Talk:Brunei dollar

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Y Done - move carried out per below consensus. References, common use in English, and so on all seem to support "Brunei dollar". Neıl ☎ 14:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Move

Requesting this page be moved back to Brunei dollar. The reasoning are:

1. This is the English Wikipedia. The correct term for Brunei's currency is the Brunei Dollar in English. Even the abbreviation bears this out with BND. (However, note that the correct name for the Bruneian currency in the Malay language, which is the official language in Brunei, is the "Ringgit")
2. The words "Brunei Dollar" is clearly printed on the paper notes (e.g. [1])
3. In the english press and other official sites, the phrase "brunei dollar" is preferred (e.g. Borneo Bulletin, Royal Brunei Airlines, Government of Brunei)
4. The word "ringgit" is seldom used when referring to the Brunei dollar in English. "Ringgit" is usually reserved for the Malaysian currenty.
   

Proposed changes for the following associated pages:
Brunei ringgit to Brunei dollar
Coins of the Brunei ringgit to Coins of the Brunei dollar
--Novelty (talk) 08:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support. That's what's printed on the bank notes in English[2] but good luck getting past the currency naming conventions which contradict WP:Use English, WP:Common name, and WP:Common Sense. — AjaxSmack 05:09, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. A legitimate, correct English name, clearly supported by the BND symbol. Gene Nygaard (talk) 15:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Ringgit is the local name, used on all coins and banknotes. There's no contradiction between Wikipedia:WikiProject_Numismatics/Style and WP:Use English, WP:Common name or WP:Common Sense. It is an additional convention used for very good reasons. Ringgit is as much an English word as dollar (both originating from other languages), it is the common name in Brunei and using the local name, as written on all the money, is common sense.
  Dove1950 (talk) 20:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • If ringgit is the local English name, then who defaced the currency with the word "dollar" in English and tricked all of the above sources into using "dollar" ? — AjaxSmack 23:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Actually, ringgit is the official Malay name. As I mention, it is neither used locally in conversations in either English (where the word dollar is preferred) or Malay (who prefer to use the word 'duit' = money instead). As a native Bruneian, I've never heard anyone use the word ringgit to refer to the Brunei currency ever in my life. I've never seen the word used to refer to the Brunei currency in the local English press or mass media. As I linked above, even official government sites use the word dollar for the currency in the English language. So I have no idea why the falsehood "ringgit is the local name" is being perpetuated because it is not, it's the official Malay name and should go by that title in the Malay and Indonesian wikipedia, but not the English wikipedia. --Novelty (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Originator --Novelty (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support per Ajax'z image and Novelty. We should not use "local name" and "what is printed on the currency" as tests in any case; in this case Dollar is printed on the currency and is used by locals, as well as being the English name. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Support. The arguments are plainly clear. We should Use English and Use Common Name. "Brunei ringgit" is neither correct English nor a common name. Besides, the current Numismatics naming convention, which supports the current status quo (ringgit), is undergoing a review to possibly follow WP:UE and WP:UCN instead of contradicting it. --seav (talk) 18:05, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments on move

Please vote above and add extra comments below to keep things clear

What is the official language of Brunei? Malay. Therefore, the local name is the Malay name, which is "ringgit". The fact that "dollar" has continued to be used does not mean that the local name is dollar.
Dove1950 (talk) 22:45, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I have no objections to that provided that all other wikipedia currency articles are named according to (one of) the official language of the currency involved for the sake of consistency. In which case, the New Taiwan dollar, for example, should be renamed either as the Xīntáibì or 新臺幣 as the only official language of the RoC in which that particular currency is used is standard Mandarin, ergo, it's local name must be either the Xīntáibì or 新臺幣. As it is currently, most currencies are named after their English name on wikipedia with the Bruneian currency being one of the few exceptions. --Novelty (talk) 05:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, please try not to confuse Brunei with Malaysia. The statement "The fact that "dollar" has continued to be used does not mean that the local name is dollar." is definately not true. Are there any official sources by the Brunei currency board or the Brunei Government that the local english name for the currency is not the dollar? As I have stated above, the official Government of Brunei site uses the word dollar as the currency of the currency on its English website.

Across the border in Malaysia, their currency is the malaysian ringgit in both the English and Malay languages (although only Malay is the official language there). Here in Brunei, the local name of the currency is the dollar in English and ringgit in Malay and because of that, the name dollar continues to be used for the currency in English, eventhough the language has no official status. As I said, this is the English wikipedia and therefore, the correct name for the article should really be its local common name in English which is the Brunei dollar (as opposed to the Malaysian ringgit, which is the local common name for that currency in English). Please do bear in mind that Brunei is a totally separate country from Malaysia and what may be true for the latter country may not be true for the former. Just an aside, I've got a question for Dove1950: have you lived in Brunei for any period of time? --Novelty (talk) 05:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't try reason here. Not only are the numismatic guidelines in contradiction of WP:UE and WP:COMMONNAME, they are not even internally consistent (as I have pointed out before).

Many currencies are exempt from the native language rule: most rubles, the Chinese customs gold unit, Cypriot pound, Djiboutian franc, Anglo-Saxon pound, Hawaiian dollar, Irish pound, Libyan pound, Macanese pataca, Malagasy franc, Maltese pound, Mongolian dollar, Moroccan franc, Philippine peso, Somali shilling, Somaliland shilling, Sudanese pound, Syrian pound, Old Taiwan dollar, and most rupees (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, &c.), various piastres among others.

Some of the supposed "native" names total original research. Even though the English name is perfectly alright for the Sudanese pound or the Syrian pound, it's not for the Lebanese pound, now the Lebanese lira. Even worse is the Egyptian pound which has its name taken from an online Egyptian dialect language teaching site: the Egyptian gineih.

These ridiculous names are the article titles despite clear prevalence of English usage in some cases, even at the official level as in the case of Brunei. Your example of the New Taiwan dollar is a good example. If the rules were applied there, the title would be Xīntáibì. It's safe to say that if you wrote that and asked 100 non-English-speaking Taiwanese what it meant, 99 wouldn't have a clue. But if you wrote NT$, or even said the English name, you'd likely much further. Good luck anyway. — AjaxSmack 06:40, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

And no, no one in Taiwan would even recognise the pinyin Xīntáibì, because Taiwan doesn't use much pinyin. The written form will probably be something like Sin-t'ai-pi in Wades-Giles, which is more common in Taiwan/RoC than pinyin. However the article on the New Taiwan dollar does not include either of those form, eventhough other Taiwan articles include it.. Anyways, that's not my concern as I'm not Taiwanese nor qualified to comment on the currency of a foreign country. What I do know, as someone who was born and lived his entire life in Brunei, who speaks both the official language, English, and several other languages spoken in the country, who use the currency on a daily basis, and who reads about it in the local English press and other English publications, that the local name of the currency in English is the Brunei dollar. --Novelty (talk) 09:15, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The current guidelines say the name of the currenct should not be the local name of the currency in English. They call for it to be the local name in the local language even though it contradicts WP:UE and WP:UCN. — AjaxSmack 20:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Just because Wikipedia:WikiProject Numismatics/Style has yet to be applied to all the currency articles is no reason to oppose its implementation. Never forget, Wikipedia is a work in progress. Sadly, some of the examples listed above represent cases where the agreed style has been opposed by small cabals of editors not interested in implementing a sensible and consistent nomenclature. Others are not inconsistent, such as Maltese pound, which is distinct from the later Maltese lira. I agree entirely that Old Taiwan dollar and New Taiwan dollar are completely anachronistic and need renaming. Yet more cases are awaiting agreement as to the proper local form before moving them. Given time, I hope these cases will be dealt with but right now we have to deal with this one. So, is Malay the local language in Brunei or not?
Dove1950 (talk) 22:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Malay is definately NOT the local language of the minorities, and you'd be stretching it to say that Standard Malay is the local language of the Bumiputeras in daily use by the majority of the population. I'd say English is the lingua franca of the country and although it has no official status, it is widely used in industry, in education, in the mass media and in public, and the term "Brunei dollar" is by default the best local name for the currency. --Novelty (talk) 05:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Please, if I may, direct your comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics/Style#Guidelines change proposal. Fix a class of a problem, not an instance of a problem. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 20:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that searching for "Brunei ringgit" gives me 2,060 hits on Google, searching for "Brunei dollar" gives 4,530,000 hits. --Novelty (talk) 05:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.