Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Northern Irish sportspeople

The following discussion comes from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. This is an archive of the discussion only; please do not edit this page. -Kbdank71 15:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Northern Irish sportspeople

Rename to Category:Sportspeople of Northern Ireland. This was previously nominated as part of a larger /unresolved change, but it was decided this one should be nominated on its own. -- Beland 03:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Agree - less controversial/entirely accurate. Not to mention following the "of Foo" rather than "Fooish" convention. zoney ♣ talk 19:33, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • What "of Foo" convention? In all the supercategories of this category, most peers are 'Fooish X", not "X of Foo". Joestynes 02:59, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• OpposeInconsistent with nearly all other sportspeople categories and 99% of people categories across the board. Therefore messy. Wincoote 05:21, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. There is some interest in moving the rest of the sportspeople categories, but it didn't quite pass. More importantly, it appears that people from Northern Ireland do not refer to themselves as Northern Irish. We could, I suppose, go with Category:Northern Ireland sportspeople. -Aranel ("Sarah") 14:56, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support - Northern Irish is POV and rarely used in Northern Ireland itself. NPOV and common usage take precedence over strict consistency with other categories (which can't be achieved across the board anyway). There are other sportspeople categories that don't use this kind of adjective form, like: Category:Saint Kitts and Nevis sportspeople and Category:Sportspeople of the Dominican Republic. Nouns are used in those cases because there is no other acceptable adjective form and the same principle applies with Northern Ireland. Category:Northern Ireland sportspeople would do as well. Iota 16:05, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Perhaps Nothern Ireland sportpeople would do, though I am unconvinced that it isn't simply the term used by Republicans and therefore no more neutral than the alternative - just a victory for the opposite camp. And republicans seem to largely ignore the existence of the Northern Ireland category anyway and put everything in category:Ireland anyway. Wincoote 00:07, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Is the regocnized name of the country "Northern Ireland"? If so, how can it not be neutral? -Kbdank71 17:08, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Because it would be the only sportspeople by country category in that form and the reason for it would be political. Republican's object to the concept of "Northern Irishness" because they deny Northern Ireland's right to exist, but these are national categories mostly based on state boundaries, not ethnic or religious group categories (though category:Basque sportspeople has slipped in. (By the way, I'm am English atheist with an Irish surname due to partly Irish Catholic descent.) But I suppose it will have to be "Northern Ireland sportspeople". At all costs it must not be "Sportspeople of Northern Ireland". Wincoote 22:45, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • To be honest, I'm not really concerned who's going to boo hoo over this for political reasons. This isn't a political encyclopedia. I just wanted to know what the recognized name of the country is. If I open a map, what will I see there? As for what format, I definitely support "Sportspeople of Northern Ireland" over "Northern Irish". And "Northern Ireland Sportspeople" just doesn't make much sense to me. -Kbdank71 15:37, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • It would be helpful if you could cite sources for your objection to "Northern Irish". Susvolans (pigs can fly) 15:18, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • It perhaps would be helpful for you, or others not familiar with the situation in Ireland, but I can assure you as to the situation on the ground being that Northern Irish is a dubious term at best. People are likely to term themselves British or Irish and nothing else, with only some calling themselves Northern Irish. And technically, even if someone from NI is British, they are Irish (in a "born in Ireland" sense, not meaning Republic of Ireland) - just as anyone from the entire island was before partition, and as much as someone born in Scotland or Wales is Scottish or Welsh regardless of being British. zoney ♣ talk 16:37, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral I don't really care, but question some of the assertions made.
  • One might view "X of Northern Ireland" as a neutral compromise between "Northern Irish X" and, say, "X of the 6 counties"; however, nationalists will rarely identify themselves with Northern Ireland in any case. Peter Canavan is unlikely to describe himself as a "Northern Irish sportsman", but he is equally unlikely to describe himself as a "sportsman from Northern Ireland". If he ever gets an article, will it be in this category? The question of who ought to be included in this category is related to the question of what the category is called. And surely if someone from Scotland is Scottish as well as British then someone in Nothern Ireland is Northern Irish as well as Irish?
  • The phrase "Northern Irish" currently occurs in the articles Northern Ireland, Irish poetry, Celtic F.C., Islands of the North Atlantic, etc; I haven't noticed any editors rushing to remove this as POV. (User:Lapsed Pacifist did change "Northern Irish parliament" to "Six Counties parliament" recently in Gerry Adams). Joestynes 02:59, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)