Talk:Oka (river)

Etymology

Doesn't the name Oka come from PIE root *akwa? --85.156.228.187 (talk) 18:59, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it does, but some know-it-alls keep removing this. --Ghirla^-трёп- 17:34, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Oka's name is Baltic origin, cf. Latvian aka 'well'. Roberts7 22:10, 6 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Roberts7 (talk • contribs)

Oka River

@Markussep: moved the article "Oka River" to "Oka (river)" without leaving a redirect, stating "River" is not part of the name, see WP:NCRIVER and WT:RIVERS#Article titles for rivers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. However, the common English seems to be "Oka River". See, for example, the Britannica article. The section NCRIVER points to (Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers#Naming) and indicates River articles may be named "X", "X River", or "River X", depending on location and most common usage. The reference to "WT:RIVERS#Article titles for rivers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus" should have been to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 6#Article titles for rivers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, a discussion that does reach the conclusion for such rivers that it does not matter what the common English usage is, because in local usage those rivers are known without the equivalent word for river in the title, and that all such rivers should be in the form "X (river)" where disambiguation is necessary. I should note however that the usual Slavic form where river is in the title is "River X", and that "Река Ока" does appear as the title in some Russian articles, for example here, here, and here; as well as "Rzeka Oka" in Polish here for example. The Russian Wikipedia considers the river to be the primary target for "Oka", and nothing on the Oka (disambiguation) page in the English Wikipedia seems to suggest otherwise. I suggest that the article should be moved to "Oka" as the primary topic, with an appropriate hatnote to the disambiguation page. --Bejnar (talk) 20:24, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I would say that English usage is mixed ("X River" and "X"), like it is for many other rivers. In the discussion mentioned above I tested that for the Volga, let's see what the same encyclopedias and dictionaries say about the Oka. Britannica: Oka River, Columbia: Oka, encyclopedia.com: Oka (Columbia copy), Lexico: no entry, Merriam-Webster: Oka, American Heritage: Oka, Collins: Oka. Like you I thought that the Volga tributary would be the primary topic, but apparently the car (named after the river), the village in Canada and the cheese (named after the village) get almost as many views. So it seems there is no real primary topic here. Markussep ^Talk 11:18, 5 September 2021 (UTC)