Talk:Guangzhou

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Name

FWIW, apparently the article should be named Canton (or possibly Canton, China, depending on factors).

SUMMARY: as near as I can figure, taking everything into account, more people looking for this city google "Canton" than they do "Guangzhou"; And if you grab a book that mentions the city off an English language library shelf, it will probably call it "Canton" (this may not be true in a couple of decades, but it apparently is now).

Lots of people in America are googling on this city, and lots of people in China are goggling this city, and a fair number of people in Europe, but not people anywhere else that much. The Americans and Europeans are using the search term "Canton" by a wide margin, and the Chinese are using the search term "Guangzhou" by a wide margin. Worldwide, 4x people search on the term "Canton" than on the term "Guangzhou" (Granted, many of the "Canton" crowd are looking for city in Ohio or the flag part etc etc; but even if only 1/3 of "Canton" googlers are looking for this large and famous city, that's more than the total of the "Guangzhou" camp.

Details below the fold, if you like.

Some data and points

I'm sure this is written down somewhere, but I'm going to guess that our readership is split between native and non-native English speakers about 50-50. We serve both groups equally -- NPOV and BLP is equally in force for both, etc. etc. -- but we cater to native speakers in that we lean heavily toward using the conventions that native speakers use and expect. That is why our article on the Eternal City is titled Rome and not Roma, etc.

So anyway, let's look at some data.

According to this Ngram, the two names are tied at this moment, in English-language books. However, a lot of the "Canton" in books are not the Chinese city, while none of the "Guangzhou" ones are. (We have cut out lower-case "canton" and plural "cantons", and that filters out some noise. Canton/Guangzhou is a very large famous and important city that was involved in the Opium Wars etc, so at a wild guess let's say half the book uses of the capitalized term "Canton" are to the Chinese city. We have to start somewhere.

Therefore, the trend line indicates that Guangzhou has pulled into the lead some, but not much. But: the areas below the lines matter a lot. If I'm picking up an English-language book published in 2008, it's twice as likely to use Canton than Guangzhou if referring to the city. If the book's from 1984 it's five times as likely; if it's from before 1974, it's using Canton, period. And even in 2021 it's close to 50-50. This is a key point that I just simply can't get most people to understand. Don't be one.

People don't usually just wake up and be like "Gee, all of a sudden I want to learn about that big city on the Pearl River". They're drawn here from mentions or descriptions of the city in some context -- book film conversation whatever. Lots of people will be coming here from a book published in 2008; some, altho fewer I suppose, from 1984 books; a smaller number from books published 1974 or earlier. I mean after all a lot of older books about the Opium Wars etc. are still in use.

And even today... this Google Trends shows that people are googling "Canton" a lot more than "Guangzhou". The map is interesting. Apparently in the Americas, Europe, and North Asia it's all about "Canton" while South and East Asia are in the "Guangzhou" camp.

Anyway the outliers are the USA at 96% "Canton" and China at 87% for "Guangzhou". Granted people who search on "Canton are looking for the Ohio city or the administrative division. But still. 96%.

I'd presume too that some ESL (English as a Second Language) speaking googlers don't want to go to an English-language site, notwithstanding that they searched on "Guangzhou" instead of "广州" or "गुआंगज़ौ" etc, possibly for technical reasons. And if they're in China, they can't access this site anyway and this will probably be forever, and we can't cater to non-readers.

In terms of "search interest" (I don't know what these numbers mean, but I suppose they would have something to do with how many people are searching on a term or something, and I guess they can be used for comparisons), for the search term "Canton" we have USA at 39, China at 44, and everyone else in single digits, but France+Britain+Germany+Italy are at 26.

For the search term "Guangzhou" we have search interest in China at 100, and most everybody else at or near zero. America is <1, Britain is <1, South Africa is <1, Australia is 2, New Zealand is 2, India is <1, and the European countries are all <1. Giant difference.

Some of these numbers I can't make out what they are actually measuring, and the downward trend on the Ngram shows that mentions in books of the city under any name are dropping fast, which seems odd, so I'd be grateful for any advice on how to interpret these charts.

Now, it would be unremarkable if POV bias were to creep into the discussion. If a person is Chinese or generally immersed in East Asian culture then they are used to calling it "Guangzhou" and are naturally (perhaps unconsciously) inclined to wanting us to use that title. If a person has been calling the city "Canton" their whole life, they are naturally (perhaps unconsciously) inclined to wanting us to use Canton as the article title. It also may be that "Canton" is lowkey insulting or annoying to some Chinese people. This is human and unavoidable, but still, something to watch for in ourselves.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Herostratus (talk) 00:57, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

I think this problem can be solved by a redirect link from Canton to here, or vice versa.
Since the WWII, it became common to refer to places with names determined by people from said places, instead of names given to them by foreigners, possibly as part of the self-determination ideology, or because that given names have connotations to colonialism. Recall, for example, Bombay/Mumbai, Peking/Beijing, etc..
Note that people don't necessarily find Canton to be insulting; afterall they name it the Canton Tower, and the nationwide-renowned university is still called the Peking University. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 12:44, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Native name

The native name is just Guangzhou and 市/shi is always considered an optional suffix; this is unlike the case of NYC, where C is specifically part of the city's name. This is reflected in both naming conventions[1] and official documents[2].

[1] e.g., Guangzhou Railway Station / 广州火车站 and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.

[2] Order a railway ticket or mail something in the post office, and it's always just Guangzhou in the City blank, etc..

I'm thankful of other editors' discussion on this, even if it's getting a bit heated. Staying calm is hard and takes many, many practices to master. :) 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 01:38, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for creating this thread (I didn't see it until just now).
I agree that the suffix (whether it's 市 or 区 or 县 or whatever) is always optional when discussing place names. However, Wikipedia consistently uses the suffix in native_name, as seen in over 4000 toponym articles. Just check any of the pages on these lists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prefectures_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_China
Why should Guangzhou be an exception? Kbaiko (talk) 01:08, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
By the way, I have actually gone through the entire list of prefectures and (almost) the entire list of counties (with some help from a script), and checked the native_name and other data on each page. A look at the edit history of List_of_counties_in_China will hopefully convince one of that. Kbaiko (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
I have no idea about how other cities are named, nor do I know exactly what native_name field is supposed to contain. My opinion is that suffixes are appended to names that are not widely known or are ambiguous to avoid confusion (e.g., 天河 without a suffix may refer to the district, a supercomputer, or the cosmos, the word's literal meaning).
It's likely that names of big cities and provinces are unique and widely-known enough to omit the suffix; Guangzhou, Beijing and Sichuan (province), is very unique, and there isn't a homonym to confuse them with.
Contrast them with say, Forbidden City / 紫禁城 lit. the forbidden city of magenta; in this case the "city"城 is mandatory and an inherent part of the name; and without it the name is ambiguous both in writing and when spoken. Forbidden magenta is a plausible noun and 紫禁 is homonym to 紫金 (rose gold, also a prefecture's name) and 子矜.
Another thought is that 市 may count as grammatical postmodfiers instead of an inherent part of one's name; its inclusion is often circumstantial and context-dependent.
Ultimately, I think both names work equally well and what we put in the field won't bother our readers at all. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 12:30, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
I appreciate you taking the time to write out a reasoned response.
I agree with most of what you say in theory, but in practice, Wikipedia includes the suffix. No doubt Guangzhou is one of the biggest prefecture-level cities, but Shenzhen has a larger population and still has native_name suffixed with 市, along with many other cities with comparable population or fame (see Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Qingdao etc). Even Shanghai has it. And as I've tried to explain (apparently to no avail to Gzyeah), every single prefecture and county-level toponym article includes the suffix. Perhaps it's to deal with ambiguity in Chinese, as you say.
On a pedantic note, I actually think it's more important Guangzhou gets the suffix than any of the cities above because 州 is a division (for example, see Dali_Bai_Autonomous_Prefecture, 大理州). Someone who looks at Wikipedia's other articles and notices the pattern in native_name may very well think it's the Guang Prefecture, and not read Guangzhou as a single term (again, a bit pedantic but still something to consider).
紫金 is a county by the way, not a prefecture - not trying to be nitpicky, but, maybe we do need the suffixes after all :) (also do you mean 自矜?)
Anyways, thanks again for creating this discussion topic. It's much better to talk it out than endlessly revert edits back and forth. Kbaiko (talk) 03:43, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
When arranging the relevant edits, you are supposed to follow the "official_name" field prepared for "Guangzhou City" as the administrative term, rather than keeping to take the liberty of pushing your own initiatives with denying "Guangzhou" as the most accurate neutral term for the "native_name" field. Let's respect the design of infobox structure as a part of coding habits. Think twice before you act, and don't be overthinking. Gzyeah (talk) 08:25, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Respectfully, that's just your opinion, which is at odds with the rest of Wikipedia. Please check literally any other prefecture or county-level division's article and consider if you've misunderstood the meaning of the two fields.
"you are supposed to follow ...", says who? You?
Let's check the documentation Template:Infobox_settlement#Name_and_transliteration
>Avoid using official_name if it leads to redundancy with name and settlement_type. Use official_name if the official name is unusual or cannot be simply deduced from the name and settlement type.
I'd say this actually indicates we should not use official_name, since "Guangzhou City" is redundant with "Guangzhou" and "City" and there is nothing "unusual" or "hard to deduce" about it. So I think the correct choice is to have settlement_type set to city (which it is), native_name set to 广州市 (in line with again, ~4000 other articles), and omit official_name entirely.
An example of an infobox that should have official_name would be Dali_Bai_Autonomous_Prefecture, since the native_name is 大理州, while the official_name includes the ethnic group, 大理白族自治州, which can't be deduced from 大理 and 州. Kbaiko (talk) 11:39, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
By discussing with you as a native rooted over decades, your opinions are totally not convincing based on life-time daily practices. Is there any existing case with someone misunderstanding the names so far? How possible does the problem you believed would happen and if any data estimated about whom failed to identify the words or differentiate the meanings behind? If the character inherited from history (e.g. "Zhou" in this case), it will be romanised as part of the native name by Chinese governmental authorities. If the character applied to insist the administrative division of town (e.g. "Shi"/City in this case), it will be adopted as part of the official name which involved the most common native name in its structure. Gzyeah (talk) 05:00, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
I already said that the point about "Guang Prefecture" was a pedantic concern, not necessarily a common issue. It was a hypothesis why native_name might need the suffix.
You are misunderstanding the infobox fields and insist on obstinately pushing your misinformed interpretation. The documentation makes it clear that official_name is not necessary for Guangzhou, and native_name should be 廣州市/广州市, similar to ~4000 other articles. Respect the rules of the infobox and consensus on Wikipedia. Kbaiko (talk) 11:15, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
You need an actual reference from a WP:RS stating explicitly the native name for this city in order to support the change; it would otherwise count as OR. Other articles on Wikipedia should not be used as reference for new edits, see Don't cite Wikipedia on Wikipedia. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 12:19, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
You are advised to review your planning of the changes, plus reminded to avoid WP:POINT, do WP:LISTEN, keep WP:COURTESY and stop WP:HOUNDING as mentioned repeately in other venues. Gzyeah (talk) 05:06, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Here's a simpler solution: go to zhwiki and ask people over there. Problem solved. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 12:07, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Ok. I looked at multiple zh toponym articles, they show one single name with the 市 character. So I think this supports what I'm saying, we don't need both native_name and official_name, just one of them, and whichever one we use should have 市 in it.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/广州市 Kbaiko (talk) 13:34, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Again, don't use Wikipedia to cite Wikipedia.
Note that the article is named so because of disambiguation reasons. See the disamb page in zhwiki of 广州.
Again, get yourself a source before changing long standing content with silent consent, and especially when reinstating such edits after they're reverted by multiple other editors. 海盐沙冰 / aka irisChronomia / Talk 13:46, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Related Articles

Wikiwand AI