text:
Election

An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.

Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local government. This process is also used in many other private and business organisations, from clubs to voluntary associations and corporations.

The global use of elections as a tool for selecting representatives in modern representative democracies is in contrast with the practice in the democratic archetype, ancient Athens, where the elections were considered an oligarchic institution and most political offices were filled using sortition, also known as allotment, by which officeholders were chosen by lot.

Electoral reform describes the process of introducing fair electoral systems where they are not in place, or improving the fairness or effectiveness of existing systems. Psephology is the study of results and other statistics relating to elections (especially with a view to predicting future results). Election is the fact of electing, or being elected.

To elect means "to select or make a decision", and so sometimes other forms of ballot such as referendums are referred to as elections, especially in the United States.

History
Elections were used as early in history as ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and throughout the Medieval period to select rulers such as the Holy Roman Emperor (see imperial election) and the pope (see papal election).

The Pala King Gopala (ruled c. 750s – 770s CE) in early medieval Bengal was elected by a group of feudal chieftains. Such elections were quite common in contemporary societies of the region. In the Chola Empire, around 920 CE, in Uthiramerur (in present-day Tamil Nadu), palm leaves were used for selecting the village committee members. The leaves, with candidate names written on them, were put inside a mud pot. To select the committee members, a young boy was asked to take out as many leaves as the number of positions available. This was known as the Kudavolai system.

The first recorded popular elections of officials to public office, by majority vote, where all citizens were eligible both to vote and to hold public office, date back to the Ephors of Sparta in 754 BC, under the mixed government of the Spartan Constitution. Athenian democratic elections, where all citizens could hold public office, were not introduced for another 247 years, until the reforms of Cleisthenes. Under the earlier Solonian Constitution (c. 574 BC), all Athenian citizens were eligible to vote in the popular assemblies, on matters of law and policy, and as jurors, but only the three highest classes of citizens could vote in elections. Nor were the lowest of the four classes of Athenian citizens (as defined by the extent of their wealth and property, rather than by birth) eligible to hold public office, through the reforms of Solon. The Spartan election of the Ephors, therefore, also predates the reforms of Solon in Athens by approximately 180 years.

Questions of suffrage, especially suffrage for minority groups, have dominated the history of elections. Males, the dominant cultural group in North America and Europe, often dominated the electorate and continue to do so in many countries. Early elections in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States were dominated by landed or ruling class males. However, by 1920 all Western European and North American democracies had universal adult male suffrage (except Switzerland) and many countries began to consider women's suffrage. Despite legally mandated universal suffrage for adult males, political barriers were sometimes erected to prevent fair access to elections (see civil rights movement).

Contexts of elections
Elections are held in a variety of political, organizational, and corporate settings. Many countries hold elections to select people to serve in their governments, but other types of organizations hold elections as well. For example, many corporations hold elections among shareholders to select a board of directors, and these elections may be mandated by corporate law. In many places, an election to the government is usually a competition among people who have already won a primary election within a political party. Elections within corporations and other organizations often use procedures and rules that are similar to those of governmental elections.

Suffrage
The question of who may vote is a central issue in elections. The electorate does not generally include the entire population; for example, many countries prohibit those who are under the age of majority from voting. All jurisdictions require a minimum age for voting.

In Australia, Aboriginal people were not given the right to vote until 1962 (see 1967 referendum entry) and in 2010 the federal government removed the rights of prisoners serving for three years or more to vote (a large proportion of which were Aboriginal Australians).

Suffrage is typically only for citizens of the country, though further limits may be imposed.

However, in the European Union, one can vote in municipal elections if one lives in the municipality and is an EU citizen; the nationality of the country of residence is not required. In some countries, voting is required by law. Eligible voters may be subject to punitive measures such as a fine for not casting a vote. In Western Australia, the penalty for a first time offender failing to vote is a $20.00 fine, which increases to $50.00 if the offender refused to vote prior.

Voting population
Historically the size of eligible voters, the electorate, was small having the size of groups or communities of privileged men like aristocrats and men of a city (citizens).

With the growth of the number of people with bourgeois citizen rights outside of cities, expanding the term citizen, the electorates grew to numbers beyond the thousands. Elections with an electorate in the hundred thousands appeared in the final decades of the Roman Republic, by extending voting rights to citizens outside of Rome with the Lex Julia of 90 BC, reaching an electorate of 910,000 and estimated voter turnout of maximum 10% in 70 BC, only again comparable in size to the first elections of the United States. At the same time the Kingdom of Great Britain had in 1780 about 214,000 eligible voters, 3% of the whole population.

Candidates
A representative democracy requires a procedure to govern nomination for political office. In many cases, nomination for office is mediated through preselection processes in organized political parties.

Non-partisan systems tend to be different from partisan systems as concerns nominations. In a direct democracy, one type of non-partisan democracy, any eligible person can be nominated. Although elections were used in ancient Athens, in Rome, and in the selection of popes and Holy Roman emperors, the origins of elections in the contemporary world lie in the gradual emergence of representative government in Europe and North America beginning in the 17th century. In some systems no nominations take place at all, with voters free to choose any person at the time of voting—with some possible exceptions such as through a minimum age requirement—in the jurisdiction. In such cases, it is not required (or even possible) that the members of the electorate be familiar with all of the eligible persons, though such systems may involve indirect elections at larger geographic levels to ensure that some first-hand familiarity among potential electees can exist at these levels (i.e., among the elected delegates).

Electoral systems
Electoral systems are the detailed constitutional arrangements and voting systems that convert the vote into a political decision.

The first step is for voters to cast the ballots, which may be simple single-choice ballots, but other types, such as multiple choice or ranked ballots may also be used. Then the votes are tallied, for which various vote counting systems may be used. and the voting system then determines the result on the basis of the tally. Most systems can be categorized as either proportional, majoritarian or mixed. Among the proportional systems, the most commonly used are party-list proportional representation (list PR) systems, among majoritarian are first-past-the-post electoral system (single winner plurality voting) and different methods of majority voting (such as the widely used two-round system). Mixed systems combine elements of both proportional and majoritarian methods, with some typically producing results closer to the former (mixed-member proportional) or the other (e.g. parallel voting).

Many countries have growing electoral reform movements, which advocate systems such as approval voting, single transferable vote, instant runoff voting or a Condorcet method; these methods are also gaining popularity for lesser elections in some countries where more important elections still use more traditional counting methods.

While openness and accountability are usually considered cornerstones of a democratic system, the act of casting a vote and the content of a voter's ballot are usually an important exception. The secret ballot is a relatively modern development, but it is now considered crucial in most free and fair elections, as it limits the effectiveness of intimidation.

Campaigns
When elections are called, politicians and their supporters attempt to influence policy by competing directly for the votes of constituents in what are called campaigns. Supporters for a campaign can be either formally organized or loosely affiliated, and frequently utilize campaign advertising. It is common for political scientists to attempt to predict elections via political forecasting methods.

The most expensive election campaign included US$7 billion spent on the 2012 United States presidential election and is followed by the US$5 billion spent on the 2014 Indian general election.

Election timing
The nature of democracy is that elected officials are accountable to the people, and they must return to the voters at prescribed intervals to seek their mandate to continue in office. For that reason, most democratic constitutions provide that elections are held at fixed regular intervals. In the United States, elections for public offices are typically held between every two and six years in most states and at the federal level, with exceptions for elected judicial positions that may have longer terms of office. There is a variety of schedules, for example, presidents: the President of Ireland is elected every seven years, the President of Russia and the President of Finland every six years, the President of France every five years, President of the United States every four years.

Pre-decided or fixed election dates have the advantage of fairness and predictability. However, they tend to greatly lengthen campaigns, and make dissolving the legislature (parliamentary system) more problematic if the date should happen to fall at a time when dissolution is inconvenient (e.g. when war breaks out). Other states (e.g., the United Kingdom) only set maximum time in office, and the executive decides exactly when within that limit it will actually go to the polls. In practice, this means the government remains in power for close to its full term, and chooses an election date it calculates to be in its best interests (unless something special happens, such as a motion of no-confidence). This calculation depends on a number of variables, such as its performance in opinion polls and the size of its majority.

Rolling elections are elections in which all representatives in a body are elected, but these elections are spread over a period of time rather than all at once. Examples are the presidential primaries in the United States, Elections to the European Parliament (where, due to differing election laws in each member state, elections are held on different days of the same week) and, due to logistics, general elections in Lebanon and India. The voting procedure in the Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Republic are also a classical example.

In rolling elections, voters have information about previous voters' choices. While in the first elections, there may be plenty of hopeful candidates, in the last rounds consensus on one winner is generally achieved. In today's context of rapid communication, candidates can put disproportionate resources into competing strongly in the first few stages, because those stages affect the reaction of latter stages.

Non-democratic elections

In many of the countries with weak rule of law, the most common reason why elections do not meet international standards of being "free and fair" is interference from the incumbent government. Dictators may use the powers of the executive (police, martial law, censorship, physical implementation of the election mechanism, etc.) to remain in power despite popular opinion in favour of removal. Members of a particular faction in a legislature may use the power of the majority or supermajority (passing criminal laws, and defining the electoral mechanisms including eligibility and district boundaries) to prevent the balance of power in the body from shifting to a rival faction due to an election.

Non-governmental entities can also interfere with elections, through physical force, verbal intimidation, or fraud, which can result in improper casting or counting of votes. Monitoring for and minimizing electoral fraud is also an ongoing task in countries with strong traditions of free and fair elections. Problems that prevent an election from being "free and fair" take various forms.

Lack of open political debate or an informed electorate
The electorate may be poorly informed about issues or candidates due to lack of freedom of the press, lack of objectivity in the press due to state or corporate control, and/or lack of access to news and political media. Freedom of speech may be curtailed by the state, favouring certain viewpoints or state propaganda.

Unfair rules
Gerrymandering, exclusion of opposition candidates from eligibility for office, needlessly high restrictions on who may be a candidate, like ballot access rules, and manipulating thresholds for electoral success are some of the ways the structure of an election can be changed to favour a specific faction or candidate. Scheduling frequent elections can also lead to voter fatigue.

Interference with campaigns
Those in power may arrest or assassinate candidates, suppress or even criminalize campaigning, close campaign headquarters, harass or beat campaign workers, or intimidate voters with violence. Foreign electoral intervention can also occur, with the United States interfering between 1946 and 2000 in 81 elections and Russia/USSR in 36. In 2018 the most intense interventions, utilizing false information, were by China in Taiwan and by Russia in Latvia; the next highest levels were in Bahrain, Qatar and Hungary.

Tampering with the election mechanism
This can include falsifying voter instructions, violation of the secret ballot, ballot stuffing, tampering with voting machines, destruction of legitimately cast ballots, voter suppression, voter registration fraud, failure to validate voter residency, fraudulent tabulation of results, and use of physical force or verbal intimation at polling places. Other examples include persuading candidates not to run, such as through blackmailing, bribery, intimidation or physical violence.

Sham election
A sham election, or show election, is an election that is held purely for show; that is, without any significant political choice or real impact on the results of the election.

Sham elections are a common event in dictatorial regimes that feel the need to feign the appearance of public legitimacy. Published results usually show nearly 100% voter turnout and high support (typically at least 80%, and close to 100% in many cases) for the prescribed candidate(s) or for the referendum choice that favours the political party in power. Dictatorial regimes can also organize sham elections with results simulating those that might be achieved in democratic countries.

Sometimes, only one government-approved candidate is allowed to run in sham elections with no opposition candidates allowed, or opposition candidates are arrested on false charges (or even without any charges) before the election to prevent them from running.

Ballots may contain only one "yes" option, or in the case of a simple "yes or no" question, security forces often persecute people who pick "no", thus encouraging them to pick the "yes" option. In other cases, those who vote receive stamps in their passport for doing so, while those who did not vote (and thus do not receive stamps) are persecuted as enemies of the people.

Sham elections can sometimes backfire against the party in power, especially if the regime believes they are popular enough to win without coercion, fraud or suppressing the opposition. The most famous example of this was the 1990 Myanmar general election, in which the government-sponsored National Unity Party suffered a landslide defeat by the opposition National League for Democracy and consequently, the results were annulled.

Examples of sham elections include: the presidential and parliamentary elections of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the 1929 and 1934 elections in Fascist Italy, the 1942 general election in Imperial Japan, those in Nazi Germany, East Germany, the 1940 elections of Stalinist "People's Parliaments" to legitimise the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, those in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and Mohamed Morsi, those in Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, those in Russia under Vladimir Putin (including the 2014 Crimean status referendum, as well as the 2014 Donbass status referendums and the 2022 annexation referendum in Russian-occupied Ukraine), the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election, the 1928, 1935, 1942, 1949, 1951 and 1958 elections in Portugal, those in Indonesia during New Order regime, the 1991 and 2019 Kazakh presidential elections, those in North Korea, the 1995 and 2002 presidential referendums in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

In Mexico, all of the presidential elections from 1929 to 1982 are considered to be sham elections, as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and its predecessors governed the country in a de facto single-party system without serious opposition, and they won all of the presidential elections in that period with more than 70% of the vote. The first seriously competitive presidential election in modern Mexican history was that of 1988, in which for the first time the PRI candidate faced two strong opposition candidates, though it is believed that the government rigged the result. The first fair election was held in 1994, though the opposition did not win until 2000.

A predetermined conclusion is permanently established by the regime through suppression of the opposition, coercion of voters, vote rigging, reporting several votes received greater than the number of voters, outright lying, or some combination of these. In an extreme example, Charles D. B. King of Liberia was reported to have won by 234,000 votes in the 1927 general election, a "majority" that was over fifteen times larger than the number of eligible voters.

Elections as aristocratic
Some scholars argue that the predominance of elections in modern liberal democracies masks the fact that they are actually aristocratic selection mechanisms that deny each citizen an equal chance of holding public office. Such views were expressed as early as the time of Ancient Greece by Aristotle. According to French political scientist Bernard Manin, the inegalitarian nature of elections stems from four factors: the unequal treatment of candidates by voters, the distinction of candidates required by choice, the cognitive advantage conferred by salience, and the costs of disseminating information. These four factors result in the evaluation of candidates based on voters' partial standards of quality and social saliency (for example, skin colour and good looks). This leads to self-selection biases in candidate pools due to unobjective standards of treatment by voters and the costs (barriers to entry) associated with raising one's political profile. Ultimately, the result is the election of candidates who are superior (whether in actuality or as perceived within a cultural context) and objectively unlike the voters they are supposed to represent.

Additionally, evidence suggests that the concept of electing representatives was originally conceived to be different from democracy. Prior to the 18th century, some societies in Western Europe used sortition as a means to select rulers, a method which allowed regular citizens to exercise power, in keeping with understandings of democracy at the time. However, the idea of what constituted a legitimate government shifted in the 18th century to include consent, especially with the rise of the enlightenment. From this point onwards, sortition fell out of favor as a mechanism for selecting rulers. On the other hand, elections began to be seen as a way for the masses to express popular consent repeatedly, resulting in the triumph of the electoral process until the present day.

This conceptual misunderstanding of elections as open and egalitarian when they are not innately so may thus be a root cause of the problems in contemporary governance. Those in favor of this view argue that the modern system of elections was never meant to give ordinary citizens the chance to exercise power - merely privileging their right to consent to those who rule. Therefore, the representatives that modern electoral systems select for are too disconnected, unresponsive, and elite-serving. To deal with this issue, various scholars have proposed alternative models of democracy, many of which include a return to sortition-based selection mechanisms. The extent to which sortition should be the dominant mode of selecting rulers or instead be hybridised with electoral representation remains a topic of debate.

Election counts

 * PARLINE database on national parliaments. Results for all parliamentary elections since 1966
 * "Psephos", archive of recent electoral data from 182 countries
 * ElectionGuide.org — Worldwide Coverage of National-level Elections
 * parties-and-elections.de: Database for all European elections since 1945
 * Angus Reid Global Monitor: Election Tracker

Election organizations

 * ACE Electoral Knowledge Network — electoral encyclopedia and related resources from a consortium of electoral agencies and organizations.
 * International Foundation for Electoral Systems
 * International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
 * European Conferences of Electoral Management Bodies (Council of Europe)
 * OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)
 * European Election Law Association (Eurela), closed in 2008
 * List of Local Elected Offices in the United States
 * Caltech/ MIT Voting Technology Project

title: Election


text:
Enniskillen

Enniskillen (, from Inis Ceithleann , 'Ceithlenn's island') is the largest town in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It is in the middle of the county, between the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. It had a population of 14,086 at the 2011 Census. Enniskillen Castle was built in the 15th century as a stronghold of the Maguires, before coming under English control in the early 17th century. The castle and town were expanded during the Plantation of Ulster. It was the seat of local government for the former Fermanagh District Council, and is the county town of Fermanagh.

Toponymy
The town's name comes from the Inis Ceithleann. This refers to Cethlenn, a figure in Irish mythology who may have been a goddess. Local legend has it that Cethlenn was wounded in battle by an arrow and attempted to swim across the River Erne, which surrounds the island, but she never reached the other side, so the island was named in reference to her. It has been anglicised many ways over the centuries – Iniskellen, Iniskellin, Iniskillin, Iniskillen, Inishkellen, Inishkellin, Inishkillin, Inishkillen and so on.

History
The town's oldest building is Enniskillen Castle, built by Hugh (Maguire) the Hospitable who died in 1428. An earthwork, the Skonce on the shore of Lough Erne, may be the remains of an earlier motte. The castle was the stronghold of the junior branch of the Maguires. The first watergate was built around 1580 by Cú Chonnacht Maguire, though subsequent lowering of the level of the lough has left it without water. The strategic position of the castle made its capture important for the English in 1593, to support their plans for the control of Ulster. The castle was besieged three times in 1594–95. The English, led by a Captain Dowdall, captured it in February 1594. Maguire then laid siege to it, and defeated a relieving force at the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits at Drumane Bridge on the Arney River. Although the defenders were relieved, Maguire gained possession of the castle from 1595 to 1598 and it was not finally captured by the English until 1607.

This was part of a wider campaign to bring the province of Ulster under English control; the final capture of Enniskillen Castle in 1607 was followed by the Plantation of Ulster, during which the lands of the native Irish were seized and handed over to planters loyal to the English Crown. The Maguires were supplanted by William Cole, originally from Devon, who was appointed by James I to build an English settlement there in 1612.

Captain Cole was installed as Constable and strengthened the castle wall and built a "fair house" on the old foundation as the centre point of the county town. The first Protestant parish church was erected on the hilltop in 1627. By 1630 the town had around 180 inhabitants, mostly comprising English and Scottish settlers. The Royal Free School of Fermanagh was moved onto the island in 1643. The first bridges were drawbridges; permanent bridges were not installed before 1688.

By 1689 the town had grown significantly. During the conflict which resulted from the ousting of King James II by his Protestant rival, William III, Enniskillen and Derry were the focus of Williamite resistance in Ireland, including the nearby Battle of Newtownbutler.

Enniskillen and Derry were the two garrisons in Ulster that were not wholly loyal to James II, and it was the last town to fall before the Siege of Derry. As a direct result of this conflict, Enniskillen developed not only as a market town but also as a garrison, which became home to two regiments.

The former site of Fermanagh College at Gaol Square (the college has now moved to the old Erne Hospital site) was the former Enniskillen Gaol. Many people were tried and hanged in the square during the times of public execution. Part of the old goal is still standing. Enniskillen Town Hall was designed by William Scott and completed in 1901.

Military history
Enniskillen is the site of the foundation of two British Army regiments:
 * Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
 * The Inniskillings (6th Dragoons)

The town's name (with the archaic spelling) continues to form part of the title to The Royal Irish Regiment (27th (Inniskilling) 83rd and 87th and Ulster Defence Regiment). Enniskillen Castle features on the cap badge of both regiments.

The Troubles
Enniskillen was the site of several events during The Troubles, the most notable being the Remembrance Day bombing in which 11 people were killed. Bill Clinton opened The Clinton Centre in 2002 on the site of the bombing. The Provisional Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack.

Alleged sexual abuse and assault
In 2019, at least nine men reported to the police and the press and said in public forums that, in the 1980s and 90s, when they were children, they were repeatedly molested and raped by a paedophile ring of at least 20 men in the Enniskillen area. Investigations are continuing.

Miscellaneous

 * The Enniskillen Dragoon is a famous Irish folk song associated with the Inniskilling Dragoons Regiment. Tommy Makem wrote additional verses and renamed the song Fare Thee Well, Enniskillen.
 * The Chieftains sing a song that mentions Enniskillen titled "North Amerikay".
 * Jim Kerr of Simple Minds was so moved by the horror of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987 that he wrote new words to the traditional folk song "She Moved Through The Fair" and the group recorded it with the name "Belfast Child". The recording reached No. 1 in the UK Charts, Ireland and several other countries in 1989. The single was taken from the album Street Fighting Years; the single version was released on the "Ballad of the Streets" EP. The video of the song was shot in black and white and displays poignant footage of children and the destruction of the bombing. Similarly, U2 held a concert the same day as the bombing; during a performance of their song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", singer Bono passionately condemned the bombing, stating "fuck the revolution" in his mid-song speech. The footage is included in U2's rockumentary Rattle and Hum.
 * Neil Hannon also mentions Enniskillen in his song "Sunrise".
 * Bill Fay also mentions Enniskillen in his song In Human Hands.
 * The Guardian noted that residential areas including Cooper Crescent and Chanterhill Road - inner suburbs just North of the town centre - were the 'poshest' with much of the fine housing stock located outside of the town centre.
 * The Irish language novel Mo Dhá Mhicí by Séamus Mac Annaidh is set in Enniskillen.

2021 Census
On Census day 2021 there were 14,086 people living in Enniskillen. Of these:

 * 61.52% (8,666) belong to or were brought up in the Catholic Christian faith and 29.09% (4,097) belong to or were brought up in various 'Protestant and Other Christian (including Christian related)' denominations. 2.2% (310) belong to other religions and 7.19% (1,013) had no religious background.
 * 22.8% (3,212) indicated that they had a British only identity, 34.68% (4,885) had an Irish only identity and 26.4% (3,179) had a Northern Irish only identity (respondents could indicate more than one national identity)

2011 Census
On Census day (27 March 2011) there were 13,823 people living in Enniskillen (5,733 households), accounting for 0.76% of the NI total and representing an increase of 1.6% on the Census 2001 population of 13,599. Of these:

 * 19.76% were aged under 16 years and 15.59% were aged 65 and over;
 * 51.80% of the usually resident population were female and 48.20% were male;
 * 61.62% belong to or were brought up in the Catholic Christian faith and 33.55% belong to or were brought up in various 'Protestant and Other Christian (including Christian related)' denominations
 * 35.59% indicated that they had a British national identity, 33.77% had an Irish national identity and 30.35% had a Northern Irish national identity (respondents could indicate more than one national identity)
 * 39 years was the average (median) age of the population
 * 13.03% had some knowledge of Irish (Gaelic) and 3.65% had some knowledge of Ulster-Scots

Churches
There are four churches in the town centre. These are: There are several other churches outside the town centre.
 * St. Macartin's Cathedral (Church of Ireland) - This church dates from 1840. It was built on the site of an earlier Plantation church.
 * St. Michael's Church (Catholic) - This church dates from 1875 although an earlier church on the site dates from 1803.
 * Enniskillen Methodist Church - This church opened in 1867. It has a Palladian facade.
 * Enniskillen Presbyterian Church - The current church was erected in 1897 although there is evidence of a building dating back to 1700.

Historic Buildings
Some of these buildings are outside the town.
 * Castle Coole
 * Colebrooke House, Brookeborough - eleven miles east of Enniskillen; built 1820
 * Cole's Monument
 * Enniskillen Castle
 * Enniskillen Town Hall
 * Enniskillen Courthouse - built 1785
 * Florence Court - eight miles outside Enniskillen; 18th century
 * Monea Castle
 * Portora Castle
 * The Regimental Museum of the Inniskilling Regiment

Natural Phenomena

 * The Marble Arch Caves
 * Cuilcagh Mountain Global Geo-Park
 * Lough Navar and the Cliffs of Magho

Other

 * Ardhowen Theatre
 * The Clinton Centre
 * The Round O
 * William Blake's pub - historic public house

Association football
As of season 2023/24, the town has five association football teams, Enniskillen Rangers, Enniskillen Town United F.C., Enniskillen Athletic, Enniskillen Galaxy and Enniskillen Rovers. Founded in 1953, Enniskillen Rangers are the oldest and most successful of these, having won the Irish Junior Cup five times, most recently in season 2023/24, when they defeated Cleary Celtic FC 2–0 in Stangmore Park, Dungannon, the Fermanagh & Western Division One title 19 times and the Mulhern Cup 16 times. They play their home games at The Ball Range.

Enniskillen Rangers have several notable former players including Sandy Fulton and Jim Cleary.

Enniskillen Town United F.C. currently play in the Fermanagh & Western 1st Division. Their most notable former player is Michael McGovern who won 32 senior caps for Northern Ireland and as of January 2024 was on loan at Livingston F.C. from parent club Heart of Midlothian F.C.. Enniskillen Town United F.C. currently play their home games at St Michael's GS Pavilion in Enniskillen.

Rugby
Enniskillen Rugby Football Club was founded in 1925 and plays its home games at Mullaghmeen. The club currently fields 4 senior men's teams, a senior ladies' team, a range of male and female youth teams, a vibrant mini section and a disability tag team called The Enniskillen Elks. Enniskillen XV won the Ulster Towns Cup in the 2018/19 season, defeating Ballyclare 19–0. The team currently play in Kukri Ulster Rugby Championship Division 1.

The rugby club was formed on 28 August 1925, when 37 attended a meeting in Enniskillen Town Hall. The name Enniskillen Rugby Club was agreed and the club adopted the rules of the Dublin University Football Club. The first match was played on 30 September 1925 against Ballyshannon in County Donegal.

Gaelic games
Enniskillen Gaels is a Gaelic Athletic Association club founded in 1927. It is based at Brewster Park, Enniskillen. The club has had success in both Gaelic football and hurling winning in both county and provincial competitions.

International events
Enniskillen was the venue of the 39th G8 summit which was held on 17 and 18 June 2013. It was held at the Lough Erne Resort, a five-star hotel and golf resort on the shore of Lough Erne. The gathering was the biggest international diplomatic gathering ever held in Northern Ireland. Among the G8 leaders who attended were British Prime Minister David Cameron, United States President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the past, Enniskillen has hosted an array of international events, most notably stages of the World Waterski World Cup, annually from 2005 to 2007 at the Broadmeadow. Despite its success, Enniskillen was not chosen as a World Cup Stop for 2008.

In January 2009, Enniskillen hosted the ceremonial start of Rally Ireland 2009, the first stage of the WRC FIA World Rally Championship 2009 Calendar.

Enniskillen has hosted the Happy Days arts festival since 2012, which celebrates "the work and influence of Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett" and is the "first annual, international, multi-arts festival to be held in Northern Ireland since the launch of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's in 1962".

Arts and Media

 * Samuel Beckett, playwright, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Nathan Carter, singer
 * Charles Duff, Irish author of books on language learning and other subjects
 * Adrian Dunbar, actor, born and brought up in Enniskillen
 * Nial Fulton, film and television producer, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Neil Hannon, lead singer/composer of the pop band The Divine Comedy, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Charles Lawson, most notable for playing Jim McDonald in Coronation Street
 * Lisa McHugh, country music singer; born in Glasgow, Scotland, she moved to Enniskillen as an adult.
 * Fearghal McKinney, journalist, former UTV broadcaster and member of the Northern Ireland Assembly
 * Nigel McLoughlin, poet, editor of Iota poetry journal and Professor of Creativity and Poetics, University of Gloucestershire
 * Ciarán McMenamin, television actor and author
 * Frank Ormsby, poet
 * David Robinson, photographer and publisher, educated at Portora Royal School
 * William Scott, artist
 * Mick Softley singer and songwriter for Bob Dylan and Donovan, lived in the town at the time of his death
 * Joan Trimble, pianist and composer
 * Oscar Wilde, satirist and playwright, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Ron Wilson, a news anchor with Network Ten in Australia

Business

 * James Gamble, co-founder of Procter & Gamble, educated at Portora Royal School

Medicine and Science

 * Denis Burkitt, FRS, surgeon and epidemiologist

Military

 * Eric Bell, recipient of the Victoria Cross
 * Henry Hartigan, recipient of the Victoria Cross
 * James McGuire, recipient of the Victoria Cross
 * George Nurse, recipient of the Victoria Cross

Politics

 * Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, brought up at the family's estate at Ely Lodge
 * Gordon Wilson, Irish senator and peace campaigner, who lived on Cooper Crescent

Religion

 * Edward Cooney, evangelist and early leader of the Cooneyite and Go-Preacher sects, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Edward Kernan, a Roman Catholic bishop
 * Henry Francis Lyte, hymn composer, most notably of "Abide with Me", educated at Portora Royal School
 * John McElroy (1782–1877), Jesuit priest, founder of Boston College

Sports

 * Robert Baloucoune, rugby union player, was born and grew up in Enniskillen, learned his rugby at Portora Royal School and made his international debut for Ireland in July 2021
 * Declan Burns, Irish kayaking athlete, three-time Irish Olympic representative and former World Superstars runner-up
 * Roy Carroll, goalkeeper who played for a number of prefessional clubs, most notably Manchester United F. C. and who was capped 45 times by Northern Ireland
 * Timothy Cathcart, rally driver
 * Harry Chatton, football player, from the 1920s and 1930s, who was a dual international for both the IFA and FAI Irish international teams
 * Jim Cleary, former Glentoran footballer and member of Northern Ireland's 1982 World Cup squad
 * William Emerson, football player who won 11 caps for Ireland between 1919 and 1923
 * Gordon Ferris, Northern Irish former heavyweight boxer who was both Irish and British champion in the early 1980s
 * Casey Howe, international footballer for the Northern Ireland Women's team
 * Frank Hoy, professional wrestler, was born in the town
 * Ted Keenan, record-breaking long-distance swimmer, inducted in 1984 into the Fort Lauderdale International Swimming Hall of Fame
 * Robert Kerr, Olympic 100m gold medalist in the 1908 Olympics for Canada
 * Kyle Lafferty, striker, professional football player for a number of clubs, most notably Rangers F. C., with 89 Northern Ireland international caps
 * Andrew Little, former professional football player and Northern Ireland international, educated at Portora Royal School
 * J. J. McCoy (rugby union), from nearby Monea, Jimmy first played rugby for Portora Royal School, Enniskillen
 * Michael McGovern, former Northern Ireland international goalkeeper, currently on loan to Livingston F. C. from parent club Heart of Midlothian F. C.
 * Kieran McKenna, football manager, appointed to take charge of Ipswich Town FC in December 2021
 * Harry Mercer, former player for Enniskillen Corinthians F.C. who, while with Linfield F.C., won a senior Ireland cap while still an amateur
 * Holly Nixon, former member of Portora Boat Club and World Champion oarswoman
 * Gavin Noble, Irish international triathlete, educated at Portora Royal School
 * Dick Rowley, football player who won six caps for Ireland between 1929 and 1931

Education
There are numerous schools and colleges in and around the Enniskillen area, from primary level to secondary level, including some further education colleges such as the technical college.

Primary level

 * Enniskillen Integrated Primary school
 * Model primary school
 * Holy Trinity Primary School
 * Jones Memorial Primary School
 * Mullnaskea Primary School

Secondary level

 * Erne Integrated College
 * Devenish College
 * Enniskillen Royal Grammar School
 * Mount Lourdes Enniskillen; convent girls' grammar school
 * St Michael's College; boys' grammar school
 * St Fanchea's College
 * St Joseph's College

Colleges

 * Enniskillen Campus of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE)
 * Enniskillen Campus South West College

Rail – historic
Railway lines from Enniskillen railway station linked the town with Derry from 1854, Dundalk from 1861, Bundoran from 1868 and Sligo from 1882. By 1883 the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) absorbed all the lines except the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway, which remained independent throughout its existence. In October 1957 the Government of Northern Ireland closed the GNR line, which made it impossible for the SL&NCR to continue and forced it also to close.

Rail – current
The nearest railway station to Enniskillen is Sligo station which is served by multiple trains to Dublin Connolly and is operated by Iarnród Éireann. The Dublin-Sligo railway line has a two-hourly service run by Iarnród Éireann. A connecting bus from Sligo via Manorhamilton to Enniskillen is operated by Bus Éireann.

Bus
Bus service to Enniskillen is provided by both Ulsterbus and Bus Éireann, from Enniskillen bus station. Number 261, 261b and X261 Goldline buses run from Belfast to Enniskillen. Bus Éireann Route 30 runs from Donegal to Dublin Airport/Dublin City via Enniskillen.

Air
Enniskillen has a World War II-era airport, Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport. The airport had scheduled flights in the past but now serves mainly private traffic.

Road
The town is on the main A4/N16 route linking Belfast and Sligo, and on the main Dublin to Ballyshannon route, the N3/A46/A509.

Twinning
Enniskillen was originally twinned with Brackwede – a Bielefeld suburb – where the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards were stationed in the late 1950s when the twinning was initiated; however, this suburb was incorporated into Stadt Bielefeld in 1973, the city with which Enniskillen is now officially twinned.

Though the twinning arrangements are still operational, at a meeting of the Regeneration and Community Committee, in February 2018, it was agreed that the twinning arrangements would be formally terminated at the end of the Council term in June 2018. However, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council still have plans to send representatives to Brackwede for the 60th-anniversary celebrations of the twinning. Therefore, the future of the twinning is now somewhat unclear.

Climate
Enniskillen has a maritime climate with a narrow range of temperatures and rainfall. The nearest official Met Office weather station for which online records are available is at Lough Navar Forest, about 8+1/2 mi northwest of Enniskillen. Data has also more recently been collected from Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport, under 4 mi north of the town centre, which should in time give a more accurate representation of the climate of the Enniskillen area.

The absolute maximum temperature is 29.8 C, recorded during July 2006. In an 'average' year, the warmest day is 25.5 C and only 2.4 days a year should rise to 25.1 C or above. The respective absolute maximum for St Angelo is 29.4 C

The absolute minimum temperature is -12.9 C, recorded during January 1984. In an 'average' year, the coldest night should fall to -8.2 C. Lough Navar is a frosty location, with some 76 air frosts recorded in a typical year. It is likely that Enniskillen town centre is significantly less frosty than this. The absolute minimum at St Angelo is -14.5 C, reported during the record cold month of December 2010.

The warmest month on record at St Angelo was August 1995 with a mean temperature of 18.8 C (mean maximum 23.3 C, mean minimum 12.9 C), while the coldest month was December 2010, with a mean temperature of -1.8 C (mean maximum 2.9 C, mean minimum -5.9 C).

Rainfall is high, averaging over 1500 mm. 212 days of the year report at least 1 mm of precipitation, ranging from 15 days during April, May and June, to 20 days in October, November, December, January and March.

The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Enniskillen


text:
Eric Raymond (disambiguation)

Eric S. Raymond (born 1957) is an American computer programmer and author.

Eric Raymond may also refer to:

 * Eric Scott Raymond (born 1956), American flight instructor and glider pilot
 * Eric Raymond (Jem), a fictional character in the 1980s cartoon television show Jem

title: Eric Raymond (disambiguation)


text:
Talk:English language

Guyana and Jamaica
Guyana and Jamaica are both English speaking - quite so. Local creole are also decidedly English dialects which rely heavily on old English - and far easier to understand than, say, Cockney. English is the native tongue and official language in Guyana and Jamaica of books, press, tv and government. To state otherwise is to demand that native English speakers fit some artificially and quite possibly racist rule regarding geographic place or 'acceptable' dialect. For a long time the French Academy rejected Quebecois as French. Wikipedia shouldn't be committing a similar error here in separating "lesser" people from recognition of speaking their own claimed native language. 208.59.107.13 (talk) 16:44, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

 * I don't see where the article runs afoul of this advice. Guyana is not mentioned. Jamaica is mentioned a number of times: (1) the infobox list of dialects, including "Jamaican", "American", "British"; (2) where it is described as an "outer circle country" that has a "much smaller proportion [than other groups in the model] of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business, and its routine use for school instruction and official interactions with the government"; (3) where it says "The most prominent varieties are Jamaican English and Jamaican Creole." Perhaps you are conflating what the article says about Jamaican creole, and the Jamaican flavour of English.  signed, Willondon (talk)  17:04, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Not mentioning Guyana - the only native English speaking nation in South America - is a vast encyclopedic oversight by any measure. And Jamaican creole is a dialect somewhat distinguished by not using the “th” sound and not pronouncing the “h” sound in the beginning of a Standard English word. It is English and written as so in all of the local daily newspapers. By what standard do we discriminate against Guyana and Jamaica in denying them of their own domestic claims of English as their native language?
 * Both Guyana and Jamacia should be listed in this article under the heading, "Countries and territories where English is the native language of the majority. 208.59.107.13 (talk) 18:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There are a few lists linked to (one in "See also"), but none currently in the article (or encyclopedia) specifically list where English is "the native language of the majority". The Jamaican Patois article says "Jamaican Creole exists in gradations between more conservative creole forms that are not significantly mutually intelligible with English, and forms virtually identical to Standard English." So where I read this article as referring to two distinct things (Jamaican Patois, and Jamaican English), that article seems to be describing a continuum. Bottom line, I don't see where there is any discrimination or denying going on here.  signed, Willondon (talk)  19:17, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Guyana is not mentioned. Not mentioning Guyana - the only native English speaking nation in South America - is a vast encyclopedic oversight by any measure. Neither Jamaica nor Guyana are recognized as nations that are native language English speakers. Why? 208.59.107.13 (talk) 23:27, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Very good question: where's Guyana in the article? No answer forthcoming, it seems. Perhaps the first step, given the elaboration of Kachru's three circles model, would be to establish where Guyana fits in that classification. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:40, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Is the UDHR sample really necessary?
If someone is reading an entire article written in English about English, do they really need a two-sentence sample of the English language? Doesn't this entire article serve as a "sample" due to being written in English? It's almost like it's pretending not to be written in English when it obviously is. Eightos (talk) 02:38, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that that's ridiculous. Can be deleted unless someone has some compelling reason we can't think of. Wolfdog (talk) 13:03, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

 * ✅  signed, Willondon (talk)  14:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Source updates for vocab section
The source that is used to confirm the number of English words is described as a 1989 Oxford English Dictionary, and links to an archived page. This needs to be updated. Also, I think that the English vocabulary's famous designation as the largest in the world should be addressed here. Norabur (talk) 02:39, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Although I've heard of this designation in pop culture, do we have an actual credible source/study that supports the claim? Wolfdog (talk) 16:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 May 2024
Change "United States of America" to "United States" 4.39.220.106 (talk) 18:13, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

 * ✅  signed, Willondon (talk)  18:19, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

British English
No mention of MLE or estruary English? MLE in particular is spreading to many cities in England. Definitely worth a mention. Bigbotnot2 (talk) 20:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Questionable examples of Norse influence
"Other core Norse loanwords include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent."

How is "give" a Norse loanword, when it is common all over the West Germanic languages? (Dutch and Low German "geven", High German "geben" etc.) "skirt" (with a shifted meaning) can also be found in German "Schürze", probably stemming from Middle Low German schörte, from Old Saxon skurtia!

"cake" is "Kuchen" in German.

Granted, some originally used West Germanic words might have been given up and later re-introduced via Norse words of the same etymology...94.219.14.131 (talk) 02:41, 14 July 2024 (UTC).

 * Pretty easily:
 * skirt and shirt are cognate doublets, but are of Norse and Anglo-Saxon origin respectively.
 * give displaced its Anglo-Saxon doublet, which fell out of use as yiven during the Middle English period
 * And so on. Remsense  诉  02:53, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:English language


text:
Longest word in English

The identity of the longest word in English depends on the definition of a word and of length.

Words may be derived naturally from the language's roots or formed by coinage and construction. Additionally, comparisons are complicated because place names may be considered words, technical terms may be arbitrarily long, and the addition of suffixes and prefixes may extend the length of words to create grammatically correct but unused or novel words. Different dictionaries include and omit different words.

The length of a word may also be understood in multiple ways. Most commonly, length is based on orthography (conventional spelling rules) and counting the number of written letters. Alternate, but less common, approaches include phonology (the spoken language) and the number of phonemes (sounds).

Major dictionaries
The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis. The word was deliberately coined to be the longest word in English, and has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary does not contain antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters), as the editors found no widespread, sustained usage of the word in its original meaning. The longest word in that dictionary is electroencephalographically (27 letters).

The longest non-technical word in major dictionaries is flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication at 29 letters. Consisting of a series of Latin words meaning "nothing" and defined as "the act of estimating something as worthless"; its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.

Ross Eckler has noted that most of the longest English words are not likely to occur in general text, meaning non-technical present-day text seen by casual readers, in which the author did not specifically intend to use an unusually long word. According to Eckler, the longest words likely to be encountered in general text are deinstitutionalization and counterrevolutionaries, with 22 letters each.

A computer study of over a million samples of normal English prose found that the longest word one is likely to encounter on an everyday basis is uncharacteristically, at 20 letters.

Coinages
In his play Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazousae), the ancient Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes created a word of 171 letters (183 in the transliteration below), which describes a dish by stringing together its ingredients:
 * Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon.

Henry Carey's farce Chrononhotonthologos (1743) holds the opening line: "Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?"

Thomas Love Peacock put these creations into the mouth of the phrenologist Mr. Cranium in his 1816 book Headlong Hall: osteosarchaematosplanchnochondroneuromuelous (44 characters) and osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (51 characters).

James Joyce made up nine 100-letter words plus one 101-letter word in his novel Finnegans Wake, the most famous of which is Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk. Appearing on the first page, it allegedly represents the symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. As it appears nowhere else except in reference to this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath made mention of it in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, when the protagonist was reading Finnegans Wake.

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", the 34-letter title of a song from the movie Mary Poppins, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun defined in reference to the song title. The attributed meaning is "a word that you say when you don't know what to say." The idea and invention of the word is credited to songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman.

Agglutinative constructions
The English language permits the legitimate extension of existing words to serve new purposes by the addition of prefixes and suffixes. This is sometimes referred to as agglutinative construction. This process can create arbitrarily long words: for example, the prefixes pseudo (false, spurious) and anti (against, opposed to) can be added as many times as desired. More familiarly, the addition of numerous "great"s to a relative, such as "great-great-great-great-grandparent", can produce words of arbitrary length. In musical notation, an 8192nd note may be called a semihemidemisemihemidemisemihemidemisemiquaver.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest common example of a word formed by agglutinative construction.

Technical terms
A number of scientific naming schemes can be used to generate arbitrarily long words.

The IUPAC nomenclature for organic chemical compounds is open-ended, giving rise to the 189,819-letter chemical name Methionyl-threonylthreonyl...iso-leucine for the protein also known as titin, which is involved in striated muscle formation. In nature, DNA molecules can be much bigger than protein molecules and therefore potentially be referred to with much longer chemical names. For example, the wheat chromosome 3B contains almost 1 billion base pairs, so the sequence of one of its strands, if written out in full like Adenilyl-adenilyl-guanilyl-cystidylthymidyl..., would be about 8   billion letters long. The longest published word, Acetyl-seryl-tyrosyl-seryliso...serine, referring to the coat protein of a certain strain of tobacco mosaic virus, is 1,185 letters long, and appeared in the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts Service in 1964 and 1966. In 1965, the Chemical Abstracts Service overhauled its naming system and started discouraging excessively long names. In 2011, a dictionary broke this record with a 1909-letter word describing the trpA protein.

John Horton Conway and Landon Curt Noll developed an open-ended system for naming powers of 10, in which one sexmillia-quingent-sexagin-tillion, coming from the Latin name for 6560, is the name for 103(6560+1) = 1019683. Under the long number scale, it would be 106(6560) = 1039360.

 is sometimes cited as the longest binomial name—it is a kind of amphipod. However, this name, proposed by B. Dybowski, was invalidated by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature in 1929 after being petitioned by Mary J. Rathbun to take up the case.

Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis is the longest accepted binomial name for an organism. It is a bacterium found in soil collected at Llan-fair-pwll-gwyn-gyll- (discussed below). Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides is the longest accepted binomial name for any animal, or any organism visible with the naked eye. It is a species of soldier fly. The genus name Parapropalaehoplophorus (a fossil glyptodont, an extinct family of mammals related to armadillos) is two letters longer, but does not contain a similarly long species name.

, at 52 letters, describing the spa waters at Bath, England, is attributed to Dr. Edward Strother (1675–1737). The word is composed of the following elements:
 * Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo )
 * Salino: containing salt (Latin, salinus)
 * Calcalino: calcium (Latin, calx)
 * Ceraceo: waxy (Latin, cera)
 * Aluminoso: alumina (Latin)
 * Cupreo: from "copper"
 * Vitriolic: resembling vitriol

Place names

The longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (85 letters), which is a hill in New Zealand (see the signpost photo on this page). The name is in the Māori language. There are several variant spellings of the name, including some that are longer. In Māori, the digraphs ng and wh are each treated as single letters.

In Canada, the longest place name is Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde, a township in Ontario, at 61 letters or 68 non-space characters.

The 58-letter name Llan-fair-pwll-gwyn-gyll-gogery-chwyrn-drob-wlll-lanty-silio-gogo-goch is the name of a town on Anglesey, an island of Wales. In terms of the traditional Welsh alphabet, the name is only 51 letters long, as certain digraphs in Welsh are considered as single letters, for instance ll, ng and ch. It is generally agreed, however, that this invented name, adopted in the mid-19th century, was contrived solely to be the longest name of any town in Britain. The official name of the place is Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, commonly abbreviated to Llanfairpwll or Llanfair PG.

The longest non-contrived place name in the United Kingdom which is a single non-hyphenated word is Cottonshopeburnfoot (19 letters) and the longest which is hyphenated is Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe (29 characters).

The longest place name in the United States (45 letters) is Char-gogga-gogg-man-chau-ggagogg-chau-buna-gunga-maugg, a lake in Webster, Massachusetts. It means "Fishing Place at the Boundaries – Neutral Meeting Grounds" and is sometimes facetiously translated as "you fish your side of the water, I fish my side of the water, nobody fishes the middle". The lake is also known as Webster Lake. The longest hyphenated names in the U.S. are Winchester-on-the-Severn, a town in Maryland, and Washington-on-the-Brazos, a notable place in Texas history. The longest single-word town names in the U.S. are Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania and Mooselookmeguntic, Maine.

The longest official geographical name in Australia is Ma-mungku-kumpu-rang-kunt-junya. It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning "where the Devil urinates".

Liechtenstein is the longest single-word country name in English, and the second-longest is Turkmenistan.

Personal names
Guinness World Records formerly contained a category for longest personal name used.
 * From about 1975 to 1985, the recordholder was Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe-schlegelstein-hausenberger-dorffvoraltern-waren-gewissenhaft-schaferswessen-schafewaren-wohlgepflege-und-sorgfaltigkeit-beschutzen-von-angreifen-durch-ihrraubgierigfeinde-welche-voraltern-zwolftausend-jahres-vorandieerscheinen-wander-ersteer-dem-enschderraumschiff-gebrauchlicht-als-sein-ursprung-von-kraftgestart-sein-lange-fahrt-hinzwischen-sternartigraum-auf-der-suchenach-diestern-welche-gehabt-bewohnbar-planeten-kreise-drehen-sich-und-wohin-der-neurasse-von-verstandigmen-schlichkeit-konnte-fortplanzen-und-sicher-freuen-anlebens-langlich-freude-und-ruhe-mit-nicht-ein-furcht-vor-angreifen-von-anderer-intelligent-geschopfs-von-hinzwischen-sternartigraum, Senior (746 letters), also known as Wolfe+585, Senior.
 * After 1985 Guinness briefly awarded the record to a newborn girl with a longer name. The category was removed shortly afterward.

Long birth names are often coined in protest of naming laws or for other personal reasons.
 * The naming law in Sweden was challenged by parents Lasse Diding and Elisabeth Hallin, who proposed the given name "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" for their child (pronounced, 43 characters), which was rejected by a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden.

Words with certain characteristics of notable length

 * Schmaltzed and strengthed (10 letters) appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in The Oxford English Dictionary, while scraunched and scroonched appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in Webster's Third New International Dictionary; but squirrelled (11 letters) is the longest if pronounced as one syllable only (as permitted in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary at squirrel, and in Longman Pronunciation Dictionary). Schtroumpfed (12 letters) was coined by Umberto Eco, while broughammed (11 letters) was coined by William Harmon after broughamed (10 letters) was coined by George Bernard Shaw.
 * Strengths is the longest word in the English language containing only one vowel letter.
 * Euouae, a medieval musical term, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. However, the "word" itself is simply a mnemonic consisting of the vowels to be sung in the phrase "seculorum Amen" at the end of the lesser doxology. (Although u was often used interchangeably with v, and the variant "Evovae" is occasionally used, the v in these cases would still be a vowel.)
 * The longest words with no repeated letters are subdermatoglyphic, dermatoglyphics, and uncopyrightable.
 * The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. However, this is arguably a proper noun. There are several six-letter English words with their letters in alphabetical order, including abhors, almost, begins, biopsy, chimps and chintz. There are few 7-letter words, such as "billowy" and "beefily". The longest words whose letters are in reverse alphabetical order are sponged, wronged and trollied.
 * The longest words recorded in OED with each vowel only once, and in order, are abstemiously, affectiously, and tragediously (OED). Fracedinously and gravedinously (constructed from adjectives in OED) have thirteen letters; Gadspreciously, constructed from Gadsprecious (in OED), has fourteen letters. Facetiously is among the few other words directly attested in OED with single occurrences of all six vowels (counting y as a vowel).
 * The longest single palindromic word in English is rotavator, another name for a rotary tiller for breaking and aerating soil.

Typed words

 * The longest words typable with only the left hand using conventional hand placement on a QWERTY keyboard are tesseradecades, aftercataracts, dereverberated, dereverberates and the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses. Using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, monimolimnion and phyllophyllin.
 * The longest English word typable using only the top row of letters has 11 letters: rupturewort. The word teetertotter (used in North American English) is longer at 12 letters, although it is usually spelled with a hyphen.
 * The longest using only the middle row is shakalshas (10 letters). Nine-letter words include flagfalls; eight-letter words include galahads and alfalfas.
 * Since the bottom row contains no vowels, no standard words can be formed.
 * The longest word typable by alternating left and right hands is antiskepticism.
 * On a Dvorak keyboard, the longest "left-handed" words are epopoeia, jipijapa, peekapoo, and quiaquia. Other such long words are papaya, Kikuyu, opaque, and upkeep. Kikuyu is typed entirely with the index finger, and so the longest one-fingered word on the Dvorak keyboard. There are no vowels on the right-hand side, and so the longest "right-handed" word is crwths.

title: Longest word in English


text:
Eric S. Raymond

Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game NetHack. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, published as The New Hacker's Dictionary.

Early life
Raymond was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, and lived in Venezuela as a child. His family moved to Pennsylvania in 1971. He developed cerebral palsy at birth; his weakened physical condition motivated him to go into computing.

Career
Raymond began his programming career writing proprietary software, between 1980 and 1985. In 1990, noting that the Jargon File had not been maintained since about 1983, he adopted it, but not without criticism; Paul Dourish maintains an archived original version of the Jargon File, because, he says, Raymond's updates "essentially destroyed what held it together."

In 1996 Raymond took over development of the open-source email software "popclient", renaming it to Fetchmail. Soon after this experience, in 1997, he wrote the essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", detailing his thoughts on open-source software development and why it should be done as openly as possible (the "bazaar" approach). The essay was based in part on his experience in developing Fetchmail. He first presented his thesis at the annual Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997. He later expanded the essay into a book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, in 1999. The essay has been widely cited. The internal white paper by Frank Hecker that led to the release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998 cited The Cathedral and the Bazaar as "independent validation" of ideas proposed by Eric Hahn and Jamie Zawinski. Hahn would later describe the 1999 book as "clearly influential".

From the late 1990s onward, due in part to the popularity of his essay, Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998, taking on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and public. He remains active in OSI, but stepped down as president of the initiative in February 2005. In early March 2020, he was removed from two Open Source Initiative mailing lists due to posts that violated the OSI's Code of Conduct.

In 1998 Raymond received and published a Microsoft document expressing worry about the quality of rival open-source software. He named this document, together with others subsequently leaked, "The Halloween Documents".

In 2000–2002 he created Configuration Menu Language 2 (CML2), a source code configuration system; while originally intended for the Linux operating system, it was rejected by kernel developers. (Raymond attributed this rejection to "kernel list politics", but Linus Torvalds said in a 2007 mailing list post that as a matter of policy, the development team preferred more incremental changes. ) Raymond's 2003 book The Art of Unix Programming discusses user tools for programming and other tasks.

Some versions of NetHack still include Raymond's guide. He has also contributed code and content to the free software video game The Battle for Wesnoth.

Raymond is the main developer of NTPsec, a "secure, hardened replacement" for the Unix utility NTP.

Raymond has written numerous open-source tools, including cvs-fast-export, a tool for exporting CVS repositories to Git fast-import streams, and "reposurgeon", a tool for exporting SVN repositories.

Views on open source
Raymond coined an aphorism he dubbed Linus's law, inspired by Linus Torvalds: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". It first appeared in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Raymond has refused to speculate on whether the "bazaar" development model could be applied to works such as books and music, saying that he does not want to "weaken the winning argument for open-sourcing software by tying it to a potential loser".

Raymond has had a number of public disputes with other figures in the free software movement. As head of the Open Source Initiative, he argued that advocates should focus on the potential for better products. The "very seductive" moral and ethical rhetoric of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation fails, he said, "not because his principles are wrong, but because that kind of language ... simply does not persuade anybody".

In a 2008 essay he defended programmers' right to issue work under proprietary licenses: "I think that if a programmer wants to write a program and sell it, it's neither my business nor anyone else's but his customer's what the terms of sale are." In the same essay he said that the "logic of the system" puts developers into "dysfunctional roles", with bad code the result.

Political beliefs and activism
Raymond is a member of the Libertarian Party and a gun rights advocate. He has endorsed the open source firearms organization Defense Distributed, calling them "friends of freedom" and writing "I approve of any development that makes it more difficult for governments and criminals to monopolize the use of force. As 3D printers become less expensive and more ubiquitous, this could be a major step in the right direction."

In 2015 Raymond accused the Ada Initiative and other women in tech groups of attempting to entrap male open source leaders and accuse them of rape, saying "Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp."

Raymond has claimed that "Gays experimented with unfettered promiscuity in the 1970s and got AIDS as a consequence", and that "Police who react to a random black male behaving suspiciously who might be in the critical age range as though he is an near-imminent lethal threat, are being rational, not racist." A progressive campaign, "The Great Slate", was successful in raising funds for candidates in part by asking for contributions from tech workers in return for not posting similar quotes by Raymond. Matasano Security employee and Great Slate fundraiser Thomas Ptacek said, "I've been torturing Twitter with lurid Eric S. Raymond quotes for years. Every time I do, 20 people beg me to stop." It is estimated that, as of March 2018, over $30,000 has been raised in this way.

Religious beliefs
Raymond describes himself as neo-pagan.

Books

 * The New Hacker's Dictionary (editor MIT Press ISBN 0-262-68092-0) – printed version of the Jargon File with Raymond listed as the editor.
 * The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly; hardcover ISBN 1-56592-724-9, 1999) – includes "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "Homesteading the Noosphere", "The Magic Cauldron" and "Revenge of the Hackers"
 * The Art of Unix Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2003; ISBN 0-13-142901-9)
 * Learning GNU Emacs (3rd Edition; editors Debra Cameron, James Elliott, Marc Loy, Eric, Raymond, and Bill Rosenblatt (O'Reilly Media, 2004; ISBN 978-0-596-00648-8)

Writings posted or archived on his website

 * The Art of Unix Usability, the book about programming and user interface philosophy in UNIX
 * How to Ask Questions the Smart Way, mirrored on personal site
 * Release Early, Release Often, excerpt from The Cathedral and the Bazaar, mirrored on personal site
 * Eric Raymond's FAQ collection, mirrored on his personal site. Includes links to Linux Documentation Project.

title: Eric S. Raymond


text:
Externalization (psychology)

Externalization is a term used in psychoanalytic theory which describes the tendency to project one's internal states onto the outside world. It is generally regarded as an unconscious defense mechanism, thus the person is unaware they are doing it. Externalization takes on a different meaning in narrative therapy, where the client is encouraged to externalize a problem in order to gain a new perspective on it.

Psychoanalysis
In Freudian psychology, externalization (or externalisation) is a defense mechanism by which an individual projects their own internal characteristics onto the outside world, particularly onto other people. For example, a patient who is overly argumentative might instead perceive others as argumentative and themselves as blameless.

Like other defense mechanisms, externalization can be a protection against anxiety and is, therefore, part of a healthy, normally functioning mind. However, if taken to excess, it can lead to the development of a neurosis.

Narrative therapy
Michael White states that the problem of the client is externalized, to alter the client's point of view.

Neuroscience of externalization
Problems with self-regulation, including impulsivity, violence, sensation-seeking, and rule-breaking, are indicative of an externalizing risk pathway. A discrepancy exists between bottom-up reward-related circuitry, such as the ventral striatum, and top-down inhibitory control circuitry, which is located in the prefrontal cortex, linking externalizing behaviors. Externalization is often related to substance use disorders. In particular, alcohol use disorder is one of disorders that much externalization research has been dedicated to. Often, issues within the externalizing risk pathway, namely vulnerabilities in self-regulation, may impact the development of alcohol use disorder differently across stages of the addiction cycle. Likewise, marijuana use has been linked to an externalizing pathway that highlights aggressive and delinquent behavior. Another type of disorder that is linked to the externalizing pathway is Antisocial Personality Disorder due to its tendency to relate by lack of constraint. Much research has examined the similarities of antisocial personality disorder and substance use disorder in relation to externalizing behaviors.

title: Externalization (psychology)