On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 07:03:56PM -0800, Delirium wrote:
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?
Gdansk definitely was never a "German" city. Its Slavonic name is original, and Slavonic inhabitants of that city has been always calling it that way. That Germans living there used different name doesn't matter much (it wasn't a "different" name, it was just a phonetical transformation of Slavonic name). It'd be silly to use the name "Gdansk" for period from medieval times to about XVIII century, when it was taken over by Prussia, switch to "Danzig" for XIX and early XX century, and then back to Slavonic name in XX century back - people living there didnt't all suddenly turn German. And it's completely idiotic to use name "Danzig" before it existed. "Poznan'"/"Posen" is in similar situation, but it was even less German than Gdansk.
But Kaliningrad is completely different matter - it wasn't a Russian city before after the Second World War. But it had a Polish name of "Kro'lewiec" too.