Do we need Category: Bahamas and Category: The Bahamas?

Question

Do we need both, if not which one is correct?

1. [[:Category:Bahamas]] to which the project and subcategories are linked; and
2.  [[:Category:The Bahamas]] which is used by Template:The Bahamas. 

The UN uses Bahamas.

The Official Website of the Government of The Bahamas in text always capitalises the "T" as in "the population of The Bahamas totaled 306,611."

Wikipedia in text always uses lower case "t" as in " the Duke of Windsor was installed as Governor of the Bahamas."

Comments

If someone was entering the birth place of an ancestor in a search box, I would imagine the vast majority would enter "Bahamas," rather than "The Bahamas." I can see that having two categories for the same place is confusing and unnecessary. I would vote for consolidating the two and have "The Bahamas" redirect to "Bahamas" as a category.

Answer 1

I would vote for dropping the article. We don't refer to The United Kingdom. We don't refer to The United States.

There are plenty of categories that don't include an article. It's implied.

Answer 2

I think some consistency is important in country names.  Most countries have a "common name" and an "official name"  If you went by official name as determined by the county itself, you would find Singapore under "R" for Republic of Singapore, as well as Indonesia under "R" for Republik Indonesia.  The official name for China is surely written in Chinese characters.  And Bahamas would be found under "T" for The Behamas...

OR -- we could go by common name in our English language category stream and find Bahamas under B, China under C, Indonesia under I and Singapore under S.  

I don't think I even have to specify what my vote would be in this case!

Comments

Lesson learned from SPC the Swedish Parish project setting up +1200 categories

1. Be Clear that this Category is part of project x use an infobox on the category page
   
   We created SPC_Header 
    
2. Set up the structure following some well defined rules
   
   In SPC I tried to follow the same structure as the leading vendor in Sweden of genealogy software Arkiv Digital = they have done the mistakes already..... 
    
3. Define in the project how you handle normal problems like
    
   1. Two names defining the same object
      We used template Details and tried use Arkiv Digital telling us how e.g. Simtuna (C) see Simtuna (U)
       
   2. Disambiguation
      see Category:Disambiguation_pages e.g. Kila is a name in more places of Sweden.... Hatnotes and Disambiguation pages is a Wiki Standard but not used inside WikiTree yet.... 
       
4. It's good to set up the whole structure so not everyone has to invent the wheel more times
    
   1. We use parish name followed with county letter and tried to use the template Details when one parish has moved from one County to another e.g. Simtuna (C) see Simtuna (U)
       
5. If you have external links on the category page use Templates see SPC_Toolbox. No one seems to love Templates inside WikiTree for external references but you are making a big mistake not using them. URLs will change
   
   My understanding is not too many people creates and use Category pages and nearly no one have external links so then its not a problem....  the future will tell if we start linking and use templates.... or we will try to minimize linking and reference things outside WikiTree land... 

Answer 3

Agreed. One name, simplification. In a collaborative community, we shouldn't have competing categories.

Comments

As part of the [[:Project:Categorization]] project, I added some missing categories that fell under the [[:Category:Bahamas]] category.

Then I also cleaned up and re-organized the [[:Category:Bahamas, Cemeteries]] (and [[:Category:Barbados, Cemeteries]]) and their more specific district cemetery categories to be in line with other cemetery category usage. And I ended up adding a category page for [[:Category:Districts, Bahamas]] that lists the 32 districts and moved the (now) 3 existing district categories under that.

When I got to the two categories [[:Category:Bahamas]] and [[:Category:The Bahamas]], my first instinct was to merge them and / or to mark the [[:Category:The Bahamas]] category as a misnamed category using the [[:Template:Misnamed Category]]. Then I noted that all but one of the Bahamas profiles are listed under [[:Category:The Bahamas]] - over 200 of them and that was just the first page of As. So, I left them alone.

Are these all due to the [[:Template:The Bahamas]]?

Is there a way to fix these without changing all 2000+ profiles?

It was kind of nice that the main [[:Category:Bahamas]] category had sub-categories and only one actual profile, like a top-level category should have.

Would it be possible to link these profiles (using a template) directly to their local government districts and / or cities instead of the main [[:Category:Bahamas]] category?

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Hello Richard,

I don't know categories well enough to correctly answer your question. I think the official name for the Bahamas is The Commonwealth of the Bahamas.  In some other official instances the Bahamas is called The Bahamas.   At some point in the past it was Bahama Islands.   Postage stamps from the Bahamas simply say Bahamas and lists of world countries list the Bahamas under B and not T.

Sincerely, Peter