and events. (note: I'm Chinese so I'm biased. I personally find the Chinese characters very useful when reading about Korea-related topics.) For royalty, you can take a look at what's been done at [[Template_talk:Zh-tsp#Like Templates]]--[[User:Jiang|Jiang]] 07:51, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
:Although infrequently used daily, Hanjas are on the official records of names of people in South Korea. Place names have their roots in Hanjas too. — [[User:Instantnood|Insta]][[User_talk:Instantnood|ntnood]] 08:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
:I also support to include hanja in the infobox. -- [[User:ChongDae|ChongDae]] 12:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
1. this is the '''english wikipedia''', not an "international", nor "official korean" version. wikipedia policy is to use the most common english names or npov name, so dokdo is called liancourt rocks, republic of korea is called south korea, etc., so what's important is not what's in official records in korea, but what english speakers recognize as useful.
most encyclopedias don't include local language non-latin scripts at all. it's a minor footnote acknowledgement of '''local practice'''. in local usage, very little hanja is used. most koreans don't know the hanja for entertainers, sports figures, or other modern public figures. just look at korean web pages, street signs, etc. nor do most korean generally refer to cities, placenames, & universities by hanja. these may be helpful for chinese-readers, but are not appropriate for the english wikipedia.
2. we're talking about the basic '''default''' infobox, & infoboxes that specifically don't need hanja. it's silly to have to search for hanja names of popular modern comedians, or korean universities, or to include the recently official chinese characters for seoul when no other country's local spelling is included. i've often wanted to add an infobox but didn't because i couldn't find the hanja, even on korean websites. take a look at [[List of Korea-related topics]]: hanja isn't really relevant to anything north korea, entertainment/cinema/contemporary culture/modern entertainers, sports/olympics/sports figures, buildings/towers/airports, industries/companies, etc.
3. i'm all for leaving hanja in royalty names or historic/traditional arts figures with pen or courtesy names, or topics related to china. but they already have infoboxes with hanja & i didn't delete the hanja there. i've often added hanja in historical articles (within the body text), in the specific context of discussing its pronunciation or etymology or identifying ancient tribes. changing the default is by no means banishing hanja, hanja is always available in the hanja infobox, or can be explained in the article if relevant.
again, my point is that it shouldn't be the default for all korean infoboxes, but we should make specific hanja-inclusive templates in appropriate subcategories. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 15:38, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
since i didn't get any responses to above, i did go ahead & make the default without hanja, created a new template for use with hanja, & also created the basic rulername, which is the same as the hanja infobox. i also changed all (i think) of the royalty or historic period infoboxes that used the basic koreanname infobox (most already used the ruler infobox, & i didn't remove the hanja from them), to use the hanja one. if anyone can think of any other groups of articles that currently use the basic infobox, that should be changed to the one with hanja, please discuss here, & if necessary, i'm willing to do the grunt work. again, please remember this is the english wikipedia, & hanja infoboxes are available for whenever it's appropriate. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 05:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
''Added after edit conflict:''
I don't know how many templates you have changed, but I think you should at least have left a comment at [[Template talk:Koreanname noimage]] when you took the hanja row out of it, as a whole lot of pages now look different; and if a template only consists of a few rows, the deletion of a row is a change that IMHO deserves a mention in the edit summary so it's easier for others to see what happened in the template's history.
Besides, I think you should have waited a tad longer before editing the rows out. Most people probably aren't even aware of this discussion yet, and it took me some time to find out what happened and that it is supposed to be discussed here. I actually reverted your change to [[Template:Koreanname noimage]] because it was hard to see whether it wasn't a deliberate act without discussion (I haven't reverted your edit of [[Template:Infobox Korean city]]). Please allow more time for a discussion to begin before making such important changes the next time.
As for my opinion on it, I feel that hanja belong into most if not all Korean infoboxes.
* I could live without them for e.g. names of Korean TV shows, but there are articles that wouldn't feel complete without hanja. (Besides, how could you delete them from ALL Korean city infoboxes just because nobody replied to you after 14½ hours? And, as I said, you haven't even left a note – let alone waited for a discussion – about [[Template:Koreanname noimage]]!)
* If you don't know the hanja of something, you can just leave the field blank, and somebody else will fill it in later.
* The Korean Wikipedia can do as it pleases, but I don't think hanja confuse, irritate or otherwise bother anybody on the English WP as long as they stay in their boxes.
* If people cannot turn to an ''encyclopedia'' for a Korean name's hanja, where else?<br>[[User:Wikipeditor|Wikipeditor]] 05:52, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
i had first noticed someone added the chinese name to the seoul article. the chinese language word, not the historical derivation of the korean word or something that is used locally in korea (except aimed at chinese toursists). since no other country's local language name was included in the infobox, that just didn't make any sense.
& by extension, other city names' hanja are not generally used by koreans, nor relevant in english unless discussed in the context of the historical etymology, which is rarely relevant enough for the article, let alone the infobox, which is a summary of basic essential data at the top of the page. so i changed the koreancity template after leaving a comment at that template page & at the korean naming convention page a full week ago. [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_%28Korean%29&diff=prev&oldid=28277395]. i've also commented on chongdae's talk page in english & korean pages later, & fully explained my reasons above. you can see nobody's responded or reverted since my response 3 days ago.
i think some people feel an article feels more complete with hanja only because we know hanja. i think most english readers, even the small fraction that might be able to read hangul & find it useful, wouldn't miss hanja. having it in the default infobox gives the wrong impression that chinese characters are in common local usage & unnecessarily makes infoboxes difficult to complete. i don't think people turn to the english wikipedia for the korean name's hanja; if they are that interested, they can look in the korean wikipedia (which often don't have hanja), but do you think that's a significant enough population to include hanja in the basic default infobox for all korean topics?
please read my original reasons above. obviously, if the consensus is against my position, that's that, but i really think this is the logical, proper, & practical format for articles in english. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 06:33, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
:I am also in support of Wikipedia displaying the hanja information, at least for personal names, place names and such. Besides the many reasons given by others above, let me add that hanja, [[kanji]], and Chinese characters are important points of reference in English-language academic literature dealing with East Asia. In several English-language journals specialising in Korea and East Asia, such as the ''[[Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies]]'', the hanja (and not hangul) for Korean terms, personal names, and place names are given next to their English transliterations. This might be mildly annoying for Korean readers, but it serves the purpose well for many Asia specialists or other readers familiar with Chinese characters. English is very much an international language and especially the language of scholarly exchange. By declaring the hanja information irrelevant for "English" users one unintentionally renders irrelevant the significant portion of the readership of the English Wikipedia for whom the hanja information would be helpful. I imagine, for example, Japanese readers who might know Korean historical terms by the kanji but not by the current Korean pronunciation would be helped by the inclusion of the hanja.
:You say those who are interested can look in the Korean Wikipedia. This assumes that those who are interested is familiar with Korean and that the Korean Wikipedia is a complete resource for hanja (which it is not, as you point out). Well, I've had similar experiences of trying to find out for example Belarusian versions of historical place names in the Belarusian Wikipedia, which was a grueling search both because of my unfamiliarity with the language and the incompleteness of the Belarusian Wikipedia (a problem shared by the Korean Wikipedia, as you point out). Users of Wikipedia who don't read Korean will face similar difficulties trying to find the correct hanja for Korean terms, and the English Wikipedia is probably the only English-language encyclopedic online source to turn to. You may dismiss Belarusian versions of historical place names as information that "English" users won't miss, whose inclusion would be an unnecessary bit of courtesy to "local" users, but there ''are'' people interested in that stuff who are not fortunate enough to read Belarusian. I for one would have been spared what seemed like hours of searching and trying to contact Belarusian users if the English Wikipedia contained that little bit of info. This is one line in an infobox placed to the side that we are talking about.
:I have a hunch you are worried more about the implications the inclusion of hanja has for readers unfamiliar with the language situation in Korea than these reasons. I share these reservations, but is that a reason to remove that piece of information altogether? Finally, there are confusions about Korean names that can be cleared up by the inclusion of hanja, as in the [[Nodong-1]] and [[Nodong-2]] missiles, which many people mistakenly think derive their names from the Korean word for "labour". --[[User:Iceager|Iceager]] 03:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
let me repeat that i wholeheartedly agree hanja is relevant & helpful in historical or china-related topics, & have attempted to preserve it in those cases. & for disambiguation, it certainly does belong in the article body. an especially knowledgeable english reader or a japanese reader reading about "korean historical terms" would see the hanja, because the relevant hanja would remain in the infobox or be in the article. of course, more information could always help '''someone''' out there, but it's a matter of balance. if hanja is in the default korean infobox, it discourages the use of that infobox for the whole universe of popular entertainment & modern culture, & yes, does give the wrong impression of hanja's usage in korea today. it's not a question of whether to use hanja or not, nobody's arguing for its elimination. i just think hanja should be used wherever hanja is helpful, not everywhere a korean infobox is helpful. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 04:08, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
:Perhaps we should create hanja/no hanja versions of all Korean infoboxes so that whoever adds them to Korea-related articles can choose whether hanja is relevant or not. I could be mistaken, but wasn't this the case already, except that the infoboxes had hanja by default with the option of removing them? I see it is now changed to have no hanja by default with the option of adding them (although not for North Korean infoboxes, I see). So this looks like an argument over what the default setting should be. The Korea-related articles I view and edit are almost exclusively ones where hanja would be helpful, but I guess there are users who view mostly popular-entertainment-related articles where hanja is less relevant. Personally I don't mind what the default is, but it bothers me that by just changing the default setting, the Korean infoboxes that already existed have suddenly had their hanja information suppressed. You could go through all the articles affected and manually change them to templates with the hanja add-on, but wouldn't it be more economical and make more sense to set the default back to hanja added in, and manually change the templates for articles requiring no hanja? The latter method helps preserve the hanja info that articles already had. --[[User:Iceager|Iceager]] 07:54, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
if you peruse my contrib list, i'm actually doing the conversion work now. i converted all remaining korean ruler names to include hanja, & am using "what links here" to convert any historical topics i recognized. i know there's more to go, but i think a good percentage has already been done, it's not as bad as i feared (the slow wikipedia servers were the major impediment). give me a few more days (well, after thanksgiving holidays). & no, i created the hanja-added basic infoboxes. there was no hanja-less one. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 08:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree with [[User:Iceager|Iceager]]. Hanja can be very useful for disambiguation, and also be informative to users who are familiar with Chinese characters and curious of word etymologies. For instance, people literate in Chinese or Japanese can find cognates in Korean words which they might not otherwise have recognized because they were obscured by phonetic changes over time. I can see cases where a no-hanja template might be useful, such as for native names and vocabulary, but considering how many Korean names and places, and technical terms are Sino-Korean, these must be the exception rather than the norm. Regarding whether the data does belong in an English encyclopedia, it has already been common practice to include foreign names and terms in their native orthography for Greek, Russian, Chinese, and Hebrew, just to name a few languages. In any case, this is a major change affecting [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Koreanname|~160 articles]] (nearly [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Koreanname noimage|1,000 more]] when you throw in the "Korean noimage" template). It is too far reaching for one user to determine alone, and should be voted on before moving ahead further. Even if we ultimately do decide to delete hanja from most of the articles, I believe the hanja should be removed on a case-by-case basis (and when doing so, specific reasons should be cited in the edit summary and possibly the talk page as well). The hanja field was unobtrusive where it was, and providing hanja adds only a trivial amount of extra text to an article. Furthermore, considering all the time countless users put into contributing hanja information, why should we now be hiding it by default? -- [[User:Calcwatch|Calcwatch]] 09:12, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
:ok, ok, i do apologize for changing the default without more consensus. i would like to hear back from the others who commented above, to see if they stopped responding because they were somewhat persuaged by my responses, or they just stopped talking to me cuz i was an a-hole.
:i feel like i'm defending a strawman, because everyone seems to be arguing that hanja is sometimes useful, & often useful in historical, etymological, china-related, & disambiguation areas. '''i emphatically agree''' with all these points, so i feel silly repeating myself in every response.
:i didn't prohibit hanja or say it was not useful. i just changed the '''basic''' infobox, & then specifically created the hanja-added infobox for use whenever people find useful. i left the hanja in infoboxes for royalty, pennames, stagenames, china-related, etc. additionally, hanja is, & will be, in the article body wherever the writer feels the etymology, pronunciation, or history is worth discussion. i've added them myself often.
:it is common practice in wikipedia to include '''common local orthography''', which is hangul for north & south korea, but it is not common to take that one step further, to include the etymological precursor orthography unfamiliar to many locals in the '''default''' infobox, however helpful it may be to readers of other regional languages or etymologists.
:& i am willing to change hundreds of articles, & already have changed about a hundred infoboxes in history articles, to change "koreanname" to "koreanname hanja" or other more appropriate hanja-added infobox., because i do feel strongly about the principle that it should not be in the '''default''', but should be used whenever it is helpful.
:if people who have commented so far, after reading my full explanation (& i do ask that you distinguish what i actually did from a broad-brush generalization about hanja use in general), still feel hanja should be in the '''default basic infobox''' instead of hanja-specific infoboxes, well, then, i'll change it back myself.
:specifically, i strongly disagree with the inclusion of hanja in north korean infoboxes, as north korea does not use hanja locally, pretty much since its founding. [[User:Appleby|Appleby]] 15:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
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