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Revision as of 02:26, 18 October 2006

Moved the discussion from the project page:

This is yet another attempt to work out a simple policy for geographic names. It started as a Central/Eastern Europe regional proposal but should likely be applicable to the entire world. The basic assumptions for the policy are:

1. it should be simple, easy to understand and to follow
2. it does not have to be perfect, some controversies will not be avoided

(No voting yet. Let's try to work on several reasonable proposals first (the less the better ;-) )

Proposal B

The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. When mentioned in a historical context, the current local official name can be additionally accompanied by the appropriate historical name in parentheses, where reasonable. This applies to articles' contents. Only the widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used in titles. Historical names are to be listed in the first line of the article. A historical name can be used in title of an article about a place only in case of a redirect to the appropriate article titled with the official name.

Suggested modification by Irpen

1. The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used for the article titles (comment: this is tautologous since already prescribed by policy but worth a mention, criteria of establishing the accpeted English usage to be discussed separately)
2. When mentioned in a historical context, the accepted name in modern academic literature devoted to the topic is preferred (e.g. "Rumania" in WW2 articles, "Lwow" in biographies of Poles of PLC time, "Chernigov" in topics about Rurikids and Rus, etc). This is largely left to the authors who write the articles since they are more likely to research literature than causial readers who might still have strong political preferences. If the current local official name is different from such an accepted usage in a particular historical context, the modern name may be added in parentheses, where reasonable. This applies to articles' contents.
3. Other names are to be listed in the first line of the article only if they have any modern English usage. Otherwise, while not listed in the first line, they still may be used within text as context prescribes. Example: there is no English modern usage of Kaniow (Kaniv, Ukraine), hence Kaniow not to be listed in the first line. It still may be used within text when saying how the coty was granted Magdeburg rights within PLC (details of the a similar issue here.)

1. OK. This is addressed in B2 below.

2. Two problems here: 1. what is "modern" ? what is "academic" ? 2. what if multiple names are used in literature ? We've seen this problem with Danzig/Gdańsk that you surely are aware of. Using the official name has the advantage of being well defined. On the other hand I can think of counterexamples, like the Battle of Stalingrad. Historical context is the tough part of this.

3. This is disputable, I think. Why would you not want to see "Kaniów" in the first line ? It seems informative and harmless. Do you find it offensive ? Using other names within the body of the article can be confusing to an unaware reader. --Wojsyl

2. How to establish what's modern academic usage is a separate issue that also needs discussed. However, I was recently in a bookstore where I looked at a WW2 history book just published and it had Rumania. Battle of Stalingrad is really not applicable since the city was renamed unlike Romania or Chernihiv. Still, in historical literature, the name changes are made much more conservatively thani the news articles and there are reasons for that. Or would you write that king Stanislaus I Leszczyński was born in "Lviv". Even if the latter is OK with you personally, there is no way it is going to be accepted by the Polish WP community fom what I can tell

I can buy that "Stanislaus I Leszczyński was born in Lviv and Emilia Plater in Vilnius". I see nothing wrong with that. History sections in the respective city articles will explain the issue for those unsatisfied. Space Cadet 22:38, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

As you expected, I don't see anything wrong with Leszczyński being born in Lviv as long as everyone follows these rules. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I believe most of the Polish editors would accept it. --Wojsyl 23:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

3. I don't find it offensive. I linked to the expanation at talk:Kiev but I can quote from there:

For some cities, their Polish name is so important that it may be found in English texts even nowadays (Lviv/Lwow/Lvov/Lemberg). For such cities it needs to be placed in the very first line of the article, except perhaps when the article has a name etymology piece close to the top where similar names are listed and explained (current solution at Kamianets-Podilskyi). In such articles all names except native are given within etymology discussion.

For some cities, while much of the Polish history still applies to them, they are never, or almost never, called nowadays by their Polish names in English language texts. Examples are Kiev/Kyiv/Kijow, Chernihiv/Chernigov/Czernihow, Kaniv/Kanev/Kaniow, etc. Polish name should be used for such cities in the history sections (like Voivodship name) but not in the first line, because otherwise (like for Kiev) any name of any country that ever conquered it (Lithuanian, German, Crimean Tatarian, Swedish, whatever was the Khazar language, Cuman, etc.) deserves the place in the first line. Similarly, Варшава, Белосток, Краков, at times conquered and controlled by Russia, by this token would need to be mentioned in the first lines of the respective articles (and I know some of our Polish friends will not take it lightly). This would be clutter and/or bad blood. We have a separate list article called Names of European cities in different languages for this information.

I hope I answered some of your conserns. --Irpen 22:26, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

As I say below, this proposal is completely unworkable. It basically says that historical names are not to be used to refer to cities at the times when they were known by this historical name. Not only has this approach been repeatedly rejected for Central European cities in votes (c.f., for instance, the vote regarding usage of Gdansk, which demonstrated massive majorities in favor of using Danzig for the period from 1793 to 1945), but this approach explicitly states that cities whose names have been officially changed, like Istanbul or Kaliningrad, should always be referred to by their current names, except in parentheses. I'm sorry, but this is just totally unacceptable. john k 22:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

John, I am all confused. Which of the proposals is totally unacceptable. Mine? I thought it exactly takes care of the issue. The problem with Gdansk/Danzig was not the resultrs of the vote but the lack of common sense in their application. When people were adding Danzig to an article on modern polish soccer club it backtfired and caused quiet some bad blood. But this should not have been done at the first place? What's your take then? --

Also, it is nice to know that Space Cadet won't have a problem with king Stanislaus I Leszczyński being born in Lviv. I strongly doubt that it would still be OK with too many Polish editors. As well as Варшава and Краков in the first lines of respective articles. --Irpen 23:04, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Irpen, your proposal is fine with me. I was referring to Wojsyl's proposal as being unacceptable. Sorry for the confusion. In terms of Gdansk/Danzig, I agree with you that there's no need to refer to the name Danzig in references to the city since 1945, and that it was stupid that people tried to do this. My only concern is with pre-1945, where I think "Danzig" is the most common name used to refer to it from at least the 14th century on. john k 23:20, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal B version 2

Slightly rephrased:

The title: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. A historical or foreign language name can be used in the title of an article about a place only in case of a redirect to the appropriate article titled according to the above rule.

The contents: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. Historical names, including other languages where appropriate, are to be listed in the first line of the article's contents. When mentioned in a historical context, the current local official name can be additionally accompanied by the appropriate historical name in parentheses, where reasonable.

• Support--AndriyK 21:08, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
• Support-- with an obvious exception to cities that had their names changed, like Königsberg etc. Space Cadet 21:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Good point about the exception for the changed names. Maybe that's the key ? --Wojsyl 22:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose. I much prefer Irpen's modifications, which adhere much more closely to current usage, and to the preferences demonstrated by wikipedians in numerous votes on individual articles. This proposal is particularly bad, as it indicates that we should say that the capital of the Byzantine Empire was Istanbul, that the Germans besieged St. Petersburg for 900 days during World War II, that the Viceroy of India was stationed at Kolkata prior to 1911, and so on and so forth. Votes on the Gdansk issue, and others, have shown clearly that most wikipedians believe that the "appropriate historical name" ought to be used in historical contexts. john k 21:51, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Look at B3 below then. I'm sure you know that the Gdansk voting was not only controversial but had many serious flaws. --Wojsyl 22:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Some parts may have been problematic. Nevertheless, an enormous majority said that it should be called "Danzig" from 1793 to 1945. john k 23:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

JK, please can you not bring the Gdansk issue here. I know we could discuss this for ages and I have my arguments that I do not want to bring up now. One of the reasons of having good rules is to avoid cases like Gdansk, that did more harm than good. If you want to hear why I consider the Gdansk vote faulty, you're welcome to my talk page. --Wojsyl 23:20, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Wojsyl - I am not referring to the controversial parts of the vote on Gdansk. I am referring to the utterly uncontroversial fact that 61 people voted to use "Danzig" from 1793 to 1945, and 10 people voted to use "Gdansk". Until you opened this discussion, nobody has ever suggested that this part of the vote was faulty, or in need of revision, although various anons (and occasionally Space Cadet) have tried to unilaterally change various individual articles. As I said, any attempt to codify a policy (a general idea which I support), should take into account that this is an overwhelming consensus - any general rule which we should devise should be one which accommodates using "Danzig" for this period. As to not bringing up the Danzig issue, please. Issues relating to the naming of cities like Danzig are clearly what is at the center of this proposal, which in its original form was so clearly geared towards these names that it would have mandated talking about the Fourth Crusade's sack of Istanbul in 1204. john k 00:17, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal B version 3

"The Battle of Stalingrad" case taken care of:

The title: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. A historical or foreign language name can be used in the title of an article about a place only in case of a redirect to the appropriate article titled according to the above rule.

The contents: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. Historical names, including other languages where appropriate, are to be listed in the first line of the article's contents. When mentioned in a historical context, the widely accepted English historical name can be used where there's no doubt about the usage. Otherwise, the current local official name can be additionally accompanied by the appropriate historical name in parentheses, where reasonable.

How about this now then ? --Wojsyl 22:12, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

No, because some users have no doubt, some others do. Stalingrad, Kaliningrad etc. should not be covered by this proposal. Space Cadet 22:15, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, as it says, if there is any doubt, use the current official name instead. --Wojsyl 22:26, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal B version 4

The "name change" case taken care of:

The title: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. A historical or foreign language name can be used in the title of an article about a place only in case of a redirect to the appropriate article titled according to the above rule.

The contents: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used. Historical names, including other languages where appropriate, are to be listed in the first line of the article's contents if they are in English usage. When mentioned in a historical context, the current local official name can be additionally accompanied by the appropriate historical (foreign language) name in parentheses, where reasonable. Only for the names that were changed (not merely translated), the historical name can be used in appropriate historical context instead.

Hopefully this addresses the concerns of Irpen, John K and Space Cadet ? --Wojsyl 22:37, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

This most certainly does not address my concerns. Look, a vast majority of people think Gdansk should be called Danzig between 1793 and 1945. This was demonstrated in a vote with a very high turn out, and many Polish contributors voted for this solution (perhaps disingenuously?). The results on pre-1793 were considerably more ambiguous, but any responsible proposal should take into account that there is strong consensus for having an article on the Free City of Danzig and not on the Free City of Gdansk, and for discussion of the city in the 19th century to refer to "Danzig," and so forth. Otherwise, this proposal is clearly just an end run around consensus. john k 23:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

As I said, I don't want to go into detail on if the vote was valid or not, as it's not our goal here. this said, the Free City of Danzig is an article about a historic state, not about a place, therefore our rules here do not apply for this particular article's title. But I see your point. --Wojsyl 00:03, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal C

Per Irpen:

The title: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used

The contents: When mentioned in a historical context, the accepted name in modern academic literature devoted to the topic is preferred. This is largely left to the authors who write the articles since they are more likely to research literature than casual readers who might still have strong political preferences. If the current local official name is different from such an accepted usage in a particular historical context, the modern name may be added in parentheses, where reasonable. Other names are to be listed in the first line of the article only if they have any modern English usage. Otherwise, while not listed in the first line, they still may be used within text as context prescribes.

I am much happier with this proposal. I would suggest however, that we do split issues in three rather than in two parts:

1. article titles
2. names in context
3. names that qualify for the first line

It's just that these are three issues and three reasons for edit wars. Agreed? --Irpen 00:20, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

This proposal seems like the best one so far, and I think Irpen's proposed revisions make sense. john k 00:22, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal C version 2

1. The title: The widely accepted English name or in absence thereof, the current local official name is to be used
2. The contents: The same as the title, unless mentioned in a historical context, when the widely accepted name in modern English language academic literature devoted to the topic is preferred. This is largely left to the authors who write the articles since they are more likely to research literature than casual readers who might still have strong political preferences. If the current local official name is different from such an accepted usage in a particular historical context, the modern name may be added in parentheses, where reasonable.
3. The first line: Other names are to be listed in the first line of the article only if they have any modern English usage. Otherwise, while not listed in the first line, they still may be used within text as context prescribes.

I would add examples to each section:

Title:Moscow (different from local name because there is an common English name), but Dnipropetrovsk (local name) because Dnepropetrovsk is not a currently used city name in the media anymore, as can be easily checked

Context: Kijow Voivodship within History of Kiev despite Kijow is not used in modern English ever. Battle of Kharkov while the city article is still called Kharkiv.

First line: "Lviv, Lwów, Lemberg, Lvov" or "Chernivtsi, Cernăuţi, Czernowitz" (Czerniowce ?) but not Kaniów or Kijów, while these two names may still be used within texts.

--Irpen 00:44, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

And a separate issue (not necessarily a part of this proposal) would be that we would have to agree on how we establish the criteria of sufficient English usage. I propose the following:

1. check other respected encyclopedia such as Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Microsoft Encarta. What names they mention early on?
2. Check the current media usage. Search engines are LexisNexis, Google News, maybe others...
3. An good old google test but only among English language web-pages.

Does the list seem objective and unbiased? --Irpen 01:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Textual. Just to make the policy more readable, it may be better to state it in an enumerated list and shorter sentences. "If, then, else" pattern is first what comes to mind, but, please, avoid nested if-thens. Since the policy is likely to be widely applied in the future, a simpler statement in terms of wording (but not in terms of content) is important.

Content. After the definition of the policy, need to give explanations for "the widely accepted English name" and "the current local official name". To a large extent, this was done for "the widely accepted English name", but I don't quite see what is exactly "the current local official name". For instance, in the case of Ukraine, the only official name is the name in Ukrainian (i.e., with Cyrillic letters). So, the policy should say explicitly how transliteration is handled.

Extra. The policy should say something about dispute resolution or refer to other policies in this regard. Sashazlv 03:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

But, in principle, I have no objections to this version. Sashazlv 03:50, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree about transliteration. This can become especially problematic for some scripts, like Arabic, which, so far as I can tell, has no agreed upon transliteration at all. john k 06:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

So far we don't have Arabic in Europe :-) and cyrillic seems to be relatively easy to transliterate. But I agree this needs to be augmented by the supporting definitions as per Irpen and Sasha. We're just in the beginning. My idea is to work on the proposal that we can accept and then seek support and wider consensus. So, how about version C3 with the shorter sentences anyone ? (Sashazlv ?) --Wojsyl 09:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Transliteration of cyrillic is easier than of arabic but it is not deovid ov problems. There is no universal transliteration. There are such things as "official transliteration tables" that countries use to transliterate named for travel passports but even within this scope there are ambiguous precedents. Just a small example is the Russian letter "ё" whose usage isn't mandatory. So, the common Russian last name Фёдоров may end up being tranliterated as Fyoderov, Fioderov, Feodorov (this is rare because archaic) and Fedorov. A similar caviat in Ukrainian is introduced by the fact that Ukrainian letter "И" which is pronounced differently from Russian "И" but rather like Russian "Ы" is tranliterated usually into "Y". At the same time "Й" is transliterated as either "Y" or "I" or sometimes even "J". Ukrainian last name "Кловський" as such may be transliterated as "Klovsky", "Klovskyy", "Klovskyi", "Klovskyj" and all the same with "'" after "s" to reflect "ь" (the soft sign sometimes is and sometimes isn't ommitted in transliteration. Additionally, if the person is of the Russian heritage, he may also be called in Cyrillic as "Кловский" but he would than be either Klovskii, or Klovskiy, or Klovsky, etc.

I might have confused everyone here, but the good news is that disagreements over tranliterations are less fevent than those over the language of the original version. If we just decide about the language issue, we will do a lot of good just by that. --Irpen 23:46, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I see. Can we agree, that transliteration is a separate issue and is out of the scope of our little project ? Better stay focused. Better stay focused for now, and as you show with your examples, transliteration is not an issue limited to geographic names only. --Wojsyl 09:22, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Supporting definitions

The weakness of version C versus B is that it is more vague and much more relying on supporting definitons. The challenge then is to provide these definition and keep it simple at the same time. I think this is doable, but has to be approached carefully. I'd not be abandoning version B altogether for now, though (even being aware of its "Gdańsk" weakness). As for C2, here's what needs to be clarified:

1. widely accepted English name - definition needed
2. current local official name - definintion needed
3. modern English language academic literature devoted to the topic - define "modern". "Academic" and "devoted" also seem a bit vague.

   Academic seems fairly clear to me - "written by people with PhD's in the requisite field, and/or published by an academic press or in an academic journal." "devoted to the topic" is relatively vague, but I see no problem with it being vague. I'd say that "modern" should also remain vague, but the last 25 years or so would seem about right. john k 00:03, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

4. authors who write the articles - this I think cannot stay, as it seems to contradict the wiki spirit. Everyone is or can be the co-author.

   I think what is meant here is simply that discretion is being left to the editors on the individual page, rather than to a the central guidelines. john k 00:03, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

5. modern English usage - again, what is "modern" ? (and why do we want to limit ourselves to modern usage only in the first place ?)

   Well, English usage before the 18th century or so is essentially not notable, simply because orthography was not standardized until the 18th century. Beyond this, we include names becausewe want to include names somebody might come across. A name used by Englishmen in the 16th century for Warsaw is highly unlikely to actually be encountered by a reader, so it just clutters up the page to include it in the first line. john k 00:03, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

--Wojsyl 09:27, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Of the three issues (title name, name in context and names in the first line) only the first and the last one are policy definable, I think. As for the context name, we can't have more than a guideline here. As for the Wojsyl's list above, I have put down some ideas earlier at this page. Maybe JohnK, who us a professional historian and a native speaker, can help in polishing the formulations. As for the proposal B, I think that we can't ever achieve the prefect guideline/policy on the issue. But proposal C is much better to what's being mostly implied now anyway. Please believe that I favor C not because it is closer to my proposal. I carefully considered these issues for a very long time

On the side note, not a policy and not even a guideline, but just as a suggestion to stress for established users could be found at Misplaced Pages:Eastern_European_Wikipedians'_notice_board#Games_with_names and discussed at its talk. Could we add a word or two along these lines? Thanks, --Irpen 16:42, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

To the side note: I think it's not practical :-( --Wojsyl 09:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

As for the agreed criteria of the usage, in addition to what's said by JohnK, another place to check are other modern Encyclopedia and reference books. It's not just Britannica, other ref books also exist. We may even agree on the list, but it seems excessive. Modern general usage is best checked by the media analysis. Google news is less useful since it includes sites without established editiorial policies. My favorite tool for this, is the LexisNexis major papers search which checks 50 mainstream English papers from many countries. --Irpen 00:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

What happens if the name is not present in modern English usage or is used very scarcely ? --Wojsyl 10:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Why I don't like the word "academic" is that it does not really solve the problem, just shifts it elsewhere. It would be naive to hope that all academic literature uses the same naming convention. It greatly depends on the author, the journal, publisher etc.

Why I don't like the word modern "modern": firstly it opens field to discussion what is modern and what is not. Secondly, using old names could be also useful sometimes, if only for reference purposes.

Similarly, I don't see why should we be limiting ourselves to the sources "devoted" to the subject. And again it would only open space to speculations whether the source is devoted enough or not. It does not provide any added value. --Wojsyl 10:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

After checking a couple of examples, I have to admit that the meaning of "historical context" is also not clear :-( --Wojsyl 14:12, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Names in the first line

The proposal above seems quite reasonable to me. However, I'd think a tad more on the first line names. The way it is now, we're planning to cut out all the alternative names, even those that are used later in the text in historical context. Stalingrad hasn't any modern English usage and is used in historical context mostly. Yet, I doubt there is a significant faction of people who know how Stalingrad is called nowadays.

I always tried to keep the matter of first line names in accordance with common sense rather than a strict set of rules. While in some cases the list gets a tad long (Chernivtsy, for instance), it's still much better than listing one name only. After all even if the name itself is not used in English any more, one might find it on a map or in a history book. Halibutt 20:31, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, what is the purpose of the alternative/foreign/historic names in the first line in the first place ? I always thought there are two main purposes: Firstly, if someone gets redirected to an article with a different name, he could quickly see why. Secondly, having the origin of alternative names explained in the lead allows to avoid confusion when they are referenced later in the text. Any other significant reasons ? --Wojsyl 21:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Those that are widely used, even if only in a particulal contexts, are worth a mention in the first line, I think. Chornobyl but Chernobyl accident, makes sure that Chernobyl needs mentioned in the first line. OTOH, there is too little of "Varshava", or "Warshawa" or "Kaniow" for that matter. I agree that "widely used" is not a very specific term. However, this isn't math and there is no hope to ever achieve a completely unambigous set of rules. Let's just see what we can realistically do. --Irpen 22:01, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

How about: the alternative name is given in the first name if this name is further used in the body of the article ? --Wojsyl 22:20, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it will be accepted since it will be too many names. That would, for example, require "Варшава" in Warsaw article's first line. Let's just stick with a broader rule about modern English usage. BTW, I checked EB, and it seems to me that this is exactly what it is doing. There are Lwow, Lvov and Lemberg in Lviv's 1st line, but no Kijow or Varshava in respective 1st lines on the other hand. --Irpen 22:35, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

No, it would not allow or require "Варшава" in Warsaw article's first line, as "Варшава" is not used in the body. Neither does "Kijów". I agree it's not mathematics, but as I stated before, these rules will need to be both simple and easy to follow. Otherwise we'll end up with similar mess like after the Danzig vote. --Wojsyl 22:40, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Kijow is in the body of the History of Kiev article and it was in Kiev article too until Sashazlv and myself spun off the history into a separate article. However, Kijow in the first line is a dead idea as the consensus have shown. And the very reason why it is a dead idea is that there is no modern English usage of Kijow. Exact same logic explains why there should not be Varshava in the first line. --Irpen 23:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

We have no other option but to be as strict as possible. Otherwise we'll end up with a set of rules as ambiguous as the Talk:Gdansk/Vote, where the shared history is defined in a zillion of ways, depending on what one wants to prove. Wojsyl's proposal above seems reasonable, though Irpen is also right that it's still a tad too general. After all Варшава could be included in the article as it was the official name used by the state authorities in late 19th century. Any other ideas on how to make Wojsyl's idea a tad more specific?

As to reasons for including the alternative names in the first line, I would add the former name (for instance the case of Lwów or Stalingrad, where hardly anyone called the city by its modern name before certain date). Halibutt 22:45, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but would a "former name" not be mentioned somewhere in the body of the article ? Like in the history section ? I think that's the same. The other rule (#2 in our proposal) would define when the name is allowed in the body of the article. Rule #3 would then say, that it's allowe in the first line only if it is usedin the body in this form. This would also mean that if someone wants his favourite alternative name in the header, he has to write the history section first, which nicely coincides with Irpen's other proposal (that name change has to be accompanied by some other significant edit). Why is it too general ? I don't see... --Wojsyl 22:54, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

As for the "former names", while Stalingrad was a former name of Volgograd, Lwow and Lvov are not former names of Lviv, it is the same name in differet languages. There is no doubt that former names (Slalingrad) should always be included. The problem is, what foreign versions of same names to include and the natural answer is to include the those names that are used in English too. More, at talk:Kiev. --Irpen 23:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but what I propose is to incude these foreing versions that are used in the text. Otherwise we should not be using foreign names in the text as well, as it would only be confusing. --Wojsyl 23:52, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think there should be a connection and I don't see a confusion. We can leave the usage of the foreign names in the text up to the editors but having too many first line names is confusion and clutter. Sometimes we have to have many (like Lviv), but these are few exceptional cases. My view is that we should be least restrictive when dealing with context usage but we should be restrictive re first line because the latter is both clutter and the favorite thing of trouble makers, like... (no need to say names, everyone knows them). --00:08, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

We differ here. I think the rules for usage in text are critical and most difficult, and the title and first line will be easy once we have it defined. I've seen far too many revert wars on the city names in text. I would also be reluctant to rely on EB or other similar traditional sources. They are often conservative and/or outdated. Misplaced Pages need to be better than this :-) Otherwise why do we need it if we have EB ? --Wojsyl 00:17, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the problems you outlined, let's just think over the best solutions. A recent rv war over the names in the text of Chernihiv raged because there was no clearly stated permissive policy regarding the context usage which allowed AndriyK and Andrew Alexander to claim that Chernihiv should be used for the Rurikids time (a total nonsense).

As for checking EB, there is nothing wrong with that as long as we agree that EB is not a sole source but just one of several, albeit an important one.

You made a very good point that the rule may encourage people like AndriyK or Witkacy to actually write something for the appropriate sections of the articles, if they want to see their favorite names used (the thing I haven't seen them doing yet). But still, a mere mention in the text should not be sufficient to qualify for the first line (clutter). Besides, we have a very complete Names of European cities in different languages to avoid confusion of any kind. --Irpen 00:32, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe ... we don't need to mention the foreign names in the first line at all ? In the meantime I've repaired proposal B to take care of the Stalingrad/Volgograd case. --Wojsyl 00:37, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

As per Irpen's while Stalingrad was a former name of Volgograd, Lwow and Lvov are not former names of Lviv, it is the same name in differet languages - quite disputable. I thought your idea was to refer to English usage only. If so, then Lviv is the new name of the city, as I doubt there were any instances of its usage in English prior to, let's say, 1945 (if not 1991).

In short, I believe the alternative names should be listed in the first line not only in the case where the name was used by, say, British press, but also in the cases where the name was not prominent in the English language, but somehow is notable. A good example would be some obscure town in modern western Poland with a German name used by its inhabitants before WWII, yet with no mentions of it whatsoever in any English source. The German name would belong to the first line, regardless of the lack of sources to use it in English, IMO. Same goes for tiny towns in what is now western Ukraine. Halibutt 13:52, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

That's fine with me as long as we are able to explain what "somehow notable" could mean. Seems a bit dangerous. --Wojsyl 14:06, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a good common sense solution, Halibutt. I personally am most familiar with German names and often add them to articles about locations within the confines of the HRE, the Kingdom of Hungary, Livonia, and the Kingdom of Prussia (outside of the 1795-1807 period). To me, most places in those regions seem like they would have had either substantial German populations (thereby fulfilling "somehow is notable") or were important enough to have had their German names used in the British press because of their German administration, even though German was not necessarily the majority ethnicity. I see no need to list alternative names created during the Nazi regime in the first line; that should be mentioned in the history body, if at all. To me, those guidelines seem to be common sense, but I certainly share Wojsyl's concern. Olessi 05:49, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

BTW, just to refresh this discussion, how about changing the example of Lwów/Lvov/Lviv/whatever to some other town where the first line names are in place? For instance I believe that the Ukrainian name belongs to the article on Przemyśl, eventhough the town has never been a part of Ukraine, not even geographically. Halibutt 11:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I think, we should just check whether Peremyshl has any modern usage in English language be it in media or in historic literature. If it does, it belongs there, silimarly to Lwow in Lviv. --Irpen 04:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

And for me the fact whether it has any modern English usage or not is completely irrelevant here. There is some Ukrainian minority there, the town is present in Ukrainian history and as such might be significant under its Ukrainian name, which is enough for me to use the name in the first line. Note that the Ukrainian name is there since times immemorial and nobody ever planned to remove it, unlike Polish or German names from other articles. Halibu] 05:08, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

As I said, we need to avoid a too liberal rule for the first line which must be much more limited then possible usage in the context. I explained why above at Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions/Geographic_names#Suggested_modification_by_Irpen. Also, the Ukrainian name was added to the aticle not in the times immemorial but in June 2005, while the article exists since 2003. Not much like a times immemorial. My feeling is that Ukrainian name belongs there rightfully, but I would have never added it without checking for the current usage. Reasons above. In fact, I would have never added a name to an article without editing/adding something else to it. This is my self-imposed rule that I kept calling more volunteers to join (I still revert name changes/additions/removals if I see them inappropriate even when I have nothing else to edit at the moment). --Irpen 05:40, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Historical context

Here is the problem that I have with the "historical context" idea. Try to answer these questions:

1. Archbishop of what city was Jan Długosz ? Lwów ?
2. Where did Bohdan Khmelnytsky go to school ? Lviv ?
3. Where was Kazimierz Bartel born ?
4. And Stanisław Ulam ?
5. And where was Stanisław Lem born ?
6. In September 1939, whas it really the battle of Lwów ?
7. But where did Stefan Banach die ?

See what I mean ? --Wojsyl 22:36, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

I think Khmelnytsky went to school in Lwow (Lviv) and most of the others were related to just "Lwow". While the rules for aticle's 1st line and the title need to be more sort of restrictive than permissive, the rules for the text usage should be more flexible and left up to editors to a larger degree. We might otherwise end up with totally anachronistic usages, like Grand Principality of Chernihiv or Chernihiv Voivodship. --Irpen 22:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

How about giving modern name in parentheses then in the text, like Lwów (Lviv) ? --Wojsyl 23:46, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Only at the first instance, I think. john k 00:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

First instance, all right. Then we maybe don't need to have it in the first line as well, what troubled Irpen. --Wojsyl 01:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

But that's already included in proposal as it says so "where reasonable". --Irpen 01:12, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but I think it's better to be straightforward with the rules where it's possible. Otherwise we could have one general rule "be reasonable" but everyone would undestand it differently ... --Wojsyl 01:24, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

No objection, but maybe "once" is better than the first instance. In some case the very first instance may not be a good idea for purely stillistical reasons. Is "once" ok? --Irpen 01:30, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

"At least once" is fine with me. Can be repeated with no harm if the style or other reasons dictate it. --Wojsyl 02:06, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Then we maybe don't need to have it in the first line as well, what troubled Irpen.

I find this a great idea. As you can see, my inclination, in general, is flexibility in the text and strictness with titles (obvious reason) and first line (possible endless expansion and clutter). English usage is a good way to curb some nationalists. OTOH, in the text, there is less need to be too strict IMO. --Irpen 01:33, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

The problem with English usage is that it also changes with history. Gdańsk/Danzig would be a good example here. Both are purely 20th century for English as it was Dantsic before. Similar usage transformation will probably now apply to Ukrainian names. We need to take care not to be backward where this is not necessary. --Wojsyl 02:06, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we should restrict the English usage to a reasonably modern one. That would leave Lwow and Lemberg for Lviv in but would leave Kijow and Kiew for Kiev/Kyiv out. And for these cities we will end up with the list of names in the first line that the consensus have decided anyway. Of course there will be lunatics on ocasion who will be playing games but with the rule, but it would be harder for them to wage edit wars. --Irpen 02:18, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Unlike you, I'm much more concerned with the text then the first line of the article. Now, that we are close to finished with the title and the first line, can we try to see what can be done in the text ? --Wojsyl 02:52, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Text of the Article

I think that as far as the text goes, we need to allow editors to use the names they find in the historical literature devoted to the time they are writing about. Otherwise, we will get AndriyK's making changes in the texts like "Grand Principality of Chernihiv" claiming it is correct. As I said earlier, I checked out recently a new book in a bookstore about the air warfare in WW2. The book is just published but it used "Rumania" for Romania despite the country name didn't change, only the English usage did. Still, the author used the name that already established itself in the WW2 literature, due to its being largely based on war memoirs and books written in the past. For exact same reason, Chernigov is used for Rurikid's time and we have to allow that as well as "Dantsic". --Irpen 07:01, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Can we somehow require that if a historical/foreign name is used, a modern English language academic source is provided (maybe on request ?) that uses this name in this context ? Example of the problem that I'd like to avoid is what happened after the infamous Gdansk voting, where some German editors started to almost automatically change each name of a town or village in pre-1945 period to German, even if they never ever existed in English language. --Wojsyl 09:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Dear Irpen, could you please tell the truth next time. In fact, you can find both Chernihiv and Chernigov in creadible English language sources. As I said you, there is no reason to lie, if everibody can check.

Chernihiv was first mentioned in 907. It was one of the chief towns of Kievan Rus and the centre of a princedom. Its Spassky Cathedral dates from 1024. Chernihiv lost importance after the Tatar invasion…

Isn't it exactly about the Rurikid's time? Here are several more examples , , , , , .

If try to push the idea of using historical names, please explain what it is. It looks like your intention is to make the convention as complicated and as ambigous as possible, and then you are going to manipulate it as you want.--AndriyK 19:47, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

AndriyK, too bad that when you decided to join the discussion, your input is mainly a twist and a personal attack.

As for the links you posted, several are just WP mirrors that prove nothing. Link to Encartha is a dead link and I can't check it. PDF file from fco.gov.uk indeed uses Chernihiv for historic times, but it is hardly an academic publication and more like a CIA fact book (still notable but would be more important if it was a book by a historian). Your link to Britannica disproves your point more than it proves it. Yes, EB uses Chernihiv in Chernihiv article but, as I have shown at Talk:Chernihiv#Britannica.27s_use_in_historical_context, EB uses Chernigov in the articles of every historical person (and there are several articles like that).

The whole point about the text usage, is not about manipulating, but about writing articles. I wrote the Chernihiv article and you came in and the only thing you did was name manipulation. That's why a proposed an additional ethics rule at EE portal but too bad you don't support that because otherwise you would have to write things in order to see your favorite names, much harder than edit warring. You started to write an article about the principality and you started to use Chernihiv there. Too bad you abandoned that. The flexible rule might have allowed you to keep it but I guess writing articles is just too hard and not very interesting. --Irpen 01:36, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal D

I have merged proposals B and C into D, which hopefully is a compromise that will be easier accepted by everyone. Any comments --Wojsyl 11:23, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Looks good to me, but I'd like to have some possible problems ironed out first:

1 The title: The 'current local official' name is not totally inclusive. What about a historic entity that never had an English name and no longer exists, thus having only a historical name and no 'current local official' name either?

2 The title 2: If the entity has no English names, but there are several competing foreign names, how to chose the one for the title?

3 The title 3: What about an entity that has 2 (or more) widely accepted English names? The infamous Gdansk Vote comes to mind. The compromise achieved in this case suggested to use the 'current local official' for the title. Thus this is why Stalingrad redirects to Volgograd, but I like that the first line of the article, even before the leads, mentions that Stalingrad redirects here. Further, I think that various names should be explained either in the lead or in the section below it, and that this section be linked with a footnote to the lead (or redirect note).

4 First line: order. If different names will be mentioned, the alphabetical order seems like a neutral idea, but - the order of languages or names?

5 Body: What to do if more then one historical name can be used in the given context (Gdansk Vote casus again)? Deciding that the English name should be used and the historical names should follow in parenthesis (otherwise we will have rev wars with people switching the historical names) is not enough if 'The Title 3' problem (more then one English-historical names) exists. In the Gdansk Vote it was decided to use the historical name most relevant to a given period, however, determining the relvancy has been done by vote. If similar disputes arise in other articles, how should we deal with them? Vote? Or perhaps we may develop a rule that would make the vote not needed (and, tiny hope, even superseed/clarified the Gdansk Vote?).

6 Body 2: I'd define 'the first occurence' as 'the first occurence in a given section'.

This proposal is about geographic names. Perhaps we can extend our compromise to institutions, people, events and such? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Good points. Addressing them one by one:

1 The title: A historical or foreign language name can be used in the title of an article about a place only in case of a redirect to the appropriate article titled according to the above rule. I thought this would mean that articles about history (and not about a place) can use historical names. This would cover your example then (as well as Freie Stadt Danzig). But probably you're right and this is not quite clear and needs some rewording.

2 The title 2: I'm not sure if I get it here. You mean several competing "official" names ? Can you think of an example ? One that comes to my mind Komárno and Komárom is solved by having two separate articles as these are indeed two separate administrative units as probably is the case with all border towns. Hm, what about border rivers that don't have English name ?

I was thinking of the countries with more then two official languages. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Right, I missed this indeed. Maybe our Belarusian friends have a solution ? I've asked a couple of Belarusian editors to help us. --Wojsyl 08:40, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Another, silly example that I can think of would be Sněžka/Śnieżka :-( --Wojsyl 23:27, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

3 The title 3: Yes, I like that, too.

4 First line: order. Alphabetical order of names can be a problem in a mixed alphabet environment. What comes first: "Ś" or "Š" ? I think alphabetical order of languages would be more practical (even if Ukrainian would be the last in most cases then).

Agreed, this is what I have been doing myself. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

5 Body: I don't know. For now I propose "when in doubt fallback to title". I would be happy to develop a more acceptable rule, though. Any ideas ?

This needs to be solved before we have the rule, John has a good point below. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

6 Body 2: That's fine with me.

As to extending to cover people etc. I'd rather try to find an acceptable compromise for geographic names first and then see if and how this can be extended. Otherwise we may neve come to the conclusion, which seems close already now. --Wojsyl 17:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal D would be acceptable to me, but just barely. I particularly don't like "If in doubt, fall back on the current name." What does this mean? This seems like it could be used by anyone objecting to a particular historical name (*cough* German names for Central European cities *cough*) could use this formula as a way to try to force usage of the current name. I would say that the default should be the name most commonly used in major sources to describe the place during the time in question. Obviously, there is often variation in how this is done, and different sources have different standards. But that's something that can be hashed out on individual talk pages. I still prefer the flexibility of Proposal C to this one. john k 16:20, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

What's exactly better in C then in D? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, that's what a compromise is about - nobody is fully satisfied ;-) As to your "fallback" objection, actually this was my intention: No German names for CE cities unless they happen to have well established usage in English (as Danzig does). A very recent example: Someone tried to change the name of birthplace of Erika Steinbach from Rumia to Rahmel only because Germans changed the name when they occupied Poland in 1939. Is Rahmel a well established English name for Rumia ? I don't think so. In my opinion this goes too far and I would like to see the rule to prevent such ideas. This is why I'm against the flexible approach that you and Irpen are advocating. I would like to see clear rules here. I'm open to other suggestions than "fallback to the title name". As for "the name most commonly used in major sources" what would it be for Rumia and why ? And what about smaller villages that may not even exist in English sources ? Like "Marcinkańce" for example ? --Wojsyl 17:43, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. IMHO The main problem with Gdansk Vote is that it is too ambiguous - too flexible - with definitions like 'clearly German/Polish person' (what is clearly? what is not clear and what to do then) and even more weasel wordy 'share a history' (is occupation during the Second World War 'sharing a history'? what about having a minority living there?). I would like very much to avoid such disputes in the future - I wouldn't object to adopting more flexible wording IF and ONLY IF it is defined properly with no room for national POV pushing. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:27, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Rumia/Rahmel at Erika Steinbach is not that recent an example, if you'be been here long enough - Nico and the Polish user with many names (most recently Emax, but perhaps someone else by now) were fighting about that one years ago. I take your point about small villages, though. It can become quite difficult when there really isn't very much English language literature on the subject. On the other hand, in some circumstances, it seems like we should use the German name, regardless. Using Polish names for small places in Pomerania or Lower Silesia or East Prussia during the period when they were in Germany just seems wrong, for instance. It seems similarly wrong, to take a less intensely felt issue, to use French names for villages in Alsace before the 17th century, and so forth. On the other hand, I'm completely at a loss as to how to deal with, say, cities in Greater Hungary. Cities like Clup-Napoca, Timisoara, Kosice, and so forth, are so rarely discussed in English at all, and the linguistic situation in Hungary was so complicated, that it becomes hard to know what name should be used. As such, the "fall back to the current name" position makes some sense - at least it allows us a clear way out when the usage is so minimal as to make it nearly impossible to determine things otherwise.

Anyway, I think I would be fine with D if it indicated a bit more strongly that we should use historical names when there is a clear one to use. To respond to Piotrus, I disagree that the problem with the Gdansk vote was that it was "too flexible." I do think that the problem is that it was "too ambiguous," but I don't think those are the same thing at all. What we need to do is to be clear about what the policies are, and to use clear, accurate language to describe what we are doing. That does not mean that we have to adopt inflexible policies. Ideally, what we should end up with out of this is a clear, unambiguous policy which leaves room for flexibility in decision-making on individual articles when appropriate (which is much of the time). john k 22:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal D version 2

I've included the easier suggestions of Piotrus in D version 2. It's still pretty hollow where there are more than one official names for whatever reason (e.g. Sněžka/Śnieżka) or more than one names in English usage. I would say use google then ? As to John's suggestion to use historical names I find it quite difficult. Let me try to explain why. Firstly this is really a sensitive issue. Secondly "historical name" is intrinsically ambiguous, as it greatly depends on tho wrote the history. The towns in Vilnius region before WW2 might be a good example. As you know The area was controlled by Poland then and from Polish perspective these were Polish towns, with most of the population being Polish (or Jewish) and with Polish names. From the Lithuanian perspective however this looked totally differently as they have seen the territory as being occupied by Poland, and Vilnius as their capital. This is why they still don't take it lightly if someone uses Polish names for Lithuanian towns. It is also why I have chosen Marcinkańce as an example. It is quite small, yet it was one of the major townships in the Dzukija region, then controlled by Poland. Today it is a Lithuanian town of Marcinkonys. I sincerely doubt if any English language literature cared about the historical name.

Now excuse me, but let me make a small comment regarding the Danzig vote here. No doubt there are many more Polish editors than Lithuanians on English wiki and the Lithuanian editors would be easily outnumbered in any vote. Do you think it would be a good solution to vote on it and then claim that the consesnus was reached ? I hope you don't. This would mean lack of basic historical and social sensitivity and complete lack of respect to Lithuanian history and their national feelings. Similarly, the Poles have been taught at schools that the territory of Poland has been occupied during 19th centuries. This has been confirmed by all the Polish national uprisings. And then reinforced again by German/Soviet occupation in WW2. What did the occupants do ? They've immediately changed the names into their language. Therefore we've had Litzmannstadt and then Stalinogród after WW2 (you know which town was named Stalinogród, don't you ?). Anyway, what I'm trying to explain is that the result of Danzig vote was no consensus at all. Simply there are more German editors than Polish editors. Had the proportions been reversed the result would be opposite. This is hardly a consensus, when one party is not happy with the outcome. In fact this was against the basic Misplaced Pages is not a democracy rule.

So, do you think that using "historical" names is the right thing to do ? Whose version of history would you chose ? Polish or Lithuanian ? So where was Erika Steinbach born ? --Wojsyl 00:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

In terms of the Gdansk/Danzig vote, I will once again note that the vote to use Danzig between 1793 and 1945 was 60 to 10, and that many Polish users voted to use Danzig in this period. I am not even especially aware that German wikipedia users played a numerically significant role in that vote - there were certainly a lot more Polish users voting than German users. The bias, if there is one, doesn't come from a greater number of Polish than German wikipedians. It comes from the fact that in English, the German name tended to be used for many Central European cities up through the Second World War (and later). john k 02:50, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

John, as one of the Polish editors who voted for Danzig between 1793 and 1945 but are disappointed with the result, I will explain this here: we are not dissapointed with the post-1793, but with the result for 1308 - 1793 (or as far as my personal axe to grind goes, 1466 to 1793, where the result was 46:47, adjusted to 36:46). Leaving aside the adjustment, with the spirit of which I do agree, I still think that the result int his part was unclear and confusing, as Gdańsk (Danzig...) was then a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I don't want to restart this argument here, let me just summarize it for those who don't know/care about the specifics of Gdańsk/Danzig history: from 1466 to 1793 it was a city in the country were German was not an official language, but the German language was used by a significant portion (majority even?) of the city's inhabitants. In such a borderline case, what are we supposed to do? There is no easy solution, and valid arguments can be made for both sides (otherwise the vote wouldn't be so close). The fact is that both names are just as good - none is better. I think that we should have a rule dealing with such cases, where there are two (or more) names. Voting, as Wojsyl pointed out, is ultimatly biased in nationalities issues: Germany is larger then Poland, not to mention richer (thus more people can afford Internet) - so I really would not be suprised if we ever did an academic study of Gdansk vote to find out that there were more German voters then Polish and that there was a correlation to nationality and votes (duh). And let's not even mention that any online votes is fairly easy to rig, and wiki was not designed for secure voting. I'd thus suggest creating the following rule: "When there are two or more valid English names that can be used for a given entity, or where there is no English name and there are two or more valid non-English names that can be used for this entity, both names should be used in all occurences, with the order determined by alphabetical order and other names given in parenthesis after the first name. Note that this may be applicable only to specific time periods, and the usage may vary depending on context. In those cases, the period and usage should be clarified on relevant article's discussion page. An English name is considered valid if it is used in at least 25% of relevant publications (Google English page search is sufficient, if the keywords are suffient to eliminate pages with other context, otherwise, a sample of 100 top hits will be sufficient). In case of non-English name, it is considered valid if it is used by majority of publications in the given non-English language." Uff, that was a bit long, but I hope we can streamline this. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

In terms of Danzig before 1793, I think it's fairly clear that the ruling classes of the city were entirely German. Seeing as the city had substantial autonomy within the PLC, it makes sense to use this name. Beyond this, as I tried to point out, "Danzig" is much more commonly used in historical works written in English that mention the city in this period. To get past that, I think you guys, in discussing the Germany larger than Poland issue, are missing the much bigger cause of bias, which is that English language usage is biased towards German names for Central European cities. We don't call it Danzig because there's more German people than Polish people. We call it that because Germans and the German language have always been more familiar to the English-speaking world than Poles and the Polish language, and because at the time when European historiography was becoming standardized (the 19th century) Germans, either in their Prussian or Austrian forms (or, in the Baltics, in their socially dominant landlord form), dominated most of central Europe. The bias towards German names in historical works is much more deeply grounded than you would have it. I suppose that this could be made into an argument for not using the German names - use of German names represents a survival of German oppression of central European peoples. But I don't think that's really tenable, at least not for cities like Danzig or Breslau or Stettin which were largely inhabited by Germans. In terms of alphabetical order, I think that's a terrible idea - I don't think we should simply invent some arbitrary rule like that. As I've said before, I think with smaller places it's much more difficult. But I think the basic resolution is cite sources. If various academic works in English use an alternate name for a historical place, and no examples in the other direction can be found, we use the alternate name. The default position should be to use the current official name (or whatever), but in individual cases people should be able to show why an alternate name should be used. For larger cities (your Danzig/Gdansks, Breslau/Wroclaws, Stettin/Szczecins, Pressburg/Pozsony/Bratislavas, Laibach/Ljubljanas, Fiume/Rijekas, Helsingfors/Helsinkis and so forth), it should be easy to show that the German or Italian or Swedish name was predominant before World War II (or whenever). For smaller cities, this'll be much harder (unless they were the locations of battles, like Austerlitz/Slavkov u Brna; or, I dunno, death camps, like Auschwitz/Oswiecim - BTW, the Oświęcim very elegantly slides between usage of Auschwitz and Oswiecim.) john k 00:47, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. John, I've tried to explain this, but apparently failed :-( or ... are you not reading what I'm trying to say ? :-) For some reason in all that I've written you've only noticed Danzig. I'm certainly of Polish bias but still I would vote for "Danzig" for 1793-1945 as you did. That's not the point. What I was referring to was the damage that was caused by non-specific terms like "other locations that share history" and that in general in many there may be no such thing as uncontroversial "historical name". Of course in most cases this will would not be the problem but these are the difficult cases that we're trying to deal with, otherwise our effort it just a waste. I take your point that often German names tend to be used for many CE cities in English. "Danzig" made it very well into English language history and there is no problem about it. OTOH "Marcinkańce" or "locations that share history" did not and there is no obvious reason why we should assume that Polish or Lithuanian name should take precedent as a "historical name". I am assuming your good will and therefore, no offence intended, I would suggest that you read more carefully the paragraph that I've written above. I know my command of English may be poor, but could you make a bit more effort in trying to understand my general message and not be so focused on Danzig (on which we agree). Please :-) --Wojsyl 09:08, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Wojsyl - perhaps we've been talking past each other a bit, then. I agree with you that there were some very vague formulations and much else that didn't work in the Gdansk poll. I think it's good that we try to work out a system that is sensible and rigorous. My only purpose in mentioning Gdansk has been the general principle that we should use "Danzig" for the period when it was part of Germany and when it was a German-speaking free city. I am concerned that the ultimate policy which results from what we are doing would sanction such a result. I think that proposal B and, to a lesser extent, proposal D, have been formulated in a way that does not necessarily indicate that we should ever call it "Danzig". Perhaps a discussion of Bombay/Mumbai would have been less inflammatory in this context, although some of the issues there are, I think, different. At any rate, I am certainly not defending the Gdansk/Danzig vote in its entirety, and I don't believe I have ever stated that I was. All I have been trying to do is to be sure that the proposals here do not violate the uncontroversial part of the Gdansk/Danzig vote. john k 00:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

John, Piotrus - after reading your above comments I tend to agree with both of you. Probably it means that I did not undestand what you were saying ;-). I agree that with larger cities on general it's easier. No problem with Breslau or Stettin. I also agree that sources are a good indicator, but only where avaialble in largrer numbers. For smaller loactions or the ones that were out of general interest of English-language historiography there may be not many sources or there may be none. A single or two sources only are not good enough for me to claim the established English usage of a name. I understand the bias towards German names in English in historical context. However I doubt if the historical names are used in today's parlance, even concerning the historical events. Would a British person say: "When Pozsony was the capital of Hungary ..." ? I doubt this. He would rather say "When Bratislava was the capital of Hungary". I say we should follow the true English usage. Respect the historical names but not abuse them. And do not invent artificial rules. Of course in an article about e.g. Hungary in 17th century I could use the Pozsony name. But not in a general article about Bratislava (neither in its history section). This would be applying the good rule in the wrong place. I think that using both names, like "Bratislava (called then Pozsony)" would be far more acceptable and in fact it would neatly fit all the cases. I like Piotrus' suggestion to use google in the few rare cases where there neither English nor single official local name. As for Danzig, I think point 3 of proposal D2 includes it, as long as we have "well established English usage" defined. From your explanation above, Danzig would clearly fit such definition. The first occurence would be Danzig (today's Gdańsk). --Wojsyl 09:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Wojsyl - re:Bratislava, I think historical works would just say things like, "the Hungarian parliament was then meeting in Pressburg" (Pozsony as a name only comes into use at all in the 19th century, and even then I think Pressburg remained the dominant usage in English - 1911 Britannica calls it Pressburg, for instance. I think in conversation, one might say something like "When Bratislava, then Pressburg, was capital of Hungary." And using Bratislava for the older period seems definitely wrong - Bratislava is essentially a name change - so far as I can tell, the name "Bratislava" appears only in 1919. But I think it would be fine in some contexts to use the "Bratislava (then Pressburg)" format. In other contexts, I think it would be better to use "in Pressburg (now Bratislava)". It would depend on the context. I'd generally prefer "in Pressburg (now Bratislava)" or "in Pressburg (Bratislava)" in historical articles. I will say, though, that "Pressburg" is very much the dominant English usage to refer to the city pre-1919. For instance, the treaty ending the War of the Third Coalition in 1805 is the Treaty of Pressburg always, never the "Treaty of Bratislava" or the "Treaty of Pozsony." Of course, Pressburg is the German name of a city which was never part of Germany, and always part of Hungary before 1918. But I don't know that this matters. We call Köln "Cologne," which is the French name, even though the city was only part of France for about 20 years. In instances like this, it seems as though the German name is, more or less, also a "common English name" for the city, in the same sense that Cologne, the French name, is the "common English name" for Köln, or Bruges, the French name, is the "common English name" for Brugge. In 1919, the name was changed to Bratislava, and that name was adopted in English (where the Hungarian Pozsony never had been). The old English name "Pressburg," though, nevertheless remains used in historical contexts - although a few modern historians use Pozsony, especially for post-1867. I would compare use of "Pozsony" for Bratislava in the 19th century to use of "Gdansk" for that city before 1793 - not the most common usage, but out there. Anyway, I seem to have gotten lost somewhere. I agree that one or two sources is generally not enough, although there may be exceptions for particularly authoritative sources. Anyway, we seem to be making progress. john k 18:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to summarise this so far. I think we have all agreed, that the primary key would be English usage (defined by referenced sources) for a given historical period. For historical names that changed it would be nice to have the modern name also quoted like "Pressburg (now Bratislava)" at first occurences. Where it's getting more difficult is when there's no well established English name for the period. Imagine there was no "Pressburg" name and English sources never mentioned the city before 1919. Then when we would not want to refer to the city in 19th century, we'd say "Bratislava (then Pozsony)". Whould this be acceptable ? I'm not sure if I'm being clear with this example. Let me know if I'm not and I'll try to think of something else (Danzig and Pressburg or Cologne are a bit misleading, as they are known to English). --Wojsyl 21:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

widely accepted English name ?

What is your definition of widely accepted English name? Sashazlv 01:07, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposals C and D are getting close and I am happy about it. In fact, there are almost never disputes about the article titles. The first line and context usage are the only ones that are tricky. In addition to what's said, we could add that if the article has a paragraph devoted to etymology of the name and the paragraph is close enough to the top of the text, foreign names can be written there, rather than the first line. It would just be styllictically nicer. This is currently implemented at Kamianets-Podilskyi. There is little doubt about true former name (Stalingrad, Voroshilovgrad, Yuzovka, Stalislawow, etc.) since they will be in the first line for sure. --Irpen 01:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Good. I've included this into D2 now. --Wojsyl 08:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Another question: do we want this as a WP genral policy (would be more difficult to push through) or just as a guideline agreed to be applied for the Eastern and Central European topics. In the latter case, it would be much easier to come up with the final version. Also, many of the interested parties, EE editors, have already seen it or are now participating in writing it up. We can be sure that our final text will be less butchered by people with no clue if we limit this to a family. I understand the problems with enforecement in latter case, but with an overwhelming community support, even the hardest nutcases would be easily corrected. Please think about it before rejecting this outright. --Irpen 01:51, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

My intention would be to "start small, grow later, maybe". So I would also prefer to limit it to CE/EE for now. For two reasons at least: it's easier to reach a consensus in a smaller group and I personally believe I have better understanding of this part of the world than e.g. Far East Asia. OTOH, I believe that these issues are much more difficult in EE than in the rest of Europe because of the history, boders shifting relatively often, various language issues and the fact that generally people in EE tend to be more nationalisticaly inclined (or patriotic if you prefer) than in the West. So maybe if we have a good version to cover CE/EE issues it could be then realitively easily extended to the rest of Europe ? So far I'd prefer to stay focused and not hurry too much. --Wojsyl 08:34, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

For it to be a policy, it must give a clear definition of key terms (widely used English name and local official name) and specify how transliteration is dealt with for Cyrillic. Otherwise, the policy may create even more trouble. Sashazlv 02:27, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Certainly. Take a look at the #Supporting definitions section above. I'm open to your suggestions. --Wojsyl 08:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, let's keep it in the family for now. We would then have a weaker position to use it to crack down on the persistent nationalist name changers, but with a wide local community support, the accepted guideline should be sufficient for most cases. OTOH, if presented to the entire WP as a global policy change, we may end up with a total impossibility to agree on the final version. Yet, OTOH, if we present it later as somethin that was tried and worked in EE, we would be in a better position to convince everyone that this is good a policy. --Irpen 08:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to see this proposal becoming a policy and even fixing the Gdansk Vote issues - but let's start small, and find a solution acceptable for CE/EE editors. Then, when we have something that is working, we can suggest expanding it. And Sashazlv makes a good point: what is a widely used English name? It is a weasel word, that what it is. We need a clear operational definition. I gave my try above in my responce to john: a name used by 25% of Googlable English sources (i.e. if the most widely commonly used name in English sources is ABC and it Google has x hits for English language pages search for it, then any name used by English sources x/4 times or more is also valid and 'widely used'). I hope this is not confusing - and this is just my suggestion, feel free to pick it apart and suggest something better. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:23, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Google is not the best way to establish the correct English usage. Even if you seach over English language pages, type -wikipedia etc. A greate part of the sites you find are the sites of variuos Eastern/Central European organizations, firmas, universities, i.e. they are most likely created not by native English speakers.

I would propose to adopt a list of creadible English-language sources whose editorial boards consist predominantly of native English speakers, for instance Britannica, Encarta, The Columbia Encyclopedia, etc. Then use very simple algorithm: if all these sources use the same name for the entity then this is well established English name. If different sources use different names or the entity is not mentioned in the sources at all, then there is no well established English spelling.--AndriyK 08:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

From the practical point of view, this might be difficult, as you'd need to have a fixed set of reference sources defined, including their specific editions etc. I would not also discard google that easily. Face it - contemporary English usage is primarily shaped by non-native speakers. English is today's lingua franca, is evolving very quickly and one of the major factors is the Internet. I would even dare say, that Internet may be a better source of contemporary language usage than encyclopedic sources. Even if not now, it will be tomorrow. It also may be worth noting that the majority of English speakers are not native speakers (depending on the definition). --Wojsyl 08:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

You make good point about -wikipedia. There is a plugin for firefox, discussed at Misplaced Pages:Tools, that also removes all wiki forks and mirrors during the search. Your proposal to switch Google to encyclopedias is interesting, but should be discussed more. There is also a potential compromise in using Google Scholar and Google Print instead, or perhaps some kind of weighed score from all 4 (or more?) suggestions? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal D version 3

I added "if they or their derivatives are or have been in English usage". (See also my proposal concerning "well established English spelling" a few lines above).--AndriyK 08:23, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, what are "their derivatives" then ? Would this be clear ? --Wojsyl 08:36, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

The derivative is a coomon linguistic term. Let's find a more clear formulation. I cannot propose a better formulation at the moment. I'll think.--AndriyK 09:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I have to admit that the intention of this change is not quite clear to me. Maybe you could give an example or two that would better explain why it would be good to have "or their derivatives" there ? --Wojsyl 09:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

If "Kijów Voivodship" is used in English language literature, then "Kijów" should be present in the list of alternative spellings in the first line(s) of the article.

I know, Irpen 'll protest. But I do not see why one more alternative names of the city is so desturbing for some people. It takes 10 to 20 symbols or so. Why not to add it?

Several month ago, (before the feverish activity of Irpen and alike, I suppose) Polish an Yiddish names were in the first lines on the articles about Ukrainian cities an towns. And I liked it. It reflected the history of these places. ::Still, if most of users are against it, I would not insist.--AndriyK 09:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Irpen does not seem to like having foreign names in the first like. His counter-example is that we would need to have Варшава for Warsaw when it was occupied by Russians or Moskwa for Moscow when it was occupied by Poles. I'm not sure if these are good examples, as the are pure transliterations of the local names. I would say that if a name has been used in English language literature, then it can make it to the first line, just for clarity). I doubt if "Варшава" or "Moskwa" were ever used in English. --Wojsyl 10:16, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

There is one more point, concerning the official name in the original language. For instance Moscow Oblast (Russian: Моско́вская о́бласть). What would our convention say about it? What about names in other languages? (I do not mean other English spellings derived from other languages. This point is more or less clear.)--AndriyK 09:44, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

AndriyK, you lost me. Sorry. Give me an example of the name and its derivative so that I can understand it better please. --Wojsyl 22:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I gave it above. If "Kijów Voivodship" is used in English language literature, then "Kijów" should be present in the list of alternative spellings in the first line(s) of the article. --AndriyK 08:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no need to hypothesise what Irpen likes and what Irpen doesn't like. I explained very clearly that what I like is consistency and good style. And the first line rule should be such as to accommodate these two requirements and prevent certain editors roaming from article to article adding/removing names or changing their order.

I was prompted to seriously think about this by the edit war started by several editors at Kamianets-Podilskyi. Witkacy and Voevoda were adding/removing names and even switching their order (which goes first, which goes second) and I ended up writing an etymology paragraph where I moved all names to calm this down.

I never insisted on Russian name for Warsaw or a Ukrainian name for Bieszczady to be in the first line as well as in the article at all, for that matter. Two edit wars over Kijow in Kiev in the last year were about adding the name that was not there (and not removed by me) rather than removing the name which was there. You can check the edit histories and talks to see that there was an overwhelming majority that Kijow belongs to the history section and not to the first line. When Piotrus expanded the history section, the first war ended. The second minor attempt to return the name by Space Cadet was similarly against an overwhelming majority.

We should give editors a chance to use the historic names within the text and if this is the only way to get some editors into writing something, we will help articles by a permissive rule. OTOH, the first line is a more sensitive issue as many editors think along the lines "if Russian, than Polish too", "Oh and then Romanian too", and then start switching the order. The presence or lack of modern English usage of the name is a reasonable and natural restriction to keep revert warriors at bay. --Irpen 19:48, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but then the purpose of having the alternative names in the first line is defeated. How about "modern or historical English usage" instead ? Then for our Bratislava example, we would have only "Pressburg". The other option would be to have all the official names listed, as long as they were differetn names, not mere translations. Then we would have both Pressburg and Pozsony (and Prešporok ?). --Wojsyl 22:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I would rather say modern English usage in current or historical context. What I mean by modern usage in historical context is that the literature that uses an archaic or foreign name in connection to a certain period of history has to be modern.

That is calling the city Kiovia by the English traveller Joseph Marshall in his book published in London in 1772 does not qualify Kiovia to the first line of Kiev. The 2004 Britannica's using Chernigov in "Vladimir II Monomakh", "John II Casimir Vasa", "Sergey Ivanovich Muravyov-Apostol", "Pavel Borisovich Akselrod", "History of Russia", "Igor Svyatoslavich", etc, does qualify Chernigov for the first line of Chernihiv article. I am not yet talking about inside the article usage where the flexibility is a different issue. I am only talking about the first line now. --Irpen 23:20, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Why not historical English usage as long as it was widespread ? --Wojsyl 23:58, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Irpen (a few days late, I guess). The important thing is modern English usage, whether it is in a current or historical context. For Bratislava, I think one can almost certainly find modern English usages of Bratislava, Pressburg, and Pozsony. john k 05:56, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but *why* do you consider historical usage not relevant ? Books that were written some time ago did not disappear even if they do not use modern English. --Wojsyl 08:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

This is true. 19th century usage, in particular, might be considered. I will suggest, though, that cities which were called by a particular name in the 19th century tend to still frequently be called by that name in certain contemproary usages. On the other hand, before the mid-18th century or so, the English language did not have standardized spelling. As such, it would quickly become ridiculous to try to include every spelling variant which was used by 17th century Englishmen for a place in central Europe. I would be happy to consider 19th century usage, though, since that is much more standardized. This would require, for instance, that we include the German name for Buda, Ofen, even though it is almost never used in English any longer, because it was used in the 19th century as the standard name (for instance, the English translation of Ranke's history of Germany in the Age of the Reformation refers to Hungary's capital as Ofen). john k 20:57, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I notice that Ofen is given in the Buda article. Other examples of such would be the French names Mayence for ] and Ratisbon for Regensburg. Neither is used very commonly in recent sources, but both were used into the twentieth century in English language sources. I believe both are listed at the beginning of the current articles. So I think I agree with you that names which have seen significant use in English since the standardization of English orthography ought to be given. Older names, though, would rapidly become problematic. john k 21:03, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

This is what I had in mind, exactly. I agree that earlier usage would make not much sense as long as it's incidental only, but historical standardised usage should not be neglected. Therefore I'd oppose to limiting it to modern usage only. I believe we agree on this now. --Wojsyl 21:14, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

It would seem so. john k 21:26, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

General comments

Wow, I'm impressed with how well you folks are tackling a hairy topic. I would have thought a guideline on something so potentially fraught with difficulties would be impossible, but you seem to be working out all the kinks. Since this is so generally applicable, will you expand the scope of the RfC once there's a draft of the guideline?

Comments:

1. Perhaps "first line" should be changed to "lead paragraph". In some cases where a place has a very long list of English and other-language names, Cyrillic, and transliteration, I have moved the entire list in parentheses to the bottom of the lead paragraph. This avoids breaking up a short lead sentence with a very long list, is still easy to find, and it still seems to be obvious what it is. It does reduce the prominence of alternate names a bit, so it may not always be acceptable. In some cases the nomenclature goes into a separate paragraph; see my clean-up of Crimea.
2. Although it should be self-evident about all style guidelines, since this is so detailed I would still add a note that says these are just suggestions, and exceptions are acceptable. Sooner or later we'll find that 'unique' situation where the guideline's not quite right, and I'd hate to have someone slavishly quoting it at me.
3. Transliteration, etc. Not core to the discussion here, but some points to keep in mind, and perhaps issues to be resolved elsewhere:
   1. The difference between English/anglicized names and transliterations: Kiev Oblast, Kyivs’ka oblast’.
   2. The difference between common transcriptions and precise transliteration: Zaporizhia, Zaporizhzhia; Khmelnytsky, Khmel’nyts’kyi
   3. I've found it useful to use a conventional loose transcription in article titles and bold name, but a more precise letter-for-letter transliteration next to a Cyrillic name. Sometimes they may seem redundant or differ only by an apostrophe, but this makes clear the difference between the two, and makes clear what the native names are (because most English-language readers can't read Cyrillics).
   4. It would be nice to choose a common system for transliterating all Cyrillic languages, for the academic transliterations. It should be a disciplined system that indicates both Cyrillic spelling and speech.
   5. And if we did that, then in many cases Cyrillic would be redundant, and could be left out.

—Michael Z. 2005-11-8 17:16 Z

As for me, I totally agree with the "lead paragraph" or "lead section", and that these are just guidelines. Good to follow, but there may be exceptions, where justified. As for the transliteration, no doubt it's an issue, but personally, I would prefer to keep it out of scope here for now, as it may be quite difficult to stay focused. --Wojsyl 21:39, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Just a word of warning: note about an exception may become a double edged sword, used to start revert wars or arguments. Rather, I'd say that this rule may be modified with exceptions, but after a discussion and consensus on this talk page. Then if sb thinks he has found an exception, he lists it here with the relevant rule change, we agree (or not), and the rule is appended (or not), becoming an even better rule :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it is time for a new proposal. Is sb going to draft it?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:20, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Guys, I'm sorry, I'm busy this and the next week, almost on a wikibreak. I would appreciate if someone would take it over now. Otherwise I'll be able to get back to it only later ... --Wojsyl 19:11, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

It's nice to see this going on. I have yet to actually thoroughly read and understand the proposals. I will do so shortly. mno 01:23, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposal E

I have posted my revised proposal as the Proposal E, I tried to incorporate comments from the last round (do let me know if I missed something) and clarify some parts, especially on how to resolve disputes (move them to talk, stop the revert wars). If Michael can work out the rules for transliteration, that would be a useful addition, but there are at lest two other issues that I think we need to iron out before this is ready. Both of them has been mentioned but no conclusion has been reached - and we need to reach it if this is to be any more useful then Gdansk Vote.

1. define 'widely accepted English' (used in name section and text section). See #widely_accepted_English_name_.3F section. Basically the question is: if there is more then one 'widely accepted English' name (think Gdansk and Danzig), how should we decide which one is to be used?
2. define 'historical context' (historical section). Note that if we can manage to reach a consensus on THAT we may want to apply it to the equally unclear 'sharing history' phrase that is causing so much problem for the Gdansk vote. See #Historical_context section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:45, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

E-2

Proposal E-2 by AndriyK offers a pretty good answer to my concerns rised above, through the wording should be standarised with the regard to paragraph 3 and 'widely accepted historical English name' (this term is not used there, instead the text refers to 'in historical context a historical name (...with) widely accepted English usage. To avoid confusion we should take care to make the proposal English-friendly and as simple as possible (if you can think of any redundant words in the proposal, please remove them). And if we decide to go with a solution requiring some search and counting, perhaps some kind of a Misplaced Pages:Tools can be designed to ease the search. Some major points that I see now:

• How to chose a name (in para 1) if there is no 'single widely accepted English name'? And by default this should also address the question if there is 'no single accepted English or foreign name'
• If therre is no 'single widely accepted historical English name' to specific historical context, what should be done in these historical contexts? Either apply the solution we invent to answer my previous qustion or decide to use the article's name (be it modern English or other in lack of the modern English, as stipulated by our current rules).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:37, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

A few comments to my proposal. In my opinion, the guidelines will be useless unless we establish a firm definition of "widelly accepted English usage". What I propose is not perfect, but this is a point to start with.

Frankly speaking, I do not like counting google hits as the way to clarify what is the most accepted English usage. As I explained above, even if you seach over English language pages, a greate part of the sites you find are the sites of variuos local organizations, firmas, universities, i.e. they are most likely created not by native English speakers. Therefore I would prefer to adopt a list of creadible English-language sources whose editorial boards consist predominantly of native English speakers, for instance Britannica, Encarta, The Columbia Encyclopedia, etc. and use these sources to clarify what the most accepted English usage is. But other people prefe google. Therefore I combined both ideas in my proposal.

There is one more subtle point not yet mentioned in the project. Suppose that a historical name of some small town is not used in English language sources. I think, it would be incorrect to use the current name, if the city was officially renamed in the past. For instance, I would write Nesterov (presently Zhovkva) if refered to the period of the Soviet occupation, even if no English language sources would mention the town under the name Nesterov.--AndriyK 17:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

That makes sence. If there is no (historical or not) 'widely accepted English usage' but there is a (historical or not) 'widely accepted foreign name usage', we should use the foreign name (with all the other rules, i.e. having it followed by current English names in parenthesis, just as you suggested in your example) - unless there is 'no widely accepted foreign name usage', in which case we should default to the article's name. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:19, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Concerning transliteration, there is official Ukrainian-English transliteration table. There should be something similar for other languages using non-latine alphabets.--AndriyK 17:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

A couple of issues:

1. Any archaic usage names in the list, as well as names used before the standardization of English orthography should be clearly marked as such.

   I agree with the first part, but, as I said above, I don't think we should include names used before the standardization of English orthography. john k 02:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

2. In case a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in parentheses at least on one, preferably the first occurence in a given section.

   This is only necessary in other articles that mention the place. In the article about the place, it is completely silly to parenthesize the modern name - obviously they are the same. john k 02:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

   I can think of many examples where it is not obvious to someone who is not aware of the other names. --Wojsyl 21:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

3. The geographic location is considered to have a historical name with widely accepted English usage if the following two conditions are satisfied simultaneously: The English-language encyclopedias (Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Encarta) consistently use this name in all articles when the corresponding location is mentioned in relation of some historical period.

   This is unacceptable. Britannica pretty much never uses historical names - it certainly never uses them consistently. john k 02:43, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

In fact, it does use historical names.

Sometimes, but rarely consistently. It calls Gdansk "Gdansk" for that entire article, for instance. john k 18:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, if other English language encyclopedias do not use some historical names, what is the reason to use them in Misplaced Pages?--AndriyK 09:12, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

True. Everything would so much simpler if we simply decided 'use the same name as in article's name, all throught article, no exceptions'. Any thoughts on that?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 15:50, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

This would be the most reasonable solution in most cases. But the ald names have to be used if the location was officially renamed, e.g Byzantium-Constantinople- Istanbul, Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad-Volgograd ("Battle of Volgograd" is hardly acceptable) etc., see also my example with Zhovkva.--AndriyK 17:17, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. If Britannica does it, why cannot we ? --Wojsyl 21:58, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

But what when it was officially renamed by a government considered to be an 'agressor' government by the people now inhabiting the country? For example, all of Poland and significant part of our eastern neighbours were renamed by Nazi Germany. How do we draw the line between reasonable Danzig and unreasonable Warschau? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Warschau is not another name but the same name in a different language. I don't think it ever made it into English usage, anyway. --Wojsyl 21:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Not exactly. While obviously I prefer Warsaw to Warshau, and I do agree that cases Danzig vs Gdansk and Warschau vs Warsaw are not similar, there are nonetheless some instances where Warschau may be used. Consider: Festung Warschau, also, see what pages use this term. Through this is a minor cases, it would be good to have a rule that clarifies this - to stop nationalist POV pushers start another revert war on such minor issues.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:42, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

That is a dumb idea, Piotrus.

It needlessly hides articles from search engines.

It needlessly keeps people from recognizing a place as being some place which they know under a different name. Suppose they got to that article by searching for some person or company or commodity associated with the place, for example, and not by looking for a place of that name, from which they might arrive there through redirects.

It is totally outside the scope of "Naming conventions" in any case. It is not an issue to be decided here. Gene Nygaard 17:42, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how it would hide articles from search engines. On the contrary. It would have the names orderly listed. --Wojsyl 21:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry for not making myself clear: I don't advocate removing alternative names completly, but it might be prudent to limit them only to 1) ethymology section in main article 2) first use, in parenthesis, in any other article if the context is relevant. I hope this clarifies my intention.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:53, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion is to add an "Alternate names" section to an infobox, ala combining Template:Infobox Poland with the box at Shkodra. It wouldn't help for small towns which don't have infoboxes yet, but it would clear up space for larger towns with many names. Olessi 03:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, most of what is going on here falls more under "manual of style" than "naming conventions". At any rate, "how do we draw the line?" Through a process of discussion and consensus, just like we do for everything else in wikipedia. Reference to reputable outside sources, especially the works of recent academic historians, should provide a good guide to what English usage is. Warsaw (which, after all, has its own English name) is never called Warschau in English. Gdansk is very frequently called Danzig. I remain unclear about what is so difficult about this. Normally, reasonable wikipedians are able to agree about what any city should be called at any given time. There are only a very few exceptions to this - Gdansk before 1793, for instance, where we've had a devil of a time coming to any consensus. There are also trolls and POV pushers who try to mess with things. But rather than radically change rules just in order to come up with a situation that rarely ever comes up (legitimately - it comes up illegitimately a lot), why not just be reasonable people and come to reasonable agreements about when a name is used historically? Citation of the usage of reputable sources ought to be sufficient to determine things. john k 18:06, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Andriy asks On the other hand, if other English language encyclopedias do not use some historical names, what is the reason to use them in Misplaced Pages? Firstly - the article as currently devised says that all English language encyclopedias must consistently use the historical name for wikipedia to use it. Most names I would want used use historical names sometimes, but not necessarily consistently. Very frequently there is a difference between usage in the article on the city itself, and usage in other articles. It is also to be noted that other English language encyclopedias generally tend to have much shorter articles than we do. At times, it is difficult to tell what name is being used, because for the whole historical section, pronouns are used. While I think encyclopedic usage is most relevant for article titles, imo recourse to English language scholarship is more appropriate for usage. john k 18:14, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll try to explain my logic step-by-step.

1. This is an English language encyclopedia and we have to use English words.
2. Then the next question appears: what are the English names for geographic locations in other countries (in Central and Eastern Europe, for instance)? The obvious answer is: this is the name used in English language literature. If all English language sources use the same spelling then the situation is clear. We do not invent anything new comparing to the existing policies and conventions.
3. What is not regulated by the existing policies is the following situation. What should we do if different names/spellings are used in English language literature when applied to the same location and the same historical period? Britannica uses different names in different articles sometimes, as you mentioned. If you switch to English language scholarship you will most likely find different authors using different names/spellings. We have to establish firm rules for such situations. If you do not like what we propose here, please propose your version of firm rules. But the rules have to be indeed firm. Otherwise the convention will be useless and edit wars will continue.

Your idea to recourse to English language scholarship is reasonable. But again we need firm rules, what kind of sources are acceptable. Otherwise discussion and edit wars will continue. Please propose how, in your opinion, the guidelines can be improved and become a usefull tool for resolving disputes.--AndriyK 19:02, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Andriy, I understand your logic here. That being said, I don't think that I share your view that what is needed here are "firm rules." I think that trying to create firm rules will either result in bad rules or insanely complicated ones. My concern is that this aspect of things remain flexible. There is simply no good way to come up with firm rules, imo. This may mean that there is more conflict. But if everybody is reasonable and listens to one another, most instances should be easily resolvable. Those that aren't will have edit wars regardless of whether we have firm rules or not. john k 19:23, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes but the purpose of our effort here is to create reasonable rules that would help minimising editwarring on location names. --Wojsyl 22:49, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Exactly, since the alternative is wasting horrendous amounts on time on discussion, Gdansk-votes, or simply watching revert wars when two parties cannot agree on details. Of course, 'insanly comnplicated' rules are not the option, but I am sure we can work out something firm and reasonable. Our current E-level proposals are already fairly good, the main issue to resolve is what Andriy mentioned and me mentioned above: what to do if there are several recognized English names? On the encyclopedias issue: ff encyclopedias are not good enough for historical context, what do you think of using Google Scholar?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:41, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't disagree that more specific standards than we currently have are in order. But I think that in instances where a city is known by various names over the course of its history, the issue is quite frequently way too complicated for us to be able to come up with any clear rule that will work. As to Google scholar - having tried it out, I'm not convinced of its quality, and I'd much prefer JSTOR searches of historical journals. But JSTOR, unfortunately is not accessible to all. I have access to JSTOR, as does pretty much anybody else in the US with some affiliation with a university, but I know that still excludes a lot of people. Anyway, my problem is not with the idea of using google, or encyclopedias, or whatever to determine if a name is used. My problem is that Clause 6 of the proposal is essentially worthless - almost no historical names would qualify under section 1; and I have no clear idea how section 2 would even be determined. As far as clear rules, I'm just not certain there's any reasonable way to do this. I think we should simply say that if scholarly sources mostly use a historical name, wikipedia should also use it. This is simple, and fits well with our broader "common use" policy. It is also considerably more specific than we have been before on this issue. It is not a hard and fast rule, and it is a rule which requires some consensus to decide.

But the Gdansk vote was clearly a highly anomalous situation. I spent months and months citing English language sources which called the city "Danzig" before 1793 (and, a long time before that, citing that no sources on JSTOR used "Gdansk" for the 1793-1945 period). I cited JSTOR, and also numerous books which I then had available to me. So far as I can recall, this was never really challenged - I remember Space Cadet at one point long ago tried to claim that English books now all use Gdansk, but he never provided any evidence of this, just a bald statement. The problem was not that anybody disputed that usage favored "Danzig" before 1793. The problem was that people were arguing for other criteria - specifically, some sort of national sovereignty criterion, which would say that "while it is part of Poland, we use Gdansk, while it is independent, part of Prussia, or part of Germany, we use Danzig." Obviously, if the criterion is usage, usage will have to be demonstrated, and there will be room for disagreement in some cases. This is bound to be the case. But what has caused serious problems in the past has not been simply the fact that there was dispute over what the dominant usage is. The problems arose out of the fact that there was no clear rule saying that the dominant usage is what should be followed in terms of how to refer to the city in different periods of time. I think that establishing "dominant usage" as the principal criterion would go a long way towards alleviating the problems we've had with articles like this in the past. It wouldn't create a rule for determining what common usage is, but I see no reason why we should need to create such a rule, or why it would even be desirable to do so. The important thing is not to decide the argument, but to decide the terms on which the argument is to be made. Does this make any sense? john k 07:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

And just to get back briefly to Piotrus's proposal that we not use alternate names in the main body, I will just have to object again. I thought we'd already been through this being a bad idea. Firstly, as noted, some historical names have to be used. I think everyone agrees that we can't talk about the Battle of Volgograd in 1942 or the siege of St. Petersburg at the same time. Nor can we say that the Crusaders sacked Istanbul in 1204. So there are clear instances when we must use alternate names. The whole "well, if the name officially changed" business is a dodge - it is quite frequently difficult to tell whether the name has officially changed, and doing it that way would result in weird discrepancies, I think. (Also, when does the name not officially change? The usual examples given are the cities which went from being German to being Polish after World War II. But this makes little sense. Official city documents and so forth called these places Danzig, Stettin, Breslau, and so forth before World War II; they called them Gdansk, Szczecin, Wroclaw, afterwards. I fail to see how this doesn't amount to an official name change, which means that just about every instance we're talking about would end up falling into that "exception"). There is no way to get around the fact that we have to use alternative names in the main body. Any proposal that suggested otherwise would be unacceptable to the vast majority of wikipedians, and with good reason. john k 07:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

This does make some sence - could you frame it into a full proposal? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 13:47, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Some general comments. As I said earlier, the rule of what should be used for the article title and what is allowed in the first line need to be very firm. However, I agree with JohnK that we need to allow flexibility for the inside of the articles usage. The latter issue, however, has two subissues: the usage in the article devoted to the place itself and the usage on the articles devoted to other topics. Let's take Chernihiv/Chernigov/Czernigow as an example. It is a good example because AndriyK picked this city for about 80 edit wars (maybe less now, didn't count). Britannica, in historical context, uses Chernigov in every article. However, it used Chernihiv indeed in the city article itself. Should the flexible rule be applicable to the article about the place itself. I say yes, so I differ from Britannica in this respect. AndriyK, OTOH, insists on using Chernihiv all over Misplaced Pages and differs from Britannica too. He insists on the strict usage of the modern name.

As for the criteria, I agree that other encyclopedia are very important ones as well as other reference books. But I would not discount the google test completely. True, it is subject to a statistical error, but if the google test gives an overwhelming advantage to one version over the other (say over a factor of 2), google test should be taken into account. The other important test, is media usage. Preferably, we should check the major media, since they have consistent policies and are staffed by editors who check for their observance. Google news is full of small news sites which lack editorial policies, so google news, same as google test, should be treated with the grain of salt. However, major papers and TV stations really tell us what the modern English usage is.

I would also request JohnK, as a professional historian, to draft the next version. --Irpen 04:27, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think "official name" should factor in more prominently.. I still don't understand why Timor-Leste is at East Timor, when Timor-Leste is one of the two names commonly used in English and it is also the official name, while East Timor is only a colloquial name.

Apart from that, I prefer proposal E2 the most right now, because it settles down on the official name if there are two or more well-known English names. File:Austria flag large.png ナイトスタリオン ✉ 16:02, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Remember that our rule should allow for fast and easy decision making (KISS principle - let's avoid rule creep and/or creating rules that would require hours of research to be feasible). I know of no easy tool to search through other online encyclopedias and see what their usage is like, but there are other fairly respectable tools I know, mainly Google Scholar and Google Books. What do you think of using them instead? I'd define the usage as 'popular' if it has over 75% hits (books or articles for name, it may get slighty more difficult to count it for the given historical context). What do you think of such a solution?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:29, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds tempting but 75% of what ? --Wojsyl 21:34, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I mean if out of all possible names in a given category 75% or of the tested sources use onlu 1 name, then we agree it is "the single widely accepted name". Those categories, discussed by us, as I see, are 1) main/modern English name (like Gdańsk) 2) English historical name to be used for specific contexts (like Danzig) 3) foreign names when there is no English name.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:35, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I think we would have to do some more testing of this on "difficult" cases. I'm also afraid it would give us less answer than the Google/encyclopedia solution proposed by Andriyk. I was inclined to believe that there are some reasons that prevent us from using modern name in historical context. But now that I've learnt that Britannica does all right with it ... hmm. Maybe we could follow this then and keep alternative names in the lead/special section only ? If they do it why can't we ? --Wojsyl 23:50, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure, if someobody goes to the trouble and does encyclopedias analysis and backs his case with this, that would be valuable - but as I wrote, we need a bottom-line quick rule that can be used to solve 99% of cases, not a cumbersome research method that would be used for 1% of the cases.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 02:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

At least two encyclopedias are easy to search (probably it would be reasonable to limit the list to these two). Just go to Britannica and type the words in search field. The same with Encarta.
Certain problems may appear with google:

• try the word "Severia". You'll see that most of hits have nothing to do with the historical region in nothern Ukraine. It could be difficult to separate the appropriate hits.

What about Severia+Ukraine?

• If the number of Google hits small < 1000 or even < 10000. Is there reason to speak about "significant English usage"?--AndriyK 21:53, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

<10000, yes. <1000 - maybe. I'd still go with Scholar and Print/Books first. Whatever we decide, it would be useful if we can create a tool to make those calculations easier. Anybody here willing to write a script or some other kind of a tool for us?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:12, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

There is no reason to exclude ref sources only because they are not freely available to all. Many of the restricted sources are available to part of the wiki-community and people can check and present the results. Here is an example of the analysis I performed for the community. Earlier, I did a similar analysis for another naming discussion (that was a narrower one, about the article titles only). I agree that ref sources, like encyclopedia, dictionaries, reference portals (like Oxford portal) should be given a very high consideration to resolve the disputes.

Google hits: as I said earlier, while it should be taken with a grain of salt it should not be discounted. We should just make sure that we understand that Google test is a statistical test with a significant statistical error. So, it means anything only when it gives a clear advantage to one name over the other (say factor of two) and sampling is statistically significant (I would say about a hundred hits is needed)

Academic books is an extremely important factor. Google print is a good search engine for those but, of course, not an exclusive source.

Modern usage can be meaningfully extracted from the media analysis. Again, LexisNexis major papers search is much more important than overall "Google News" test.

And let's just not bring up again an obvious issue on what to do when the city was actually renamed. This is trivial. Suvorov visited Yekaterinoslav, the battle was of Stalingrad, etc. It is not worth wasting our time to bring this up here now and then. The problem here is with the names that are essencially the same names, just expressed in different languages. --Irpen 02:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

All right, where are we now ? Can we agree that we all support Proposal E so far, and only disagree on the supporting definitions (point 5 and 6 of E2) ? --Wojsyl 10:15, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I support it, yeah. (E2 to be specific.) ナイトスタリオン ✉ 10:48, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

E-3

Good. I have archived all the old proposals, and left E-3 only so that we can focus on it. --Wojsyl 17:37, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal F

Now I'm starting to think that the text of E-3 has grown too large (or has it not ?). Any idea on how to compact it back without sacrificing its completeness ? --Wojsyl 18:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Good point. I don't like the instruction creep and increasing officialize. I will attempt to summarize this into a new proposal.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Done. I think this version is much easier to understand, and also has fewer logical errors :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposal looks clear and balanced, very well Piotrus.Dirgela 04:28, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm...

I see that Any archaic usage names in the list, as well as names used before the standardization of English orthography should be clearly marked as such is still in there. Would any object to removing mention of names used before the standardization of English orthography? It is my feeling that such names should never be included at the beginning of the article, because to do so would be to both severely escalate the number of names that need to be listed, and to drown out the actually significant names in a sea of spelling variants. john k 19:50, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Also still present: In case a historical name is used, it should be followed by the modern name in parentheses at least on one, preferably the first occurence in a given section. There is no reason to do this in the article about that place. That is to say, it is incredibly stupid for our article on Bratislava to say "Pressburg (Bratislava) was the capital of Hungary from the 16th to the 18th century." Because it is an article about Bratislava. Parentheses only have a place in other articles. john k 19:53, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Possibly disregard these statements - i was looking at E3, not F - Let me look over the new person and return... john k 19:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Okay...looking it over, I still have serious issues. The definitions of swaen's and wahen's is absurdly limited, especially the latter. I'd prefer a much less rigid means of determining whether there's a widely accepted English historical name. Furthermore, I don't think that the current rules would actually allow for any WAHENs to exist. As currently stated, all the Encyclopedias have to consistently use the name for it to be a WAHEN. But as I noted before, Britannica never consistently uses any name - in the article about a city, it always uses the current name, but it uses the historical name in other articles that mention the city. Which means that, for instance, by the current definition, "Danzig" is not a WAHEN (Britannica talks about the Free City of Gdansk). Neither is "Pressburg" (Britannica talks about Maria Theresa's flight to Bratislava in 1741). Even ignoring the completely unworkable nature of the first criterion for WAHENs, the second criterion is almost unworkable - how are we to actually conduct such a search. I once did a JSTOR search for Gdansk, and that was an incredible amount of work, since I had to look at each reference and see what the context was. And I didn't even bother to do the same with Danzig, which would be necessary to establish Danzig as a WAHEN. Basically, the method of determining what is a WAHEN seems rigged to prevent there from being WAHENs. Personally, I think the WAHEN should be determined in a much looser way. The problem in these discussions has not usually been determining what the WAHEN is. The problem has usually arisen because people don't think we should use the WAHEN. Nobody ever seriously tried to argue that Danzig wasn't the WAHEN for 1793-1945, and I don't think there was ever much of a case that it wasn't the WAHEN before 1793, either. The argument was, essentially, that determining the most widely used name for that particular time period wasn't the criteria we should be using. I don't see why we need such a rigid way to figure out what the WAHEN is - citations from historical sources can be provided. If someone feels that these are being quoted misleadingly or selectively, they can present counterevidence, and one can have a normal debate to determine what the more used name is. The problem with these issues has never been that people argue about what the most common usage is. It has always been that people were never agreed on what the criteria should be for determining what name should be used. So long as we are clear that it is the WAHEN which is to be used in historical context, the debate will have to be narrow and focused. I'm sure there will still be debates, but just saying "the WAHEN is the name to be used" will clear up a lot of the arguments on this issue.

The definition of SWAEN is also problematic. If all other encyclopedias use Cologne rather than Köln, why should anybody need to do a Google Scholar or Google Books search on the subject. I think the SWAEN is almost always pretty self-evident - Cologne, Rome, Vienna, Bucharest, Moscow, Warsaw, Brussels, Antwerp, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Tyre, Sidon, Baghdad, Saint Petersburg, Athens, Venice, Milan, Naples, Florence, Seville, Copenhagen, The Hague...the only instances of conflict that I can think of are in the "familiar Indian cities whose names have recently been changed" department, with Chennai/Madras, Mumbai/Bombay, Kolkata/Calcutta. And I think it's been generally established that that the issue there is more of a name change than it is an issue of the English name as opposed to the local name, since India is an English-speaking country. There's a few other cases where a French name was once used in English, but isn't anymore - Mayence/Mainz and Ratisbon/Regensburg in Germany; various cities in the Low Countries. But in those cases I'm quite certain that one won't find encyclopedias agreeing on using those archaic names, so I see no particular reason to worry about it. I'd suggest, at the very least, that we change the criteria here so that the SWAEN must fulfill either point one or point two, but not necessarily both.

As I said above, I still don't like the idea that archaic names used in English in the seventeenth century can be included in the first line of an article, even if they are marked as such. I also note that English usage seems to have been completely lost from the first line criteria - one of the better parts of the older proposals was that they said that names (other than the current local name, obviously) should only be mentioned in the first line if there is some significant English usage of them.

Also, the examples currently have several mistakes. Notably, Constantinople is the principal name in use until 1930, when the name was officially changed to Istanbul. Some historians, I think, have started to use Istanbul for the 1453-1930 period, but this is still not standard. As for Vilnius/Wilno, I think that "Wilno" is almost never used in English. The WAHEN of Vilnius is "Vilna," the Russian name. See, for instance, the 1911 Britannica, which lists the city under Vilna, although the name Wilno is mentioned in the title ("VILNA or WILNO"). As usual, the Polish name gets screwed, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. john k 20:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

The Oder (Czech and Polish: Odra; German: Oder; Classical Latin: Viadrus, Viadua; Medieval Latin: Od(d)era) is a river in Central Europe.