Talk:Keiki Province

Requested move 17 November 2024

• Keiki-dō → Keiki Province
• Chūseihoku Prefecture → Chūseihoku Province
• Chūseinan Prefecture → Chūseinan Province
• Heian'nan Prefecture → Heian'nan Province
• Heianhoku Prefecture → Heianhoku Province
• Kankyōhoku Prefecture → Kankyōhoku Province
• Kankyōnan Prefecture → Kankyōnan Province
• Keishōnan Prefecture → Keishōnan Province
• Keishōhoku Prefecture → Keishōhoku Province
• Kōgen Prefecture → Kōgen Province
• Kōkai Prefecture → Kōkai Province
• Zenrahoku Prefecture → Zenrahoku Province
• Zenranan Prefecture → Zenranan Province

I think "Provinces" may be more appropriate, but still not sure. I moved all the other Korea prefecture pages from "-dō" to " Prefecture" following the category name, but @robertsky pointed out " Province" may be more appropriate.

"Prefecture" has kind of a loose definition, per Prefecture and Prefectures of Japan. The nature of prefectures in various countries differs; it's not really clear to me how these differ from provinces, esp given that colonial Korea was governed differently from Japan.

Both "prefecture" and "province" seem to be variously attested to for Korean provinces (as well as the use of transliterations of Korean names for Korean places during the colonial period). English terminology for Korean history is notoriously inconsistent.

Reading Prefectures of Japan, it seems like "道" is also used for prefectures, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that it would extend to Korea. Provinces of Japan seems to suggest that Japan itself adopted the prefecture system in the late 19th century, but that doesn't necessarily cover Korea.

However, recent RS on the colonial period seem to use "province" for this period (although these all seem to write from Korea-centric perspectives; using Korean-language terms for concepts during the colonial period).

• [1]
• [2]
• [3]
• [4]

Edit: more sources (see below for my analysis of the situation)

• [5]
• [6]
• [7]
• [8]
• [9]

In short, I think there's a WP:COMMONNAME argument to use "Province" instead of "Prefecture". Either of the two is certainly better than the previous "-dō". seefooddiet (talk) 05:25, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

@RachelTensions commented on the contested speedy move at WP:RM; feel free to weigh in here if you'd like. seefooddiet (talk) 05:26, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

If the intention is for this to result in changes to the other pages, it should be formatted as a multimove request. (Probably the other moves should be undone for the time being under WP:RMUM since they have effectively been objected to now.) On the merits, in contemporary Japan "Prefecture" is used for -dō in the case of Hokkaido, but the Korean regions were never treated as integral parts of the "Japanese homeland", so I would probably avoid using "Prefecture" here. There isn't too much problem with "Province", but if there is no common name in English, I don't see a problem with using -dō as in the current title. The name is already based on the Japanese reading of the region, and "-dō" is also "do" in Korean. Dekimasuよ! 05:53, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I just (attempted to) convert to multimove request; lmk if I did it wrong (edited this post and added templates to pages e.g. [10]).

I retract my argument about "Province" or "Prefecture" being preferrable to "-dō"; I misremembered WP:NC; thought there was a preference for the use of translating terms like "-dō" but was wrong.

However, I think my point on WP:COMMONNAME still stands. We have more than enough sources to establish some kind of name, and the vast majority of them seem to use English for the admin district type. In my experience, the use of "-dō" for these is rare.

Actually doing more thinking, the Japanese names of these places may be rarer than the Korean names. Hmphg. seefooddiet (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

• Support the mass-move from "dō" to "province". I trust seefooddiet's assessment of the common name in sources, most of which I cannot verify myself. Circuit (administrative division) also covers this term and suggests that we should translate it as "province". Hokkaido seems like an exception, where "dō" was created as a special category of prefecture just to fit this one longstanding use, so I would not use it as evidence that "dō" should be translation as "prefecture" (see Prefectures_of_Japan#Dō).

There's no reason to revert the moves at other pages, since there's no urgency and repeated moving back-and-forth is a waste of time and clutters the logs. If this closes as no-consensus or not moved, we can move them back to the status quo titles. Toadspike [Talk] 12:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

• Mild oppose: When I worked on these articles a few years ago, it was not immediately clear whether there were common names for these formerly Japanese sub-national polities. Ken (縣/県) was and is typically translated as "prefecture", but the kanji for dō (道) can refer to various kinds of sub-national administrative divisions. Rather than arbitrarily choose an English term that may not be commonly used, I settled for dō. However, if there is indeed a common term by which these administrative divisions are now referred to in English, I'll be happy to support. It may interest fellow editors to note that this 1945 National Geographic map neither mentions dō nor "province", etc. —CurryTime7-24 (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2024 (UTC)