Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions

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This style page summarizes Wikipedia "good practice" for Germany pages as discussed on both the WT:GER page.

The choice of a style does not mean that other conventions are worse, or wrong. The sole purpose is to enable consistency among a large number of Wikipedia articles. Completed Wikipedia articles should mention the fact that other usages exist and in which contexts they are preferred.

Contents 1 Disclaimer 2 Alphabet 3 Terminology 4 Naming 4.1 Personal names 4.2 Titles 4.3 Contemporary placenames 4.4 Historic placenames 4.5 Universities and Colleges 5 Disambiguation 6 German abbreviations

[edit] Disclaimer

This page is still under discussion and is not final.

[edit] Alphabet

The Wikipedia convention is to use the 30-letter German alphabet in proper names, in line with the broader Wikipedia convention of using local Latin alphabets. It is helpful to explain near the top of an article how to convert a name to the 26-letter alphabet.

[edit] Terminology

Sentences of definition generally employ semantic English and do not literally translate German terms, for example a municipality of 8,000 people would be described in Wikipedia as "a town" even if its German status is "Dorf".

[edit] Naming

[edit] Personal names

Where an English form of name for a king or prince is in common use, Wikipedia employs that as the headword for an article. Within the article, the German form should be mentioned at least once.

Wikipedia spells out names and does not employ German abbreviation systems whose significance is not understood in English, e.g. "v." for von.

[edit] Titles

Titles of historic royalty and contemporary family heads and their immediate family are translated into English in Wikipedia. The convention is to include the royal titles in headwords. This is set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Other_royals, e.g. Ernst August V, Prince of Hanover.

Titles of contemporary persons who merely use the title as a consistent and de facto part of their surname are not translated in Wikipedia, e.g. Otto Graf Lambsdorff. This German-language word (not the English form) appears in the headword as if it were a regular surname.

Wikipedia translates and places ecclesiastical titles outside the name of the person, e.g. Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, not "Georg Cardinal Sterzinsky". This convention is set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Clerical_names. The title is not part of the headword.

[edit] Contemporary placenames

In the absence of a common English name, the current local name of a city is used by convention in Wikipedia. Five cities in Germany have uniquely English orthographic sequences in common use today:

• Cologne (universal)
• Hamelin (derived term Pied Piper of Hamelin)
• Hanover (universal)
• Munich (universal)
• Nuremberg (universal)

Wikipedia uses the spelling Brunswick in historical contexts and for persons, but Braunschweig as the headword for the article about the contemporary city. The English name Dusseldorf, employed where only limited character sets are available, is not used in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia uses these English names for the states of:

• Bavaria
• Hesse
• Lower Saxony
• North Rhine-Westphalia
• Rhineland-Palatinate
• Saxony
• Saxony-Anhalt
• Thuringia

For the other states, Wikipedia uses an English name orthographically identical to the German name (including Baden-Württemberg with ü). Mecklenburg-West Pomerania is used in Wikipedia text but not as a headword. Formal names such as "Free State of ..." need to be mentioned early in the article text.

Wikipedia uses English names for other contemporary geographic features when the English usage is (1) universal or (2) the feature crosses language boundaries or (3) derived terms are in common use:

• Black Forest (universal)
• the Danube (cross-border)
• Franconia (universal)
• Frisia (cross-border) (not to be confused with the district of Friesland)
• Lake Constance (cross-border)
• Lusatia (cross-border)
• the Moselle (cross-border)
• the Ore Mountains (cross-border)
• Pomerania (cross-border)
• Swabia (universal)
• the Rhine (cross-border)

For six administrative regions derived from the above, Wikipedia uses non-vernacular names:

• Upper Franconia
• Middle Franconia
• Lower Franconia
• Swabia (administrative region)
• Upper Bavaria
• Lower Bavaria

[edit] Historic placenames

For historic geographic entities, such as Prussia, Wikipedia uses the traditional English name.

[edit] Universities and Colleges

In line with most other national sections of Wikipedia, the headwords and links for German universities are descriptive and short and take the form: University of [[Placename]]. Qualifiers such as "technical", patron names or provincial names should only be prefixed if there are multiple universities in the same town, e.g. Humboldt University of Berlin. The full German name should be reproduced near the top of the relevant article. If the university claims an "official" English name, this should also be mentioned, though this may not be the same as the headword. Schools that do not confer doctorates should be termed colleges or schools in the headwords.

[edit] Disambiguation

In line with the general policies set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements), articles on places in Germany go under placename without any further higher-level division.

Where disambiguation among like-named places is still needed, the locality names go under [[placename, state]] (the "comma convention", where the name is followed with a comma, a space and the name of the state), as was suggested in the now-inactive project Wikipedia:WikiProject German districts, e.g. Bergen, Lower Saxony to distinguish from Bergen in Norway, Bergen in Hesse and other similarly named places. State capitals and major urban centres such as Frankfurt stand alone without such disambiguation.

Where disambiguation among entity types is needed, use Wikipedia's parentheses convention, e.g. Braunschweig and Braunschweig (region). River-names are not used as disambiguating terms in parentheses as their meaning, especially in the case of minor streams, is not intelligible to English-speaking readers outside Germany.

[edit] German abbreviations

German placenames often employ a native disambiguation system where the name of a river or region is added to a town name. These names should be spelled out in full in Wikipedia, because the various German-language abbreviation systems (parentheses, points or forward slashes) are not understood in English, e.g. Linz am Rhein, not "Linz/Rhein" or "Linz (Rhein)", Dillingen an der Donau, not "Dillingen a.d. Donau".

Wikipedia does not use the German-language system of hyphenating the subdivisions of municipalities, as this meaning is not intelligible in English, e.g. Spandau, not "Berlin-Spandau". The article explains in the text that this is a place in Berlin. Exception: Bergen-Belsen. However hyphens are retained in keeping with German usage if the first word is an adjective, e.g. Groß-Gerau, Neu-Ulm, or if the town was created by a merger, e.g. Clausthal-Zellerfeld.