Talk:Voivodeships of Poland

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[edit] Wikiproject

I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Polish Voivodships some time ago to settle the naming conventions for Polish Voivodships, powiats/counties and gmina/communes. Please participate. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 13:11, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Voivodship? It should be Province!

It is undesirable to use foreign words in English text where there is an English equivalent, or near to it, as this only confuses those unfamiliar with the term. "Voivodship" is not a word traditionally used in English histories of Poland, and is unfamiliar to English speakers. Moreover, it is ineptly formed as an English word: the suffix "-ship" denotes a condition or state (as in "friendship"), or office (as in "Charles came to the kingship by succession") or skill (as in "his chairmanship has been excellent" or "his scholarship is faulty from time to time" or "his batsmanship was poor in the second innings"); it never means an organisation or area [see for example Chambers' Dictionary on this]. Until recent years, when eight or nine "regions" have been established, there have been no administrative areas within England larger than the "county". So where these exist in other countries English tends to use "province", a word hallowed by history since the Roman Empire (though there are exceptions). It is true that the OED cites three examples of the word "voivodship" from the 18th and 19th centuries, but these are very obscure. On the understanding that the purpose of writing is to communicate, it is better to use a familiar term such as 'province' which is both readily understandable and unambiguous. If in doubt, then a brief note (eg "the area under the jurisdiction of a voivode") could be inserted in parenthesis after the first use of the term "province". Mark O'Sullivan 10:29, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The word "voivodship" is present only in one dictionary, namely Jan Stanisławski's dictionary. A real english word should be present in many dictionaries. And in at least one english dictionary. Try to search for it in any english dictionary and you'll see that it's just absent. For example: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=voivodship

Even if you want to derive it from word "voivod" (in Polish: "wojewoda"), you should translate it as "voivod's area" or "voivod's own land". The word "voivodship" would mean something like "being a voivod" which is not relevant to a part of a country, because "voivod" is a man, not a land.

Many languages have their own versions of word "province", so does Polish. But there is no reason to say "voivodship" while it means just "province".

I suggest changing the word "voivodship" into word "province", which is a real english word. If you want to indicate its polish origin, write: "Province (województwo)". And you can explain that "województwo" comes from "voivod". --Wahwah 10:20, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  1. What for?
  2. Why?
  3. Did you forget of paper dictionaries?
  4. Also, the term is actually being used ([1]). contrary to your proposed "Province (województwo)"
  5. I can see only one pro of promoting province over voivodship: the latter has two alternative spellings.

--Halibutt 11:54, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Voivodship is used in English language. I asked a professional translator about it some time ago. Google shows 81,500 hits, and 31,500 hits for vovideship (and this is english word, not Polish - Polish is województwo). Google define has one defintion other then Wiki - which is more then for some English words. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:04, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Pros

I'll try to provide some pros.

[edit] 1: Is it really english word?

First let's take a look if this word really exists in english language.

  1. Webster Unabridged online: negative ([2])
  2. Merriam-webster online: negative ([3])
  3. Polish expert answers this question: negative (in polish) ([4])
  4. Nowy słownik Fundacji Kościuszkowskiej, polish paper dictionary: negative ([5]); the review notices the fact that in this dictionary word województwo is correctly translated, as province
  5. Cambridge online dictionary: negative ([6])
  6. Polish dictionary at www.onet.pl: gives both, and province as the first meaning ([7])
  7. Pocket Langenscheidt (paper): negative

Conclusion: it's not a native english word.

Hi! I found this page on WP:RFC and it got me curious. I'm not sure this changes the conclusion, but it at least was an English word at one point in time. The 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has two entries, "Voivode" and "Voivodeship" (both sic).
The latter has two senses, "The district or province governed by a voivode" and "the office or dignity of a voivode". There are no citations for either later than the 19th century but the entry is not marked historical or archaic. "Voivodship" is not listed as an alternative spelling but "woywod-" and "woiwod-" both are.
"Voivode" is listed as a synonym for "Vaivode", whose single sense is " A local ruler or official in various parts of south-eastern Europe (in older use esp. in Transylvania)." This entry is listed as historical. — mendel ☎ 05:08, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2: What's the origin of this word?

The history of this infamous word is as follows:

  1. Polish word "województwo" has two meanings: (1) property or land of a voivode and (2) idea of being a voivod.
  2. Jan Stanisławski makes up a translation of this word (using meaning (2)?) and gets it printed
  3. Stanisławski's dictionary is the only one printed to contain a translation of this word, so everybody starts using it

[edit] 3: Is it really used?

I performed a Google search: I looked from pages in .pl domain, in english, containing the word "voivodship" and "province". The results are:

  1. voivodship: 24700 ([8])
  2. province: 94100 ([9])

Please note that at least top results come with the names of certain provinces, like "Łódzkie province" or "Lubelskie province".

Conclusion: word "province" is also widely used in the same meaning as "voivodship" on Polish websites.

Perhaps this will clarify this matter: it is a translation of a Polish term, invented by Poles and used by all Polish official documents in English. I see no reason to restrict our search to .pl domain, and searching for "voivodeship+province" may yeld many pages with use one for Polish districts and other for non-Polish. The translator I spoke to sais that correct translations of Polish text into English use the term voivodship with a note (I will quote it here soon). Bottom line is that this term exists in English languege and is correct in it's current usage on Wikipedia - i.e. Polish province should be reffered as Polish voivodship.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:05, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
For me it didn't clarify this matter. You say that this term exists in english language, while it obviously doesn't. You're Polish, thus biased. Maybe an english native speakers and/or language experts (but not polish!) should have a say? And about Googling: Mazowieckie is the most popular province, so let's try to look for it together with "voivodship" and "province". The results are: Mazowieckie+voivodship ([10]): 552 results. Mazowieckie+province ([11]): 1090 results. In conclusion, the word "province" is used more often than "voivodship" in context of polish province. Anyway, are polish provinces so different from provinces in other countries that they need a different word?--Wahwah 21:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
It is not so much that Polish provinces need a different word. Many different countries have their own names for provinces. The French régions, Japanese prefectures etc. This is described on Wikipedia in: Subnational entity. Chelman 13:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Update. 'The guy named Stanisławowski is in fact Jan Stanisławski, a famous Polish linguist [12]. So as you can see, there is some authoirty behind the word voivodeship. And from the mentioned translator, I got this clarification: "TRANSLATOR’S REMARK: voivodship is an administrative unit of Poland, comparable to a province (for example an official (in documents) English version of 'wojewodztwo śląskie' is 'Śąskie voivodship' In other (literature, ect.) publications a version "Silesian Voivodship' may be used as well.; voivode is a head officer of the voivodship according to the administrative division of Poland, the term 'powiat' can be compared to ditric/county. The smalest unit is 'gimna' - this is Polish word used in English (with its plural form " gminas)." Those tranlations are recommended by Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as recommended terminology (see also loanword), and when used, often require an explantion (such as the above translator's remark). As you can see, voivideship is the most correct term for Polish provinces. For their difference from others, see voivodeship. As much as I love standarisation, the fact is there are lots of countries with lots of different names for their provinces - states, county, district, land, etc. Why do you want to deny Poles the right to introduce their own loanword? Finally, I am quite sure your meanings and etymology of the word 'województwo' is wrong (as voivode never ever owned a voivodship) - at least in their present meaning; I will have to check their etymology in Słownik Języka Polskiego. PS. You're Polish, thus biased, LOL, you have been reading meta:How to deal with Poles? Please, Wikipedia:No personal attacks, let's keep it civil. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:43, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I checked the link about Stanisławski and let me quote the website: Until recently Polish-English translators had to do with Jan Stanisławski's The Great English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary or The Kosciuszko Foundation English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary, both of which were published in the late '50s or early '60s. For nearly forty years they were the largest source of reference, although not always a reliable one due to errors/omissions and a lapse of time.. Isn't the voivodship likely to be one of those errors? The new edition of the other mentioned dictionary (Kosciuszko Foundation Dictionary) translates województwo as province. Now, let's talk about what is a translation. If you translate a polish text into english language, you write english text with the same meaning as polish. It means that you want to use existing english grammar and existing english words. You don't invent the words! You look in the english dictionary, find the right word and use it. Writing voivodship for województwo is like writing thank you from the mountain for dziękuję z góry (thanks in advance).--Wahwah 22:38, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Write the the Polish Ministry of Foreigh Affairs, perhaps they will change their mind, it would much ease our trubles. Until then, I will stick with the official Polish guidelines, as every single self-respecting translator (read: people who deal with translation on professional basis) does. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 22:47, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Speaking of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they seem not to stick with their own guidelines. When searching their website for discussed words, we get 315 results for word province ([13]) while keyword voivodship returns only 60 documents ([14]). Can you explain that?--Wahwah 22:58, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ministry of FOREIGN Affairs beign, well, of FOREIGN Affairs, it is quite possible they use the term province when talking about non-Polish units of administration. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 08:10, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let the Ministry of Foreign Affairs speak for itself.

  • Dolnośląskie 0:0 (draw)
  • Kujawsko-pomorskie 0:5 (province wins, [15], [16])
  • Lubelskie 0:2 (province wins, [17], [18])
  • Lubuskie 3:7 (province wins, [19], [20])
  • Łódzkie 0:0 (draw)
  • Małopolskie 0:0 (draw)
  • Opolskie 0:0 (draw)
  • Podkarpackie 0:5 (province wins, ([21], [22])
  • Podlaskie 3:12 (province wins, [23], [24])
  • Pomorskie 4:9 ([25], [26])
  • Śląskie 0:0 (draw)
  • Świętokrzyskie 2:0 (voivodship wins, [27], [28])
  • Warmińsko-mazurskie 0:0 (draw)
  • Wielkopolskie 2:3 (province wins, [29], [30])
  • Zachodniopomorskie 0:2 (province wins, [31], [32])

I performed a statistical test to check if there are reasons to say that word province is more often used than voivodship. Here is the data and the results:

> P
                    voivodship province
Dolnośląskie                 0        0
Kujawsko-pomorskie           0        5
Lubelskie                    0        2
Lubuskie                     3        7
Łódzkie                      0        0
Małopolskie                  0        0
Opolskie                     0        0
Podkarpackie                 0        5
Podlaskie                    3       12
Pomorskie                    4        9
Śląskie                      0        0
Świętokrzyskie               2        0
Warmińsko-mazurskie          0        0
Wielkopolskie                2        3
Zachodniopomorskie           0        2
> binom.test(cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province)), p = 0.5, alternative = 'less')
       Exact binomial test
data:  cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province)) 
number of successes = 14, number of trials = 59, p-value = 3.265e-05
alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is less than 0.5 
95 percent confidence interval:
 0.0000000 0.3458262 
sample estimates:
probability of success 
            0.2372881

The p-value of 0.00003265 indicates that we can be 99.997% sure that word province is used more often than word voivodship in regard to polish provinces, on website of Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.--Wahwah 09:47, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Doubts

Now I'm really confused about it because it seems like this wrong translation is now widely used (lots of hits on Google), so it's difficult or impossible to change it, while I'm really certain that it's really wrong.--Wahwah 20:20, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In your searches you apparently forgot to check for all variants of the name. For instance, the unit of administrative division in Silesia can be called:
  1. Silesian Voivodship
  2. Silesian Voivodeship
  3. Śląskie Voivodship
  4. Śląskie Voivodeship
  5. Śląsk Voivodship
  6. Śląsk Voivodeship
  7. Slask Voivodship
  8. Slask Voivodeship
  9. Silesia Voivodship
  10. Silesia Voivodeship
  11. Voivodship of Silesia
  12. Voivodeship of Silesia
  13. ... perhaps more...
To get the general idea, compare your search above with the following:
  • Podkarpackie 0:5 (province wins, ([33], [34])
  • Sub-Carpathian 3:1 (voivodship wins, [35], [36])
Anyway, the problem you have with dictionaries is with ambiguity. ALL voivodships are provinces, while not all provinces in the world are voivodships. That's why it is safer to translate the Polish term as province in a dictionary, since it might be used for all cases, while "voivodship" would denote only the Polish traditional unit of administrative division. Get the point? A Pole searching a dictionary for an English equivalent of a Polish voivodship would most likely want to find a universally-applicable version. Halibutt 12:14, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)


By the way, here you have an interesting example of usage of the term province to denote powiat-sized entity. Halibutt 14:11, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Full search of Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs

I was so nice to perform a full search on Google, according to Halibutt's suggestions. I checked: "<province> voivodship" and "<province> province" (those two denoted with _1), and "voivodship of <province>" and "province of <province>" (those denoted with _2), for every province, in both polish and english versions of province names. Both "voivodship" and "voivodeship" spellings were taken into consideration. The search results follow:

Now, after summing it up, we have 69 total hits for voivod(e)ship and 123 for province. Statistical test checks if the sample size is big enough to claim that province is used more often than two other words:

> binom.test(cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province)), p = 0.5, alternative = 'less');
       Exact binomial test
data:  cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province))
number of successes = 69, number of trials = 192, p-value = 5.949e-05
alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is less than 0.5
95 percent confidence interval:
 0.0000000 0.4202916
sample estimates:
probability of success
             0.359375

P-value is very close to zero, indicating that there are reasons to reject hypothesis that voivod(e)ship is used more often than province. With 95% of confidence, we can say that probability of use of word voivodship in any given document regarding polish provinces is between 0 and 0.42. In conclusion, polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs apparently favors word province in regard to polish provinces. --Wahwah 17:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am impressed with the amount of research you did, it is enough for an academic article :) One thing I should clarify: the guideline to use 'voivodeship' is a proposal that is currently being discussed, not an official guideline (yet). Still, as long as this word exists, I prefer to use it - when one hears 'voivideship' one knows instantly it's a Polish province. And note it's not a Wikipedia invention - the over 100,000 worldwide uses of this term show that the harm has been done, it will be hard to put the djinn back in the bottle. Feel free to add some info on this phenomena to the relavant article, and if it's your hobby or professinal area of expertise, try writing an article or something like this (I might have tiem to help you translate and publish it in Polish translator magasine 'Lingua Legis' if you would like). From article on province: In some countries an alternative term is used, such as state (in Australia and the United States), prefecture (in Japan), or region (in France and Italy; the latter uses provincia as a tertiary form of government, akin to a county). Should we insist that state, prefecture, region, etc. are also eliminated? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:40, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
You say: Still, as long as this word exists, I prefer to use it. What do you mean that this word exists? Maybe it exists in the same way as word "ginormous" does (82500 hits) or "confuzzled" (69,200 hits). But it doesn't exist in any major english dictionary. See one of above sections with dictionary checks. I don't think that there are reasons to claim that "voivodship" is a legitimate english word. Regarding the quotation about alternative terms are used in different countries, please note that terms state, prefecture and region are legitimate english words that can be found in english dictionaries. --Wahwah 18:30, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] World search

The list of results for usage of words voivod(e)ship and province in regard to polish provinces:

[edit] Raw results

[edit] Statistical test

> binom.test(cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province)), p = 0.5, alternative = 'less');
       Exact binomial test
data:  cbind(sum(P$voivodship), sum(P$province))
number of successes = 48224, number of trials = 69356, p-value = 1
alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is less than 0.5
95 percent confidence interval:
 0.000000 0.698187
sample estimates:
probability of success
             0.6953111

Statistical test says that there are no resons to reject the hypothesis that word voivod(e)ship is used more often than province on all websites. Therefore, the hypothesis is accepted.

[edit] Further discussion

These results were not in my favor. The word voivodship is widely used in regard to polish provinces. The whole count of usage of this word is 118,000 ([481]). To summarize:

  • Against voivodship, in favor of province
    • Word voivodship doesn't exist in major english dictionaries
    • Most of english speaking people don't know word voivodship, while they know word province and state
    • Meaning of word voivodship is the same as meaning of word province, and it denotes an administrative region of a country
    • Word province is favored by polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their web publications
  • In favor of voivodship
    • Word voivodship is widely used in regard to polish provinces

--Wahwah 19:21, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Would exclusion of Wikipedia and it's mirrors (if you can filter them out) change the result of your test - note it is better to exlude Wiki when we are discussing use of the word on Wiki, where it is prominent ATM? Another test: use Internet archive or Google advanced tools (if possible) to try to calculate if the usage is getting more common with time (pages by year). Btw, are you doing the analysis in excel (if so, could you send me the xls with formulas, or perhaps make it available for download for more users with a guide 'how to'? I'd love to adapt it to some other wiki-related discussions, and I am sure many other users would find a use for it as well. It could be linked from Wikipedia meta-pages as a general tool. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I will eventually try excluding Wikipedia. I posted my script on my Wikipedia user page so you can see if it's of any help for you. I didn't use Excel anywhere in my research, but the results should be easy to import to Excel. --Wahwah 08:32, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I found a nice example: Bulgaria: Since 1999 Bulgaria consists of 28 regions (oblasti, singular - oblast), after having been subdivided into 9 provinces since 1987. So they do have their own word for the province, but they don't try to invent anything like obwhast. They just say region or province.--Wahwah 28 June 2005 08:10 (UTC)
Again, Wahwah, I'm really impressed, but it seems you apparently forgot (?) to check the most popular terms. For instance, you checked "voivodship of Greater Poland" (3), "voivodeship of Greater Poland" (8) and "province of Greater Poland" (330), but you apparently forgot to mention the "Greater Poland Voivodship" (659). Halibutt June 30, 2005 13:58 (UTC)
Wrong. I did include it. Look up, I've made a pointer for you. --Wahwah 30 June 2005 14:35 (UTC)
Ok, sorry, now I see it. So, in this case, the Greater Poland Voivodship beats all other options at least 2:1. Also, there is a number of other problems with your searches. For instance, you've searched for "voivodship of Pomeranian" (1 hit) instead of "voivodship of Pomerania" (19 hits). It doesn't change the fact that "province of Pomerania" (1820 hits) still beats it, but large part (if not most) of links are to sites on pre-1918 provinces and not on actual voivodship (established 1921). On the contrary, the "Pomeranian Voivodship" beats them all by a huge margin (5680 hits), and most links seem to be related to be on the actual Polish unit of administrative division and not some 17th century Swedish fief or 19th century Prussian region. Halibutt June 30, 2005 14:55 (UTC)
My searches aren't perfect, that's for sure. They started, when Piotr Konieczny brought the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an authority (after voivodship), and I wanted to check it. The global search was performed to measure (roughly) current usage of this term, and it proved that it's indeed present on many websites. Now, I'd like to put some order in the discussion. My arguments are written above, and I'd like to know what you think about them.--Wahwah 30 June 2005 15:12 (UTC)
  • Against voivodship, in favor of province
  1. The word does exist in some while it doesn't in others. The reason for that might be the one I already mentioned. Anyway, this is not a dictionary but an encyclopedia and the link to an article on voivodship should suffice.
  2. Similarily, most of English speaking people don't know the word conjunctivitis while they do know the word pinkeye. Which doesn't make the latter term any less accurate or less ambiguous
  3. Meaning of word voivodship is not the same as meaning of word province, as I already pointed out above. Shortly: all voivodships are, logically speaking, provinces. Not all provinces are voivodships. It's a simple method, but it easily lets you check whether two words are exact synonyms or not.
  4. Only in some pages, while others use other versions.

--Halibutt June 30, 2005 16:05 (UTC)

This sounds very nice, but it seems to me that in this discussion I am the only one who supports his theses with examples. (1) Which english dictionaries do contain the word voivodship? (3) Which provinces are not voivodships? If you define voivodship as a polish province, then of course not all provinces are voivodships. For example british provinces aren't, because they're british, not polish. But if you define voivodship as an administrative region of a country, then they seem to me the same (any counterexamples?), because province is an administrative region of a country ([482]). (4) Piotr Konieczny mentioned the Ministry as an authority in this matter and even though they use also term voivodship, they seem to prefer word province. Are there any other authorities available?--Wahwah 30 June 2005 21:24 (UTC)
The way the discussion goes is probably due to the fact that there are only two polish people involved, who vote for using a polish term, and others just don't care about polish administration regions. I think I said everything I had to say in this matter. It's up to you now, if you're going to do anything about it or not. --Wahwah 6 July 2005 10:42 (UTC)
You need to start a discussion on related page if you want to keep the {{moveoptions}} template. Alternatively, you may want to ask for comments at Wikipedia:Requests for comments. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 6 July 2005 14:44 (UTC)
To Wahwah:
Which dictionaries contain the word? For instance Webster's Online and Onet.pl. Also ling.pl, dict.pl (which also uses district as a synonym to it), perhaps more. I must admit I didn't check all of my dictionaries and used only those available online.
Webster's definition of voivodship comes from Wikipedia! I consider this argument invalid. Alternative spelling, voivodeship gives out the Romanian voivodat, which refers to various books on Amazon, all of them written by romanian authors. Conclusion: this cannot be used as a proof that this word is present in english language. The rest of dictionaries you mentioned are polish, and I asked for english dictionaries like, say, Oxford.--Wahwah 7 July 2005 13:05 (UTC)
As to which provinces are not voivodships - it would be easier to list the scarce provinces that are voivodships. However, since you insist... Province of Canada was not a województwo. Neither are Prefectures of Japan, though all of them are, technically speaking, provinces. Same for American and Australian states. Lithuanian Province of Germany was not a voivodship either. States of Germany could also be called "Provinces of Germany", but not "Voivodships of Germany". Also, there is a reson why Voivodships and territories of Canada article does not exist, while Provinces and territories of Canada does. Same for Provinces of Argentina, Provinces of Afghanistan, Provinces of the Netherlands, Provinces of Spain... need more? Halibutt July 6, 2005 16:24 (UTC)
Did you think, why Voivodships and territories of Canada doesn't exist? The explanation is quite obvious to me: this word doesn't exist in english language. And how would you explain to a polish person, what are Provinces of Spain? You would say: "Well, they are just like polish województwo's, they're just spanish..." --Wahwah 7 July 2005 13:05 (UTC)
Not really. Article on Voivodships and territories of Canada doesn't exist for the same reason why there is no page on Gubernyas of Poland or Provinces of Germany. The word voivodship has a very specific meaning and is associated with Poland, not with Canada. Just like you wouldn't call Tennessee a voivodship or a province. Halibutt July 7, 2005 13:27 (UTC)
Waywah, it may interest you to know that in Polish language, województwo is used only to Polish provinces. We have words like prowincja, stan (state), region, prefektura, dystrykt, hrabstwo and others for other country's provinces. Using your logic, however, we should drop them all and use województwo for everything... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 7 July 2005 17:12 (UTC)


[edit] Puzzled

I don't understand the objections to the use of "voivodships." It's the English word for a Polish subnational entity. Words of this sort often aren't well-covered by English dictionaries, so the OED citation is significant. Subnational entities go by lots of different names in different countries. Some places they're provinces, some places they're states, some places they're called by some unique local name. We have, for instance, Oblasts of Russia although oblast is generally regarded as equivalent to "province." I see no problem with this, and I really haven't seen any explanation of why it is problematic. An oblast is an oblast, a voivodship is a voivodship, and a province is a province. Why not call each by its proper name? -- Visviva 15:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Voivodship IS the official word, any half-decent translation comming out of Poland will use the term (unfortunatly there is a lack of decent translations comming out of Poland, so the term is not always used, even when it should be).
I'm not too 100% sure, but arent there regions of Poland which can be described as provinces, but which aren't voivodships? As in "Prowincia" = a region defined by historical and general consensus, "województwo" = a region defined by the authorites, used for administrative purpouses only and subject to change.
There were in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As pl:Prowincja (I Rzeczpospolita) article describes, the term province could be applied to Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Greater Poland and Lesser Poland, each of which was composed of several smaller voivodeships. I will update the PLC article with that terminology. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:21, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
No one would think of using anything other than "département" and "arrondissement" for French administrative districts, (including wikipedia Administrative_divisions_of_France) even though these are not "English words", although through greater usage have become more accepted than "voivodship". Therefore we should accept "voivodship" as the correct usage. --217.153.193.6 15:01, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

The English spelling of voivod(e) varies materially. However, some points seem clear. Terminal -e is common; the OED spells voivode, and lists voivodeship as an attested word. This spelling also seems natural to me as a native speaker of English who has read some Eastern European history. V/w and i/y do vary, so googling will understate the populatiry of voivodeship.

I believe voivodeship to be the English word and spelling, although now used in historical contexts; I would be happier with province for even larger units, like the whole of Silesia. I hope this helps. Septentrionalis 18:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Responding to RfC

  • I see two separate issues here:
1. There's dispute above about whether voivodeship (or voivodship) is an English word. The better view, based on the citations given and on my personal experience as a native speaker, is that it is not. On that basis, province should be used.
2. Assuming for the sake of the argument that voivodeship is an English word, and therefore eligible to be used here, which word is better, voivodeship or province? The latter will be much more familiar to readers.
I conclude that province should be used, but with a note somewhere about voivodeship in case a reader happens to encounter it elsewhere. JamesMLane 04:56, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pushing forward

Looks like I finally received support in this discussion (thanks!). The conclusion of three native speakers is that word province should be used. I'd like to know if this is sufficient for Polish guys here. --Wahwah 18:18, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Umm, I am afraid the supports are quite evenly divided between two cases. At this point in our discussion I am more sure that voivodeship should be used then when it begun... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:43, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Piotr, English native speakers say that this is not an English word!--Wahwah 07:01, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
So far I've only seen arguments that the native English speakers don't know the word, not that it doesn't exist. Anyway, if we move all "provinces" to provinces (including states of the USA and Mexico, departments of France, lands of Germany and oblasts of Russia), then it would be fine with me since consistency is what we need. However, IMHO wikipedia would not benefit from such a move. Halibutt 09:00, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
States, departments and lands are all legitimate English words. I don't know about oblasts of Russia, but look at Bulgaria. They call their provinces "regions" and they note that they are named "oblasti" in Bulgarian language.
Halibutt, it seems to me that you're trying to bring the discussion into absurd. Please, keep with the topic, and the topic is Provinces of Poland.
Wikipedia will definitely benefit from moving Something I don't understand of Poland into Provinces of Poland, because English speaking people will start to understand, what the title means. --Wahwah 12:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
Simple Wikipedia would benefit, but this one would not. The fact that the world is rarely used doesn't mean we should discard it. Some English dictionaries use it, most don't. Some English people know it, most don't. No suprise - majority of people have little reason to know the specific and correct term for majority of specialised concepts. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:04, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
And even the usage of the word in dictionaries proves little as wikipedia is about using proper terms rather than easier-to-understand for an average six-pack-Joe. Finally, would wikipedia really benefit from an article saying that "the Provinces of Poland (commonly referred to in English as Voivodships)... blah-blah"? Halibutt 15:55, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

So, what Wikipedia says about a situation when some guys cannot achieve any agreement? --Wahwah 11:55, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request for comments has been used. In that case, I guess one can make a vote - see Wikipedia:Survey guidelines. Also, this may be solved by a normal vote on Wikipedia:Requested moves. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
I, too, would like to see this changed to "Province". I'd also like to see a wider discussion here, from a larger cross-section of the Wikipedia community. --Elonka 19:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Province inside province inside province ? Sounds stupid

If you want to 'translate' "voivodship" into "province", you have to invent another word for a "province", because the English word province is already used in the article for something else that is called prowicja in Polish, and provincia in Latin. It will sound VERY STUPID that a province of Greater Poland consited of 15 provinces, and the privince of Little Poland considted fo 10 provinces.

English word "province" and Polish word "prowincja" are false friends. AFAIK, Polish word "prowincja" is translated into English as "country". In regard to an administrative region of a country, English word "province" is translated into Polish as "województwo".--Wahwah 14:08, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
You are wrong. Province is translated to Polish language as "prowincja" - most of the times. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Can you translate following sentences into Polish?
I went to country for my vacations.
Gary Doer is a premier of province of Manitoba.
--Wahwah 17:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
In the first example, it would be 'wieś' (village). Wyjechałem na wieś na wakacje. 'Prowincja' is rarely used in this context, although I think it might have been used like this earlier, before the IIWW. In the second sentence, of course 'prowincja' is the right translation. Gary Doer jestet premerem prowincji Manitoba. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 09:22, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
Province and prowincja are not false cognates since both have basically the same meaning and both stem from the same Latin root. The only difference here is that the Polish provinces traditionally are greater than those of other states and are composed of several voivodeships, which in turn are divided onto powiats and communes. Halibutt 06:27, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, Wyjechać na prowincję would sound as ridiculous nowadays as he took his automobile and led it to his manor where his serfs greeted him cheerfully.. :) But indeed, the word prowincja has a number of different meanings (including the headquarters of various monastic orders - prowincja redemptorystów, for instance). BTW, it's a relatively rare case in Polish, such a phenomenon is observed much more commonly in English than in Polish. Halibutt 09:44, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Polish voivodships 1569-1795

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Map showing the voivodships of the Republic of Both Nations
Map showing the voivodships of the Republic of Both Nations

[edit] Province of Greater Poland

[edit] Province of Lesser Poland

[edit] Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Here the first name given is English, then in brackets - Lithuanian, and then Polish.

[edit] Duchy of Livonia

The word voivodship is well established in English language so let it stay as it is now.

I'm sorry, but it isn't. I've never seen an English dictionary containing this word. Someone said that it can be found in one of English dictionaries, but it's not available online. You can't say that some word is well established, when it's not present in English dictionaries.--Wahwah 14:03, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
No dictionary is perfect. There is quite a lot of words, especially restricted to some narrow field of specialisation (like administrative division of Poland) that are not present in a common dictionary. That never stopped people from using them. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't call an administrative region of a country "a narrow field of specialization". --Wahwah 10:17, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
"Voivodeship" (spelled as such, with an "e" between the d and the s) is, in fact, to be found in the OED, defined as " 1. The district or province governed by a voivode." Which doesn't mean that we oughtn't translate it as "province." john k 22:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Using province for voivodship is as correct as using province for US States. Especially as the word voivod(e)ship exists in English language, I see no reason we should not use it. The fact that it is not well known is not a serious argument - this is not simple wiki.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:36, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I have checked every hardcopy English-language encyclopedia and dictionary I have available to me here, but have been unable to find the word "Voivodship" as a listing in any of them (even if they do list "Vojvodina", which is then described as a province). Which dictionaries have you seen it in? --Elonka 00:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Try Oxford English Dictionary - it was mentioned at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 05:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I did some more digging... Looks like the root "voivode" (the title of a military commander) is an alternate spelling of the word "waywode". Dictionary.com does have a listing for "waywodeship" [483], which is described as an office, province, or jurisdiction. As for the claim that "Voivodship" is "well-established" in the English language, I looked really hard, but I just can't find any proof of that, sorry. To be "well-established", it needs to be something that's accessible in a typical dictionary, not something that needs a visit to a large library to even find a listing. I'm afraid that I'm still voting for "province" as the English equivalent of the word "Voivodship". --Elonka 15:53, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Analysis

Here's the analysis of the translations of the word "województwo" and of the specific województwo names, based on different dictionaries, official websites and other sources: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Analysis. Hope it's useful. Ausir 15:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote

A vote on which translation of the Polish word województwo should be used in Wikipedia articles has started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Województwa vote. Ausir 13:02, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Update: After an extensive discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland, the consensus decision is that the word that should be used on Wikipedia is voivodeship. Thanks to everyone that participated! --Elonka 21:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Both versions, "voivodship" and "voivodeship," are crap. If anything, it should be "voievodship." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.134.123.40 (talk • contribs) 17:55, July 23, 2006.

[edit] Against the consensus

  • The official translation of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland at the website of Sejm (Polish Parliament) has voivodship, not voivodeship - see [484] "Article 152: The voivod shall be the representative of the Council of Ministers in a voivodship." NoychoH 01:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge question

Should this article perhaps be merged with Administrative division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Or if not, they need information in their respective lead paragraphs to clarify the differences. --Elonka 17:36, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Voivodships existed before and after the PLC. If anywhere, you probably meant Administrative division of Poland. However considering the long history of the Polish voivodships, and the need for quite a few lists and maps, I am sure that there is good reason to have article on Polish voivodship, both separated from the article on voivodships in general (summarizing the use of this term in various countries) and on Polish administrative division, which should summarize the division on many levels (not only voivodships, but powiats and such).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:17, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] "województwo," "voivod(e)ship," "province"

The Polish "województwo" is that country's second-level unit of national administration, corresponding to other countries' analogous units that are most commonly rendered into English as "province."

The principal reason why there has been some resistance to rendering "województwo" in English as "province" is that, until the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that were completed in 1795, the Polish cognate term "prowincja" had been applied idiosyncratically to several larger political entities, principally Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, and Lithuania.

This impasse is easily enough resolved by rendering "województwo" as "province," and "prowincja" as "Region."

logologist|Talk 08:59, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
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