Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography/Archive/WikiProject UK subdivisions/English districts

This has been updated and can now be found at WP:UKDISTRICTS

Braintree

Well, it looks like you're doing a lot of work here, so well done there, but I'm not sure this is all right, is it? How many districts in England are actually known by the same name as their main town? I found an article at Braintree (district) just now. Who calls the Braintree district "Braintree"? I live in the Braintree district, but I don't consider myself as living in Braintree. I moved the page to Braintree District, as I thought that seemed a more appropriate name (cf. "Braintree District Council"). Perhaps the same should be done for the other places...? -- Oliver P. 02:54, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The district is called Braintree, or maybe District of Braintree. Calling it Braintree District or Braintree district is incorrect. The council is called Breiantree District Council, but this doesn't mean that its called Braintree District, only that it _is_ a District. Leicester City Council doesn't administer Leicester City. Morwen 23:39, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean by "incorrect" in this context? If you're happy calling the district the "District of Braintree", we can call it that, although if you do a Google search, you'll find plenty of people calling it "Braintree District" or "Braintree district" as well. (Braintree District Council itself describes its website as "The official Council website for Braintree district".) "Braintree" without further qualification just means the town. The villages surrounding Braintree are not (well, maybe occasionally) described as being in Braintree, even though they are clearly in the District of Braintree. -- Oliver P. 00:33, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Have a look at [1] for example. You will see it refers the district as the 'district of Braintree' without even a capital - '"district" means the district of Braintree;'. However, this doesn't mean the district's name is the "district of Braintree", it means that they are clearly stating which of the many possible uses of the term Braintree they mean. Likewise, we are using standard wikipedia disambiguation practice to make it clear we are referring to Braintree the district. I could cope with moving them _all_ to borough of X or district of X, but this isn't something special for braintree. Morwen 19:53, Mar 10, 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't think Braintree was special; I just brought it up as the example I was most familiar with. Anyway, thanks for the link. Now I'm in two minds. You must be right that the official name for the district is "Braintree", but it still seems that nobody refers to it by that name alone. If even the official documents consistently refer to it using the phrase "district of Braintree", we should presumably call it that in our articles (and picture captions!), too. That might support district of Braintree as an article title. On the other hand, if we had it at Braintree (district), we could more easily link the word "district" separately: "district of Braintree" (using the pipe trick). Maybe I should just stop worrying about it. But if it is decided to move the pages to borough of X and district of X, I can move the pages if you like... -- Oliver P. 00:31, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I like being able to use the pipe trick. I dunno really. Morwen 19:16, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

moved conversation

moved "Borough of" discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK subdivisions.