Constantinople was officially the name of the city far past the Byzantine
period, I think...the Ottomans always called it that, and according to the
Istanbul article it was not officially changed to that name until March 28,
1930 (and interesting, Istanbul comes from Greek "stan poli", not Turkish).
(I know that's not really the point, but I thought I might clear up this
particular example :))
From: Delirium <delirium(a)rufus.d2g.com>
Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV disputes
inPolish-German articles
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:03:56 -0800
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
You have wrong idea about the problem. The
disputed area wasn't
exclusively
Polish or exclusively German at that time. Usually, it's hard to even
decide who was
the "majority", as we don't have detailed data from the epoch, and it's
known
to differ from town to town. It's also not possible to tell what was the
official
language - the concept of "official language" is a recent one - then some
mix of
Latin and local languages was used, depending on context. Also, the name
of a city
could be the same in both German and Polish at that time, only to diverge
later
with phonological changes. "Torun'" is example of a name which isn't
originally Polish
nor originally German. According to modern etymology it was Polish name
equivalent to
"Tarno'w", later to be imported to German language during times of the
Teutonic Order,
then to be reimported to Polish in significantly changed version. "Warta
Boleslawiecka"
is another such example, except that reimporting happened after the Second
World War.
The only sensible policy is to consequently use contemporary names, with
possibly
versions in the other languages parenthesized.
This makes sense for some of the names, but I don't think for all. For
example, "Danzig" was until 1945 the generally accepted English name for
that city, so I think speaking of someone like Arthur Schopenhauer (a
German born in 1780) being "born in Gdansk" is a little bit anachronistic,
and speaking of him being "born in Danzig (modern-day [[Gdansk]],
[[Poland]])" is more accurate. I think we should generally use the name
that would've been used by the person if it's clear, and otherwise prefer
the modern name. So, Constantinople (not Istanbul) for the Byzantines;
Danzig (not Gdansk) and Koenigsberg (not Kaliningrad) for 18th-century
Germans, but Warsaw for everyone in all time periods, etc.
The main impetus behind this suggestion is that it seems odd to say someone
was born in a city that they wouldn't have called by that name--if
Schopenhauer thought he was born in Danzig, and in fact mentioned Danzig in
his writings, then that's what we should call his birthplace.
However, I do think your argument has convinced me to use the modern names
when discussing the general history, if former names are unclear, which I
think is how it currently is: [[Gdansk]] refers to the city by that name
throughout the history section, including the 16th/17th/18th/19th
centuries. That seems fine to me. It's be wrong to refer to 16th-century
[[Kaliningrad]] though.
So perhaps unfortunately we need to do it on a case-by-case basis?
-Mark
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