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I understand the stylistic rules for capitalizing the word "river" in a place name, but I can't seem to find any consistent guidelines on whether to capitalize the word "basin" when it follows an instance where "river" should be capitalized.

example:

"The Hooseywhatsit River Basin is home to several species of platypus."

or

"The Hooseywhatsit River basin is home to several species of platypus."

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    I use a simple test. If I see it named as a Basin, I follow that. If I am the one who wants to talk about the river basin, and did not otherwise see it with caps, I don't need caps.Then it's like I am talking about the river bank, or the Red River bank.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 15:18
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    From ICPDR.org: 'The Danube River Basin is Europe's second largest river basin ...' BUT from USDA.gov: 'The Red River basin spans 25 million acres ...'. I'd say it's not set in tablets of stone; go with what you find more common (but be consistent within a document).
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 15:46
  • What @Edwin said. But note this NGram suggesting that the "all words capitalised" version (previous the least common), has in the past couple of decades shot up to pole position for Danube River Basin.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 16:07
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    @FF It's hard to avoid titles, which comprise a lot of the examples.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 16:26
  • Thank you for your responses. I'm going with "The Hooseywhatsit River Basin" when it's a proper name, and "logging in the basin is threatening the platypus" otherwise.
    – Maria McDonald
    Commented Aug 1, 2017 at 14:34

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There doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule.

• An Ngram comparison shows that "River Basin" is more common in American English but "river basin" is more common in British English.

• Alaska's very through guide to capitalization of geographic terms recommends lower case for compound nouns like "river basin", "river mouth", etc. but capitals when it's just the river's proper name – so "Yukon River" but "Yukon river basin".

• The Chicago Manual of Style (section 8.53) uses "River" in caps as part of the proper name but "basin" in lowercase because it's a modifier: the Mississippi River valley, the Amazon basin, the Mississippi delta.

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  • Um, no, basin isn't a modifier - basin is the common noun. It is being modified by Mississippi River, which is here being used as a proper adjective.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 17:16

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