Wikipedia:Naming conventions (immigrant ethnic groups)

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The titles of articles for immigrant and ethnic minority groups are a controversial issue on Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not have any required naming convention for such articles, and this proposed guideline does not seek to mandate one. Instead, it merely describes existing practises, expands on how existing guidelines and policies such as

If you would like to rename articles in this topic area, you should open a discussion on the Wikipedia:Requested moves page. Building consensus for article renaming helps to minimise friction between editors and ensures that a variety of options are explored before a decision is made.

One common way to describe immigrant groups is by combining the demonyms of their country/region of origin and country/region of destination. Pluralisation and hyphenation vary. For example, for immigrants from Fooland to Barland:

• American-style (Fooian Barian), as in
  Japanese Peruvian, or Chinese Filipino
• British-style (Barian Fooian), as in
  British Bangladeshi, Malaysian Chinese, or Volga Germans

• People are sometimes categorized by notable
  ancestry, culture, or ethnicity
  , depending upon the common conventions of speech for each nationality. A hyphen is used to distinguish the word order:
  1. Fooian Barians, nationality followed by heritage, such as Category:British Asians.
  2. Barian-Fooians, heritage followed by nationality, such as Category:Irish Americans.

In practise, this recommended use of the hyphen has often been disputed^[1] because many Asian American groups object to the use of the hyphen, and because the United States Census Bureau explicitly does not use the hyphen.^[2]

If reliable sources predominantly use one name (ordering and hyphenation) to refer to a specific group, and that title is reasonably unambiguous, it should be used as the article title. However, there are some reservations:

• Use of demonyms may incorrectly imply citizenship of the group in question.^[3]
• If both Fooland and Barland have sent large numbers of immigrants to each other, and neither country in question has an overwhelming usage of either the American or British convention, then it may be less confusing to use a title from option 2 or 3.^[4]
• If a given group is not referred to as either "Fooian Barian" or "Barian Fooian" in reliable sources, then inventing a name for them along those lines constitutes original research (synthesis of published material in order to advance a point) and fails
  Wikipedia's policy on verifiability

Frequently, these are also the self-identifying name of the group in question, and may be in the language of the origin or destination country. Examples include:

• Goryeo Dynasty
  , is a politically-neutral alternative to North and South Korea's competing Korean-language terms for "Korean people".
• Beta Israel, Jews of Ethiopian origin, some of whom have settled in Israel while others remain in Ethiopia. The name means "House of Israel" in Hebrew.
• Hindoestanen, people of South Asian origin in Dutch-speaking countries (Suriname and the Netherlands). The name comes from a Dutch language inflection of the Persian term Hindustan, an alternative name for either the modern Republic of India, the whole Indian subcontinent, or the areas from which Hindi
  speakers historically originated.