Talk:Duchy of Oels

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move to English-language title. DrKiernan (talk) 15:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

• Duchy of Oleśnica → Duchy of Oels —(Discuss)— In English source literature, when speaking of the duchy or of the ducal title, the form given is Oels, even when speaking of the Württemburg and Brunswick-Lunenburg/Lüneburg dukes where umlauts tend to be given (although the German article seems to omit this now). Anglosphere sources follow with Olesnica and then Oleśnica. There are many more Duchies of Silesia, but this one particularly stands out as having a predominately English name which differs from the Polish form. —Charles 18:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support As nominator. Charles 18:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as creator, disruptive move (suggest speedy close) - see also Talk:Duchy_of_Oświęcim#Requested_move. The town was known during the times of the Duchy and is known currently as Oleśnica, not Oels.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

  How is this a disruptive move? I made a change at Duchies of Silesia to reflect the English name and when the article didn't reflect that, I put it up for a move. Also, it is important distinction to make (one of language and also one of location (town vs duchy)): What is the duchy known as in English? Charles 18:36, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

  English texts on that period are full of ambiguities, for example, consider how often they talk not of duchy but of principality. The city modern and historical name is clearly established, it is only logical to have the Duchy named after the city.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:44, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Using that argument and rationale, one would have to move the Duchy of Warsaw to the "Duchy of Warszawa". Would that be disruptive? Dr. Dan (talk) 23:05, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Using that argument is nothing but building a straw man.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Not at all, I chose not to vote at the Duchy of Auschwitz move because both sides were unable to produce sufficient evidence to convince me one way or the other. This one is truly a no brainer (with a plethora of English sources using Duchy of Oels, particularly dealing with the Napoleonic era). Let's not waste time, your suggestion for a speedy close, would certainly be in order here. It remains English Wikipedia, and the subject matter has an established English name. Dr. Dan (talk) 23:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• English usage is English usage. They call Oels/Olesnica/etc "Oels" in the English language for that entity. Note also ambiguity, which is accepted I believe, with the Free City of Kraków, known as both a Free City and a Republic. The issue is of course with the territorial designation. This issue isn't new, for instance, with principalities/margraviates of Brandenburg-Ansbach, etc. Charles 18:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Is there any evidence for the assertions given in the move request? Knepflerle (talk) 18:37, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

See below. Charles 18:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

• Support and strongly suggest Knepferle read WP:OWN. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I am familiar with this policy, and do not feel I have violated it in spirit or in letter. I saw a request without enough evidence for me to make an informed decision, asked for evidence, received some, but was not convinced that it was strong enough to support the claim made. I feel that move requests should be judged on the quality of evidence presented rather than the volume of assertions - for accountability, integrity and future justification. Asking for better evidence is what constitutes research. If you feel these actions have caused disruption, please indicate how and ask for comment on my conduct with other users. Knepflerle (talk) 05:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support as this is English Wikipedia & I'm an opponent of diacritics (can't read cubes). GoodDay (talk) 20:38, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support "Duchy of Oels" is the established usage in English-language scholarship. Noel S McFerran (talk) 02:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
  • If you have evidence that this is the established usage (further to that presented below), it would be helpful if you could present it. Knepflerle (talk) 05:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Google is not a God and by the way if you look closer you will find out most of these Oels sources are from the 19th century. We are supposed to build here an encyclopedia for the 21st century. - Darwinek (talk) 12:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Are 45-ish or more not from the 19th century? Charles 13:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• I too was struck by the large number of "old" sources. Such sources do have value, but newer sources are of course better. After refining the search to include only 1950-2007 publication dates, there are still over fifty citations [1] , which is still more than the total citations for any variant of "Oleśnica".Erudy (talk) 17:22, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support After doing my own Google Book test (below), and reviewing evidence presented, I am convinced that English usage favors Oels.Erudy (talk) 17:34, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. Another stab in the dark by User:Charles following his outright failure at trying to move yet another article about an old Polish Duchy to a German title. Please see Talk:Duchy of Oświęcim#Requested_move for details. Meanwhile, Duchy of Oleśnica is a well established name in English literature as proven by Google Book Search, taking into account of course its faulty optical character recognition algorithm. Please remember to click on links to individual titles here to see proper spelling of the name, including Polish diacritics. Meanwhile, the proposed new name is an archaic peculiarity resulting from the partitions of Poland. The Google hits for the city of Oels feature a collections of books and papers published between 1820 and 1875 when Poland did not exist on the political map of Europe. None of these ancient titles represent the complete history of the Duchy. --Poeticbent talk 18:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I clicked on the link given above by User:Poeticbent. There were only FOUR instances where the book mentioned a duchy named Olesnica. That compares with dozens and dozens of instances of a duchy named Oels. Noel S McFerran (talk) 18:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I repeat, Duchy of Oels (here) is mentioned only in about two dozen titles published before the end of nineteen century. The proposed move is based in conclusion drawn from indiscriminate hoarding. Only FOUR books published in the last 57 years mention it.[2] --Poeticbent talk 18:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• And only three books have any form of Olesnica from the same period (there are none with ś). All of them are from Poland, from 1960-76. I would prefer not to make encyclopedic decisions on a handful of Communist-era translation errors. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• This is extremely tiring. Again and again, users get fooled by faulty optical character recognition. All three books have ś in the name of the Duchy, only one little click away. --Poeticbent talk 20:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Yes, it is. I am not arguing Olesnica vs. Oleśnica. I assert that there is no evidence whatever that English-speakers call this the Duchy of Oleśnica at all, or ever have. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

*Support on the evidence as given. The state need not, and probably should not, have the same name as the modern city. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:06, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

• Septentrionalis, you have already cast your vote once, as of 19:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)... right above. Did you forget, or was your second vote meant for the visual effect? --Poeticbent talk 04:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Lost my way in all the discussion in this survey; thanks.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. There's not much in English to go on but historical atlases (e.g. Shepherd) tend toward Oels or occasionally Öls. Using current town names for pre-national polities is a bit neologistic. — AjaxSmack 06:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. The current naming "Duchy of Oleśnica" and non-content of this article is a bad joke, dragged in from pl-Wiki by P.P. who needs to be stopped from continuing his ongoing disruptions, especially regarding the Duchies of Silesia. Only in the early 14th century, the Duchy was associated with Poland, but not the next 500 years, until the "Duchy of Oels" was dissolved in 1884. Only Polish nationalists can dare to speak of a "Duchy of Oleśnica", it's comparable to speak of a "Kingdom of Polen", using the German name in English. -- Matthead  DisOuß   11:12, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Oppose-per Piotrus and Darwinek.--Molobo (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support per provided rationale, I also would like to note that accusations of disruptive move is completely unacceptable here. M.K. (talk) 13:15, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose Some users seem to forget that English and German are different languages. Tymek (talk) 18:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Google Books search

Google Books seems to be of assistance in verifying English usage:

duchy+Oels - 354 results

Comment. Please note, dates of the above listed publications are as follows: 1875, 1866, 1817, 1883, 1843, 1851, 1820, 1850, 1885, 1895, etc. Please, see the complete list of 278 nineteen century publications featured in that seach.Poland did not exist on the political map of Europe in that century. So, you can draw your own conclusions taking into account the ensuing hostility toward Polish sounding names. --Poeticbent talk 22:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

duke+Oels - 637 results

duchy+olesnica - 41 results

duke+olesnica - 36 results

duchy+oleśnica - 3 results

duke+oleśnica - 3 results

Those show nothing whatsoever. I have already demonstrated that Google's optical character recognition is not suitable for looking at diacritic use here, so doing separate searches for Olesnica and Oleśnica demonstrates nothing. Just look at the results for any of them though - how many actually talk about this duchy, and don't just have Oels and, say, duchy just on the same page? A lot of the ones I checked were completely irrelevant. Have you accounted for the multiple occurrences of some of the results, eg from the identical texts from multiple occurrences form the American Cyclopedia? Strong assertions need strong evidence. Knepflerle (talk) 18:56, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

They show something. The letter ś is likely to show up as s per your opinion in the linked page diff. Combining those results, they both fall short of Oels. Going through the results, you can see that Oels is used in the Brunswick titles, etc and shows up in the context of a duchy. Even if they only appear on the same page, it shows Oels is used more in this context and it doesn't prove that Oleśnica is "better". As for multiple occurrences, I have navigate through enough unique results in the search which yielded the most to account for all the other results (unique or not). Charles 19:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I showed that ś may parse as s. It may however parse as something else altogether, or nothing at all. Just as ū sometimes parses as a, o, or is missed altogether. I never said that the problems showed that Oleśnica is better, just that they don't prove that Oels is better. No, a surname is not the same as the duchy name - this is not the duchy of Brunswick-Oels, the most common cause of hits for Oels. And no, being on the same page is nowhere near enough to show they are used in the same context. Capybara and Cape Town are on the same page in some encyclopaedias, but you won't find the first wandering around the second. There may be evidence which proves what you want, but the above ain't it. Knepflerle (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, according to this article, the duchy was sold to the dukes of Württemberg and the dukes of Brunswick-Lunenburg. The reason why the "surname" (it's not a surname) is important still is that it indicates in English that they weren't Württemberg-Oleśnica and Brunswick-Oleśnica ;-) Specifically searching for "Duchy of Oels" and "Duke of Oels" yields 10 to 30 times the results (different with duke or duchy) than Olesnica. Charles 19:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I agree that Brunswick-Oels is somewhat more popular in usage than Brunswick-Oleśnica! I just want to be shown that the preferred usage in the English language specifically for the landmass, independent of it use with Brunswick in titles, is what you claim. Maybe that's stronger evidence than is likely or easily to be produced, but that standard of evidence would be something to point to as unequivocal should this ever be queried in future. Knepflerle (talk) 05:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Knepferle's arguments seem weak. All of the first page of hits on duchy+Oels actually hits on "duchy of Oels" or an equivalent. Searching on that phrase alone gets 38 hits. So there are many such references. On the other hand, most of the results on Olesnica are false positives, the result being Zbigniew of Olesnica; the results on Oleśnica are all in Polish.

If Google failed to distinguish between the two forms of Olesnica, they would return the same results. So I fail to see what Knepflerle's argument is on this point at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

It wold just be nice to come up with a test that removes as many false positives from all sets of data, and does not exclude unfairly other data. Olesnica (one would hope) would always parse as Olesnica. Oleśnica may parse as Olesnica, Oleśnica or Ole*nica, with * standing for any character with some resemblance to ś. It may be skipped altogether if not sufficiently close to a character the OCR knows. So no, they would not return the same results; one is not even guaranteed to be a subset of the other. Knepflerle (talk) 05:46, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Google Book

• "duchy of Oels" 38 Large number of citations from "old" sources, but also includes very recent ones as well. In my mind establishes tradition of usage and confirmation of its continuation.
• "duchy of Olesnica" 3 Consisting of works from 1960's and 1970's, including one in Polish that mentions D.O.O. in English summary, and the others published by Polish state tourism organs, it appears.
• "duchy of Oleśnica" 0

This evidence was convincing to me Erudy (talk) 17:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

• Comment Were the people and rulers of this Duchy mono-ethnically or mono-linguistically Polish during its existence? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 15:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• No. Poles were certainly a majority at first, but due to germanization the German speakers became at the very least a significant minority; there was also very likely some Jewish population, too. Closer to 20th century it was common for those regions to have a mostly Germanized city surrounded by Polish-speaking rural regions. PS. There is also the question of Silesians and Silesian language. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

• Quite right, but the question here is the English language. Dr. Dan (talk) 19:03, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Nope, Pndapetzim asked a different question. //Halibutt 22:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

That question was answered. The question concerning the English language has not been however. As long as you're here, do you think that the preponderance of evidence in English sources points to Oels or Olesnica? Dr. Dan (talk) 18:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.