Commons:Categories for discussion/2023/02/Category:Rendered names of countries

Category:Rendered names of countries

I don't think anyone at Category talk:Rendered name of Albania seriously considers rendered text of Albania unique so the actual question is about: (1) the name of this parent category and each child category and (2) whether this category should be a child of Category:Symbols of countries and whether each child should also be in the respective child category. I'm perfectly fine with keeping these in place (Category:Names of countries seems odd as these are under Category:Rendered texts) and keeping each one as a symbol of the country as it is a decent enough subcategory of Category:Countries. Ricky81682 (talk) 19:26, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Answering to Ricky, Category:Names of countries seems perfectly valid and it’s the kind of intermediate category that could/should exist: It would be a parent cat of Category:Rendered names of countries, of course, in parallel with Category:Rendered texts.

(Later: Oh, Category:Country names exists and it’s seriously underpopulated and categorized. I will fix that now.)

-- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:19, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Tuvalkin, Kj1595, Jmabel, Adamant1, Pigsonthewing, RZuo, and TilmannR: who commented at Category talk:Rendered name of Albania or at the VP discussion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:34, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

• If not under Category:Symbols of FOO COUNTRY, where might these better belong under the category for FOO COUNTRY? I don't see a better place. - Jmabel ! talk 20:06, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  I am in agreement with the proposal made by Adamant1 (talk · contribs) in placing the images under the Category:Simple text logos. Perhaps creating a new subcategory Category:Simple text logos by country. Kj1595 (talk) 20:19, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  Are the images in Category:Rendered name of Algeria like File:Algeria1.png simple text logos? In contrast, Canada has Category:Simple text logos of Canada and Category:Canada (text) so maybe we need structures for the text in different languages as well? Ricky81682 (talk) 20:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  Even if some of these files are indeed "simple text logos", let’s be clear about one critical detail: These categories deal with two things each: the name of a country and a type of text — and therefore each of them must have two parent cats: One within the subcat tree under text by type and another within the subcat tree under said country. Here we’re dealing with the latter, while the mentioned proposal about "simple text logos" is about the former.

  Also, please note that Category:Simple text logos is populated by the licensing template {{PD-textlogo|simple}} so it’s probably a good idea to keep it (and its subcat tree?) away from manual categorization.

  -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:07, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  These categories deal with two things each: the name of a country and a type of text I strongly disagree that the category should deal with the type of text. Putting aside the other categories involving "rendered" images for a moment, lets say I'm a random user that wants to categorize an image of the word "Albania." How exactly would I know if it is "rendered" or not and why would I even care about categorizing the image by "type of image" in the first place? --Adamant1 (talk) 02:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  Trying to understand you:

  • It seems that you are saying that you strongly disagree that a category about X of Y should have as parent cats both Category:X and Category:Y.
  • As for your question, a random user would categorize an image of the word "Albania" under Category:Albania, and from there it would be dissiminated (by other random users) down to the appropriate category. I’m sure we all agree about that.
  • You seem to be strangely hung up on the word "rendered". If it bugs you so much, then please open another CfD in Category:Rendered texts and fight your battle there.
  • Somewhere in this discussion it was already explained why some things belong here and other belong in its parent cat Category:Country names. Do you disagree with that, too?
  • Would you be okay with Category:Country names (text) instead of Category:Rendered names of countries?

  -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 09:41, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  Concerning the given example about Canada, some thoughts:

  • Category:Simple text logos of Canada, as exemplified by its current contents, is only partially related to the subject at hand: Except for its subcat Category:Canada wordmark (which is properly categorized under Category:Symbols of Canada), the rest are unrelated text samples that happen to pertain to entities headquartered in Canada, like company logos. At most, this should/could share a common (grand)parent cat with Category:Rendered name of Canada, but nothing more.
  • Category:Canada (text), and many of this kind of litteral categories, has the potential to become a disambiguation category, as the word "canada" has various meanings in several languages, apart from the country name.

  And, of course, this applies to most other countries, not just especially Canada. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:37, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with Jmabel that there’s no better place. However, seeing how this user was unsettled by the notion of Commons conflating generic symbols of a country (things like its ccTLD, former national flags, unofficial nicknames and personifications, streets named after that country, etc etc) with its official national symbols, I propose that, for each of these country categories named Category:Symbols of Country, we create an intermediate Category:National symbols of Country to have as its parent cats both the said Category:Symbols of Country and Category:National symbols. Only officially sanctioned current national symbols of each contry would go on these new cats, leaving everything else within the current cats. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:14, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

  @Tuvalkin: I like where you are going with that, but it does not seem that merely adding 'national' to 'symbols of Country' does the trick, if the trick is to segregate official from non-official symbology. Instead, lets keep it simple and say what we mean and call it "Official symbols of Country". This is much more clearly to be only those symbols that are officially sanctioned. "National symbols of Country" just sounds like duplication, in that 'national' simply implies that they are of the country. Josh (talk) 17:24, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree. I’m merely trying to accommodate the status quo, as Category:National symbols already exists while it’s more clearly named alternative Category:Official symbols of countries does not. However, I would say that all the putative new cats (Category:Official symbols of Albania, Category:Official symbols of Canada etc) could have as one of their parent cats the existing Category:National symbols, no qualms there. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 17:53, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Agreed with Jmabel, don't see a better place to have this. - Chris.sherlock2 (talk) 15:02, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Why are there image files of just plain word texts here/on Commons? Prototyperspective (talk) 14:56, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

@Prototyperspective: probably for things like their use at az:2014_Avroviziya_Mahnı_Müsabiqəsi#1-ci_yarımfinal_2. There are ways to do that entirely in HTML and CSS, so it's not strictly necessary, but there seems to be a fair amount of use of it in some of the Wikipedias, so we probably need to continue to support it. - Jmabel ! talk 19:24, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the info; this addresses & solves my concern. Regarding question (1) of the nominator, I think category titles like "SVG texts of country names" or "SVG text files of country names" or sth like that would be better partly due to being clearer and because "Rendered" is I think not the right term for this. However, in regards to the latter that may be a broader issue – and I wonder how files like File:A Specimen by William Caslon.jpg belong into cats like Category:Rendered texts in Gothic script. Prototyperspective (talk) 20:29, 9 April 2026 (UTC)