Talk:Penhelig railway station

Name of the village in English

There appears to be a dispute on whether to use the the Welsh name (Aberdyfi) or the anglicised version (Aberdovey) in this article. On other Wikipedia articles Aberdyfi is used to refer to the village and Aberdovey to refer to the main railway station. There has been a similar discussion in the talk page on the Aberdyfi article in which it has been said that the Welsh spelling is standard nowadays. On further research I discovered that the Welsh spelling is favoured by the Aberdyfi Community Council, the Gwynedd Council, the Welsh government and the BBC while the anglicised spelling is favoured by online maps, Network Rail, National Rail and Arriva Trains Wales. The same goes for the river Dyfi and the Dyfi Valley while Dyfi Forest has become more or less universally accepted in English. The official website for the village uses the address aberdyfi.com while another website, aberdovey.org.uk, mostly uses Aberdyfi saying it is the generally accepted spelling describing Aberdovey as the olde English spelling though most map and routefinder sites accept both spellings these days.

I would still suggest using Aberdyfi to refer to the village and Aberdovey to refer to the main station to be consistent with other English Wikipedia articles. Tk420 (talk) 12:14, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

This is the English Wikipedia (there is also Wicipedia Cymraeg, which has articles like, for example, Gorsaf reilffordd Penhelig and Aberdyfi). It's called "English" because that is the language that it is written in; and where a place has two names, we use the English one, see WP:UE. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:53, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Also, this edit was contrary to WP:BRD. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:55, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Actually the manual of style does contain region-specific guidelines for placenames (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)) but there is no mention of which name to use for Welsh places if the English and Welsh names are different. In other Wales related articles editors appear to follow the style set out in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Ireland-related_articles#Place_names but that is for Irish names. I have decided to post a message in the talk page to the Aberdyfi article to see if anyone can help. Tk420 (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Great to see you two getting all Lyfi Dyfi here, but yes, I agree it needs to be decided as a high-level article style convention. Normally what a community calls itself might be the best indication. But in this case that might disregard hundreds of years of glorious Anglo-Welsh railway history? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Most of the time when a Welsh place name was changed the name of the railway station serving it was changed accordingly, e.g. Towyn station became Tywyn and Portmadoc is now Porthmadog, and heritage railways have also followed this practice. However the railway companies still use the anglicised versions for Aberdovey and Dovey Junction. Tk420 (talk) 18:21, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

I've just 'driven' into Aberdovey/Aberdyfi on Google Street View and they have both names on their signs at the entrance to the village (as is normal in Wales with most placenames). It strongly suggests Aberdovey is the English spelling, rather than the 'old' spelling. Other places such as Carnarfon have officially dropped the English spelling, but this doesn't seem to be the case with Aberdovey. Being in the Welsh-speaking heartland of Gwynedd it doesn't surprise me that the locals prefer the Welsh version, but I imagine visitors (including me) still know it as Aberdovey.
I'm surprised the English Wikipedia uses Aberdyfi as the name, but I see there was a heated edit war in 2005/6 where the 'Aberdovey' supporters backed down, though the discussion on the Talk page seemed to be unresolved. Maybe the discussion needs to be revived and concluded there. Sionk (talk) 21:41, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

I checked Google Street View myself and have noticed the same with the signs on the approach to the village. However I have noticed differently with the direction signs. The signs pointing towards Aberdyfi in Gwynedd tend to only use the Welsh name for it. I presume this is because the Gwynedd Council which is responsible for the signs favours the Welsh spelling. I also found a bilingual sign pointing to Aberdyfi/Aberdovey in Machynlleth, which is in Powys, but the biligual sign for the Dyfi Eco Park up the road only uses the Welsh spelling for the nearby river which the park is named after. Tk420 (talk) 18:21, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

On further research with online maps I discovered that Google Earth uses Aberdovey while Google Maps uses Aberdyfi and Bing Maps uses the bilingual Aberdovey/Aberdyfi. As for the hamlet of Glandyfi across the river, only the Welsh spelling for it is used on today's maps and road signs though I have seen the anglicised Glandovey on old maps. Tk420 (talk) 21:00, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I did start a move discussion in the Aberdyfi article but the result was to keep the Welsh spelling for the name of the article. The solution suggested in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Multiple local names is to adopt the name used by the linguistic majority if English usage is indecisive. In some cases a compromise is reached to avoid giving the impression of support for a particular national point of view e.g. in the case of Derry/Londonderry the compromise on Wikipedia is to use Derry for the city, where it is widely used locally although its official name in the UK is Londonderry, but Londonderry for the county. There is, however, still no official compromise for Aberdyfi/Aberdovey with the current de-facto compromise being to use the Welsh spelling for the village but the anglicised spelling for the railway and lifeboat stations, owing to its continued use by the railway companies and the RNLI respectively, and the river. Tk420 (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

For articles about railway stations, such as this one, we use the name of the station as used by the railway itself, on station signs, in timetables, etc. If the railway uses both English and Welsh names, we use the English one because this is the English Wikipedia. What Google Maps do is immaterial. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Aberdyfi has an RFC

Aberdyfi has an RFC for possible consensus over the usage of alternate spellings for the name of the community on the English language Wikipedia. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.Tk420 (talk) 10:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)