Jump to content

Category talk:Kazakhstani emigrants to Russia

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Name

[edit]

Should we not rename this Kazakhstani immigrants to Russia? It seems more standard to use the "immigrants to place x" and then add the place of origin, than "y emigrants" and then add the place of destination. See Category:Romanian immigrants to Israel, Category:Algerian immigrants to France, Category:Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, Category:Mexican immigrants to the United States among many others.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:34, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, this old chestnut. This issue has quite the history. Back in December 2008, I made a formal proposal to change some that used "emigrants" to "immigrants". There was no consensus for the change, and I actually came to agree that using "emigrants" is correct. Why? "Kazakhstani" is an adjective. Adjectives modify nouns—in this case the noun is the subject of the phrase. So the subject of the phrase that is being modified will be either "emigrants" or "immigrants". "Kazakhstani" describes the nationality of the person, i.e., where they are coming from. Thus, the noun that the adjective modifies should also be one that suggests the person is coming from that place. That word is emigrants. An emigrant is a person who is leaving a place. An immigrant is a person going to a place. Here, "Russia" is the place that the subject is going to, but it is the object of the phrase, not the subject. The subject and its modifying adjective need to agree, which is why "Kazakhstani emigrants to Russia" is correct. This has been debated back and forth in a number of forums a few times, including the speedy rename section. An agreement has been reached that we need a full CFD nomination to work these out.
It's my opinion that all those that are named "FOOian immigrants to XXX" are incorrectly named, and should be nominated for a change to "emigrants". The problem is that there are so many of them, it would be a mammoth task to nominate them all for a discussion, especially when there is a chance that other users would not agree with what I have set out above. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:12, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]