An interesting row is going on at [[Talk:Côte
d'Ivoire]]. The country is usually known in English as
Ivory Coast but is controversially at its
little-used-in-English French name. A proposal by me
supported by Ed Poor to move it to the more widely
used English name, to follow the standard naming
rules, produced the mother of all rows, with users
queuing to claim that 'everyone' calls it Cote
d'Ivoire.
That argument was clearly disproved. Checks on
websites with the BBC, New York Times, ABC, South
African television, Australian newspapers, the Times
of London, the Guardian, NBC, Bloomberg, the British
Foreign Office, etc shows that worldwide Ivory Coast
is more used in some cases by a factor of 10. Only the
US State Department uses the French name, and even
then just occasionally, a far cry from the 'always'
claimed.
Even then the majority was queuing up to insist the
French name be kept, no matter what. But a closer look
showed that a large number of those voting to keep the
French name were French speakers! French and English
are famous rivals to be the dominant world language,
but is it a first for a English Wikipedia article to
be kept at a little used French name rather than the
widely used English version contrary to WP NCs and the
MoS, by a block vote of French speakers defending the
French language?
What is WP policy when language is used to a block
vote to force the MoS and NC to be ignored in an
article's name?
Thom
PS: The vote is still going on. Please come and vote.
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