Talk:The Bahamas

"Crown Colony of the Bahamas" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Crown Colony of the Bahamas has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 July 11 § Crown Colony of the Bahamas until a consensus is reached. estar8806 (talk) ★ 01:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

"Crown colony of the bahamas" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Crown colony of the bahamas has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 July 11 § Crown colony of the bahamas until a consensus is reached. estar8806 (talk) ★ 01:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

What is the name of this country?

The article uses "the Bahamas" and "The Bahamas" indiscriminately. Maproom (talk) 10:15, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

The official name is "Commonwealth of The Bahamas". There have been a fair number of electrons spilled over whether Wikipedia should use "The Bahamas" or "Bahamas/the Bahamas" as the name of the country. I will note that official Bahamas government web pages are also inconsistent on this point. Donald Albury 15:25, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Population estimate

The source cited for the 2022 census population, [1], gives a preliminary population for the country of 399,314 on April 22, 2022. The article showed, until I removed it, a 2023 population estimate of 358,508. There was no source cited for the estimate, but the figure appears to have been taken from [2], which we usually treat as a reliable source. That estimate indicates a 10% reduction in the country's population in one year, an event that I think would have produced large headlines in the news. Since it has been only one year since the government census was taken, I do not believe that it is critical to have a 2023 estimate in the article for the time being. Any ideas? Donald Albury 22:35, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The limits of the Caribbean

The Bahamas is not in the Caribbean Sea, nor does it abut on the Caribbean Sea. The Bahamas is in the West Indies, but that is not synonomous with the Caribbean. Previous attempts to say that the Bahamas is a Caribbean country have been reverted to saying it is a county in North America. At this point, any change from saying that it is a country in North America will require forming a consensus to do so after a discussion here. Donald Albury 16:45, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Caribbean has both a narrower and a broader sense. While I think it's right that the short description only mentions the North Atlantic, I don't think avoiding mentioning the Caribbean at all in the lede is WP:NPOV or reflective of scholarly consensus. Quite the opposite.

This introduction to the topic does it justice: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781685856816-004/pdf?licenseType=restricted It notes differences in how the Caribbean is defined, while noting that both European and American scholars include the Bahamas (with the former including other islands as well). This reflects the broader scholarly consensus.

Geographically, while it's not in the Caribbean Sea, the Bahamas archipelago formed at the boundary of the North American and Caribbean Plates: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0070457104800232

Scholars referring to the Bahamas as being in the Caribbean is very common:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X00001041

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/cultural-position-of-the-bahamas-in-caribbean-archaeology/C334A445A6E726AE5E8698CF32759C2D

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=L42oT48bPCEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=is+the+Bahamas+in+the+Caribbean%3F&ots=QTsBWKj2hR&sig=jLERgmLR4_Us0B97X47R2XhzARU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=is%20the%20Bahamas%20in%20the%20Caribbean%3F&f=false

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Uk1Tbdsq99gC&oi=fnd&pg=PA157&dq=is+the+Bahamas+in+the+Caribbean%3F&ots=JLjuyKx_7I&sig=2N3LBw5pI2u6IAg4M2LzysLNW84&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=is%20the%20Bahamas%20in%20the%20Caribbean%3F&f=false

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780857452603-015/pdf?licenseType=restricted

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01440398908574983

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-interamerican-studies-and-world-affairs/article/abs/bahamas-in-international-politics-issues-arising-for-an-archipelago-state/40982727C77907BA7D65E1C9F6BDE7FF

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/407874/summary

As this source puts it, it's "often considered part of the Caribbean", even if it's technically not in the Caribbean Sea: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QsT0LFcgWmYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=is+the+Bahamas+in+the+Caribbean%3F&ots=C1_Dmlno2O&sig=rC-F6g4wpleBq3rexU_wPaxThao&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=is%20the%20Bahamas%20in%20the%20Caribbean%3F&f=false

Most scholars end up grouping it with the Caribbean, while recognising its unique qualities, as here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=chcHEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA338&dq=is+the+Bahamas+in+the+Caribbean%3F&ots=l_IFOQ712K&sig=ucYzzTr2sphzdMP-mtaSCcCKy_A&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=is%20the%20Bahamas%20in%20the%20Caribbean%3F&f=false

https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/tclj13&div=17&id=&page=

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NYHSEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT7&dq=is+the+Bahamas+in+the+Caribbean%3F&ots=X_AcNSsiRb&sig=Ytopm4ZiDnohznypgWt051B7Iho&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=is%20the%20Bahamas%20in%20the%20Caribbean%3F&f=false

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-73764-2_7

Rather than ignoring the significant debate either way to give a "neater" picture of the actual usage, reflecting consensus also means reflecting any significant debate or disagreement. In[this case, giving WP:DUE weight to the caveats I've pointed out above.

I actually think the consensus skews the other way (more scholars seem to treat it as part of the Caribbean), but I think a neutral line such as this can cover all bases:

"Though the Bahamas are in the West Indies, in the North Atlantic, they are sometimes also considered part of the wider Caribbean."

You could then add some caveat about how scholars tend to point out the differences at the same time. That, in my view, is quite a conservative way to frame it and probably veers too far towards the "not Caribbean" side, but I can't see most people objecting to that, either.

I also couldn't see any reference to being part of CARICOM (while being outside its single market), which seems strange too. That probably belongs as a single line at the end of the lede (with the caveat about the single market). Lewisguile (talk) 14:25, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

The more one looks into it, actually, the more the consensus seems to be against your stance.

The United Nations geoscheme for the Americas also puts the Bahamas in the Caribbean.

As do Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cambridge Dictionary and Collins Dictionary.

Though Wikipedia has pages for both the West Indies and Caribbean, even those pages note that the terms are often used interchangeably. The Caribbean can also include chunks of the South American mainland. (See aHigman, B. W. (2011). A Concise History of the Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0521043489.)

Britannica goes so far as having one page for both the WI and the Caribbean https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean Lewisguile (talk) 14:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

While my personal view is that the Bahamas are not in the Caribbean, I will defer to what some meaningful proportion of reliable sources say, or, if that is not clear, a consensus of the editorship. It is not the hill I choose to die on. Donald Albury 15:39, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

That's fair. Thank you. I took a bit of a dive into Google Scholar there, so apologies if I drowned you in links.

I was thinking something like this could go at the very end of the lede:

"Though the Bahamas are in the Lucayan Archipelago, and not on the Caribbean Sea, they are often considered part of the wider Caribbean region.[1] The Bahamas is a full member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) but isn't part of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy."[2]

[1]: Boswell, Thomas D. "2 The Caribbean: A Geographic Preface". Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean, edited by Richard S. Hillman and Thomas J. DAgostino, Boulder, USA: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009, pp. 19-50. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781685856816-004

[2]: 4th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, 4-8 July 1983, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and Tobago Archived 6 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine

What do you think? Lewisguile (talk) 16:21, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Fine with me. Donald Albury 16:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Done. Thank you. Lewisguile (talk) 18:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Capitalization of 'the'

Currently this article is relatively inconsistent with capitalization of 'the' within a sentence, where 'The Bahamas' is used in some places, while 'the Bahamas' is used in others. This includes the lead section, which at time of writing uses 'The Bahamas', apparently deriving from this September 2019 edit; this may have been motivated because the article itself mentioned 'The Bahamas' being the official capitalization and seems to have said that in some form since September 2017.

I noticed this went against the current guideline at MOS:THECAPS. The inclusion of the Bahamas in this guideline was discussed in July 2019, with a consensus towards lower-case (other minor related discussions: Sept. 2019, Dec. 2021, Dec. 2022). This also seems to align with the general guideline that Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia.

Accordingly, I'm changing the article and some related articles to use 'the Bahamas'. Retro (talk | contribs) 21:14, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@Retro: Please see the results of the four attempts to move this article at the top of this page, all of which resulted in no change to the name of the article. Without a new consensus to make the change, you will likely be reverted. Donald Albury 22:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Those are only somewhat related: the move requests are about whether to include the 'the' period in the page title.

In the context of the edits made, it's generally not a case of changing the standard, but applying a standard: the capitalization is just generally wildly inconsistent even within the same page.

It's my understanding that the page title is distinct from the guidelines about prose usage of the term. An example being how the page title is The Beatles (because page titles on the English Wikipedia are always capitalized), but it's referred to as 'the Beatles' in prose -- I'm not claiming the situation is equivalent, but I do think that illustrates the distinction. Retro (talk | contribs) 23:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)