Double Countries in Countries List

I see there are 405 countries the country list, but I have to point out there is Burma and there is Myanmar. These are the same country with the same coins listed in for both. The situation is the same with Spitsbergen and Svalbard. Can we combine these listings and remove two duplicate countries?
Also, why is there England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom? It is because it's hard to quantify 1,000 plus years of history in one country?
I apologize if this topic has been breached before.

If you look closer, the country "Great Britain" is merely there to improve searchability and when clicked will take you to the United Kingdom. The England catalogue covers all issues from the earliest ancients up to the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707.

Some name changes are less assimilated in foreign countries. The Burma/Myanmar is a perfect example of this.

Concerning Spitsbergen and Svalbard, it's a multilingual issue due to the special status of the Svalbard archipelago (I prefer using the Norwegian name that way).

Concerning England, radrick007 said all. And concerning GB/UK, it's due to a naming confusion risk.

Cita: "chomp-master"​Some name changes are less assimilated in foreign countries. The Burma/Myanmar is a perfect example of this.
​
​Concerning Spitsbergen and Svalbard, it's a multilingual issue due to the special status of the Svalbard archipelago (I prefer using the Norwegian name that way).
​
​Concerning England, radrick007 said all. And concerning GB/UK, it's due to a naming confusion risk.

Thank you for the response Chomp. I know the world of coins and coin collecting is always in flux and open to interpretation.

I understand about UK, it's hard to quantify that much history and keep all the political alliances correct.

But I still think Burma should be removed. When I click on Burma, it ​goes straight to Myanmar. It is pointless to have that as a feature. I think the members of this site are smart enough to know that Myanmar represents Burma, no matter what country they are from. At worst, combine them, do not have two separate entities.

It is the same for Spitsbergen/Svalbard. Can't we combine it, seeing as how it is the same 8 coins for both countries? I have no coins from that country/territory right now, so I can't say how they would appear in my catalog. But it is redundant to list them twice.

Making those two small changes won't hurt or help this site much, but might help some members in their collecting efforts.

It is a good idea that a names could be combined and show in the format of:

Burma/Myanmar
Spitsbergen/Svalbard

It is both searchable and keeps two names for everybody.

Or keeping the actual system but adding in the country listing title a mention about the double naming, like Wikipedia does... For example:

Burma redirects here as Myanmar is a less known rename of Burma.

The same for other similar countries.

Chomp, I respect your opinion and your position, but it wouldn't change the fact that there are 405 countries listed, but only 402 distinct currencies.
(I'm adding Tanganyika to this discussion, because it was a country, but had no currency. As far as I can tell, it's currency was the East African Shilling. )
This all came about for me (again, I apologize if this topic has been previously discussed), because I recently created a slot for each nation in the Numista countries list into plastic sleeves, so I could better categorize my collection. So I have 405 slots (and 23 for the Euros), but I won't be able to add a coin from Burma to my list because it doesn't exist. It will always be a coin from Myanmar.
The same with Spitsbergen/Svalbard. I have one coin for two slots.
Radrick's point about England/Great Britian/UK is well taken, so I'll leave those slots.
Jarcek's point is the one I agree with (obviously, because he agrees with me).
But I will leave the decision up to the members of the Numista team to decide.
Thanks

I would prefer if we let the two (for example) Burma and Myanmar where they are, but write after the Word "Burma" the few Words "- link to Myanmar" or anything what explains us users this is not a additional country but a often used word for the country Myanmar. We also can bracket the older name like "(Burma)" and "Myanmar" and let them where they are.
Or we write "(Burma) now Myanmar" and "Myanmar (Burma)".

The same we can do with Ceylon and Sri Lanka (which are counted here as two countries but they are one country) and others.

With the more names, the list is easyer to use for everyone because not everybody knows the actual name of all countries.

For me it would be enough to keep the actual names and delete the older ones. But i am not alone here.

I agree they should not count as separate countries... but both names should be there somewhere. When I first started using NGC it took me a while to work out that all the UK coins were listed under "Great Britain" so it would have helped me if NGC had used a similar system of redirecting any searches of "United Kingdom" into their "Great Britain" rather than just returning "no entries found".

Either having the two separate names but not having them count as separate countries, or having the names merged into "Myanmar (Burma)" and "United kingdom (Great Britain)" or "Myanmar/Burma" and "United Kingdom/Great Britain" should be the way to go.

Cita: "Jarcek"​Burma/Myanmar
​Spitsbergen/Svalbard

​I must say that I am very surprised that it doesn't say this already. It should've been done by default since it's the same country. The only difference is that the international name for the country were changed from Burma to the Burmese name Myanmar (Bur: myanma).
As said before, the country will be searchable for both "Burma" and "Myanmar".

According to Spitsbergen/Svalbard it's a little weird. Spitsbergen is the biggest island of Svalbard. So, why is it under the name of "Spitsbergen"? It's like have the listing New Zealand and South Island, or Cook Islands and Rarotonga, since Rarotonga is the most populous island of Cook Islands.

Nah, make it right and slash them!

Cita: "ngdawa"​​According to Spitsbergen/Svalbard it's a little weird. Spitsbergen is the biggest island of Svalbard. So, why is it under the name of "Spitsbergen"? It's like have the listing New Zealand and South Island, or Cook Islands and Rarotonga, since Rarotonga is the most populous island of Cook Islands.

​Apparently the whole archipelago used to be called Spitsbergen:
"The archipelago has traditionally been known as Spitsbergen, and the main island as West Spitsbergen. From the 1920s, Norway renamed the archipelago Svalbard, and the main island became Spitsbergen"
(from wikipedia page)

Anyway, I found there are currently 3 different cases with countries that were renamed:
- all coins are under only 1 name: e.g. "Guyana" lists coins from both colonial British Guiana and Guyana
- both country names appear but one of them is just a redirection: e.g. "Burma" and "Myanmar" both list the same coins
- both countries appear and are considered separate: e.g. "British Honduras" and "Belize" each have their own coins

In order to make the list more coherent there should be guidelines that state when a country becomes a "new" one and deserves to be split. Is it when it changes its name? When it becomes independant? When it includes or loses territory? All of the above? Something else?

Personally I think that the number of countries in the list should be the number of real past and current countries, so I vote for no doubles and something like "Myanmar (Burma)", or (ex-Burma). For the UK it should be "United Kingdom of Great Britain" as it's the official name (minus Northern Ireland).

Problem is that we cannot create such guideline without making more problems. History is never plain and without issues. I believe each country issue should be discussed separately.

Sometimes it is OK when they are listed together - Guyana, Phillipines - but sometimes this is not aplicable (when states lose/gain teritorry or even merge - Poland,Lithuania, Commonwealth or are disassembled and then connected again - Czechoslovakia, Bohemia and Moravia + WW2 Slovakia)

"British Honduras" and "Belize" - here is the naming issue.

"Burma" and "Myanmar" could be solved by changing it to Burma/Myanmar (Plus maybe this should be applied to to Honduras and Belize too)

But one general rule? Nope for me, I would rather saw general discussions, then Team with concerned referees decide - maybe there could be voting or something. We can also look how other catalogues are handling these problems.

Cita: "Jarcek"​But one general rule? Nope for me, I would rather saw general discussions, then Team with concerned referees decide - maybe there could be voting or something. We can also look how other catalogues are handling these problems.

​
Not one general, immutable rule but guidelines which will help decide what to do on the simplest cases. For example, in the case of a country just changing its name, the guideline may state that the country appears only once in the list, as "New name (ex-old name)", so there would be no need to discuss each and every one of those cases but we would be sure that they're all treated the same way.
Of course that can't be used automatically in every case, but it could help decide on a case-by-case basis if the guideline states that a country is defined by say its territory, or its ruling system (or whatever is decided).

Agree, that can be done.

I think cross referencing is very different from COUNTRY setups, i.e. UK and GB are okay, so is Myanmar and Burma, and all others, ...
... but is NOT okay to mix and match similar looking but different countries like CzechoSlovakia and Slovakia or "Qatar and Dubai" and UAE ...

No one coming to numista with a coin that says on itself British Honduras is going to think that it is found under a country of a completely different name, Belize. All of this talk will exclude a lot of participation by newer collectors. The country list should be a table of contents. The cross references should remain in the back of the book so to speak.

Cita: "Oklahoman"​No one coming to numista with a coin that says on itself British Honduras is going to think that it is found under a country of a completely different name, Belize.

​I was just going to say that (believe it or not), but in different words.
Of course the Countries and Territories list needs to be fixed, but I do reckon that former colonies - and it's names - should be listed separately from the modern country. If it says, let's say, British Honduras on the coin, of course we need a list for the British Honduran coins! Anything else would be insane.

The starting point would be countries which official name is change (like Burma/Myanmar) etc. This has nothing with colonisation to do, it was just that they decided to change the English name from "Burma" to "Myanmar".

Similar example is the currency of Ethiopia, the birr, which was referred as "dollar" in English until mid 60's/70's. In amharic (the official language of Ethiopia) the currency has always be refered as "birr".

So, keep the colonies separated from its modern counterparts, please.

I think this has gotten off topic, as much as I have enjoyed all the different perspectives displayed.
My point was there are no coins from Burma. There are only coins from Myanmar. So Burma shouldn't be on the countries list. At worst, it can be combined with Myanmar as to not confuse the people who traditionally know the nation as Burma. But as far as I can tell, the nation has always referred to itself as Myanmar.
The coins from Spitsbergergen/Svalbard are the same, so there should be one reference, not two, in the country list.
And finally, Tanganyika never issued coins under its name. They are either East Africa or Tanzania. So this country should be removed.
I just inquifred about changing the reference to these three countries/territories. I didn't intend to rewrite the entire catalogue or change the way the site is administrated. I just saw one small piece of this enormous puzzle that I thought could be improved.
Like many people on this site have said before, I love this site and think the administrators and team have done a phenomenal job with it. I am thrilled with the people I have interacted and swapped with, love the conversations discussed, and have learned more about the world and its currencies than I have ever thought possible.

Cita: "Oklahoman"​No one coming to numista with a coin that says on itself British Honduras is going to think that it is found under a country of a completely different name, Belize. All of this talk will exclude a lot of participation by newer collectors. The country list should be a table of contents. The cross references should remain in the back of the book so to speak.

​Well, I think people who collect coins are eager to learn, not necessarily expecting something simple and are definitely not stupid. A new collector will be happy to find, even after struggling a bit, that Belize was British Honduras ! In fact, if you don't find a country, then you google it or whatever search engine you use, and find it , which makes you happy because you learned something.

But for those simple cases of "duplicate" countries, it will happen don't worry.

I would consider more "educational" to keep a double entry like Svalbard/Spitsbergen or Burma/Myanmar as the country is/was known as both names (previous/modern, archipelago/main island...)

The same goes for Great Britain/United Kingdom.

The problem with Spitsbergen and its coins is a bit more complicated than "archipelago/main island".

Historically, the archipelago was disputed between Russia and Norway, with Spitsbergen being the Russian name for it and Svalbard the Norwegian name.
In the 1920s, an official arbitration awarded it to Norway, so Svalbard became its official international name. But the Russians continued to call it Spitzbergen (and indeed do so to this day).
Now, as it happens, while the archipelago was still disputed, a Russian coal mining company was established there. The arbitration specifically allowed said company to continue operating; to the best of my knowledge, it still operates there today.
And, as it also happens, all the "coins" of Spitsbergen are tokens of said Russian mining company. So they naturally use the Spitsbergen name, because from that perspective it's what the place is actually named. (Though they technically say "Spitsbergen Island", so if the main island still has the name - I'm not sure whether that's true - they aren't even technically contradcting international geography.)

As such, it is definitely true that there are no Svalbard coins; all of them are Spitsbergen. But doubtlessly some people would have heard of "coins of the Svalbard archipelago" or somesuch - which they are - so an entry for Svalbard (linking to the Spitsbergen entry) does make sense as well.
Now if there were any coins of Norwegian Svalbard, this would've been another problem entirely. But, as far as I know, there aren't any (yet).

Cita: "January First-of-May"​The problem with Spitsbergen and its coins is a bit more complicated than "archipelago/main island".
​
​Historically, the archipelago was disputed between Russia and Norway, with Spitsbergen being the Russian name for it and Svalbard the Norwegian name.
​In the 1920s, an official arbitration awarded it to Norway, so Svalbard became its official international name. But the Russians continued to call it Spitzbergen (and indeed do so to this day).
​Now, as it happens, while the archipelago was still disputed, a Russian coal mining company was established there. The arbitration specifically allowed said company to continue operating; to the best of my knowledge, it still operates there today.
​And, as it also happens, all the "coins" of Spitsbergen are tokens of said Russian mining company. So they naturally use the Spitsbergen name, because from that perspective it's what the place is actually named. (Though they technically say "Spitsbergen Island", so if the main island still has the name - I'm not sure whether that's true - they aren't even technically contradcting international geography.)
​
​As such, it is definitely true that there are no Svalbard coins; all of them are Spitsbergen. But doubtlessly some people would have heard of "coins of the Svalbard archipelago" or somesuch - which they are - so an entry for Svalbard (linking to the Spitsbergen entry) does make sense as well.
​Now if there were any coins of Norwegian Svalbard, this would've been another problem entirely. But, as far as I know, there aren't any (yet).

So can we call it "Spitsbergen/Svalbard" and get rid of the double country notation?​

Cita: "JRo69"​

Cita: "January First-of-May"​The problem with Spitsbergen and its coins is a bit more complicated than "archipelago/main island".
​​
​​Historically, the archipelago was disputed between Russia and Norway, with Spitsbergen being the Russian name for it and Svalbard the Norwegian name.
​​In the 1920s, an official arbitration awarded it to Norway, so Svalbard became its official international name. But the Russians continued to call it Spitzbergen (and indeed do so to this day).
​​Now, as it happens, while the archipelago was still disputed, a Russian coal mining company was established there. The arbitration specifically allowed said company to continue operating; to the best of my knowledge, it still operates there today.
​​And, as it also happens, all the "coins" of Spitsbergen are tokens of said Russian mining company. So they naturally use the Spitsbergen name, because from that perspective it's what the place is actually named. (Though they technically say "Spitsbergen Island", so if the main island still has the name - I'm not sure whether that's true - they aren't even technically contradcting international geography.)
​​
​​As such, it is definitely true that there are no Svalbard coins; all of them are Spitsbergen. But doubtlessly some people would have heard of "coins of the Svalbard archipelago" or somesuch - which they are - so an entry for Svalbard (linking to the Spitsbergen entry) does make sense as well.
​​Now if there were any coins of Norwegian Svalbard, this would've been another problem entirely. But, as far as I know, there aren't any (yet).

​So can we call it "Spitsbergen/Svalbard" and get rid of the double country notation?​

​​​Yes, just like we could say "Myanmar/Burma". (And like how we do say "Soviet Union (USSR)"; might as well say "Macedonia (FYROM)" for consistency.) But the double notation is simpler, because otherwise we would have no idea where to put it alphabetically.
In Spitsbergen's case, we should really just call it Spitsbergen until and unless any Svalbard coins appear. (If so, rename the country to Svalbard, and add Spitsbergen to the name of the currency.) But the current situation might be simpler.

(On the topic of Burma/Myanmar: the country had indeed called itself something like "myanma", or perhaps "mranma", for all of its history, and Burma was an incompetent attempt at transliteration. But the spelling "Myanmar" is now heavily associated with the rather awful bunch of people that was in power when the name change was originally pushed - don't recall if they still are in power - so many still call the country Burma to avoid looking like they agree with the bad people that rule said country.)

Cita: "ngdawa"​

Cita: "Oklahoman"​No one coming to numista with a coin that says on itself British Honduras is going to think that it is found under a country of a completely different name, Belize.

​​I was just going to say that (believe it or not), but in different words.
​Of course the Countries and Territories list needs to be fixed, but I do reckon that former colonies - and it's names - should be listed separately from the modern country. If it says, let's say, British Honduras on the coin, of course we need a list for the British Honduran coins! Anything else would be insane.
​
​The starting point would be countries which official name is change (like Burma/Myanmar) etc. This has nothing with colonisation to do, it was just that they decided to change the English name from "Burma" to "Myanmar".
​
​Similar example is the currency of Ethiopia, the birr, which was referred as "dollar" in English until mid 60's/70's. In amharic (the official language of Ethiopia) the currency has always be refered as "birr".
​
​So, keep the colonies separated from its modern counterparts, please.

​And if it says Bank Deutscher Länder on the coin, which country that coin should go under? (It's West Germany, for the record, represented here as "Germany - Federal Republic".) If it says Impero Austriaco, should the coin go under "Austrian Empire"?
(Both examples are from my collection; the latter is this type, quite correctly catalogued under "Italian states".)

I've been surprised, a few weeks ago, to find out that my coin of Portuguese Guinea was catalogued under "Guinea-Bissau". My OFEC bug led me to buy a coin of actual Guinea-Bissau - which didn't get me any new countries by Numista rules, but in my mind I count that as a new country.
Similarly (though I expected it in these cases), coins of RSFSR and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes are categorized under USSR and Yugoslavia, respectively; but I consider each of them their own country.

I recently bought a coin of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and when I looked it up on the Internet, I learned that was the name of the country known as Yugoslavia before the name was officially adopted.
So I am not sure if it should be its own country or a subset of Yugoslavia.

For now they're listed under Yugoslavia. The King only kept its traditional title even after the country rename (which meaned South Slavs for information)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia