How douars get their Latin names
HCP names all 33,189 douars in Arabic only. Here’s where each Latin name on this site comes from.
Found in a source
14,710 names come from a source that writes them, each matched to HCP’s Arabic among the douars of its own commune.
- Ministry of Education school lists1,283
- OpenStreetMap1,887
- GeoNames11,540
- Spelt by the engine18,479
Tested against chance
Every matching pass runs again with each commune swapped for another. Whatever it still finds is chance, and a pass over the line is thrown out.
Spelt by the engine
The other 18,479 are spelt from the Arabic, and show in italics. Both scripts come down to the same consonants for 98.3% of the names HCP gives in both, and words learned from sourced names fill in the vowels.
The same consonants find a douar typed in Latin letters on the douars page.
How close it gets
On sourced douars the engine never saw, against how often 2 sources agree with each other.
Fractions
A fraction named like one of its commune’s douars takes that douar’s Latin name. HCP lists a few under a label, which is translated.
- Named after a douar711
- A label, translated139
- Spelt by the engine4,353
From visitors
Anyone can suggest a spelling for a douar no source names. The engine checks each one overnight, and a spelling that reads as the douar’s Arabic and that visitors agree on goes live.