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There is NO mention of the spread of, nor the existence of, maize through what is now Northern Mexico and then into North America. 2601:244:4601:BA50:2CC2:8250:4783:1309 (talk) 19:05, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. We can only go on what the sources cited say. The spread that is well-documented is from the Americas to Europe. The lateral spread, as it were, is a lot more obscure, as is its timing and extent. As far as any edit request goes, the idea is to propose an exact new wording, supported by an exact new source (or sources), so that the intended change is unambiguous. Many thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:25, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think a brief etymology of the word “corn” should be added to the Names section. I came to the article for this information and it was not there. The shortening from “Indian corn” is present but not the origin of the word itself.

The Names section has an argumentative rather than informative tone. Violates WP:NPOV. It reads like a Talk page comment. The article itself is not the place for debate over the title of the article. It doesn’t help that the Talk page references the Names section to justify the title of the article. Cooly158 (talk) 05:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get the "argumentative" critique—the section includes pertinent facts about when and why specific terms are used, and exclusion of these facts would itself be an indisputably "false neutrality" POV. How would you write it? Remsense ‥ 论 05:48, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For the other point, the first issue I see is that corn doesn't really have much of an etymological history—it has the same sense with the same spelling in Old English, and it doesn't seem worth including only reconstructed forms that differ. Secondly, this article isn't about cereals, so that sentence would be totally detached from the article's topic—though I see the issue that there's nowhere else to put it. Ultimately, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, IMO. Remsense ‥ 论 06:00, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, not this all over again. It may help to know that this has been *very* extensively debated on this page over the years (all archived), and as a result the agreed text extremely carefully documented in the section. The range of meanings of "corn" is well presented, as is the etymology of "maize". Remsense is quite right in his replies; as for Cooly158's assertion of non-neutrality, on the contrary, the section represents a remarkably wide consensus of editors over a long period of time. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:23, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I imagined the present state of this section would've been quite finessed, given the inordinate amount of attention given to RMs in the past. Remsense ‥ 论 08:24, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fair point on the lack of interesting etymology, though that itself could be worth noting. I just think when I go to a topic I’m often interested in the origin of the word first. And the topic of this article is the crop many know as “corn”.

I’m not looking to rehash the debate. My criticism was that the Names section is unnecessarily justifying the title of the article at length. I think a brief comment on the corn vs maize usage would suffice, and everything else reads as scars of an edit war.

On both points, see for example the Etymology section on Coriander for what I would view as a much better alternative. It clarifies the coriander vs cilantro distinction briefly and gives an brief etymology of both. Cooly158 (talk) 15:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The names section is indeed a natural product of iterative editing and many discussions, but also reflecting what sources say. The naming of maize/corn is something sources readily discuss, sometimes with controversy, and that's merely reflected per WP:NPOV. Also worth nothing that this article passed GA with the current names section and was never flagged as an NPOV issue. Like others, I don't see anything argumentative in the text. It's actually pretty thorough and even-handed. KoA (talk) 15:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And btw the section begins directly with a plain statement of the etymology of "maize", and goes on to "corn" in the first paragraph: this is exactly as it should be. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:37, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]