Talk:Macau/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Macau. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Pinyin are necessary for Chinese names

The usual practice of Wikipedia for including Traditional and Simplified Chinese and Pinyin is a proper way, because it has considered different users. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.18.220 (talk • contribs)

Simplified Chinese and Pinyin are NOT commonly and offically used in Macau SAR. You can see clearly that the Chinese language in the emblem of Macau (e.g. Image:COA of Macao.svg)is written in the traditional form of Chinese, so obviously it is nothing wrong indeed to exclude the simplified form. 74.12.181.126 23:30, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyway, the information of Hanzi and Pinyin are necessary for Chinese names. It is the usual practice of Wikipedia, even the articles of "China" and "Taiwan" also included Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and Pinyin.

the information of Hanzi and Pinyin are not necessary for Chinese names and I actually didn't see that this is the usual practise of Wikipedia. You can go to the topic of Names of Macau and write down the necessary information that includes both forms of writing. 74.12.181.126 13:14, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia has added Simplified Chinese and Pinyin for the names of Kowloon, New Territories and Lantau Island now. Wikipedia has done right, as well as other names of China and Taiwan.

Intro paragraph is unreadable

The intro paragraph is unreadable. I've asked a bunch of people, from grade school kids to adults, to read this paragraph, and only two of them were able to repeat the main content. All the other languages (four of them!), and links to audio, is important, but it is way too crowded. This is broken. I'm open to suggestions on how to fix this. SchmuckyTheCat

Why? It reads "Macau, officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, is one of the two special administrative regions (SARs) of the People's Republic of China (PRC)."

Compare "Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in west-central Europe." Iianq 17:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Not quite. It says that, but every noun has the cantonese/traditional putonghau/simplified, and portugese translations and possibly a voice dub. Everything in parentheses needs to go somewhere else. SchmuckyTheCat

Compare with France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, or perhaps Switzerland too. Iianq 17:58, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Compare with Japan

PRC and Macau after the Portuguese MFA coup

Can anyone point to a good source explaining the PRC's reasoning behind allowing the Portugese to continue to administer Macau after the MFA coup in Portugal? Was it, for instance, to avoid undue pressure on Britain (when most of Hong Kong would, after all, revert to China anyway)?

MOS problems

There are some MOS problems with the article. Particularly with the formats of the references. It would be better if they used the cite templates. Also, there are various bolding problems. Please read WP:MOSBOLD to see what ought to be bolded and what should not be bolded. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 04:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Episcopal see

According to my reading of a poor reproduction scan of Macau, Illustrations of China and Its People, John Thomson (London,1873-1874), Macao was made into a see by pope Gregory III in 1580. However, it appears that unless there are other Gregory IIIs, the pope in question ought to have been Gregory XIII. Would anyone have any further info in this regard? Ohconfucius 04:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

GA review

I'm going to put this article on hold until the following have been address:

Name

"The gale miraculously ceased" - POV, try and find Y ref. added about Matsu + rm "miraculously".

Legislative body

Note 17 should be after a punctuatio mark, per WP:FOOT Y Done

Folk religion

In the middle paragraph, why is "and" enbolded? Y Done

Events & Festivals

This is just a personal preference, but surely it should be "and" instead of "&". Also, "Festival" should be with a lower case "F" as per WP:MoS. Y Done
"the biggest tournament of the year in Macau is the Macau Formula 3 Grand Prix in November". Again, a preference of WP:MOTOR and myself is that Formula Three are spelt as the world, not the number - It just looks better IMO. Also, on thing you could do is make a comparison of the F3 circuit with another street circuit, there are many you could use but the Circuit de Monaco would be a good choice, IMO. Y Done
At the moment, I'm a little "dry" on suggestions sorry. But one thing I could suggest is looking at other FA articles as examples, such as Australia.

Plans for the Future

This isn't really a section in the article, just a few things you could do if you wish to improve the article to FA.:
- In the Politics section, why are there two links to the Politics of Macau article via the {{Mainarticle}} template? Y Done (i.e. repetitive links removed)
- Keeping with the Politics section, I strongly suggest that the "Introduction" header gets taken away as the first paragraph to any new section should be an introduction IMO. Y Done

Anyway, apart from the "Plans for the Future" section, please can you see the concerns I've addressed and I'd be happy to pass this article as a Good Article. --Phill ^{talk Edits} _{Review this GA review!} 09:55, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as you addressed all my concerns, I will now pass this article. Good luck with improving the article to FA status! Remember to rate my GA review, see my signature - Thank you. --Phill ^{talk Edits} _{Review this GA review!} 09:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

There are also some things that should not be bolded. Per WP:MOSBOLD, only table headers, definition lists, and volume numbers in some formats for bibliographic entries for journal articles should be bolded. Here are the texts that need to be unbolded:

Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau Y Done
one country, two systems Y Done
Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau Y Done
Secretariat for Administration and Justice Y Done
City of Dreams Y Done

Also in the References section, there are several references that read "refer to such and such". I don't know if this conforms to WP:MOS. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 15:14, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

A few more comments for the GA review. Even though Macau is not a country, I suggest comparing this article to FA country articles like Australia, Japan, and Cameroon to see what needs to be improved. I've only done a high level review, but several things are apparent to me:

The lead does not provide a adequate overview of the article as required by WP:LEAD Y Done
The article has far too many subsection headers, resulting in the table of contents being overwhelming long.Y Done
The International rankings and Miscellaneous topics sections should be removed and any notable information merged into the other sections of the article. Partly done
Religion details probably belong in Demographics rather than Culture as per country articles.Y Done
The Culture section contains nothing about cuisine, sport, film, tv, radio, music, etc. Y Done
The Transportation section provides far too much detail. Y Done
The Legal system and judiciary section contains too much detail and should probably be merged into Government and politics.

(Caniago 13:11, 31 May 2007 (UTC))

It will surely re-arrange and improve them very soonest for upgrading from GA to FA standard .70.54.9.155 16:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Some of these issues may not stop the article being awarded GA status, but things like the inadequate lead and the missing details regarding culture in my opinion need to be fixed before it is promoted. (Caniago 10:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC))

Done

it takes time to sit down and figure out how to do it. For the part of culture, mostly you can find out from the topic of Culture of Macau. 70.54.9.155 14:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

GA Pass

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Epbr123 14:39, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hospitals in Macau

I have tried to add a link to the Wikipedia page "List of Hospitals in Macau". For some reason it seems not to be coming up !

Professorial —Preceding unsigned comment added by Professorial (talk • contribs) 19:50, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

English dialect

Why was this article changed from American English to Queen's English? Macao doesn't have an official form of English, but street and academic English is usually American unless dealing with HKers. SchmuckyTheCat

It doesn't matter indeed. You may change any word from British English to American English, but please make sure that the spelling of English words consistent with either American or British spelling, depending upon the subject of the article. Examples include: flavour (B) (American: flavor), honour (B) (American: honor), harbour (B) (American: harbor), neighbor (A) (British: neighbour), meter (A) (British: metre), metre (B) (American: meter), defense (A) (British: defence), defence (B) (American: defense), recognize (A) (British: recognise), ization (A) (British: isation), isation (B) (American: ization), programme (B) (American: program ). Coloane 08:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Minor edits

I made some minor edits in order to remove elements of anti-west propaganda which are typical of every single-party, authoritarian, formerly-communist central governements, but are not appreciated in truly encyclopedic articles. ("Occupied by", "obtained by bribing" are not neither accurate nor neutral descriptions of the historical events related with the Portuguese) Pularoid (talk) 13:28, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Your comments are appreciated. But it escapes me as of why "occupied by" and "obtained by bribing" are not accurate nor neutral. For me "occupied by" and "administered" is just a matter of taste. But I have two independent sources that support the "bribing" fact. One is the book by Fung published by Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd (an independent H.K. publisher). The other is the Macau Encyclopedia published by the Macau Foundation (in October 1999 under the Portuguese administration). It might not be the truth, but it's certainly verifiable. Josuechan (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Dress Appearances

As I was just wondering, Did The Brutal Queue order had any effect on Mancau Han Chinese at the time when the Qing emperors came into power in 1644, many years after the Portuguese control of Mancau itself? I'm just curoius or wondoring myself, since I got to shortly before got to notice that, compare to Hong Kong. But otherwise, what effect did the Portuguese had on Han Chinese Hairdos and Clothing in Macau? And also, they don't menthion about this on the Mancau article and history of mancau article and such. So please answer me if you please.-Jana —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.68.73.116 (talk) 22:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Awkward third paragraph placement

It seems that the third paragraph would be a much better fit in either the Politics or Economy section, rather than in the initial section. Can someone check this and change it if you agree, and if I am mistaken, please explain why it belongs where it is so that I can better understand. Thank you, Baadcatj (talk) 06:26, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I moved it. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Did the China-Macau border move?

Wondering if anyone can tell me if this border today at a different location from the one prior to handover in 1999 ie. it has moved a couple of metres north of the Portas do Cerco? Looking at old photos, the border seemed to have been exactly at the Portas do Cerco but today, the Macau immigration building is on the other side of the gate in what looked like Chinese territory prior to 1999. Am I correct? Slleong (talk) 17:16, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Most borders have functional buildings that may be on one or both sides or even straddling the "line". In Macau, since the "border" is domestic it isn't considered important where specific buildings are. PRC laws apply on both sides and they'll just deal with any troubled situation without regard to which "side" has specific jurisdiction. The placement of border control buildings does not reflect where the line in the dirt actually is.SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Point taken and I certainly realise this. My question is what you would call academic. I am keen to know where the line in the dirt actually is, whether the original pre-1999 border was at the Portas do Cerco or beyond where the new frontier checkpoint buildings is now. The People's Daily internet edition story on Monday, December 20, 1999, entitled "China: New Map Delineates Macao SAR Boundary Line" made me even more confused: "The northern boundary line of the Macao SAR connects with Gongbei Road of Zhuhai City in Guangdong Province. The area to the south of the arched door of Guanzha belongs to the Macao SAR, while the area to the north of the arched door of Guanzha up to the old flag building at the Zhuhai frontier checkpoint will remain the same as before." What does "remain the same as before" mean? Anyway, the borders between the mainland and its two special administrative regions are virtually international boundaries - passport checks, security controls, Chinese citizens do not have free movement across the border etc. Slleong (talk) 05:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Macau and other parts of southern China in the Dutch Empire

Hello everyone! There is a discussion at Talk:Dutch Empire#Request For Comment: Map, because user Red4tribe has made a map of the Dutch Empire (Image:Dutch Empire 4.png) that includes Macau and other parts of southern China. Would you like to comment? Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 15:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

New Map(does not include macau) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dutch_Empire_new.PNG http://www.colonialvoyage.com/ square=tradingpost (Red4tribe (talk) 16:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC))

Still OR, POV and unsourced (yours is not not a credible source). Please discuss stuff at Talk:Dutch Empire#Request For Comment: Map. This was just a request for comment, not a discussion. Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 16:43, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

http://www.colonialvoyage.com/
http://www.colonialvoyage.com/biblioDAfrica.html (credible source) (Red4tribe (talk) 16:51, 26 April 2008 (UTC))

WWII in Macao

This is quite an interesting period in Macao and maybe you could write about it. I don't have the sources, but I am aware of the fact that Portugal remained neutral during the WWII and so its colonies. Japan has respected it to a certain degree. There were few bombing raids on Macao though. Also, there was a huge influx of chinese from mainland to seek refuge in Macao. Food shortages and overpopulation led to many people starving (50-100 each day!). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.22.194 (talk) 07:47, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Images and photography offer

I am going to be in HK and Macau for the next 8 days, if any regular editors of this article would like anything specifically photographed for this or other articles, please let me know on my talkpage and I'll try and accomodate requests. Mfield (talk) 17:53, 10 October 2008 (UTC) This place has a population of 17,310(KM2) WOW its like another new york i wish I lived here that would be so cool wouldn't it? I know. B4N(bye4now) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.105.243.14 (talk) 00:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Page Display Issues

On a widescreen monitor this page has display issues. The text goes all the way across the screen in such a way that the images flow off of their sections and heavily bunch up. For reference I am using 1920x1200 and this issue does not go away until I shrink the page width to be less than 1024x768 resolution (in width). I don't know wiki syntax well enough but this should have some spacers added to the text such that the images can not completely flow off the page. (I should also add that the images heavily overlap the right side of the weather infobox.) Ergzay (talk) 23:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Can I suggest that we merge the article Historic Centre of Macau into this page? At the moment that article contains very little material and it seems to me that any attempt to expand it would just be reiterating the material in this article. The merger could be done along the lines of the article for Prague which is another major city with a UNESCO listed historic centre. I honestly see know reason for Historic Centre of Macau to exist as a separate article to Macau. Mutt (talk) 05:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose this. There's too much topic-specific content in the Historic Centre of Macau to merge into this already long article. --Oakshade (talk) 03:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

No way, this is a bad idea. Historic Centre should be expanded. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

strong disagree to merge Ijanderson977 (talk) 21:21, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Disagree , two things ... Hoising (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:55, 4 April 2009 (UTC).

Foreign workers in Macau still has a large presence?

This is not updated, since late 2008 the number of foreign workers in Macau is almost non existent because of the unwise decision making of the Macau S.A.R government to combat it's fictional fear on recession and it's imagined job security for it's local population. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.54.68.114 (talk) 11:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Romanizations in lede

The {{zh}} template for 澳門特別行政區 gives Cantonese Yale, and the template for just 澳門 gives Jyutping. Why the inconsistency? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Montage Caption

I added captions for the montage as per image source links on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Macau_montage.png

The only one I'm not sure on is "St Joseph Seminary Church" - I believe this is correct, but I'm not sure if it is more commonly known by another name (Sao Jose, with appropriate accents, would be the Portugese equivalent) and hence if there is an article to link to. Some quick searches on Sao Jose/Saint Joseph threw up nothing on wiki.

--Danny252 (talk) 20:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

"It is one of the wealthiest cities in the world"

This is absolutely baseless and untrue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.244.60.158 (talk) 19:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

Introduction is becoming quite cluttered, due to the transliterations. Why not create transliteration boxes and delete at least some of the simplified (this is Macau; traditional characters dominate) and pinyin from the introduction? 华钢琴49 (TALK) 22:46, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Alternate location map

I found File:Macau locator map.svg on Commons, which is currently only used on FR Wiki. It looks quite appealing; should this be used here? -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 03:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems better, follow the 2008 color conventions. 122.117.35.27 (talk) 17:37, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Percentage of Lusophones

How many people speak portuguese, not "at home" but are able to communicate in portuguese fluenty and or effectively? Are there lusophone radio and tv stations? Arthurian Legend (talk) 02:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

According to the 2006 by-census, 2.4% of the population could speak Portuguese. Currently there is one only TV station that broadcasts in Portuguese. Josuechan (talk) 06:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

From my experience only Portuguese and Macanese can speak Portuguese language in Macau. The local chinese don't even know the streetnames in Portuguese language. Quite unusual. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.22.194 (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC) I can told everyone that more that 90% population in Macao could not read the streetnames showed by Portuguese, most of them take look at the Chinese name and visitor(exclude from China) pay their attention to English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.238.154.140 (talk) 13:32, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Historic Jewish community?

If this is going to be in the Historic Jewish Communities category, maybe someone should explain why somewhere in the article. 98.216.159.236 (talk) 16:56, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Slaves in Macau were sent to Goa not Portugal

Most slaves from Macau was exported to Portuguese Goa, not Brazil or Portugal, and most were females/ prostitutes sent because of the lack of women in Goa for the Portuguese to marry.

http://books.google.com/books?id=GglrUksvCUcC&pg=PA114&dq=chinese+slaves+goa&hl=en&ei=Wzu7TuqtHKLg0QGz_bHXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=chinese%20slaves%20goa&f=false

Seeing as I did not make the mistake, I do not feel the need to replace it, if User:El0i wants to correct it with a paragraph on the slave trade to Goa then he can do it himself.

there is a reason why it was the viceroy of Goa who made it punishable by a fine of 1,000 ducats to trade in chinese, because most of it was IN Goa and not portugal, and the decree from the King of Portugal against slavery in macau of chinese, was directed specifically at Goa and Macau, not portugal.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YmauWWluaqcC&q=The+traffic+continued,+despite+a+decree+stipulating+an+incredible+fine+of+one+thousand+ducats+for+any+Portuguese+found+guilty+of+buying+or+selling+Chinese+slaves+which+was+put+on+the+books+by+the+Goa+viceroy+in+1595&dq=The+traffic+continued,+despite+a+decree+stipulating+an+incredible+fine+of+one+thousand+ducats+for+any+Portuguese+found+guilty+of+buying+or+selling+Chinese+slaves+which+was+put+on+the+books+by+the+Goa+viceroy+in+1595&hl=en&ei=lUW7TuDBF8r20gH2u9neCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA

http://books.google.com/books?id=WyBZ7wVBdtoC&pg=PA1196&dq=chinese+slaves+goa&hl=en&ei=Wzu7TuqtHKLg0QGz_bHXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=chinese%20slaves%20goa&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=EayR3sm4mvUC&pg=PA268&dq=chinese+girls+goa&hl=en&ei=zze7Tv-2KsXh0QG-7pHfCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=chinese%20girls%20goa&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=-exZv8Cw7fUC&pg=PA172&dq=chinese+girls+goa&hl=en&ei=Aji7TrLxJMjd0QGKsIHfCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=chinese%20girls%20goa&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=oCx0D0iE2QoC&pg=PA323&dq=chinese+slaves+goa&hl=en&ei=Wzu7TuqtHKLg0QGz_bHXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=chinese%20slaves%20goa&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=TbZaZw216gMC&pg=PA45&dq=chinese+slaves+goa&hl=en&ei=Wzu7TuqtHKLg0QGz_bHXCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CF8Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

There were very few slaves from Macau actually in Portugal itself.

There is also the separate Coolie trade of Chinese laborers to the americas which took place in Macau which can also be added by whoever wants to edit it.江南吳越 (talk) 03:34, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

http://books.google.com/books?id=W0fBhqb1kdkC&pg=PA1629&dq=Moc-+quet+claims+that+his+Chinese+hostess+in+Goa+had+been+kidnapped+in+Canton+and+sold+to+the+Portuguese+when+she+was+eight+years+old.&hl=en&ei=HUe7TuTAGcro0QHZ1q3eCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA

The sources make very clear that most macau/canton slaves were females sent to goa to serve as servants or prostitutes, and the rest of the slaves in macau were africans.江南吳越 (talk) 03:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There were only a few boys and girls who were bought as children, and they were always sold in Macau and Goa itself not portugal

http://books.google.com/books?id=H7dBmBsd-XgC&pg=PA54&dq=Chinese+youths,+boys+and+girls,+to+be+used+as+household+servants+and+slaves.+11+According+to+the+French+traveller+Jean+Mocquet,+who+visited+Goa+in+the+first+decade+of+the+seventeenth+century,+Chinese+servants+were+in+big+9+Purcell&hl=en&ei=bji7TteIF-Ll0QH5ro3eCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Chinese%20youths%2C%20boys%20and%20girls%2C%20to%20be%20used%20as%20household%20servants%20and%20slaves.%2011%20According%20to%20the%20French%20traveller%20Jean%20Mocquet%2C%20who%20visited%20Goa%20in%20the%20first%20decade%20of%20the%20seventeenth%20century%2C%20Chinese%20servants%20were%20in%20big%209%20Purcell&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?ei=K0q7TpHELqHV0QHyuPneCQ&ct=result&id=PHPaAAAAMAAJ&dq=for+the+most+part+kidnapped+from+their+villages+when+they+were+young%2C+and+sold+to+the+Portuguese+by+native+pimps&q=kidnapped+villages

http://books.google.com/books?ei=ZEq7TsSFJajw0gHQ2s3fCQ&ct=result&id=PHPaAAAAMAAJ&dq=jean+mocquet+portuguese+were+particularly+desirous+of+securing&q=hard+working

http://books.google.com/books?id=qUAsAAAAMAAJ&q=These+Chinese+slaves+and+domestic+servants+were+for+the+most+part+kidnapped+from+their+villages+when+they+were+young,+and+sold+to+the+Portuguese+by+native+pimps.+The+French+traveller+Mocquet,+writing+in+the+second+decade+of+the&dq=These+Chinese+slaves+and+domestic+servants+were+for+the+most+part+kidnapped+from+their+villages+when+they+were+young,+and+sold+to+the+Portuguese+by+native+pimps.+The+French+traveller+Mocquet,+writing+in+the+second+decade+of+the&hl=en&ei=Dkq7TqHOCIP30gGO45TYCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA

http://books.google.com/books?ei=vUm7Tv-kHura0QGrw7neCQ&ct=result&id=qUAsAAAAMAAJ&dq=These+Chinese+slaves+and+domestic+servants+were+for+the+most+part+kidnapped+from+their+villages+when+they+were+young%2C+and+sold+to+the+Portuguese+by+native+pimps.+The+French+traveller+Mocquet%2C+writing+in+the+second+decade+of+the&q=kidnapped+canton+boys+girls

The portuguese were accused of kidnapping Chinese children to be either sold as slaves in India (goa), or to be eaten /cannibalized by the portuguese who were aleged to have liked human flesh

http://books.google.com/books?id=qUAsAAAAMAAJ&q=corrupt+venal++sold+chinese++slaves+portuguese&dq=corrupt+venal++sold+chinese++slaves+portuguese&hl=en&ei=u0q7TrmwFeTi0QGcxpnfCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA

http://books.google.com/books?id=LP9q1dzVRYQC&pg=PA87&dq=Some+Chinese+children+were+indeed+kidnapped+and+sold+as+slaves+and+domestic+servants+to+Macau+or&hl=en&ei=D0u7Tu7KFMPn0QGHp_zeCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA — Preceding unsigned comment added by 江南吳越 (talk • contribs) 03:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The content is sourced and the source does say some of the slaves were sent to Portugal and Brazil. [1]. El0i (talk) 11:56, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I changed some wording like "boys" to "children", and added information on Goa slave atrade and laws banning the trade, I also deleted what I believe was one sentence about an individual owning a slave, since that is an extremely minor and irrelevant detail, but I left the general things intact. I also deleted the sentence on the number of slaves in Portugal since I could find that number virtually nowhere else and its not reliable. Everything else is left.江南吳越 (talk) 23:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Graphic representation of Macau's Chinese name is wrong

The writing in the right is wrong. The correct writing is 澳 instead of 澳 (note the stroke above 米), as evidenced by the emblem of Macau (below). Can anyone please correct it? --Jabo-er (talk) 05:08, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong! This additional stroke is weird! You won't find this character as unicode.--89.14.100.221 (talk) 02:33, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

It is not wrong, there are 2 graphic variants of this character. The one used by most computers and used throughout the article has 16 strokes but the one which is used in the emblem has 17 strokes and is the version from the Kangxi Dictionary.

For those who can read Chinese, there is actually a site with the variants (go to the 字源字形 tab of the following page: 澳 on Zdict.net). This shows the 16-strokes graphy as being used in Mainland China and the 17-strokes graphy used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. This is even though all dictionaries list the simplified and traditional forms of this character as identical 16-atrokes character... --Pignoof (talk) 09:23, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to contribute to this discussion: the two big characters at the top of this section are exactly the same on my system (both have the slash). I'm using CentOS 6.2 + Firefox 10. But by all means change the picture if you want to be pedantic. Der yck C. 10:14, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

But the character in this emblem got an extra stroke above the character rice. 218.250.159.142 (talk) 22:48, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Etymology and historical sightlines

This is an important point – in this case with regard to this [2]. In any subject we're not specially educated in, we tend to think from our own viewpoint, and to overlook anything that speaks against that, not out of carelessness but simply because we can't see the signs. E.g., in history, we tend to impose contemporary ideas about national state, "national" language etc. backwards on times before those notions were even known. And this encyclopedia isn't for those already well versed in the respective subject – it is for those who may want to become. 83.253.228.202 (talk) 00:34, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Insufficient citations

This article is lacking citations in many parts. There should be at least one citation for every paragraph. That is currently not the case. There are citations needed tags that need to be addressed. These issues need to be fixed in order for the article to maintain its GA status.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 18:23, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Macau/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This orange-tagged article clearly fails criteria 2b. There are many paragraphs lacking citations. I brought this issue up at the talk page a while ago, but there doesn't seem to be much interest.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 17:01, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Result: Delist - It's been a week. There doesn't appear to be much interest in improving the article.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 18:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

GA Nominee

I use to frequent this page before my hiatus from Wiki, and saw it had lost its GA status since then. I fixed the citations with various methods in the history section, and I feel that it is ready to become a GA again. If anyone that does the review encounters any problems/issues with the article, do not hesitate to contact me on my page! LeftAire (talk) 18:26, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

GA Nominee

I still need to do some rewriting and add some citations before this is nominated, so I removed the GA nominee for the time being. LeftAire (talk) 12:19, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Update Climate

the data in the climate section is very out of date, most of it being more in keeping with 1914 than 2014 weather data. Please compare 2000-2012 climate data with those in the weatherbox (although the same outdated information is in the text of this section as well):

Climate data for Macau (1991–2020, extremes 1901–present)
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	29.1 (84.4)	30.2 (86.4)	31.5 (88.7)	35.3 (95.5)	37.5 (99.5)	36.9 (98.4)	38.9 (102.0)	38.5 (101.3)	38.1 (100.6)	36.0 (96.8)	34.2 (93.6)	30.0 (86.0)	38.9 (102.0)
Mean daily maximum °C (°F)	18.6 (65.5)	19.2 (66.6)	21.4 (70.5)	25.1 (77.2)	28.7 (83.7)	30.5 (86.9)	31.4 (88.5)	31.5 (88.7)	30.8 (87.4)	28.5 (83.3)	24.7 (76.5)	20.3 (68.5)	25.9 (78.6)
Daily mean °C (°F)	15.2 (59.4)	16.1 (61.0)	18.6 (65.5)	22.3 (72.1)	25.8 (78.4)	27.8 (82.0)	28.4 (83.1)	28.3 (82.9)	27.5 (81.5)	25.1 (77.2)	21.3 (70.3)	16.9 (62.4)	22.8 (73.0)
Mean daily minimum °C (°F)	12.7 (54.9)	13.9 (57.0)	16.5 (61.7)	20.3 (68.5)	23.7 (74.7)	25.7 (78.3)	26.1 (79.0)	25.9 (78.6)	25.1 (77.2)	22.7 (72.9)	18.8 (65.8)	14.3 (57.7)	20.5 (68.9)
Record low °C (°F)	−1.8 (28.8)	0.4 (32.7)	3.2 (37.8)	8.5 (47.3)	13.8 (56.8)	18.5 (65.3)	19.3 (66.7)	19.0 (66.2)	13.2 (55.8)	9.5 (49.1)	5.0 (41.0)	0.0 (32.0)	−1.8 (28.8)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	34.2 (1.35)	43.9 (1.73)	80.0 (3.15)	153.5 (6.04)	286.0 (11.26)	373.7 (14.71)	290.7 (11.44)	331.4 (13.05)	227.8 (8.97)	75.1 (2.96)	39.0 (1.54)	31.3 (1.23)	1,966.6 (77.43)
Average precipitation days	5.8	8.9	11.4	11.6	14.1	17.7	16.6	16.2	12.3	6.2	4.9	5.0	130.9
Average relative humidity (%)	74.9	80.5	85.0	86.3	84.9	84.6	82.7	82.1	78.3	72.5	72.6	70.8	79.6
Mean monthly sunshine hours	126.5	85.7	74.8	94.6	135.5	159.0	211.3	188.2	178.3	192.2	158.1	145.1	1,749.3
Source: Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau^[1]^[2]

Although the databox claims to reflect 1971-2000 data, the source is actually from 1900-2000. — robbie ^{page talk} 12:16, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Done I Just updated the climate data of Macau to the most recent 30 year period (1981-2010). I did find out that the previous source was incorrect so I updated it to link the reader to the data and not the period 1900-2000. Ssbbplayer (talk) 06:37, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

^ "Macao Climate: 30-year Statistics of some meteorological elements". Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
^ "Macao Climate: Extreme Value of some meteorological elements (1901-2020)". Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau. Retrieved 19 March 2021.

Climate Update Box on Geography section

Hello! I'm just curious, given some of the above information, if the box stating that the information given of the yearly climate of Macau needs to be removed. It seems to be updated, though I can be wrong if anyone wishes to state something that I might have looked over. Thanks for reading! LeftAire (talk) 20:02, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Macau/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sainsf (talk · contribs) 06:53, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Will review this soon. Cheers, Sainsf (talk · contribs) 06:53, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Here are my comments. Pinging FutureTrillionaire, LeftAire and Ssbbplayer as well, who I feel are interested in this article. Sainsf (talk · contribs) 09:22, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

General

Someone needs to ensure the sources have been placed as inline citations to what they support. The nominator does not seem to have edited the article at all, and I am not sure who basically wrote what we are reading now. Without someone to interact with directly, this might be difficult work.
There may be some close paraphrasing [3]
There are a lot of duplicate links. These can be detected and fixed using this tool.
Fix this link [4]

Etymology

The languages need to be wikilinked
I think translation to only one language should be enough. Too many translations may add clutter.
Source for last line?

History

Too long, needs subheadings for better navigation. Also, the text appears choppy, paras need to be combined.
At a few places some lines appear unsourced, while at a few other places there is some overciting.
But their pride was shocked by the indifference with which the Chinese treated them Wording appears a bit too strong.
The Dutch Governor Jan Coen said after the defeat "After the defeat, the Dutch Governor Jan Coen said" would read better
In the most serious Add "riot" after "serious"

Executive

Fernando Chui is the current Chief Executive Wording like "current" and "recent" should be avoided, say exactly from which year he has been active. And is the information up to date?
Source for the last line?

Military

Completely unsourced.

Geography

The two images on the right are creating unnecessary blank space, this needs to be fixed.
It also has 41 kilometres (25 mi) of coastline "also" is not needed
yet only 310 metres (1,000 ft) Why "yet"? What is the contrast?
Source for the last line?

Economy

The clothing industry has provided ... Macau government revenue when are these figures of?
The World Bank classifies Macau as a high income economy When was this done?
Subheadings may be used. Also, there is some choppiness about the section.
with over 50% of the arrivals coming from mainland China and another 30% from Hong Kong. Source?
Reasons for this fall of revenue are related to the slowdown that the Chinese economy is having officials pursue a corruption crackdown that's confined in lavish spending Meaning?

Monetary system

which is currently pegged to the Hong Kong dollar When is "currently"?
The name pataca is a Portuguese word "Pataca" in quotes
There are "citation needed" tags.
Wikilink escudo

Demographics

(18,428 persons/km2 in a 2004 projection 47,728/sq mi) Needs to be written properly
According to The World Factbook, Macau has the fourth highest life expectancy in the world Once again we need to know when this data was recorded. Same for 4th para
between 2005, 2007 and 2009 Does this mean "between 2005 and 2009"?

Education

A fifteen-year free education is currently being offered Say since when.
Currently, there is only one school in Macau where Portuguese is the medium of instruction. Source? When is "currently"?

Health care

Some parts are unsourced.
"Currently" is used at places.

Transport

The trishaw, a hybrid of...is usually 15 minutes. Source?

Culture

Source for 1st para and last line of 3rd para?

Notable people

Completely unsourced.

Sports

Completely unsourced.

That's all for now. Sainsf (talk · contribs) 09:22, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

@Sainsf: Thanks a lot. I agree this article requires a lot of further work. Again, please don't fail this just yet, I am trying to do some fixing according to your suggestions. Wishva de Silva (talk) 08:58, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

@Wishva de Silva: You have been given more than a week to fix the issues, but it doesn't seem appreciable work has been done here or can likely be done in a short time so that the nomination passes. I am going to fail this for now, but I hope this is renominated soon, after necessary changes have been made. Sainsf (talk · contribs) 12:35, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Languages

According to the current version, the official languages are Chinese and Portuguese, with note to "Chinese" (link to "Chinese Language") saying 'The Macau Basic Law states that the official languages are "Chinese and Portuguese." It does not explicitly specify the standard for "Chinese". While Mandarin and Simplified Chinese characters are used as the spoken and written standards in mainland China, Cantonese and Traditional Chinese characters are the long-established de facto standards in Macau.'

I agree that the language spoken is mainly Cantonese rather than Mandarin. But the note is otherwise very problematic: 1. It implies that Mandarin and Cantonese are just two ways to speak the Chinese language, as the traditional and simplified characters are two ways to write the language, which can be easily converted. But if you ask Mandarin native speakers who do not speak Cantonese to read the wikipedia pages in Cantonese, most people would have problems understanding the text. They are just written differently. The grammar and vocabulary are different. 2. The Macau Basic Law may not explicitly states that the term "中文" (Chinese) mentioned in Article 9 is Mandarin, but the Basic Law itself is explicitly written in Mandarin. Ask any Cantonese speaker, no one would tell you that it is written in Cantonese. Additionally, when people talk about a language called "中文" that can be spoken, it generally refers to Mandarin. Lysimachi (talk) 20:42, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

To your first point, I don't actually see that implication in the quoted text. I think you are reading into it too much from your own natural bias. I guess the second point makes sense, the article lacks reference. There probably is a reference that the text was based on — because they are arguing that even though the official and legal language is basically Putonghua, people still use (perhaps even in legal contexts from time to time) Cantonese. — robbie ^{page talk} 12:59, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Simplified and traditional characters can't be easily converted and there are more than two ways to write the language. Who told you all this? Every local variety uses different words from the standard language, this doesn't exclusively apply to Chinese. In fact, every standard language is a promoted local language. --2.245.170.92 (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Why is there nothing about protests?

The "History" section ends with "The Chinese government assumed formal sovereignty over Macau on 20 December 1999. The economy since then has continued to prosper with the sustained growth of tourism from mainland China and the construction of new casinos." It might as well say "and they all lived happily ever after". Yet there are Wikipedia articles on the 2007 Macau labour protest, the 2010 Macau labour protest and the 2010 Macau transfer of sovereignty anniversary protest, and loads of news articles on the 2014 protests.[5][6][7][8][9]. Surely they ought to get some mention in the article? 86.41.40.63 (talk) 09:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Protests happen everywhere once in a while, you might as well add every happy event. This isn't just part of the overall history. I just don't get why people are so obsessed with this. --2.245.170.92 (talk) 00:07, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Way too many photos to me in this article

We should delete some to ensure the article quality, this is an article not a photo gallery. Wishva de Silva (talk) 09:02, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

"Holy Mary" (photo caption)

This presumably refers to Jesus's supposed mother in the Christian religion, but this figure is never referred to in English as "Holy Mary". Possible names are "the Virgin Mary", occasionally "St Mary", and also "the Mother of God".188.230.248.85 (talk) 17:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

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Do people in Macau really drive on the left?

Just curious, since Macau was a former colony of Portugal, which drives on right, my instinct tells me this should also be true for Macau. So any people from Macau or having been to Macau can clarify that? Thanks a lot.--Tricia Takanawa (talk) 15:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Traffic in Portugal (and all its colonies) drove on the left until 1928; Macao, however, did not change at that date because China drove on the left and continued to do so until 1946, by which time it was (probably for the same reasons as those which held sway in Hong Kong) thought more convenient not to switch. -- Picapica (talk) 02:43, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

They drive on the left, or at least they all were at the end of last year. Mfield (talk) 15:52, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

According to Right- and left-hand traffic#Hong Kong and Macau:

Macau, a former Portuguese colony, historically followed Hong Kong in driving on the left because most of the RHD cars in Macau were imported through Hong Kong. Macau did not follow either Mainland China in 1946 or Portugal in 1928 in switching to driving on the right.

--76.167.241.45 (talk) 22:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Cantarin or Mandonese?

After reading the so interesting:

#Spelling (Macao vs. Macau)
#Graphic representation of Macau's Chinese name is wrong
#Languages

I still have no clear whether " 中華人民共和國澳門特別行政區 " is Cantonese/Mandarin or Simplified/Traditional as I can read in Hong Kong. Can anyone clarify this? ※ Sobreira ◣◥ (parlez) 14:29, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Sobreira: Traditional Chinese characters; doesn't distinguish between Mandarin or Cantonese. Deryck C. 10:45, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

March of the Volunteers instrumental.ogg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. Community Tech bot (talk) 09:06, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 8 July 2018

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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move at this time. I don't think anyone can argue this point. The nomination was lacking; no sources at all and an erroneous criterion for moving. (WP:OFFICALNAME and all that.) I saw sources that said that British English prefers the O version but no reason why we should care about specifically British English only. The fact that sources are split due to the AP Stylebook does not change the fact that sources are split. Nevertheless, many good reasons to change were listed below, as well. I look forward to a much better-argued nomination later on down the road. (non-admin closure) Red Slash 11:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Macau → Macao – Macao is the official name of the city in English. NYKTNE (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Oppose; the official name has basically no bearing on how the article should be titled. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), Wikipedia:Official names and Kiev. If we were to use the official name the article would be titled "Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China". Both "Macau" and "Macao" are in common use, and even the government apparently uses both according to Names of Macau. "Macao" is also not used in Portuguese, an official language of Macau (whereas English isn't one), and would be considered incorrect spelling in Portuguese. Jc86035 (talk) 11:42, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Jc86035: That is incorrect. The government never uses Macau in its English sites and neither the official authorities. I believe the Names of Macau article is bit misleading. Please correct me if the official websites use Macau in English pages. NYKTNE (talk) 09:17, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@NYKTNE: Here you go. The government does appear to prefer "Macao" in English usage, but there are a lot of exceptions, partly because of inconsistent usage and partly because of inconsistency in the names of third-party organizations. Google Ngrams says "Macao" is historically more popular, but English-language usage of "Macau" increased significantly during the 1980s (possibly as a result of internationalization as well as Macau becoming a current topic due to the handovers). Jc86035 (talk) 09:36, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: The site you've suggested may have the word "Macau" but when you actually press the links and browse the sites, most of them use "Macao", for instance, they use "About Macao Post", "Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region", etc; the only one is "Macau Grand Prix Organizing Committee", no more other exceptions. Moreover, you can't use search history to determine if that's the correct name. Many people use "Porto Rico" instead of Puerto Rico, then should the US Government and its Wiki article use Porto Rico instead? NYKTNE (talk) 09:43, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose per Jc86035. The editor whose username is Z0 15:04, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose move. WP:COMMONNAME. Possible snow close? ONR (talk) 02:42, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Except "Macau" is not the common name in English, the only thing en.WP cares about in such a case; see proof below. Pings: Old Naval Rooftops, Jc86035 Horserice, Roman Spinner, Bazonka – please reconsider. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:44, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose per above reasons. Horserice (talk) 02:51, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose. "Macao" once was the "official" English-language form {Macao (film)}, in the same manner that Peking, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras or Kiev were once "official" English forms for those cities. All those forms, however, are now outdated. Such key sources as the United States Department of State, The World Factbook or the world's largest publisher of travel guidebooks, Lonely Planet now refer to those localities as Macau, Beijing, Kolkata, Chennai and Kyiv. Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:05, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Roman Spinner: As far as I know, the first 2 examples of yours, namely Peking and Bombay, are rather invalid because Peking was actually an inaccurate romanization as the locals usually pronounce as Beijing and, therefore, Beijing is adopted for accuracy later on; Bombay was an Anglicised name made by the Portuguese after they named the city and yet Mumbai was the pronunciation of the city's name in Marathi. To be honest, I am unfamiliar with the remaining examples but, with all due respect, I believe your examples may not share similarity with the case of Macao and hence cannot have a suitable analogy drawn. Plus, you claim that Macao once was the official English language but you are partially wrong as Macao is still the official English name. NYKTNE (talk) 09:17, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
  - @NYKTNE: Well, pronunciations of placenames and transcriptions change over time. We have pretty solid evidence that, for example, the pronunciation of the name of the northern capital was closer to "Peking" and "Beijing" as recently as two centuries ago (see Mandarin (late imperial lingua franca) and Chinese postal romanization). Prevalent historical placenames often preserve historical pronunciations of both the source language and the target language and we should avoid judging the quality of a historical name without sufficient knowledge of how the respective languages have changed since the name was first written down. Deryck C. 10:27, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
    - @Deryck Chan: Thank you for your meaningful content. However, I presume Peking is the Southern pronuncation of Beijing. Furthermore, I don't deny that names change over time and that is why Peking needs to be changed to Beijing and Bombay has to be amended to Mumbai in order to suit present pronunciation. Again, this has nothing to do with "Macau" vs "Macao". Even though the historical name of Macao is Macau, that was a Portuguese name; and the present English name of the city should be in line with the official authorities. NYKTNE (talk) 10:37, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
      - @NYKTNE: The government's mandated name doesn't necessarily matter if people in real life also call it something else. There was a failed RM recently to move Tiananmen Square to Tian'anmen Square, for example. "Macau" is not the historical name; the article says "Macao" was the Portuguese name until an orthography reform. (Note that Mumbai and Bombay have separate etymologies, so as in Macau it's a situation of the newer name becoming more commonly used.) Jc86035 (talk) 11:47, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
        @Jc86035: I apologise for my ambiguity: I meant Macau was a name with long history. Also, even Macao has a Porgutuese heritage, it is in official English use currently and hence should be the English title of the city. The way we call it should be of no importance to decide the correct spelling of it. (Bombay is an Anglicised name of Portuguese name, Mumbai is the correct name of the original local name) NYKTNE (talk) 17:00, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. English-language Google search for Macao, excluding Macau = 108m results; Macau excluding Macao = 200m results. Bazonka (talk) 20:56, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Support per WP:UE. As this Google Ngram shows, the English name is historically vastly more common and still marginally more common than the Portuguese name in print sources. — AjaxSmack 01:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Support per WP:UE. AjaxSmack's more proper use of Google Ngrams is correct, and is confirmed by further constraining the searches to British then American English [10][11], in turn [It's aways good to do that test, because the "English" corpus doesn't always return the same results as the British+American ones viewed back to back, due to different books being used to generate the corpora.] The common name in English, which is what WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RECOGNIZABLE care about, is clearly "Macao". The fact that it also agrees with the official name is just a cherry on top. "Macau" saw a spike from ca. 1982 to 2002, mostly in American publications, but this has slacked off and "Macao" still leads. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:41, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Further bit: If you construct a Google Advanced Search query on "Macau", exclude "Macao", "Wikipedia", "wiki", "blog", and "forum", constrain it to English only, and limit the results to within the last year; run the search, then switch it to the News filter; you find that wile "Macau" does lead in newswriting (almost certainly because of the preference of the AP Stylebook, which about 95% of American news publishers follow to the letter; see below), it barely leads now. You get 4 pages of results, while if you flip the search to "Macao", excluding "Macau" and the other terms, you get 3 pages of results. Something has clearly changed, when news results for the entire decade+ were showing about a 2:1 lead of Macau over Macao (i.e., just do an unconstrained Google News search on "Macau -Macao" and vice versa). Combined with book results always favoring Macao, other than a brief spike toward Macau in the 1990s, Macao would seem to be the winner overall. In scholarly publications (via Google Scholar) they're almost tied, but this includes non-English results, and I don't know of a way to exclude them. Anyway, this would not be the first time that the AP Stylebook has individually put a major skew on search results and thus on common name discussions. If you search "AP Stylebook Macau", you find lots of individual publisher style guides declaring that they follow AP and calling for "Macau" (the one exception I could find (CFA Institute) confusingly mixed the spellings.) This is a clear indication that AP is causing the "Macau" spelling to retain some currency. Non-AP publishers have moved to "Macao", following the official name change. That's the thing that changed. The 2018 ed. of AP has been out for only 1 month, and its preparation may have been completed after the official name change, so it may not be until 2019 that AP news people stop using "Macau"; anyone have the 2018 ed.? My latest is 2015, and definitely uses "Macau".
As noted in way earlier threads, the ISO country name is "Macao" (code MO), and its CCTLD is .mo. Oxford dictionaries list "Macao", have no entry for "Macau", and just give that as a Portuguese spelling at the "Macao" entry. This is mirrored at https://en.oxfordditioncaries.com/definition/macau; the entry exists, but just as Portuguese for "Macao". Dictionary.com, which includes the Random House Unabridged (US) and Collins (UK), has a proper entry at "Macao", but gives "Macau" only in full-on Portuguese form as "Macáu", with nothing but a cross-reference to "Macao". Merriam-Webster.com has a "Macao" entry, and just lists "Macau" as a variant; going to that entry redirects back to the "Macao" one. So, RS on English language usage strongly prefer "Macao". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:24, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Ngrams also shows that Mumbai is still less popular than Bombay, so it could be a systemic sampling bias towards people who get their books published. Jc86035 (talk) 05:30, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
As with "Peking" for "Beijing", "Bombay" shows up in a lot of phrases and names in English ("The Bombay Company", "Bombay Sapphire gin", "Bombay red" [both an onion cultivar and a popular furniture color], and the names of many, many restaurants). Bombay was a also a state of India, not just a city; it was a big place with a large number of people, many of whom brought the name into use in English in multiple places. Such complications don't seem to exist for Macau/Macao in English; phrases and proper names that use either aren't common in our language, the population is comparatively small, and there aren't millions of Macau expats and the descendants in the UK and the US exerting an influence and keeping an old spelling alive. A statistical sampling error can't possibly account for Macao being favored over Macau in English by such a wide margin for so long, nor can things like "Macao Grill" and "House of Macao" restaurant names here and there. There aren't any major businesses or product lines bearing the name. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 05:51, 12 July 2018 (UTC); revised 06:38, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: Ngrams also shows the old name to be much more popular for Pusan/Busan and Chungking/Chongqing, although both of those are probably affected by World War II-related usage. In any case, authors who have mentioned Macau and who went to high school after 1985 (i.e. those who were more likely to prefer the newer spelling due to the ongoing change in usage) and got their books published and into Ngrams between then and 2008 are probably significantly outnumbered by the authors who have similarly mentioned Macau but were born before the 1970s (who would have been 38 or older in 2008). There are a fair amount of British expats an hour away in Hong Kong, and "Macao" has existed for centuries longer than "Macau". There are almost certainly other variables that that graph doesn't factor in. That Ngrams doesn't have data after 2008 also makes it difficult to rely on for deciding which one is more popular now, even if it's useful for analyzing some historical trends. It's not like the world didn't change in the intervening years. Jc86035 (talk) 06:47, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
That last is why I double-checked the news results; the idea that news favors "Macau" 2:1 turns out to have been a) a historical blip that is coming to an end, and b) due to one stylebook skewing the results. Even with that skew still in play, the usage is almost tied now in newsprint. As for the rest, we probably don't care much why a particular usage is more common, just that it is – for the topic in question (the real place), not in derived usage. RS really seem to be using Beijing and Mumbai in direct reference to the cities now, even if Peking and Bombay survive in other usage; I don't know if that's going on with the other two; I can say that Chongqing and other q-laden spellings are not common in English for extended usages (Chun King was a leading Chinese food brand in the US until recently, for example; the old-style spellings like Szechuan for Sichuan remain dominant in everyday English for foodstuffs and the like). The question is whether references to the city in books and news today are mostly using Chongqing, and what current dictionaries [that have geographical-name entries] use; I would guess that they are in favor of Chongqing or we wouldn't've moved the article. However, we are going to care when the RS results are severely skewed by a single source like AP Stylebook; that doesn't tell us anything about actual broad usage, only about what a certain cluster of publishers prefer. Modern book publishing, up to 2008, shows Macao in the lead in English [12] (and consistently so back to the 19th c.), except for a "Macau" spike in the 1990s which ended ca. 1997, with usage of both steady for more than a decade afterward, "Macao" clearly back in the lead. There's no reason to think this changed between 2008 and now, other than more in favor of "Macao" due to the official change. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:46, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Support per AjaxSmack and SMcCandlish. VibeScepter (talk) (contributions) 06:29, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Weak support. Rather than showing overwhelming usage of one over another, the Google results show that current usage is clearly split between "Macao" and "Macau" without an overwhelming winner. In that case we should give some weight to the official point of view of Macanese government and organizations, which prefer "Macao" in English. The search results could also be polluted by English-language sources which consciously adopt the Portuguese spelling because Portuguese is an official language of Macao/Macau. I wouldn't trust Lonely Planet on the matter of English names of placenames because they have a habit of adopting a transliteration of the current native language name over traditional English names, e.g. Kyiv over Kiev, Thessaloniki over Thessalonica etc. All said, I think this is a marginal case. I've come down on the "Macao" side but I'm not massively fussed. Deryck C. 09:49, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
See also some of the stuff I added later, e.g. dictionary results (that is, reliable sources on English usage). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 10:56, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

I must challenge the above statement, "I wouldn't trust Lonely Planet on the matter of English names of placenames because they have a habit of adopting a transliteration of the current native language name over traditional English names, e.g. Kyiv over Kiev, Thessaloniki over Thessalonica etc". Lonely Planet does not have such a habit. The covers of their books indicate forms which are unchallenged and universally accepted in the English-speaking world: Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest and Belgrade, not Warszawa, Praha, București and Beograd. Only outdated forms such as Cracow, Kiev, Thessalonica or Macao have been replaced by forms used by the U.S. State Department and The World Factbook: Kraków, Kyiv, Thessaloniki and Macau. All of those forms, except for Kyiv, have already been adopted as main title headers of their Wikipedia entries. Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 05:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Neutral. It initially seemed like Macau was more frequently used than Macao, but as Deryck Chan mentioned and the Ngram results show, it's pretty even. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I'm changing my oppose to neutral to reflect this. Horserice (talk) 18:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
oppose. The common name in English is 'Macau'. The spelling 'Macao' is relatively obscure and historic, and to many English speakers does not look like an English word at all.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 07:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Inclined to oppose as proposed. There are a wide variety of articles that would be affected by this change, and I'm not sure I've ever trusted a Google Ngram less. Names of Macau has a good (if weakly sourced) summary of the variety of names involved, and says that the government accepts both spellings, although we do not necessarily use official names (WP:OFFICIAL); it also implies that Macau enjoys greater WP:RECOGNIZABILITY in English. The WP:COMMONNAME data seems to be split. I don't see much benefit to moving all these things around, and thus per WP:TITLECHANGES I am inclined to believe that maintaining the status quo is the best outcome here. Dekimasuよ! 20:03, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Anthem

Is the anthem sung in Cantonese and Portugese in Macao? If it isn't, I think we might have to reconsider putting the Portugese translation and Cantonese romanisation of the title in the infobox, and perhaps substitute it with Mandarin pinyin (perhaps also specifying that it's the PRC's and not only Macao's anthem). Let me know what you think! Doanri (talk) 13:21, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I started the same discussion on talk:Hong Kong. Doanri (talk) 13:25, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

0$ debt?

In the article "List of countries by external debt" Macau is listed as the third with a value of 0. Is this worth putting in one of the opening paragraphs? NowIsntItTime 00:31, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

Sister cities

The list of sister cities here is redundant and inconsistent with the list in Foreign relations of Macau#Sister cities. Given the separate articles, it would be best to delete the list here and rely on the other article to cover the subject. Also, if someone knows the correct list, it would be great to check the list (in either article). They differ and someone with an IP user name has been making changes to city pages regarding sister cities, and I am not clear these changes are valid. Coastside (talk) 16:13, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

To add to article

To add to the top of this article: a very good map clearly showing where Macau is located in relation to its surroundings in the Pearl River Delta. Why is there not already one here? 76.189.141.37 (talk) 15:16, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Skyline Image

Hi all, I am thinking about adding a skyline image to the infobox. If anybody has any objections please do let me know. Thank You! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chickensarebleepssorryuncle (talk • contribs) 22:17, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Spelling (Macao vs. Macau)

Can someone please address the spelling of Macau vs. Macao? ISO 3166 defines the spelling as "Macao", but it seems that "Macau" has been preferred on Wikipedia (on all non-ISO 3166 related articles).

'Macau' is I'm pretty sure the usual spelling in English: it's the only one I remember when visiting there, although the last time was 15 years ago. The variant 'Macao' seems to be a modern alternative spelling. Both have official status according to Names of Macau but I think the former is still the common name.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:20, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

both Macao and Macau are found in a wide variety of English language resources. Some years back it was decided to use a consistent spelling of Macau unless it was a proper name that used Macao. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

Just realised this has probably come up before and yes, it's been discussed before here and here.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Macao is the older Portuguese spelling, the older English spelling and the modern English spelling adopted by the Macau government. Macau is the modern Portuguese spelling and the comparatively more common spelling in contemporary English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.198.29.61 (talk) 10:11, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Naturally, my Oxford dictionary here would suggest that Macao is the only English spelling, as it is the only entry. The entry closes with "Portugeuse name Macau." However, English Wikipedia, for whatever reason, differs from the other Wikipedias by frequently titling articles with endonyms rather than the exonyms in the language of the Wikipedia. – RVJ (talk)

This is an English language Wikipedia page. In the first line of the article, it says "spelled Macao officially in English". So why is the page /Macau, and not /Macao? I checked the ISO country and currency codes, even the ISO 3166 code and internet TLD end in "o" (not "u"). This is all by choice of the official authorities of the country, it's not imposed from the outside. This is also inconsistent with other Wikipedia pages, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_Authority_of_Macao (which also ends in "o"). If all these government sites (amcm.gov.mo/en, portal.gov.mo, etc.) themselves spell it "Macao" in their English pages, why does this page not follow? Hi-Toro (talk) 16:40, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Decisive is how the authorities of the territory in question officially call their territory. They call it "Macao" in English, and "Macau" in Portuguese. I can't read the Chinese version(s). See the web page(s) of the governent of the Macao SAR:
in Portuguese: https://www.gov.mo/pt/conteudo/leis/diplomas-constitucionais/
in English: https://www.gov.mo/en/content/laws/constitutional-documents/
One can switch between the language versions by the "other language" link top right.
So I move the motion to change the name of this article, i.e. MOVE it to Macao.
--L.Willms (talk) 16:44, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

'largest frequesia (population)'

What does 'largest frequesia' mean? (putting population in parentheses afterwards doesn't help me) --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 13:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

'frequesia' seems a mis-spell of 'freguesia', a portuguese word which can mean a community, parish or also the customers. The word also appears in the map of city divisions. In the File:Administrative Division of Macau.png you find the header "Frequesias (Parishes) and Zones of the Macau special administrative region of the PRC". So the "largest frequesia (population)" should mean the largest parish by population (not by superficie). --L.Willms (talk) 20:18, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Regional language (table)

Stating Cantonese as a regional language separately contradicts the footnote just above, which says "No specific variety of Chinese is official in the territory. Residents predominantly speak Cantonese, the de facto regional standard." There are no special mentions of all the German or Italian varieties in the tables of Germany or Italy.--2001:16B8:3150:ED00:E4A0:EF8D:52A4:918A (talk) 10:35, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Religious demographics

JaMongKut, you have replaced the religious demographics sourced to the Pew Research Center with different numbers that you have stated are "official data by government". You did not cite a reliable source for this information, so it was removed. Please refer to the message I left on your talk page.

If you can provide a reliable source, and you feel the information should replace the Pew data, please explain why, in the context of due and undue weight. Wikipedia does not necessarily accept "official" data over other sources, it depends on the source. --IamNotU (talk) 14:22, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Population Density

I followed the link cited and couldn't find anything to substantiate the claim to being the most densely population "region" in the world. Region is an ambiguous word which can mean a part of a city, a part of a nation or an entire continent. Ambiguous words should be avoided in sentences claiming such a precise fact. Manhattan's population density is 71 201/sq mi, if that constitutes a region by your definition. Also, the figures may not have been updated, if one uses the 2009 population given and land mass given the density is 48 447/sq mi and 18 698/sq km. I'm not correcting because I don't know the criteria you're using for selecting which figures to use. mp2dtw (talk) 02:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess "region" comes from the Chinese term "diqu" which is probably more better translated "territory", which means something like a country but politically not a country. HkCaGu (talk) 02:57, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

12 years later and this is still unresolved. "region" is a meaningless term. I could define the 1x1 ft area where im standing as a "region" and then it would be far more dense in population (28 million people per square mile). Finnigami (talk) 22:41, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Why "Macau" instead of "Macao"?

Macau has merely been the Portuguese name of the city and, however, Macao is officially the English spelling. I can hardly find it justified to adopt Macau as the English spelling of both the article's title and the content. Official spelling should always be the correct one as "contemporary" is most likely not a universal agreement. NYKTNE (talk) 08:25, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@NYKTNE: Names of Macau reasons that both "Macau" and "Macao" are officially used; "Macao" is not currently used in Portuguese, and English is not an official language of Macau. I've always used "Macau". Jc86035 (talk) 08:40, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Well, according to the Macao SAR Government, the correct English name for the city/region is Macao, not Macau (Source: https://www.gov.mo/en/). I reckon the official documentation should take priority over your personal editing habits. 144.130.162.86 (talk) 08:34, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

@Jc86035: The problem is that Macao is the official English name and I believe using Macau in English context is an example of misuse. NYKTNE (talk) 09:06, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@NYKTNE: See WP:RM. Jc86035 (talk) 09:07, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Why is this article still named Macau, not Macao?

Macao SAR Government official website: https://www.gov.mo/en/

Okay, it seems to me that according to the Macanese government official website, Macao is the correct English name, Macau is the correct Portuguese name, and 澳門 is the correct Chinese name. Also, the Internet country code .mo appear to be the abbreviation for Macao, not Macau. So why is Wikipedia insist on using Macau as the English name for this city/region? Are we involving in another "Myanmar vs Burma" or "Taiwan vs Republic of China" drama that some people for whatever reasons just refuse to accept the reality? Jesus. 144.130.162.86 (talk) 08:13, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Macau is more used according to Google Trends, on Ngram Viewer, Macau is slightly more used.

The Guardian uses Macau [13].
BBC usually uses Macau [14], but sometimes uses Macao.
The Economist formerly used Macao, but now uses Macau.
The Wall Street Journal usually uses Macau [15], but sometimes uses Macao [16].
CBC usually uses Macau [17], but sometimes uses Macao [18].

It would be better look at this WP:RM 2804:14C:55:87C7:9C82:6A8D:EC39:F648 (talk) 22:06, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Giant image of Guangdong in the middle of the article

In the geography section, there is a humongous image of Guangdong with major cities surrounding Macau listed. I think this image should be removed or resized to be a lot smaller because I feel its current size is a bit distracting. LittleCuteSuit (talk) 19:26, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Macão

Hasn't it also been spelled Macão? 76.126.29.36 (talk) 19:41, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

er... I don't think so. --95.93.27.164 (talk) 10:23, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Even if, that was centuries ago. A hypercorrection of the official english name Macao to a portugualized world with ã. Macau is the official name of this territory in English language. --L.Willms (talk)

Wrong. The correct English name is Macao, not Macau (Source: https://www.gov.mo/en/). 144.130.162.86 (talk) 08:22, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

The official name is Macao, Macau is more used 2804:14C:55:87C7:9C82:6A8D:EC39:F648 (talk) 22:08, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AIHTNY.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:03, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - FA22 - Sect 200 - Thu

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Macao Exempted from the Gold Trading Rules of Bretton Woods

This is a major historical event which has been omitted from the article. There is a reference online at http://www.macaubusiness.com/news/opinion/what-price-freedom/519/

But I am not sure where to put it in the article.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.232.240.28 (talk) 10:51, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Macau Product Exports (2019).svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Why is the flag of macau so big on the info box?

why it's humongous. 90.240.247.173 (talk) 17:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a mobile site / app bug that's present on all country / territory articles. Yue🌙 00:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Should this article be written in Hong Kong English?

Macao is not a English region at all. The requirement that this article should be written in Hong Kong English looks really weird (especially when China is written in American English instead of Hong Kong English). John Smith Ri (talk) 01:05, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Hong Kong English is more commonly used in Macau than any other variant of English, and certainly not American English. Yue🌙 01:16, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

area of macau is inaccurate

the area of macau as stated in "Macau" is listed as 115.3km^2 (i'm not going to write the american equivalent in miles square because who cares about the imperial system). however, the area of macau listed in the article titled "List of countries and dependencies by population density", it shows 33km^2. so which one is correct??? 2406:3003:2002:2D79:AC21:87FD:5C6E:EC8D (talk) 05:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

because of the inaccuracy in the area given, it affects the calculation for the population density of macau (which is famously listed as the most dense country/dependency in the world) 2406:3003:2002:2D79:AC21:87FD:5C6E:EC8D (talk) 05:45, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

@2406:3003:2002:2D79:AC21:87FD:5C6E:EC8D: As stated in the article (particularly the Geography section) and at Geography of Macau, the smaller figure is the land area while the larger figure includes water. The land area is generally what's relevant for population density. — MarkH₂₁^talk 06:33, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

oh alright got it, thanks 2406:3003:2002:2D79:AC21:87FD:5C6E:EC8D (talk) 06:54, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Spelling of 'Macao'

'Macao' is the official English spelling, while 'Macau' is the official Portuguese spelling. Why is the Portuguese spelling (Macau) used throughout/ as the title of the English page? Eensaam (talk) 18:13, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME overrules WP:OFFICIAL. Yue🌙 18:17, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Our relevant policy is WP:COMMONNAME, but a cursory Ngrams search finds the relevant datum to be closer than I'd realized . Remsense诉 18:17, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I did the exact same search and was surprised too. However, the 2018 move proposal for this article failed because the crux of the movers' arguments was also WP:OFFICIAL. This is not a policy-based point, but if you make an English-language Google search of Macau or Macao, the first page will return almost exclusively Macaus. I'd reckon a lot of editors familiar or unfamiliar with the site guidelines would need a better explanation than "it's official". Yue🌙 18:25, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

The question could then become "how much of that is Wikipedia itself", but it seems when it's this even, we do need a clearer, more compelling majority to make a change. Remsense诉 18:27, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

If the two names are equally common, then wouldn't being official be a reasonable "tie-breaker"? This would make sense for the naturalness and consistency criteria. Being the current title isn't a reason to favor it. — MarkH₂₁^talk 20:39, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

It's more that I don't trust Ngrams as the sole data for what's the COMMONNAME in a scenario like this. Remsense诉 20:51, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh sure, I agree. It's one piece of evidence, but a more detailed analysis would be helpful. If they end up being similarly common in English reliable sources then I think the official name should be the title. — MarkH₂₁^talk 20:54, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Completely arbitrary but more specific data point I'll contribute: my personal library of China-related books has 40 using "Macau" somewhere in the text, but 73 for "Macao". Remsense诉 14:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Where two names both might fit the common name criteria, I favor the official name. Common name is not a purely mechanistic "vote by the ngrams" criteria. In the instance of Macao/Macau there are so many overlapping linguistic questions that I don't feel particularly strongly, however.

I thought I might add this from Prof. Tim Simpson's (University of Macau) recent text in case it's helpful to thinking about the issue:

One odd challenge encountered by anyone who writes about this city is the ambiguous spelling of Macau/Macao. Both versions are widely used. A local government directive indicates that the proper spelling of the city is "Macao" in English and "Macau" in Portuguese, except for the case of the "University of Macau" which retains the "u" in both languages. HGowever, as the latter clause in that sentence makes clear, this is primarily a policy of convenience rather than a definitive orthographical rule. In any event, I have chosen to spell Macau with a "u," which is (despite the local policy) arguably the more common form found today in the international English press. [Simpson goes on to say he retains "Macao" when quoting that usage]. Ultimately, there is no way to avoid this spelling inconsistency, which, although frustrating, is also a reflection of the endemic historical and cultural ambiguity that makes the city so fascinating. JArthur1984 (talk) 21:44, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 24 June 2024

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.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Out of the number of voters, there is a total of eight support !votes (including two weak support), and nine oppose !votes (including one weak oppose). There was no consensus since between the two sides, the two names remians the WP:COMMONNAME. While there is a proposal of official name because of interchangeability of both titles, was already tackled by arguments saying that WP:COMMONNAME supersedes WP:OFFICIAL, which was mostly the conclusion of the support voters. Since both are recognizable in English, and used widely in certain particular areas, I see no argument of move and do not move. (non-admin closure) Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 04:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Macau → Macao – Per the preliminary discussions above, it seems there's actually a solid case on WP:COMMONNAME (+ WP:OFFICIAL) grounds for this rename. Let's see where it goes. Remsense诉 14:27, 24 June 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Polyamorph (talk) 17:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Politics, WikiProject Geography, WikiProject Cities, WikiProject China, and WikiProject Macau have been notified of this discussion. Remsense诉 14:27, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Support: As official + common name in English. --Wengier (talk) 16:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)
Support per nominator, for reasons listed above. Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:03, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose – Google Ngram results (based on print sources only) are split between the two, as are many contemporary English-language news sources (that I took a quick look at), e.g. AP News, BBC, CBC, CNN, Fox News, The Guardian, NYT, SCMP, etc. I am unconvinced that "Macao" is more recognizable than "Macau". Yue🌙 20:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Support. Both variations might fit the common name criteria. In a situation where we have multiple common names to pick from, I favor the usage which has the additional benefit of being "official". JArthur1984 (talk) 20:35, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose as Macao does not command greater WP:RECOGNIZABILITY in English. (Interestingly, the main newspaper of record in the immediate vicinity, South China Morning Post, prefers Macau.) There is not yet a strong change rationale per WP:TITLECHANGES. - Amigao (talk) 00:27, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose– Ngrams are too close right now to assuredly say that Macao is more common than Macau, I say leave the status quo for now. DervotNum4 (talk) 17:14, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose It seems that Macau and Macao are both commonly-used and equally recognisable. As such, there is no good rationale to change the spelling to Macao. --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 01:53, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Support - The official English name 'Macao' also fits common name criteria, and where both spellings are interchangeable and common I prefer the official term.

Eensaam (talk) 14:32, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Support per nom Kowal2701 (talk) 19:57, 29 June 2024 (UTC)
Oppose While Macao is the official name of the region in English, but we must beware that both Macao and Macau are equally recognisable name in English (with the US, Singapore, and Australia prefer the latter while China and the UK prefer the former). On the other hand, the majority of non-governmental English-language sources outside China prefer to usage of "Macau" instead of "Macao", signify that there's a popularity split between two spellings that make the page cannot be moved to one another. 103.111.100.82 (talk) 12:49, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting to allow more time for consensus to develop Polyamorph (talk) 17:41, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose move. Neither is more recognizable than the other. O.N.R. ^(talk) 18:07, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
I will note here (in response equally to several of the other oppose votes) that there are five criteria for article titles. To me, the case is predicated on "Macao" being equally recognizable, but more natural, as it reflects official use. Remsense诉 18:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
Oppose – Per WP:RECOGNIZABILITY. Svartner (talk) 10:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)
Weak oppose per Yue. Ngrams does show they're close, but the current is still ahead, so something else proving COMMONNAME is needed, not OFFICIALNAMES. Tiebreaker would make sense if there were more than two spellings or Macao was just barely ahead. Dank Jae 18:43, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Weak support: If the two names are equally common (so WP:COMMONNAME is split between them), then the article title should be the official English name for the naturalness and consistency criteria.
There is no preferential treatment for the status quo under any part of the naming guidelines, even though multiple oppose !votes given here seem to be implicitly based on such a principle.
My support is only weak because there isn't a detailed analysis on the frequency of either spelling. Google Ngrams show them as being similar and English language reliable sources using both names (e.g. Associated Press uses "Macao", Reuters uses "Macau"). I'd upgrade my support with a more careful counting of sources. — MarkH₂₁^talk 22:07, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per WP:RECOGNIZABILITY. Neither one of two words are more recognizable than each other. Both "Macao" and "Macau" are equally recognizable in English, with "Macau" preferred by majority of English-language media publications and government publications in the US, Australia, and Singapore, while the name "Macao" used by British, Canadian, and Chinese governmental publications, as well as some English-language media publications. 2404:8000:1037:178:6846:2832:E7EC:82C6 (talk) 10:16, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Weak Support - Macao is the one of the Common name as well as the official english name as said on the article itself.

My support is only weak because both are being use interchangeably. Warm Regards, Miminity (talk) (contribs) 10:31, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

[SMG1-1] "Macao Climate: 30-year Statistics of some meteorological elements". Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau. Retrieved 19 March 2021.

[macaoclimate-2] "Macao Climate: Extreme Value of some meteorological elements (1901-2020)". Macao Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau. Retrieved 19 March 2021.

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