Talk:Kiev/Naming issue Archive06 (mostly finished by mid-2006)

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Summary of older discussions over names in the articles

For those who are too lazy to read older discussions here is a quick summary. Polish names probably exist for every city of Ukraine. There are three ways how they can apply.

1. For some cities, their Polish name is so important that it may be found in English texts even nowadays (Lviv/Lwow/Lvov/Lemberg). For such cities it needs to be placed in the very first line of the article, except perhaps when the article has a name etymology piece close to the top where similar names are listed and explained (current solution at Kamianets-Podilskyi). In such articles all names except native are given within etymology discussion.
2. For some cities, while much of the Polish history still applies to them, they are never, or almost never, called nowadays by their Polish names in English language texts. Examples are Kiev/Kyiv/Kijow, Chernihiv/Chernigov/Czernihow, Kaniv/Kanev/Kaniow, etc. Polish name should be used for such cities in the history sections (like Voivodship name) but not in the first line, because otherwise (like for Kiev) any name of any country that ever conquered it (Lithuanian, German, Crimean Tatarian, Swedish, whatever was the Khazar language, Cuman, etc.) deserves the place in the first line. Similarly, Варшава, Белосток, Краков, at times conquered and controlled by Russia, by this token would need to be mentioned in the first lines of the respective articles (and I know some of our Polish friends will not take it lightly). This would be clutter and/or bad blood. We have a separate list article called Names of European cities in different languages for this information.
3. Finally, for some cities in Ukraine (Sevastopol, Kramatorsk) Polish name is totally irrelevant.

The same rule of thumb applies to Russian names. However unfortunate it may seem for some, many Ukrainian cities are mentioned in English by their Russian names occasionally even today (Kharkiv/Battle of Kharkov, Chornobyl/Chernobyl accident), etc. So, there are more Russian names than Polish ones in the first lines. I hope I captured everything. Do read archives, if interested. --Irpen 17:43, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Good as long as we're all clear on this. -Iopq 23:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

This was an implied consensus. However, it was never voted or formally approved, unlike Gdansk/Danzig dispute. If most agree on this, I could set up a page for up and down vote on this proposal so that edits in violation of consensus (if reached) could be reverted on sight similar to Gdansk/Danzig vote results. Any objections to trying to run such a survey? --Irpen 03:37, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and of course we need to establish in advance the criteria of establishing sufficient English usage. I propose the following:

1. check other respected encyclopedia such as Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Microsoft Encarta. What names they mention early on?

   The only issue I'd like to raise about using other encyclopedias is if we do so extensively (and as I've seen, many articles source other encyclopedias as source), it almost becomes pointless to write the article in the first place. Why not just say "Read Brtiannica"? And further, doesn't it become a copyright issue, also? -- mno 01:47, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

2. Check the current media usage. Search engines are LexisNexis, Google News, maybe others...
3. An good old google test but only among English language web-pages.

Does the list seem objective and unbiased? --Irpen 03:58, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. I can see how this would apply to article titles, but can we extend it to include the secondary names too?

I would add that the default titles for Ukrainian place names on Wikipedia have generally been spelt using the simplified National transliteration system (see Romanization of Ukrainian). Notable exceptions are the well-known names Kiev, Odessa, Dnieper, but not Kharkiv, Lviv. —Michael Z. 2005-10-11 15:52 Z

PS: let's not create any templates of domination. —Michael Z. 2005-10-11 21:04 Z

I am also against domination templates. To Michael's question on how this would apply not only to article's titles but also the secondary names, my view is the following. First of all, primary names (titles) are more or less settled now. Except of Kiev, Odessa, some cities of Crimea (as well as the name Crimea itself), Dnieper, Southern Bug (maybe there are a couple of more examples but I can't think of any off hand) the Ukrainian name is primary and the article is entitled by its transliterated version. This is already determined via the criteria listed above by looking for the most common English usage and finding that for the places of UA, except those listed above, the most common usage name coinsides with the transliterated Ukrainian name. In a similar way, we can determine an existence of the usage for the secondary name. EB article for Kharkiv is called Kharkiv, but introduces Kharkov in the first line. EB article on Lviv introduces Russian, Polish and German names, EB's Chernivtsi introduces Romanian, Russian and German. I am not saying we should just copy Britannica. If we find via methodes 2 and 3 that other names (Czernihów) are used in modern English we will also add them to the first line.

Let me repeat that the issue here is not the usage of the names in the article in appropriate context Czernihów Voivodship but what names should be mentioned in the first line. I want to settle the issue not because I want to remove some particular names, but because settling this would help consistency, reduce clutter (explained in the beginning of this section) and put an end to a very popular type of edit wars over this. So, any objections to putting this proposal up for a vote? I will then set a separate page for this. Thanks! --Irpen 04:17, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is one more related question. Which name should be used in the text. Should it be the title of the article, excluding probably some historial names like Kijow Voivodship?--AndriyK 11:37, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You are correct that here are three issues: what name to use for the article's title (settled earlier practically for all Ukrainian places), the name(s) to mention in the first line and the name to use within the articles. We are not deciding the latter issue right now, but a rule of thumb is to use the name that is used in modern English L. history books that write about that particular period. This tradition is broader than WP. Check for instance WW2 books terminology. However, this discussion for now is only about the names to be listed in the first line as alternative names. --Irpen 02:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I've been reading old discussions and it seems the trend is to beginning to emerge to write it as Kyiv. More new webpages on google write it as Kyiv. But since so many old webpages remain, it will take a long time before Kyiv becomes the most popular google spelling. Compared to 2003, the ratio between Kyiv and Kiev has shrunk considerably. Even in a few months that I spend looking it seems Kyiv gained on Kiev. We should begin thinking about when we plan to rename the article to Kyiv. -Iopq 10:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

What we are discussiong right now are the rules of the game not the particular name. When Kyiv prevails in English L usage, we will move the article. What matters much more than google test, is the major media test as well as other online reference sources, like Britannica and Oxford. I proposed Kharkov->Kharkiv and Lugansk->Luhansk myself as you can see if you read the earlier discussions. Let's just all agree on the general rules first and discuss the applications for particular cities separately. --Irpen 16:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Remember: Wikipedia:Use English. What about use inside article? Let me add a comment based on personal experience: there are new Polish names waiting for English/Russian/Ukrainian versions in the Dymitriads article. I find it useful to keep Polish names in the article (after first instance of use, following English of course), since they are useful when one wants to research some stuff in Polish (many of my articles are based on transltion from Polish and I find it mighty useful to have Polish name mentioned in the articles). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 04:55, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

This is not about the use inside of the articles as I said above. This is only about the first line. Besides, we have a great list of Names of European cities in different languages. Use inside the articles is a separate issue. --Irpen 04:59, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

At the present time, Kiev is the name the Beeb uses, for whatever that's worth [1]. Shimmin 17:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

More Kiev Kyiv

Use English in all. We've had this debate as it relates to the names of Irish towns. Irish Gaeilge just doesn't work no matter how many Irish speakers the town has.

I just left a message for a user at Commons that: while I supported his change of the article to Kyiv (Commons is an interlingual resource), I felt insulted by his assertion that "Kiev" was an American spelling. After checking with Australian, British and Canadian news outlets, all major English speaking nations use the spelling "Kiev". In fact, there's a fascinating article about it here from Canadian Broadcasting Company]. ℬastique▼^parℓer♥^voir♑ 22:17, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Please keep in mind that Kyiv is an alternate English spelling, and not merely a Ukrainian transliteration or a neologism. It is still used by some English-language media in English-speaking countries, is has been used in English-language publications since at least a couple of decades in my experience, and is an alternate headword referring to Kiev in my Canadian Oxford Dictionary —Michael Z. 2006-02-06 23:24 Z

What I don't understand is if most Kievans actually use Russian instead of Ukrainian, why would we want to reject the English form? Is it just because the Ukrainian government promotes the Ukrainian language? - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 23:38, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Kiev is a Russophone city and strictly the Russian would be Kiyev. So Kiev is a long-established English spelling like Moscow and Warsaw. --Kuban Cossack 00:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

So why, if the city is Russophone and there is an established English-spelling, is there any movement to call it by the Ukrainian name? I mean, if the Ukrainian executive government decided to actually reflect the de facto status of Russian in its various regions and changed its spelling of the city to Kiyev, would we have to move the article again? Seems like a silly argument. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 00:58, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well what goes in the minds of certain Ukrainian government officials I would not take kindly to explain on this talk page and that's the main argument of Ukrainization. Of course suppose Russian becomes also a state language (which is quite possible given the recent SMS referendum and the opinion polls showing support for Parties that do currentely exhibit Russian as second official language), it will not change anything since Kiev is still the most widespread spelling in the world. --Kuban Cossack 01:15, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Guys, this debate takes more than half of all the article's related discussion and archives. Please see the message on top of this page about checking the archives first. Should we start a subwage of this talk on the issue? Like Talk:Kiev/naming issue. Or maybe someone would write an article English spelling of the capital of Ukraine whose talk will be used for all this? This is all discussed and settled for now. Let's discuss other article's improvements. --Irpen 01:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi everyone,

I am a new person at Wickipedia, made first edits a few days ago. My interest here for now is confined to Ukraine. Having read a good deal of various parts of the Kyiv vs Kiev debate here, I do not agree with those supporting the spelling "Kiev", and to that effect, I also do not agree in the slightest with what appears to be the current Wickipedia policy for resolving such issues (i.e., using "the prevailing usage form of a word in English"). There are strong reasons why I think this is not a sensible policy, and there are even stronger arguments for using Kyiv and not Kiev; but for now I am not going to go into that. My question now is procedural: to help save my time searching through all the rules and guides of Wickipedia, can someone please tell me what is the formal procedure that one would have to follow to change the spelling of "Kiev" to "Kyiv"? Your answer is much appreciated. Please note that I've seen the mentioning of some poll that was carried out here, and comments saying that the issue "is closed for now". My question is exactly about how to re-open this issue, conduct a new poll preceded by a new debate etc etc - a mechanism that can, procedurally, lead to this change.

Thank you, Serhiy 12:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Serhiy. As you probably already understood by now, "Kiev" spelling is used per Wikipedia's "use English" guideline. If you are really serious in your desire to have it amended, a good starting point for you will be Wikipedia:How to create policy, which should take care of most of your procedural questions. You may also review the Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which will provide additional information as to why the things are the way they are. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) • (yo?); 17:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Ezhiki, thank you. I don't think much of the current WP policy on this issue, but I do appreciate your reference to some info on how to change it. In fact, my concern is perhaps even less with the policy per se, but just with the application of that policy - how do you actually know that "Kiev", and not "Kyiv", is the most commonly used word? (But then even if it is, the change in policy would come first to the agenda). By the way, some further discussion on this has started to form at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Serhiy#Kiev.2FKyiv, where I also expand a bit more my view on some of the reasons for the change. Serhiy 17:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the English spelling is "Kyiv" - per the Ukraine government. The UN and other international diplomatic organizations have already accepted the change. Eventually it will filter down to places like Wikipedia. They're a little resistant to change here. Though I suppose that is inevitable when someone is done by committee. --SpinyNorman 16:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Ukrainian government has no authority over the English language. It has an authority of the UA-gov organizations, who follow its order and use Kyiv in the documents they issue. It also has a right to ask other governments to follow, which most do. Neither of those determine the English usage and the media is the best indicator of the latter. Once (and if) it makes it to the mainstream media, both EB and WP would change the name. --Irpen 21:27, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the Ukraine government do have the authority to decide the proper spelling for the names of their cities - in whatever language they see fit. The idea that popular ignorance and intellectual laziness should be the determining factor in issues like this is absurd. --SpinyNorman 05:55, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

So you are saying that spelling it "Kiev" is dumb? Until the Ukrainian government is a world superpower, most of the world won't care what it suggests. I've always known of the city as Kiev, now whether my children learn it as Kyiv is not for me to decide. 203.218.135.24 17:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Not "dumb", just ignorant. Superpower or not, the Ukraine government have made their position on the correct spelling of the city's name abundantly clear. Sadly, there are a few people here at wikipedia who, in their arrogance, prefer their ignorance to fact. --SpinyNorman 06:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I would in fact say that no government on earth has authority over any language. Language is governed by usage. So all one can say is that the official English spelling of the name as sanctioned by the Ukrainian government is <Kyiv>. However, it is not even the only official spelling, as the US State Department uses <Kiev> (see [2]), and the British Foreign Office uses both spellings, with <Kiev> in the first place (see [3]). For an English-language encyclopedia, the usage inside the English-speaking countries has to have priority. --Daniel Bunčić 09:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Language is NOT governed by usage. If that were the case, there would be no point of something like a dictionary. The US State Department's decision to not respect the Ukraine government's wishes has nothing to do with the actual spelling of Kyiv. The fact remains that the Ukraine government has to right to decide how the names of their cities are spelled. There is no "official" spelling outside the Ukraine government. --SpinyNorman 03:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

In a modern world, what you look up in an orthographic dictionary is how the educated majority writes. If there is no clear majority, you find variants: For example, the 1993 edition of Webster's New Encyclopedic Dictionary on my bookshelf gives three spellings for boatswain (<boatswain>, <bos'n> and <bosun>), two for codeine (<codeine> and <codein>), two for the past form of to duel (<duelled> and <dueled>) etc. In its appendix "Nations of the World", however, you find only the following two spellings of Kiev: <Kiev> and <Kiyev>, the latter marked as "Russian". That is, at that time <Kyiv> was not usual.

Of course the Ukrainian government has the right to decide on spelling, and it can make government authorities use these spellings, and there have also been several attempts in history to force citizens to use a certain form of language by means of a law that punishes misuse (e.g. the use of foreign words or of a forbidden language). A government can also refuse to sign treaties with other countries if these treaties contradict the government's language policy. But a government has no legitimate power whatsoever over citizens of other countries. And most English speakers are not citizens of Ukraine.

--Daniel Bunčić 06:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Clearly the Ukraine government has no enforcement authority over how people spell the name of their cities. All they can do is establish the correct spelling. If some people in the world prefer ignorance and arrogance, that's their business. Of course, it doesn't make them right. --SpinyNorman 06:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

What is 'right', then? This seems to be a rather pre-democratic understanding of what a norm is: Correct is what the government says? No, for me there are higher authorities in linguistic issues than governments. I respect democratically elected governments, but they have been elected for making politics, not for meddling in the way I speak and write and for telling me what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. Linguistic norms are made by the people who speak and write (in a very complicated way, see Rudi Keller, On language change, London 1994, ISBN 0-415-07672-2), and we pay dictionary makers (by buying their dictionaries) for finding out what can be considered 'right' and what 'wrong'. --Daniel Bunčić 08:42, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Be serious for a second. If the Ukraine government decided that it didn't like the whole idea of "silent letters" in English words and banned them, people would just laugh and ignore them. They have no authority over that aspect of the language. They do, however, have the authority to decide how the name of a Ukraine city is spelled. That's one of the things governments do. Just because people are too lazy or stupid to respect a change, that doesn't make the change invalid. here's a better question, why do we call the country "Sri Lanka" instead of Ceylon? Go ahead... type "Ceylon" or "Bombay" or "Siam", etc. ad nauseum into wikipedia and see what happens. You get redirected to the new spelling yet many some people still use the old spelling - quite a few people in the case of "Bombay". --SpinyNorman 18:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

That's just what I'm trying to say: Names are a part of language! See Exonym and endonym on how that works.
Or let's make a test: Let's elect governments who will claim that in Ukrainian, Köln (in fact English Cologne, which the German government should prohibit!) has to be spelled Кöлн, not Кельн, that New York has to be spelled Ну Йорк, not Нью-Йорк, and that both Washington and Washington, D.C. have to be written Уошінґтен, not Вашингтон or Вашинґтон. You know what the Ukrainians would tell our governments? "That's none of your business!" And they would be right. --Daniel Bunčić 06:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The Exonym and endonym article explicitly mentions the controversial aspect of usign exonyms, expressly mentioning Côte d'Ivoire and Ankara.
It seems very clear that the spelling of Kyiv in English is and will remain controversial, repeatedly bringing the article up for debate. Other articles, like the aforementioned Côte d'Ivoire and Ankara, as well as Mumbai, Ceylon and others, deal with the controversy respectfully by allowing the place name to be spelled as the sovereign city/state spells it itself.--tufkaa 20:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The cases of Bombay/Mumbai and Ceylon/Sri Lanka have nothing to do with exonyms. The city was officially renamed on 4 May 1995, and the state was proclaimed as Sri Lanka in 1972 (after being a British colony under the name of Ceylon). Ankara is just the common name for the city, I have never heard any other (except in texts about classical times). As to Côte d'Ivoire, I have never really understood this. In German, everyone continues to call that country Elfenbeinküste, just as we say Kiew. --Daniel Bunčić 21:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

So is it your belief that renaming a city/state overrules the power to apply an exonym? How does that work? What are the boundaries as they pertain to renaming? For instance, was not Kyiv renamed when Киев stopped being an official name of the city?--tufkaa 22:17, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

No, and that's the point. K__v was NOT renamed. Renamed was Stalingrad (Volgograd), Dnepropetrovsk (Yekaterinoslav) and Luhansk (Voroshilovhrad). Kiev was never renamed. It has walays been Київ in Ukrainian, Киев in Russian, Kiew in German and Kijow in Polish. Switching from one version of the same name to another doesn't create any renaming. We are choosing not between the old and the new name of the same city but between several English versions of the same name. There is no English version of the city name in the Russian language, there is no English version in Ukrainian language (the versions in these languages are in Cyrillic). None of these versions (Kiev/Kyiv) are "incorrect". They are both correct. We are deciding which one to use in Wikipedia based on prevailing usage and sometimes a secondary usage, if in certain context the current usage still differs from the prevailing one.

Examples of the latter case is Chernihiv. Both the media search and other encyclopedia search confirms that Chernihiv is prevailing usage and the article is called as such. OTOH, the majority of even modern texts devoted to the Kievan Rus times use Chernigov (see for instance this new book published as late as in 2003: *Martin Dimnik, The Dynasty of Chernigov, 1146-1246, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521824427. So, the articles are Chernihiv city, but Oleg of Chernigov. Similarly Lviv but Lwow Uprising, etc. As far as Kiev is concerned there is no context in which Kyiv currently prevails in the English language literature, so even that would not apply.

Our naming convention WP:NC(UE) says: "Use the most commonly used English version of the name as you would find in other encyclopedias". That's pretty much sums it up. Nothing helps determine the most common usage like the major media and to this day it is Kiev. When the city (or the country) really gets renamed, that is more likely to affect the media usage, the major encyclopedias (Britannica, Columbia) would soon follow and Wikipedia should as well. If K__v is renamed, god forbid, to anything else, be it "Ukrayins'k", "Russkiy Gorod" or "Granica Polska" that would have been a different story. If, OTOH, the major media and other encyclopedias switch the usage to Kyiv with time, we will do so in no time. For now, restrict your arguing to the usage analysis and not to what name is "right". They both are right. --Irpen 23:12, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of other encyclopedias, Encarta has the article under "Kyiv". — Alex ^(T|C|E) 06:11, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Merger

I propose that these articles be merged, Section 10 on Kyiv doesn't make any sense and Kiev is better presented. The talk pages are merged already on these articles so why aren't the source pages.

88.108.68.252 21:49, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I restored the redirect at Kyiv; there wasn't anything worth merging.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 22:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)