Talk:Haudenosaunee

Should this page be split between the Iroquois Confederacy and modern Iroquois?

One article for the Iroquois Confederacy, another one for the activities of the Iroquois post confederacy. -FelineHerder (talk) 19:01, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

The Confederacy still exists, so I don't think "post confederacy" is correct. But there is a broader point here that this article is trying to do too much. I would think that this article should be about the Iroquois Confederacy, not the people that comprise it. On this page, there is too much about things like medicine and spiritual beliefs. Those are not relevant for the confederacy, only for its people. I would prefer to see that at Iroquoian peoples. A good comparison is the European Union article. On that page, things like sports are covered only to the extent that the EU itself sets policies. --GoldCoastPrior (talk) 16:59, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

Length of article

I propose removing the tag about the length of the article. It was added in January 2025 but no topic was opened on the talk page to discuss it. Here are some page lengths for comparison: United States of America 366,000, Lithuania 299,000, Bhutan 206,000, Andorra 151,000. I don't think the Haudenosaunee Nation, at 23,000, is a problem.

The biggest subtopic would probably be "Society". However, a substantial portion of that information would have to remain to do justice to the overall topic. So it doesn't really make sense.

As for splitting it, should "United States" be split between pre civil war and post civil war?

If you are monitoring the lock on this page and agree with me, please remove the tag.

Humpster (talk) 22:38, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Page size is calculated in readable prose. Andorra weighs in at 8.5k words of readable prose, Bhutan at 11.1k, Lithuania 13.7k, United States 12.6. This article is 23.4 k - 10k more than the next largest of the comparators listed, and well over the 15k WP:SIZERULE indicates an article "almost certainly should be divided or trimmed". Nikkimaria (talk) 22:44, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

The tag is about prose text size of 23407 word. What constitutes "too long" varies by situation, but generally 50 kilobytes of readable prose (8,000 words) is the starting point at which articles may be considered too long.....so in other words this page is almost triple of what we recommend.

The examples you're giving are half the size....

Lithuania has 13781 words

The United States has 12637 words....etc

I suggest reviewing WP:SIZERULE....

And perhaps turn on the tools so you can see this.

Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing → Prosesize: add a toolbox link to show the size of and number of words in a page (direct link), and then save. Moxy🍁 22:50, 2 October 2025 (UTC)

Picking this up, to reduce this article size, it should be easy enough to have the current "History" section spun out into an independent article, and then condense the history section in this article, while pointing to the new "History of the Iroquois" article as the main article for that topic. I've not looked at "Society" yet as suggested by Humpster, but a similar set of actions may be possible. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:22, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

History now has it's own article, and after some attempts at trimming in this article, the readable prose has reduced from 23,403 words to 21,191 words (-2,212). -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:05, 18 December 2025 (UTC)

I've made some changes, and plan to make more. The article currently describes a 17th century snapshot of the Haudenosaunee. This seems wrong to me, as the Haudenosaunee are living people today. It would be like having a society section for the European Union article that describes their society at the time of the 17th century. I'm moving most to the History of the Haudenosaunee article; feel free to find it there. GoldCoastPrior (talk) 17:06, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Names

Iroquois is a colonial name. ~2026-43954-3 (talk) 22:47, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

The fact that "Iroquois" is a colonial name is stated in the article itself. The reason this name is used as the article title rather than Haudenosaunee is due to the policy of WP:COMMONNAME. There are many other examples of nations or countries that are more commonly known by an exonym than their native name. -888Zitong888 (talk) 08:57, 29 January 2026 (UTC) 888Zitong888 (talk) 08:57, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 March 2026

Change Iroquois to Haudenosaunee ~2026-16401-09 (talk) 00:23, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

 Not done –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 02:54, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Requested move 14 April 2026

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: moved. There is a clear consensus to move the page. While those opposing made strong arguments about the historical commonality of the original title, supporters provided a more robust, policy-backed rationale demonstrating that the antonym has sufficient modern use in English to satisfy WP:NCET. (non-admin closure) Feeglgeef (talk) 21:32, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

---

Iroquois → Haudenosaunee – Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes). The names an ethnic group or Indigenous government self-identifies should be considered If their autonym is commonly used in English, it would be the best article title. 'Haudenosaunee' is clearly their preferred name name and is common in English, a search of gscholar since 2020 shows 13,300 hits for 'Haudenosaunee' slightly lower than the 15,800 hits for 'Iroquois' over the same period. blindlynx 19:32, 14 April 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:11, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment This was previously discussed in 2020, in 2022, and in 2023; what exactly has changed since? If the answer is "nothing", I would recommend withdrawing this RM. 162 etc. (talk) 20:11, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

The gap has closed significantly since last time in 2015 to 2020 the ratio was 15,700 to 6,300 on gscholar [], [] to 15,800 to 13,300 in the last five years. It's becoming very clear that 'Haudenosaunee' is common in English and it's time we actually applied out naming convention guidelines to this—blindlynx 13:27, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

The nominator has explicitly addressed recent usage in sources. One editor in the last RM pointed to Britannica'‍s usage in support of "Iroquois", with a link to: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iroquois-people. That URL now redirects you to the "Iroquoian peoples" article located at https://www.britannica.com/topic/Iroquoian-peoples, which is distinct from the "Haudenosaunee Confederacy" article. I don't know if Britannica has updated their language since 2023 or if the editor was simply mistaken at the time due to the ambiguity (imprecision) of "Iroquois". —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:43, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Ngram usage (past 50 years) shows the current name much more common. I also see substantial self-usage of "Iroquois" by the people who are suggested to find it undesirable, and the family of languages seems to be called Iroquoian languages. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:34, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

  Nagram data ends in 2022 and gscholar hits suggests the gap has closed significantly since then. —blindlynx 23:39, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

  Extrapolation is fraught with peril, and very flat for the last four years of that data, with a usage ratio of nearly 5:1. That's pretty dominant. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:49, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

I did a quick search of Gscholar hits by year for both and it's a lot finer grain than Ngrams it also paints a clear picture of use in high quality sources

GScholar hits by year

Year	Iroquois	Haudenosaunee
2015	3,700	668
2016	3,870	877
2017	3,630	856
2018	3,370	1,050
2019	3,690	1,240
2020	3,720	1,650
2021	3,560	1,970
2022	3,510	2,390
2023	3,420	2,480
2024	2,950	2,520
2025	3,030	2,550
2026 (partial)	601	562

—blindlynx 18:16, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

As a note looking at the rate that Ngrams updates, we should see an update to the data set by the end of 2028. Which would coincide roughly with when we may see Haudenosaunee overtake Iroquois in GScholar hits, doing a basic forecast of the data trends. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:37, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Note: GScholar a good number of results for the genetics topic Iroquois homeobox. These are over-represented in the Google Scholar corpus, which contains many biology publications. A Google Scholar search for "Iroquois homeobox" returns 1,060 results from 2020 to the present. This is a minority of uses but does close the gap between "Haudenosaunee" and "Iroquois" somewhat. Attention must also be paid to usage of "Iroquois language(s)" and to historical vs. present-day references in both Google Scholar and Google Books (Ngram) results. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 14:48, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

The name of a language group is not a good place to pull the name of a people or polity. Need we look at how the English, Scots, and Dutch are not called Germans? Or the history of the name of the Eskaleut language family and the changing names of the Inuit and related groups? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 15:58, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose as a perennial rehash of former rejected arguments, with no demonstrable change in long-term usage. Iroquois is more widely used and recognized, probably by a wide margin. It's not generally regarded as offensive, and is typically used by a high percentage of those it describes; from what I read, "Haudenosaunee" is used by only some of the same people, and then often interchangeably with "Iroquois", or with more specific meanings. Very little can be gleaned from limited, short-term samples of very recent usage; a long-term trend would be more useful, and the last few years aren't nearly long enough to show that. It's also not enough that "Haudenosaunee" is more widely used than it was in the past; it needs to be the predominant form, given the historical usage of "Iroquois". At this point, that appears to be far from the case. P Aculeius (talk) 05:37, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  This comment states that Haudenosaunee "needs to be the predominant form", but I don't see as a requirement in Wikipedia:ETHNICGROUP. Further, it is easy to find examples where historical forms are more popular as general words, but Wikipedia still uses the newer form for the community. As an example, Ho-Chunk is used on Wikipedia rather than "Winnebago". Google Trends still shows "Winnebago" as a more common term, in part because of place names and popular usage of the term "Winnebago", just as is the case with "Iroquois" (e.g., "Iroquois County, Illinois", "Iroquois" the neighborhood in Louisville). We still made the change to Ho-Chunk. See comments below on how journalists prefer "Haudenosaunee", in some cases exclusively. GoldCoastPrior (talk) 20:31, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  WP:COMMONNAME would seem to be the relevant guideline, when the most widely-used term for a particular topic is not generally regarded as inaccurate or offensive. Since "Iroquois" is still widely used as a term of self-identification, changing the title of this article to a name that most people will not recognize or search for is not ideal. P Aculeius (talk) 14:57, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

  Agreed that "Iroquois" is not considered offensive. But WP:ETHNICGROUP still applies. The policy mentions (as quoted above) "The names an ethnic group or Indigenous government self-identifies should be considered". The Confederacy at this page qualifies as "Indigenous government". Further, even if we use WP:COMMONNAME, its general rule is "article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources." Academic articles, news articles, and formal documents of self-expression favor "Haudenosaunee" (see below). Last point: on the WP:CRITERIA in WP:COMMONNAME, Recognizability favors "Iroquois" (this is your strongest argument to Oppose), but Consistency favors "Haudenosaunee" (given preference for Indigenous names in most other articles). I believe the others are neutral or irrelevant. Given the use by reliable sources and the arguments from WP:ETHNICGROUP, I think this pushes it to "Haudenosaunee". GoldCoastPrior (talk) 15:36, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose This comes up at least annually. I don't think at the present time most people would recognize Haudenosaunee, let alone spell it correctly. This would only be a nitpicky change anyhow, since Haudenosaunee is a redirect to Iroquois, and both are mentioned in the lead and various places throughout the article. Peter Flass (talk) 17:15, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
• Support: Journalists use "Haudenosaunee" more often than "Iroquois." You can see yourself, or review some of my examples: there are many articles about the Haudenosaunee men's national lacrosse team. Their uniforms say "Haudenosaunee". The Biden White House referred to them exclusively as Haudenosaunee in this 2025 statement. Reporting used the same convention as the White House, e.g., here. "Haudenosaunee" is not limited to sports; this 2024 Condé Nast article uses "Haudenosaunee", as does this 2026 article on land returns. When Wikipedia changed from "Burma" to "Myanmar," many of the arguments were about how the term was used in the media (see discussion here) —⁠ GoldCoastPrior (talk) 20:18, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  Addendum to my previous comment. Reviewing some of the earlier votes to Oppose, one of them by User:BilledMammal relied on this link to "Iroquoian peoples" at Britannica. But Britannica has updated the page for the Confederacy itself (distinct from the peoples), here: Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The distinction between Iroquoian peoples and Iroquois / Haudenosaunee is a good one. In my opinion, Iroquois currently contains information that ought to be moved to Iroquoian peoples. That might help convince some of the users voting "Oppose". GoldCoastPrior (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

  Agreed, and I noted that issue with BilledMammal's !vote in one of my replies above, as well. "Haudenosaunee" is the better title for this article in its current form, and for additional clarity, some content could be moved to Iroquoian peoples. However, I think Iroquois should still redirect here if this is moved. That could be sorted out later especially if content is changed or moved around post-move. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 02:47, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Support per nom, tbh I’m surprised, but Scholar hits (though not perfect) are much more reliable than ngrams (which includes all kinds of crap). Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 10:09, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Support, seems clear that the autonym is commonly used in English. SomeoneDreaming (talk) 14:24, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support per nom. The move to Haudenosaunee has repeatedly been proposed (and will keep being proposed until it finally happens) because it is the preferred term. I agree that most non-Native people coudn't clearly define "Haudenosaunee", but those same people would also be incapable to producing a coherent definition of "Iroquois". Haudenosaunee is in primary use by the:

• Six Nations of the Grand River
• Cayuga Nation
• Oneida Indian Nation
• Oneida Nation
• St. Regis Mohawks
• Ondondaga Nation
• Tuscarora Nation

The Seneca Nation of Indians uses Iroquois, and the Seneca-Cayuge Nation uses both but only in PDFs on their website. Yuchitown (talk) 14:48, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Support per nomination. It is the preferred term of the peoples described and has clearly become the more common term in contemporary times, overtaking Iroquois. We don't need to pander to the general public's lagging misunderstandings. Yes, this has been discussed before, and it will continue to be discussed until the preferred term of the Haudenosaunee is respected. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 15:58, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support per nom. As shown in this discussion, Haudenosaunee is widely used by journalists, the White House, and the majority within the Confederacy. It is obviously the Confederacy's preferred name.Bcbc24 (talk) 19:41, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

  I support the change for these reasons as well. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:48, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Support per nom. agreed for the same reasons though I admittedly am biased. Lalafell (talk) 02:55, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. Very, very clear WP:COMMONNAME. We would do no service to our users by moving it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:23, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

  That's not clear at all, as User:blindlynx has already demonstrated. A consideration under WP:CRITERIA is WP:PRECISE, and Iroquois is also part of numerous placenames across Canada and the U.S.; these geographical terms would also appear in quick internet searches. As per WP:INDIGENOUS, naming articles for tribes/Indigenous nations should take into consideration which terms are preferred by the people themselves. Indigenous autonyms aren't used as article titles if they aren't in common English usage; however, Haudenosaunee is commonly used in English, as demonstrated by links above and examples like the Canadian Encylopedia or Encyclopedia Brittanica Kids. The move would do great service to people who wish to learn more about the Six Nations. —Yuchitown (talk) 21:57, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support: This is a difficult one and I was really torn between supporting and opposing. Both Iroquois and Haudenosaunee are common names, with Iroquois being more common but with Haudenosaunee gaining increasing usage recently. Even if Iroquois may still be the common name, which seems questionable in modern usage, WP:COMMONNAME is a broad policy that makes it clear that less-common-but-still-common name can have benefits that outweigh the downside of not being the most common name, and as blindlynx pointed out there is specific guideline backing for this exact situation being one of cases where that is considered to apply. I also think this is the only way to achieve WP:CONSISTENCY as WP:NCET#Tribes states Use the proper name of the tribal government, e.g. Seminole Tribe of Florida, Cowichan Tribes, or Spirit Lake Tribe. As proper names, titles should be capitalized. This means we have the article Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council. If we have a polity X then it's highly confusing to have the government of said polity located at a variation of "Y government" or "Government of Y". The only way that can be addressed here is by moving Iroquois to Haudenosaunee, as WP:NCET#Tribes forbids the alternative.
  All these factors combined has made me end up thinking that the usage of the term Haudenosaunee has reached a level where it is now the best PAG fit for this article's title. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley$\lor$investigateᛅ} 19:38, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

  Want to add that I'm more confident in my support now after reading what I feel are further convincing arguments given by @Myceteae🍄‍🟫 below. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley$\lor$investigateᛅ} 00:24, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Relisting comment: We seem to have a consensus to move here, but because of the previous discussions I'll err on the side of caution and give it another week. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:15, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

This seems good, I think "Support" has the votes, but not unanimous consent. My only hesitation is that I don't see a single person who previously voted "Oppose" in earlier discussions and has moved to "Support". GoldCoastPrior (talk) 20:41, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. Overwhelmingly and clearly so. Walrasiad (talk) 07:50, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support simply because I wouldn't want to oppose progress. ~2026-21927-06 (talk) 12:07, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

• Support, and strongly so. Haudenosaunee is the name used by these indigenous people themselves and is in primary name used by the: Six Nations of the Grand River, Cayuga Nation, Oneida Indian Nation, Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, Onondaga Nation as cited above; among others such as the Tuscarora and the Six Nations of the Grand River. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (which was formerly known as Iroquois Confederacy originally named by the French) refers to itself as Haudenosaunee. As pointed out above, Haudenosaunee is widely used by journalists, the White House, and the majority within the Confederacy. It is obviously the Confederacy's preferred name. Netherzone (talk) 16:06, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
• Strong support. I agree with the other 'support' rationales provided. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) (WP:TRIBE) calls for following usage in the usual high quality, reliable sources as well as in the sources produced by the people, tribe, band, or nation in question. Specifically, it says: Use the proper name of the tribal government. The controlling guideline is explicit that we should give more weight to official sources in this context than we do in most other article title determinations. These sources are consistent in using "Haudenosaunee" for the confederation and the peoples. Additionally, Haudenosaunee is more WP:PRECISE. This is the name most often used when discussing the confederacy in a modern context and it more clearly distinguishes the subject from Iroquoian peoples. A closer look at sources reveals that "Iroquois" is often used in historical contexts. This change would be WP:CONSISTENT with a growing number of article titles which have changes in recent years, including Haudenosaunee passport; Haudenosaunee men's national lacrosse team (the "Haudenosaunee Nationals"); and other lacrosse articles: Haudenosaunee women's national lacrosse team, Haudenosaunee women's national under-20 lacrosse team, Haudenosaunee men's national under-20 lacrosse team, Haudenosaunee national indoor lacrosse team, Haudenosaunee at the 2022 World Games. Coverage of the Haudenosaunee Nationals has increased in recent years. Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, which was published in 2025, also follows present-day usage. "Haudenosaunee" is also the name used by other high quality reference works, including The Canadian Encyclopedia, Britannica, and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Ultimately, both are used commonly but the Haudenosaunee authorities clearly prefer one over the other. GastonN'estPasBon (talk) 17:03, 23 April 2026 (UTC)
• Support as Wikipedia tends to give deference to the descriptions of living persons to the living persons themselves per WP:BLP. Even though this is not a biography article, the same principle should apply. --PoliticalPoint (talk) 20:36, 25 April 2026 (UTC) ( Blocked sockpuppet of Justthefacts, see investigation) ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley$\lor$investigateᛅ} 14:23, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
• Oppose. The current title is overwhelmingly the WP:COMMONNAME in English. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:25, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
• Support per Myceteae's rationale. Kibblebrain (talk) 07:14, 29 April 2026 (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.