[WikiEN-l] NPOV disputes in Polish-German articles

Wed Oct 29 06:04:12 UTC 2003

Delirium wrote:
>This seems a little inconsistent with [[Mumbai]] though -- 
>by far [[Bombay]] is the most common English name for 
>the city (and someone used to Bombay could hardly 
>recognize the much-differently-pronounced Mumbai), 

Maybe when you and I went to school, but that is not the case anymore. 
Searching only English-language websites on Google actually returns a quarter 
million more hits for Mumbai than Bombay. And over a third of the Bombay hits 
have Mumbai in them. 

So this is an example of English usage in transition (like Beijing/Peking was 
about 15 years ago). I would expect, however, that outside of India "Bombay" 
is still the clear dominant usage, but we cannot forget the tens of millions 
of English speaking Indians (many of which speak much gooder than average 
yanks and brits). 

So in cases where usage is more or less similar between two terms, then using 
an "official" name to break the tie seems to make sense to me. Also if there 
is a coup or other major change of government and a nation officially changes 
its name and the names of its cities, then we should follow that as well 
(thinking of Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo). 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)