Talk:Districts of Switzerland

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Article naming[edit]

I suggest the district articles be renamed to the format "X District":

TrueColour (talk) 20:36, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No objections, though that should be "X district", lowercase d, per WP:MOSCAP.  Sandstein  21:20, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Translations of proper names, thus uppercase, as one would do with the native proper name. TrueColour (talk) 21:27, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Amtsbezirk Bern" is not a proper name, it's a compound noun. Only "Bern" is the proper name. We also don't translate "die Stadt Bern" as "the City of Bern", or "die Strasse nach Bern" as "the Road to Bern".  Sandstein  21:33, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That it is compound is not contrary to it to be a proper name. For the road: there are several roads to Bern. If one talks about a specific road it is capitalized: Houston Street, Broadway. It is New York City, not New York city. The object is called "Amtsbezirk Bern". Per WP:MOSCAP it is also "Southern California" not "southern California". TrueColour (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

TrueColour, all nouns are capitalized in German orthography, so it is perfectly irrelevant that Bezirk is capitalized. I am fine with dropping the parentheses, but I agree that "district" should be in lowercase. So, Bülach (district) and Bülach district are equally acceptable to me. --dab (𒁳) 12:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

German casing is irrelevant. The examples were only brought to show that the class name even in the native languages is part of the name. Relevant is English casing, as in Southern California, Houston Street, New York City. TrueColour (talk) 18:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, what is relevant is English "casing". But it is unclear what you think any of your examples have to do with anything. Nobody was suggesting NYC should be spelled "new York city". Find examples with "District" vs. "district" if you want a valid comparandum. --dab (𒁳) 16:48, 31 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just to be sure, did you look at Talk:District#List of district article sets and page name format? For English speaking countries: Category:Districts of Liberia and Category:Territorial Authorities of New Zealand - the latter does not only contain districts, but this is due to not so good article naming, WP:WPNZ only lately cleaned up the regions: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject New Zealand/Archive 3#Regional categories and articles. TrueColour (talk) 19:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In a table in a Zürich article itself, the city districts are uppercase: Zürich_(district)#Municipalities_.28subdivisions.29_of_the_district_of_Z.C3.BCrich TrueColour (talk) 23:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, not all articles in Category:Districts of Switzerland use "(district)". I wouldn't add it to articles where it's currently not needed.
If just "district" would be used, I think it should remain in lowercase as it's a translated term. BTW the quote from Wikipedia:MOS#Geographical_items isn't really relevant to this. -- 签名 sig at 01:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In titles like Gotthard Base Tunnel, "Base Tunnel" is translated like is "District" in "X District". Same for republic in "Helvetic Republic". It's uppercase even for translated terms. TrueColour (talk) 22:03, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that the "X District" naming proposed by TrueColour here but rejected by the other participants has now been enacted by User:Schwyz. Knepflerle (talk) 09:15, 13 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all- I propose that the Swiss canton district articles be restored to the format "<District Name> (district)", as they were before TrueColour/Schwyz (blocked sockpuppets, see above) unilaterally named them. I am posting here after having changed Gruyère District to Gruyère (Swiss district) (revision history here), then discussing the topic with someone who reverted my change. The article names as they stand are awkward in English, especially with district capitalized. Eric talk 04:19, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
After our chat yesterday, noticed that the Wikiproject's article naming convention is to use X (district). Either X (district) or X district are fine with me, just as long as the usage is consistent across all the articles.Tobyc75 (talk) 20:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for finding the project naming convention info, Toby. That strengthens my preference for restoring the format to X (district). But I would love not to have to undertake the whole name restoration task myself. Eric talk 00:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My preference, as indicated above, is "X district", because it is a straight translation of "Amtsbezirk X" / "district de X". The name "X (district)" is incorrect, because the "district" is part of the name, not a disambiguator introduced by us.  Sandstein  12:39, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
While I don't have any big problem with the X district format, I do not think our goal should necessarily be to translate the full name of something like a district--that is how problems like X District arise. Wikipedia often--I think correctly--employs parentheses in article names to distinguish between uses of words that are unambiguous when used in context, but whose different uses are made clear in article titles with help of a disambiguating term, e.g. Gruyère (disrict/cheese) and Rhône (river/department). Eric talk 13:21, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "district" isn't a standardized layer across Switzerland. Function and designation of layers between canton and municipality vary from one canton to the other. While the function and borders evolve in a canton, sometimes the designation is changed. If all these are translated with "district", this may generate more confusion rather than help readers. -- 签名 sig at 22:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Good point; thanks for the input. Eric talk 17:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong items in the category[edit]

I removed Emmental from the category and will do so with Emmental-Oberaargau. Template:Canton Berne is causing the inclusions, I think it is not good to have the category tag in the template. This is not common behavior and will lead to wrong inclusions, e.g. when there is a page districts of Berne and it includes the template. TrueColour (talk) 20:33, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Appenzell Innerrhoden Inconsistency[edit]

The article lead says:

Eight of the 26 cantons – ... Appenzell Innerrhoden, ... – have always existed without the district level of government.

The Appenzell Innerrhoden section of the article says:

The Canton is divided into 6 districts

and:

In Appenzell Innerrhoden districts are the lowest administrative division

I've marked these as inconsistent. -- Starbois (talk) 18:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relationship between Valais districts and flags[edit]

The article says:

Valais is divided into 13 districts, representing the 13 stars on the flag of Valais

That means that Valais was deliberately divided into 13 districts, because the flag had (for unspecified reasons) 13 stars. That strikes me as rather perverse, and I cannot help wondering if we have cause and effect the wrong way round here. Adding cite needed to try and drive a resolution. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 17:26, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, no response in three months, so removing reference to the flag. Please feel free to reinsert if you can find a reference to the canton being divided into 13 because the flag had 13 stars. Or to reinsert and rephrase if you can find a reference to the flag having 13 stars because the canton was divided into 13 districts. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 16:02, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So what to districts actually do, and how are they governed[edit]

This article goes into chapter and verse about what districts exist where, without satisfactorily answering the question of what they are. The closest is comes is to say that they 'generally provide only administration and ...', but administration is such a vague word that you could argue that definition fits pretty much every local government body anywhere in the world.

I know that the answer is probably different canton by canton, but I think this article needs to indicated what specific functions districts are responsible for. If it is only court organisation, say so, and drop the administration weasel word. If there are other specific responsibilities, list them. Also how are districts governed; are there district elections, or does the canton appoint a prefect, or what?. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 15:43, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a context template to the article, to attract attention and hope this request gets more response than those above.-- chris_j_wood (talk) 15:51, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Hi, i'll roughly translate some information from the official description found on various state websites, i hope it helps, but districts are clearly not well defined. Districts are not public bodies, but only administrative entities. They perform cantonal decentralized administrative duties, in particular in the sphere of health (hospitals, public hygiene), education (schools), justice (tribunals) and general administration (fiscality, Office of Foreclosure and Bankruptcy, ecc. (by the law every canton makes "circondaries" and each has its own office)). Until about 1950, district played a central role in swiss statistics: not only they represented the only intermediate spacial entities between municipalities and cantons, but for costs reasons, many charts of censuses of the popoulation were presented only at district level (this part is not very clear in italian too). For historical comparison, and naturally to document these official istitutional entities, these data are of a certain interest. Recently, districts were were integrated in european regional statistics. However, following municipality aggregations, creation of territorial development areas and LIM regions (Federal law of help to investments in mountain regions) they lost a lot of their importance. In the european regionalization system (Eurostat), swiss districts constitute UAL 1 level (see European regionalization NUTS and UAL). Local land registries are also district level at least in ticino. I add that districts are used to split the territory by other non-official things, for example used by hunting federation, lower level of political party (there are internal political equilibrium and representation inside cantonal parties), etc. --Maurazio (talk) 12:22, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Thurgau[edit]

It is stated 'a reduction of eight to four districts is under discussion': when, especially as the other areas were changed several years ago Jackiespeel (talk) 17:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

St Gallen[edit]

Appears twice on the list: and it is said there are 26 cantons, but only 19 are listed. Jackiespeel (talk) 17:03, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for noticing double St. Gallen. The reason only 19 are listed is that 7 do not have districts.Tobyc75 (talk) 20:55, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I am coming across various minor anomalies and imperfections as I develop the Local government history wiki (and correcting what I can) - if you wish to make use of it feel free. Jackiespeel (talk) 21:31, 26 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If you're looking at local government history, for Switzerland take a look at mergers and name changes since 1960.Tobyc75 (talk) 14:12, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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