Talk:Dilbeek

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[edit] Grand Bigard

I know this is a sensitive subject, in Dilbeek more than most places, but if you look at other placenames on wikipedia, such as Liège (city), or Brno, or a host of others, you will see that it is common to give exonyms for placenames without any suggestion that these are "official names" or indeed anything beyond potentially useful information. Most English-speaking historians will know the Sint-Wivina abdij (if they know it at all) as the "Abbey of Grand Bigard" (see, for instance, Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop's Tale. Mathias Hovius among his Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders. New Haven and London: Yale Univesity Press, 2000, pp. 216-230), and the village and abbey appear under this name in many old documents and on many old maps. Furthermore, contrary to a well-intentioned suggestion on my talkpage, some French-speakers in Brussels do actually use "Grand Bigard" (and if they live in the "rue de Grand Bigard" in Sint-Agatha-Berchem they can hardly help it). Given that "Grand Bigard" is one of the historical names for Groot-Bijgaarden, and with no suggestion that it is an "official name", I therefore intend to restore it to the article unless somebody can give a good reason not to. --Paularblaster (talk) 23:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

And just to clarify: I have no intention of adding Schepdael, Bodeghem-Saint-Martin, or Chapelle-Saint-Ulric, because the above points do not apply in those cases. --Paularblaster (talk) 23:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Groot-Bijgaarden

Yes, well of course there are frech-speaking people in Brussels that use the name 'Grand-Bigard', but the fact of the matter is that nowhere in Belgium there are signs or official documents that use the name 'Grand-Bigard' . This is in contrast with your example of Luik/Liège, or, say, Braine-l'Alleud/Eigenbrakel. Braine-l'Alleud is a municipality in Wallonia (en therefore monolingual French), but in Dutch-speaking or bilingual areas it is also called 'Eigenbrakel'. As I said earlier, this is not the case with Groot-Bijgaarden. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Winter1988 (talk • contribs) 11:47, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Nowhere now. An encyclopedia has to have some sense of the past - take another look at Liège and don't read too quickly: it isn't "Luik/Liège" I'm giving as an example, it's "Liège/Luick/Lidje/Luik/Lüttich/Leodium/Liége". Just how many of them are you claiming are in current use on signs and official documents? --Paularblaster (talk) 21:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but there's a huge difference between a name that is used by a very large number of people (like the translation of the names of large cities or areas), and a name that is used by a minority that is so small it can be neglected (in this case, some francophones in Brussels). If we use your logic , Schepdaal (e.g) can also be called 'Skèpdoal', since that's how it is pronounced in the dialects of western Brabant.

Well if you can cite a reputable English-language source in which users of wikipedia are likely to come across "Skèpdoal" (as I have already done to show that they are to come across "Grand Bigard") then yes, it should be added. Can you cite such a source? If not, then WP:V rules out that possibility. Your own comments here seem to indicate that your removal of the information is not motivated by consideration for the users of wikipedia, but by a politicized animus against speakers of French that fails WP:NPOV. --Paularblaster (talk) 20:53, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Do you really think the casual wikipedia user (who happens to come across this page about an unimportant Flemish village) will have heard of the name 'Grand-Bigard'? I find that very hard to believe. Why not add all known Celtic or Germanic names for European regions while you're at it? I'm sure there's an audience for that sort of thing out there somewhere... But most definitely not here on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Winter1988 (talk • contribs) 16:22, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

The same point about wikipedia's verifiability policy applies with regard to Celtic or Germanic names for European regions as applies to "Skèpdoal": if you can cite reputable English-language sources that use them without further explication, then they should be included. If not, then not. Your assumption that people "happen" upon pages in an encyclopedia surprises me. The usual assumption about an encyclopedia would be that a reader looked up an article, having come across a mention elsewhere and wanting elucidation or general information. I've already provided a reference to one reputable English-language publication that uses Grand Bigard, as well as to a Brussels street name, and it wouldn't be too hard to find others (in fact, google turns up this straight away, and Alban Butler uses "Grand Bigard") - anybody wanting to follow up on these will be unable to do so on wikipedia if the word does not appear anywhere here. Further to your suggestion (which I accepted rather too readily) that "Grand Bigard" is not now in current use, a google search (restricted to pages in the English language) comes up with over 4,000 hits, several of them property ads - as current as you could wish for. --Paularblaster (talk) 00:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll take your silence as consensus. --Paularblaster (talk) 14:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)