Talk:Dnipropetrovsk

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Contents 1 Number of Jews left in Dnepropetrovsk 2 How the city name is spelled in English 3 On WP naming conventions 4 Phonetic spelling

[edit] Number of Jews left in Dnepropetrovsk

During the German occupation ... but soon after the Nazis conquered the city on October 12, 1941, 11,000 were shot; in the end only 15 Jews of Dnipropetrovsk survived at the end of the war.

What is the source for "15 Jews"?

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Should its name be Dniepropetrovsk?

Redirect from Dnepropetrovsk is buggy. Also, what is the relation between Dnepropetrovsk and Kudak (mentioned in article about Stanislaw Koniecpolski? Is this an older name, or was Kudak just nearby? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 13:25, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd say just nearby. I guess Kodak (as far as I'm accustomed to name) was destroyed before the foundation of existing city.AlexPU

[edit] How the city name is spelled in English

I checked LexusNexus database on how the city name is spelled in major English media. The search for the last two years usage in major papers gives the following results:

• Dnepropetrovsk - used 66 times.
• Dnipropetrovs'k - used only once.
• Dnipropetrovsk - used 243 times. Also used by Britannica.

Therefore, I moving the article from Dnipropetrovs'k to Dnipropetrovsk. Irpen 00:14, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Please note that none of the spellings you mention are English names; they are different transliterations of the Russian and Ukrainian names of the city. Dnipropetrovs'k satisfies the suggested convention in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which says If there is no commonly-used English name, use an accepted transliteration of the name in the original language.

We've been using the full formal National transliteration for geographic names in Ukraine, in article titles, and often in the text of articles (many articles on Russian Empire and Soviet-era topics use Russian names, and a notable exception is Kiev/Kyiv). It makes good sense to use a consistent transliteration scheme, and not the most popular transliteration scheme for each individual name. I think this is also consistent with most current atlases, Mapquest, MSN Maps, and Terraserver, and also with the observation at Wikipedia:Naming#Ukrainian_names.

Lately I've been considering suggesting changing this to use the official simplified National form (see footnotes of the Romanization table), and retaining the formal transliteration next to an article's Cyrillic (Just the way this article looks, at the moment). But this should probably find consensus on Wikipedia:WikiProject Subdivisions of Ukraine, before starting to move individual articles. —Michael Z. 2005-03-29 01:00 Z

Sorry, I did not know about the Subdivision of Ukraine Project. I will post proposed changed there for discussion in the future. As for this article, I appreciate if you don't move it back for now. Lets discuss this of course, but it seems that 246 mentions in major papers shows that there is a "commonly used English name". I specifically checked "major papers only" in my LexusNexus search because, unlike multitude of internet news sites, major papers do have the style policy and are staffed with editors who check for style consistency. Of course, this is a matter of debate whether accepted English usage is the same thing as "English name" and whether 246 mentions in two years in about 50 major papers establishes the English usage.

BTW, if we use similar criteria, the second largest city in UA should be called "Kharkiv" in WP, rather than Khar'kov, Kharkov, Harkov, etc. I just noticed that you did this change and I agree with it. Perhaps, when referred to in connection with many historical events, the WP usage should be "[[Kharkiv|Kharkov]] (currently Kharkiv)". However, the current English usage favors Kharkiv over Kharkov with a similar margin as Dnipropetrovsk over Dnepropetrovsk.

Lets wait until other editors voice their opinions and decide on what this title should be. Of course, if someone feels too strong about this and can't wait, s/he can move the article back anytime. I will not do anything further with the title until we conclude this discussion. In the meantime, I will try to fill the section stubs in the city history with useful information and hope other editors will help. Cheers, Irpen 01:26, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] On WP naming conventions

After reading more carefully Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) and it's talk page, I would like to elaborate a little on how I would interpret it as applicable to this discussion. Here is what the policy says (italicization is mine):

"If you are talking about a person, country, town, movie or book, use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article (as you would find it in other encyclopedias). This makes it easy to find, and easy to compare information with other sources. For example, Christopher Columbus, Venice.

If there is no commonly-used English name, use an accepted transliteration of the name in the original language. Latin-alphabet languages like Spanish or French should need no transliteration, but Chinese names can use Pinyin, for example."

The question we have is what is meant by "most commonly used English version of the name". Several interpretations are possible and we should simply choose how to interpret these words. Some names entered English through other means than transliteration of what's their today's name. Examples are Moscow, Warsaw, Germany, Finland, etc. Everyone agrees that there is no question what name to use for these places in English WP. Should we interpret the policy as applying only to those names and everything else should be transliterated from native language?

I interpret the words of the policy differently. The words "most commonly used" either apply only to the word "English" in the sentence or to the combination "English version of the name". Now, are Dnipropetrovsk and Dnipropetrovs'k two different English versions of the same name or they should be treated just as two different transliterations of one name? I think that while they certainly are two different transliteration of the same name, they are also two different versions of the name in English. The question is whether we accept that the way the place is most commonly called by the English media and among English speakers is the "most commonly used English version of the name". Or should we call all these versions "not English" because they originate from another language. Basically it comes down to this: "Does Днiпропетровськ, the town in Ukraine, have its own English name (or several English names for that matter)?". Or perhaps it has only a Ukrainian name and, when the journalist writes about it in English, he transliterates Днiпропетровськ each time on the fly. I think the answer is that he uses an accepted English version, which for this city is a transliteration of its Ukrainian name.

Now, what about the "If there is no commonly-used English name..." clause in the policy? I think it applies to places that are so infrequently mentioned that the standard way to call them did not crystallize. I do believe that serious media sources do not transliterate each time they mention the name of the foreign place. They have specific names to use. Those may evolve. Like the name Gypsy evolved into Roma. Like Dnepropetrovsk evolved into Dnipropetrovsk. Like Kiev may evolve into Kyiv. I think that for the very similar reasons what Britannica chooses for the article names matches the results of my LexisNexis search. The policy also says "as you would find it in other encyclopedias". I am not saying that LexisNexis and Britannica are bulletproof authorities to answer questions about English usage. But they are strong indicators. A simple Google search is more prone to errors for the reasons well known and, I think, Google results mean anything only when the difference is overwhelming.

So, I think we should transliterate in WP only for relatively obscure places which are not mentioned much in English texts. I hope this is going to crystallize into a less ambiguous text of the policy. And only for the names that are used in English very infrequently the discussion on the best transliteration rule should come into play. Of course this all is just my opinion. I am not a specialist in the field, not a veteran of WP and not a native speaker of English. But this is how I understand what is meant by the Policy. Luckily, the policy is not as rigid as constitutions, which are so hard to change that high courts spend all their time figuring out the "correct" way to interpret the text. I do not have skills to write a new version of the policy to propose to the community but I think this is going to happen sooner or later. Regards, —Irpen 06:24, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the policy is represented by your first case. Remember that it speaks to all article titles, not just place names. English names are Moscow, hammer, oak, and not Moskva, molot, and Quercus. But Arctotis does not have a common English name, so it is named in Latin. If it hit the news it would still remain a Latin name. And incidentally, the convention only refers specifically to the naming of articles, and not other usage.

The only geographic names in Ukraine which are well-established enough to have their own English names are "Ukraine" (which I'm guessing was once a German transliteration), and "Dnieper" (which looks to me like a less-awkward to pronounce by Anglophones transcription of Russian Dniepr). All others that I can think of are simply transliterations from Ukrainian or Russian. The most well-known one, "Kiev", is hotly defended against "Kyiv" by Wikipedian Anglophones, because they've actually heard of it before, and they're offended by having to change their pronunciation. But even L'viv and Kharkiv seem to be obscure enough to hardly rate comment when used in place of the "traditional English" Lvov and Kharkov (although I wouldn't dare trying to change it to Kharkiv in a WWII history article).

Their obscurity is also the reason that their usage is so elastic in the press. As a national capital, Kiev is in their style manuals. But they just look up other place names in an atlas and drop the apostrophes, and most atlases now use Ukrainian names in place of Russian. I'm curious how highly Dnipropetrovsk/Dnepropetrovsk rated in LexisNexis, if one only consider the period before the Orange Revolution made the news.

Anyways, it's madness to name every place name this way. We have to use consistent standard, or Ukrainian place naming will be a mix of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Yiddish, and possibly Tatar, Rusyn, German, Romanian, and Hungarian. Everything that shows up in a "major news source" will be transliterated without apostrophes, and every other name will either come from a recent English-language atlas or from an official Ukrainian government list, and so will have apostrophes for the soft sign. As Ukrainian towns hit the news, their apostrophes will fall away, and you'll spend all your time counting hits on LexisNexis. No one wants that, and it would definitely go against the word and the spirit of the Wikipedia naming convention.

we have an agreed standard, so let's stick to it. The Wikiproject is very quiet, and it may be no problem to change it if you propose to. In the mean time, I'm not going to bother moving this article, but it properly belongs at Dnipropetrovs'k —Michael Z. 2005-03-29 08:22 Z

Replied at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ukrainian_subdivisions#More_on_Wikipedia_naming_conventions_as_applicable_to_Ukrainian_names. Irpen 20:03, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phonetic spelling

from talk:Irpen

I phonetically spelled out this word [1] because not everyone has a browser that can read the IPA script, not to mention many are not going to learn IPA anyway. The insertion I used was from the New Oxford American Dictionary. --LibraryLion 22:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I mistyped in my summary. I reverted you simply because this contradicts what we are using in other articles, so it breaks consistensy. If you think it is importnat, I, personally, don't have a problem with that if it is fine with others. It just looked strange. Nothing personal against your edit. --Irpen 23:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)