Talk:Grisons

English name

I know one already discussed this in 2005, but I see that the article uses both names in the introduction such as "Grisons" and "Graubünden" but officially, the English world is rather using only "Grisons". Therefore, should it be rather more accurate to use "Grisons" and "Graubünden" in the introduction but putting "Graubünden" in second place and using rather "Grisons" in the main article ? Let's keep in mind that the Umlaut doesn't exist in English so the name would rather be "Graubunden" without Umlaut and sources on the web are using "Grisons", such as:

• The official English website of the Canton itself
• The Guardian, UK
• MySwitzerland - though they use the also the German version with Umlaut in English
• Cambridge University Press
• Yahoo about the 2022 Winter Games' bid
• The Tourist Office of the Grisons - though they use the also the German version with Umlaut in English

Would it be problematic to rather use therefore in the whole article "Grisons" and mention "Graubunden" (with no Umlaut therefore) in the introduction such as : "Grisons or Graubünden ... is the largest and easternmost... " ? This is not a proposal to change the name of the article. It's a proposal to rather use the official noun "Grisons" throughout the article. The 2005 archived discussion was short and brief but the above websites (Tourism, Official site of Canton, etc) are to me pretty significant for the use of "Grisons". :)

The discussions in 2005 also stated that "Britannica" was using "Graubünden" but it seems that it's using both in other articles related to the canton... Ngagnebin (talk) 02:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it is better to stick with "Graubünden" in the article (and wikipedia in general) unless we move the page under another name, otherwise we may confuse the reader a bit. About "Graubunden" (without the umlaut), if you want to mention it in the lede, you probably need to provide a solid reference to back up that spelling. Having said that, I have nothing against using "Grisons" as title since it is the well-established English name (unlike the umlautless "Graubunden") and probably the most neutral way to refer to a trilingual region. But naturally such a rename should go through a formal move request. mgeo talk 20:17, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I think a move to "Grisons" with a redirect from "Graubünden" seems appropriate, for the reasons Ngagnebin stated, but especially because the canton itself seems to be officially using the name "Grisons" in English. I think the general convention in English-language journalism is to go with the English name preferred by the entity itself, if there is one — I'm old enough to remember when "the Ukraine" became just "Ukraine" and when "Byelorussia" became "Belarus" — but for all I know, Wikipedia may have a different convention. I also agree about not using "Graubunden" without the umlaut; and anyway, if you need to avoid the umlaut, you insert an E, so it would be "Graubuenden" if anything. — Goueznou, 173.77.103.129 (talk) 18:40, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Here's a couple of touristy sites that use Graubünden

• The Swiss portal
• Graubünden.ch

also, a google search comes up with 14,000,000 hits for Graubünden, with only 2,140,000 hits for Grisons. Of course Graubunden (without the umlaut) gets 1,900,000 hits, but I think that's just lazy writing. Of course google results aren't the ultimate authority, but they do seem to show a preference for Graubünden. Tobyc75 (talk) 22:45, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for all your comments. So it seems that « Graubuenden » wouldn't make it but refering first to « Grisons » and then to « Graubünden » would be ok. I agree on your two examples, Tobyc75, but that might have something to do with what one could call some « germanification » on the English language in Switzerland. Many times, Swiss-german people are working and translating websites from German into English. For the English translation, they just use the German name they know and they're used to. One therefore finds « Bern » instead of « Berne », one even sometimes finds « Genf » in English when its official name in English is still « Geneva »... One also reads « Basel » in "English" instead of « Basle » and often "Luzern" instead of a correct English spelling of « Lucerne ». These examples are even described, live, on Wikipedia such as here under the Dateiversionen's description: Coat of arms of the canton of Genf ;) Another great example of germanification is for the SBB-CFF-FFS, the Swiss Federal Railways. In English, they decided to call themselves «Schweizerische Bundesbahnen». They use therefore the « SBB » everywhere on their English pages. They assume that CFF-FFS is not English, but SBB is, when the actual and literal translation would be SFR (Swiss Federal Railways)... By the way, it's interesting to see that the description of the Coat of Arms of the Canton on the English Wikipedia states «English: Coat of arms of the canton of Grisons, Switzerland (since 1933)» and as some of you did mention it as well, the officiel authorities of the Canton itself refer to the term « Grisons » on their English official webpages and internet presence. The google results are showing some in a higher percentage just because of the fact that they take in account the ... german pages too. So of course, the German noun « Graubünden » will always be in a better position. You can use the google.com in English and write « Suisse » and « Schweiz » and you'll see the second one is more used. It doesn't mean « Schweiz » shouldn't be the English name for Switzerland :) So do you think it's worth a formal move request ? Or just changing in the article " Grisons or Graubünden..." and then only use " Grisons " ? :) Ngagnebin (talk) 05:35, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

A move is a bit premature, I don't think anything has been decided. The "Germanification" is no different than the "Frenchification" (is that even a word??) that happened to Swiss locations in the early 20th century. The fact that the German names are starting to be used more simply means the German version is becoming common. However, both names are used. If there was a clear majority then by the WP:COMMONNAME policy we should use that name. The google search indicates that Graubünden is more common than Grisons, which while not definitive, indicates that only a minority prefer the name Grisons. The argument that we should use Schweiz as the article name is also covered in the Common name policy, "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources". There's no equivalent to the English Switzerland for Graubünden, so we need to use the most common or easily recognizable name. As for what is used on Wikipedia under the Coat of Arms, that's meaningless. I could edit the caption and then argue that it supports my point of view. Finally, why use the French "Grisons" for a canton where the majority speak German. That makes as much sense as calling Geneva, Genf. Tobyc75 (talk) 16:13, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Not that I want to get deeply involved in a new discussion on this, but I found something interesting using Google Ngram Viewer. Searching the corpus of English books actually shows "Grisons" as being more common than "Graubünden" and "Graubunden" combined. --Terfili (talk) 13:35, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

given that the move was made, is it worthwhile to change Graubuenden to Grisons in other articles? Richardson mcphillips (talk) 15:31, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think changing one acceptable variant for another acceptable variant is necessary, as long as usage is consistent across a specific article. That move didn't really follow a proper discussion or consensus anyway, and the whole issue seems to come down to individual preference, without a clear pattern of usage in English. Let's just respect whatever variant the people writing articles about Grisons/Graubünden topics prefer, just like we respect the usage of people who write articles about topics related to sofas/couches. --Terfili (talk) 14:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

As a native English speaker in Switzerland I would only ever use Graubünden, and I'm pretty sure that holds true for every other anglophone I know both in French and German speaking Switzerland when speaking in English.

Why would you use the French version for a canton that doesn't speak French? In literally every other case we use the majority language of the canton. We don't call Basel "Bale". We don't call Ticino "Tessin" or Geneva "Genf". 84.73.72.12 (talk) 16:45, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

English speakers commonly write/say "Lucerne" rather than "Luzern" too. From what I remember, several Swiss place names entered English through French in the 19th century, and Lucerne and Grisons stuck around. The reason seems quite simple: easier to read and pronounce. --Terfili (talk) 20:38, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

But Lucerne / Luzern is more of a spelling difference than anything else.

The pronounciation is similar. 213.55.224.200 (talk) 19:23, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Rumantsch Grischun

.... has supposedly 'been slowly accepted'. This would mean the same as 'gradually accepted', which I don't believe is the case - this artificial hybrid version of Rumantsch seems to have been widely resisted. I think this should read 'been accepted slowly' (the different word order is crucial), or even 'been accepted only slowly'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.163.73.142 (talk) 15:52, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

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