Why does a country name in Project badges start with a lowercase letter instead of a capital letter?

Question

I have noticed that, against the official European and American language roles, the names of countries on the Project badges for countries start with a lowercase letter. 

Is there a special reason for it?

Names of countrys always start with a capital letter, we learned  in elementary school, so even kids now. The badge is a representation of a project and give a strange impression this way.

Can this be canged to give these badges the right look.

Also I noticed that the badge of former Dutch Roots Project now is "Project Member netherlands". Official the name in English for Nederland is "the Netherlands" Look in an offical dictionary, no Wikipedia, to convince. The preposition starts with a lowercase letter, the country name with an uppercase.

So please don't violate official languages roles and use for the Netherlands the name "Nederland" or "the Netherlands".

I have been using Wikitree with pleasure for a few years now and in general the most is well organized, thanks for that. Things have canged and improved in recents years, thanks for that also. Maybe time to pay attention to this? Then you Wikitree managers deserve a big thanks.... ​​​​ 

Comments

Starting a country name on badges with a small letter instead of a capital letter is the same on all badges for all projects (not just those for countries).  It has been this way for many years and is a 'house style'.

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yes but not all badges represent Country names, so the house style is wrong for many years don't you think?

The same as the English name for my Country, the Netherlands not Netherland.

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No, I think this is the house style.  For instance: magna carta, rangers...this is the way they do it.

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Ros is correct. It's just the style.

These actually aren't the names of the projects, they're the tags for the projects, e.g. united_kingdom for the United Kingdom Project. All-lowercase used to be how we wrote tags everywhere, but that changed, so I can understand the confusion.

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Thanks, Chris. So the Dutch_Roots project is now the Netherlands project? Does that mean we should use/follow the tag Netherlands in G2G (this information is missing from the help page about projects)? 

And if the project needed to change name to conform to new standards, why not the Nederland project? (That is, why must we use English language for projects for all projects when wikitree is international - and I am asking as an English language speaker who does not read/speak Dutch).

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These are the tags shown on the badge, now I understand the underscore between united and kingdom.

For me a badge is something like a business card, shown on my profilepage. Its said something about what I do and the organization behind it. So if people see a badge like that and they are not aware about the background, they maybe wonder what kind of people we are who cannot even write the name of there own country properly.

But so be it.... is just a name. Wikitree members know us for what we, Dutch Roots members (a subproject now) are doing, thats the most important.

Thanks for the answers,

Greetings Joop

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And you guys are doing really good things! :)

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Why isn't it possible to change house style rules if we change  so much in Wikitree anyway? I do agree that it's fundamentally wrong to write country's without a Capital and if the Dutch Roots project had to change to 'Netherlands' I can't understand why the badge style can't be changed to start with a Capital. Rules and styles although used for several years can change (see the current setup of how you would like us to use the categories).

Answer 1

Just throwing this out there...

United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names "List of Country Names"

Comments

thanks Nelda, it's confirms what I said.

English:  Netherlands (the)