[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish, Scottish and Welsh localities?

[Mark Williamson]

For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
or Corcaigh.

Mark

On 10/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm planning to work on a number of articles related to Irish, Scottish and
> Welsh localities on the Romanian Wikipedia. I am currently in a dilemma as
> to what name to use - the Celtic variant or the English variant. I have
> realised that most non-English Wikipedias use the English variant - so that
> place names such as "Cork", "Dublin", "Edinburg" and "Cardiff" are used. For
> the exception of Dublin, perhaps, many of these place names, particularly
> smaller towns, do not have native variants in languages such as Romanian,
> German, French, etc.
>
> So, why should the English name be used in this situation? Wouldn't the
> Celtic name be more appropriate? Celtic languages are co-official in
> Scotland and Wales, while in Ireland, Irish is the first official and
> national language. Due to this, I would prefer to use placenames such as
> "Corcaigh", "*An Uaimh*" (for Navan), "*Chill Dara" *(for Kildare), etc.
> However, this sounds quite odd and are not frequently used, even though they
> are the first official name. What do others think? I am inclined to use them
> so that people are actually educated that there exists an Irish language as
> the first official language of Ireland. Too often, people in Romania say
> "the Irish speak (just) English" and stop it at that. They're surprised, for
> example, when I tell them about Irish names such as "Baile Atha Cliath" for
> Dublin, etc.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ronline
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"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin