|From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com |Content-Disposition: inline |Sender: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 03:48:06 -0800 | |Mirko Thiessen wrote: |> What do you think about that solution: call it "Oder" in articles |> relating to German regions (Lower Oder Valley National Park), call |> it "Odra" in articles relating to Polish regions (Szczecin). | |Is this common practice in English? | |> So, my vote is to leave the main article where it is now: "Odra", |> since there are greater portions of the river in Poland. | |The location of the river is one factor in determining what we should |call it in English, but not the only factor. We know the name in |Polish, and the name in German, but the question of what the name |"really" is in English seems to be primarily a question of common |usage. | |It seems like this river is not widely talked about in English at all |(based on my web searches), so it probably doesn't matter a great deal |either way. :-)
Unfortunately, the Oder and Niesse are important in 20th century history due to their role in settling the border between Germany and Poland. The Oder-Neisse line was part of the Iron Curtain. It was a great concession to Poland to draw the line there, as it meant that Danzig (now Gdansk) was unequivocally part of Poland. When right-wingers talk about the "give-aways" of the Yalta conference, the Oder-Neisse line is one of the big ones.
Google has 1100 hits on Oder-Neisse line, and 12 hits (all in Polish) on Odra-Nysa. Wikipedia does not have an entry [[Oder-Niesse line]] but other encyclopedias do. However, Wikipedia has numerous mentions of the Oder-Niesse line, such as in [[German reunification]].
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
| |--Jimbo | |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |