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

[Andreas Vilén]

If the English name is the most common name in Romanian, use that one
and vice versa. It's all about the least possible surprise for the
readers. They want to find an article where they except it to be. We
don't have the article about Germany under "Deutschland" on enwiki,
even less under "Bundesrepublik Deutschland", or "United Kingdom"
under "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (rowiki:
"Regatul Unit"). Just use the common names and write the official ones
in the info box, just like with all the countries and cities with
local (Romanian) names.

I'm Swedish and would be extremely surprised and confused if the
enwiki article about Sweden would be under the official name
"Konungariket Sverige" (The Swedish Kingdom), and would in that case
very much suggest a move of the article.

/Andreas

On 3/11/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > 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
> >
> >
> > To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
> >
> > Cormac
>
>
> But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
> the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
> be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
> "secondary" variant?
>
> So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
> I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
> told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
> if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
> is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
> that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
> can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
> just English!
>
> Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
> Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
> and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
> Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
> Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
> languages.
>
> Go raibh maith agaibh!
>
> Ronline
>
> PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
> one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
> respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
> have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
> least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.
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