The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Auckland Region → Auckland region
• Bay of Plenty Region → Bay of Plenty region
• Canterbury Region → Canterbury region
• Northland Region → Northland region
• Southland Region → Southland region
• Wellington Region → Wellington region
• West Coast Region → West Coast region

– The proper names of the regions of New Zealand do not include the word "Region", which is found mostly lowercase in sources when included. Past discussions support keeping region as natural disambiguation (as opposed to putting it in parens), which I agree with, but there's no need to keep it capitalized. The decision here would also apply to lots of subsidiary articles ("... of the X Region" etc.). Dicklyon (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 12:49, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support—"Region" would have to be capped in nearly all of the literature for the cap to be accepted. Tony (talk) 06:19, 28 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Dicklyon, Tony1, and Cremastra: I request this move be re-opened. The followup move request at Talk:Gisborne District#Requested move 29 January 2025 is attracting significant opposition, and in the meantime there's a long list of proposed moves following up on this at Wikipedia:Requested movesWikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy#Current requests. I would suggest at least we put a hold on more moves until the requested move at Giborne District is closed.-Gadfium (talk) 22:51, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds reasonable. Cremastra (talk) 23:01, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a little busy right now, so I'll reopen the discussion right away and then deal with the reverse-round-robin moves later, if that's okay. Cremastra (talk) 23:02, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Cremastra.-Gadfium (talk) 00:10, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. "Region" is a common English noun, it is often used for a undefined area, and "Auckland region" can reasonably mean "that part of the country which includes Auckland", with no specific boundaries needed. That is not what this article is about, which is the local authority area with precisely determined boundaries, which is a MOS:PROPERNOUN. The New Zealand Gazetteer gives it as "Auckland Region" [1]. It was set up by the Local Government (Auckland Region) Reorganisation Order 1989 [2] and the other regions set up at the same time are also capitalised. I do note that Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 which set up the Council does not capitalise region and district [3], and the Auckland Council is inconsistent, sometimes using the capital e.g. [4] and sometimes not e.g. [5], so there is certainly some confusion. My arguments also apply to the other regions listed, although I haven't done the same amount of research for the others.-Gadfium (talk) 00:10, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You are absolutely right, bro. The western Australia region could be any part of Australia which is located on the western part of the continent whereas Western Australia is an Australian state with defined boundaries. Proper nouns (specific names of people, places, or things) are always capitalised in English grammar. 2001:8003:9100:2C01:B00D:CD0E:7D6B:3B5B (talk) 18:24, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I think a new discussion should have been started as opposed to reopening the previous discussion 15 days after closure. Hey man im josh (talk) 01:43, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it comes to the same thing. Cremastra (talk) 01:44, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not really/necessarily. 15 days after is a fair bit of time. I do a lot of cleanup after moves are closed and I've never seen one reopened this long after. I'm not invested in the outcome, but I sometimes wait to do cleanups specifically because some get reopened within the week occasionally. It's more a concern regarding procedure. How long after is it appropriate to reopen a discussion? Hey man im josh (talk) 01:53, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say there's a hard and fast cutoff, but this is nearing it.

I closed the discussion per WP:RMNOMIN after verifying with the n-grams that this wasn't a wildly erroneous move. But the more recent discussion's shown that this issue is more nuanced, and, given the low participation in this RM, I felt comfortable withdrawing my closure. If this had had more participation in the first place I probably wouldn't have withdrawn my close. Cremastra (talk) 02:39, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Gadfium: Re "Auckland region" can reasonably mean "that part of the country which includes Auckland", with no specific boundaries. That's true, but why would that be a problem for Wikipedia readers if the article was named Auckland region? Thanks. Nurg (talk) 08:50, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nurg: Not a problem for readers, as the search would still work, and not a problem for editors, so long as there's a redirect from the capitalised version so links would still work. The same would be true if we decided to move the article to a misspelling, e.g Aukland Region.-Gadfium (talk) 01:08, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per the case made by Gadfium and the discussion and result of the 2014 lowercase attempt. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:19, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Per WP:LOWERCASE (part of WP:AT) that invokes WP:NCCAPS and evidence by Gadfium. WP:NCCAPS states: For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid-sentence but we do not capitalise for other uses falling to MOS:SIGNIFCAPS. The evidence provided by Gadfium tells us that this is not always capped in sources - more significantly, government sources that are notorious for over-capitalisation. Therefore, this is not being treated as a proper noun that we should cap per WP:NCCAPS. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:56, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak support these are supposed to be proper nouns with legally defined boundaries but they aren't consistently capitalised by sources: [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] Most instances from my random selection do not capitalise. I will say that these names aren't typically used, aside from Auckland and Wellington the term 'region' is typically dropped when discussing the areas which further supports a move to lowercase: [13] [14] [15] Traumnovelle (talk) 03:10, 17 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: Based on the evidence presented, the capitalized version appears to be the intentional legal name of the regions. But, as with all common words, sources end up miscapitalizing them sometimes not realizing or not giving enough attention to the fact they're proper names. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:22, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Failure of alerting. I have just realised that only "Auckland Region", and not the other six articles, appears in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Article alerts and Wikipedia:WikiProject New Zealand/Article alerts. Why are the six missing? Nurg (talk) 08:24, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the RMCD bot for some reason did not replace the RM notice to the other articles, which triggers the additions to the "Wikiproject article alerts" lists. This is fixed as of 22 February 2025. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 12:06, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. The Manual of Style/Capital letters guideline says, "only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia" (the MOS's italics). Looking at ngrams, it seems to me that use of the uncapitalised form has long been higher than the capitalised form; the capitalised form did increase from 1989 (when the local gov regions were established), but has declined from about 2002 or 2003. Gadfium has made a point that the uncapitalised form is ambiguous (as I would paraphrase it). That is true in the real world, although it doesn't stop most writers from using it. But in terms of Wikipedia article titles it is not ambiguous, as shown by the fact that all the uncapitalised forms currently redirect to the capitalised form – none redirect anywhere else, not even to a disambiguation page. I have hummed and hawed about this request but I am not seeing a good reason to not follow the guideline. Nurg (talk) 02:48, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Oppose. Agree with Gadfium above. I feel these meet MOS:PROPERNOUN. They are formal local government areas. The formal Wellington Region is different from a more amorphous concept of the Wellington area or Wellington region. I also agree with Traumnovelle that the WP:COMMONNAME for most of these regions (except Auckland and Wellington) is sans the word region entirely. If we went that way though many would require disambiguation and we should aim to be WP:CONSISTENT. ShakyIsles (talk) 08:33, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a point of fact – use of 'Region' here is as a disambiguator. The default is to omit the word – see Hawke's Bay, Manawatū-Whanganui, Otago, Taranaki, Waikato. Nurg (talk) 09:02, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, to clarify. I believe Auckland Region and Wellington Region are proper nouns and are therefore obvious cases that should be capitalised. There is even a longstanding section on the Wellington Region page expressing the difference between the official "Wellington Region" and amorphous "Wellington region" (albeit unreferenced).

The others disambiguated pages are more contestable. Capitilisation keeps them WP:CONSISTENT while lower case meets WP:NCCAPS. I err on the side of on keeping the consistancy. ShakyIsles (talk) 06:17, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While WP:CONSISTENT is part of WP:AT. it does not apply to spelling variations and arguably, capitalisation is a spelling variation. WP:LOWERCASE is also part of WP:AT and tells us emphatically to use sentence case. On determining what should be capped, it explicitly defers to WP:NCCAPS. Per my above, NCCAPS tells us that proper nouns are always capped. The evidence, as discussed herein, is that these are not always capped in sources when referring to the council area. For Wellington, not even the government caps it: "The Local Government (Wellington region) Reorganisation Order 1989". The section, Term Wellington region, referred to has no sources to verify the claims made therein. MOS:PROPERNOUN only tells us to cap proper nouns; it does not define what is a proper noun. WP relies on source based usage (eg NCCAPS) to determine what is a "proper noun" for the purpose of capitalisation. For the pupose of capitalisation, there is nothing at PROPERNOUN to meet that would resolve the question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cinderella157 (talk • contribs) 00:19, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Neutral on Auckland and Wellington, Support others. While the official names do include the term region, I'm not convinced that common usage does in the same way that it does for the district names. Rather, the term region is used here as a form of WP:NATURAL disambiguation, which can be seen by other regional articles (eg. Otago, Hawkes Bay and Manawatū-Whanganui) omitting the word altogether. The exceptions to this are Auckland and Wellington, which due to the confusion with the city do get used with the term region a lot more frequently, and less frequently use other terms such as "Greater Wellington". Given the term region is mostly used here as a form of disambiguation, I don't think it needs to retain the capitalisation - the exception to this being Wellington and Auckland for aforementioned reasons, where I'd be happy for the capital to remain (noting that this would reduce consistency). Turnagra (talk) 18:01, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[Redacted] (against one of the five pillars – P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 14:43, 6 March 2025 (UTC)) 2001:8003:9100:2C01:B00D:CD0E:7D6B:3B5B (talk) 18:15, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

— 2001:8003:9100:2C01:B00D:CD0E:7D6B:3B5B (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:56, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]