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Azerbaijan Stub‑class Low‑importance

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Armenia Stub‑class

Aghstafa (river) is within the scope of WikiProject Armenia, an attempt to improve and better organize information in articles related or pertaining to Armenia and Armenians. If you would like to contribute or collaborate, you could edit the article attached to this page or visit the project page for further information.ArmeniaWikipedia:WikiProject ArmeniaTemplate:WikiProject ArmeniaArmenian Stub This article has been rated as Stub-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Rivers Unassessed

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Gragg

Gragg, this is not a place to continue edit wars from the Russian wiki. You know the result of discussions there. Grandmaster 10:53, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Name

Discussion on the Russian Wiki can not be a base to remove a page in the English Wiki. As the source of the river is in Armenia, I think it should be moved back to Aghstev, as other rivers, which flow through Armenia and the Azerbaijan or an other coutry.--Vacio (talk) 15:09, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It is difficult to find which form is more used since Aghstafa has other meanings as well an is the name of an Azeri rayon. However the form Aghstev is prefered by a.o.:

• Britannica Encyclopedia
• NationMaster Encyclopedia

According to WP:NC we should use the most common name in English.--Vacio (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

NationMaster is a[REDACTED] mirror.

Google search:

Agstafa - 49,500 hits

Aghstafa - 1,360 hits

Aghstev - 1,010 hits

Agstev - 529 hits

Both Agstafa and Aghstafa get more hits than Aghstev or Agstev. Thus, the present title should remain. Grandmaster 16:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The hits, according to you, Agstafa get can not be valid because:

• as earlier said in the most cases it refers to the Agstafa city or district, not the river
• you searched in az.google, however the name must be common in English, not in Azeri
• you searched Agstafa with a small letter (agstafa).

If you search in google.com, with advanced search on the English language:

• Aghstafa - 994 hits
• "Aghstafa river" - 54 hits
• Aghstev - 752 hits
• "Aghstev river" - 108 hits

Aghstafa in the most cases refers to the eponymous Azeri district and city and therefore if you explicitly search for the Aghstafa river you get only 54 hits. The name Aghstev river is thus more common in English than Aghstafa. Moreover, Aghstev is also used in UN publications . I think these facts, together with the argument that the river originates and flows first through Armenia then through Azerbaijan, are enough to move the article back to the original title version.--Vacio (talk) 06:00, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Aghstafa still gets more hits than Aghstev: Aghstev - 792 hits And the name is not always used together with the word river. And the fact that there's a city in Azerbaijan named after the river is another strong argument in support of the present name. The city is not named after Aghstev, it is named after Aghstafa. No city in Armenia is named after the river. Plus, in Russia and Soviet Union the river has historically been Aghstafa (Akstafa), see Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: , Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Акстафа (река на Кавказе), modern Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary . Grandmaster 06:19, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

And it was historically called Akstafa by western sources too, see 1896 source:

The valley of the Akstafa river, until one has passed Delijan, presents to the traveller a series of scenes of the utmost beauty.

Walter Burton Harris. From Batum to Baghdad. Adamant Media Corporation, 2000. ISBN 1402197829, 9781402197826

Grandmaster 06:38, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure other western travellers from the 19th c. or ealier called it also Agstev or otherwise, when they visited the region (your source says nothing that Akstafa is the historical name). The point is what is the contemporary common name in English. Thus Brockhaus, GSE and other Russian sources can not be used as starting point for English language articles. Also the fact that there is a city in Azerbaijan with the name Aghstafa, is absulutely not an argument to use the present title. It explains why you get more hits if you search for Aghstafa without specifieing that you search for the river. --Vacio (talk) 07:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

And how do you know that the common name is Aghstev? Sources that report from Armenia call it Agstev, and sources that report from Azerbaijan call it Aghstafa. Note that Britannica also says that Aghstev is a river in Armenia, but says nothing about Azerbaijan, where the longer part of the river runs, which means that it refers only to the Armenian part of it. There's no common English name for this river. But in the former USSR/Russia region, to which both countries belonged for centuries, the river has always been called Aghstafa or Akstafa. Grandmaster 10:46, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Something to consider: in Google books, we have the following results:

Agstev river - 53

Aghstev river - 20

Aghstafa river - 2 (one of which does not refer to the river, but to the city

Agstafa river - 7 (only one of which appears to be about the river)

In Google Scholar, we get the following:

Aghstev river - 9 (of which 2 appear to refer to the river)

Agstev river - 9 (most of which appear to be about the river)

Agstafa river - 16 (only one appears to be about the river)

Aghstafa river 9 (only 1 or 2 appear to be about the river)

Based on this fairly quick Google sampling, it seems that either Agstev or Aghstev are favored in scholarly books, while they are pretty evenly split in scholarly journals (i.e, only a couple of appearances for each spelling variation). Based on the Google Book results, it seems that Agstev is the preferred spelling in English. Parsecboy (talk) 05:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Stub-Class Azerbaijan articles
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