Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Basque/Basque toponyms

Question

Currently a little confused, are you proposing the official name be put into the article title itself? or just in the introductory sentence? If the latter then you don't need to propose this as this is already being done, example Delhi. If you wish to place it in the title then I would advise against that and just stick to WP:NC:CITY. In general unless a wikiproject is breaking an existing guideline then it's fine to write a guide for how to organize an article without having it approved by the larger community. - Tutmosis 14:43, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

• Essentially this whole proposal is designed for the case of Guernica (city) / Gernika-Lumo, as will be seen from the talk page of that article and Bombing of Gernika. In the case of Guernica there is a common English name, despite the small size of the town. You are right to say it is not necessary; no other cases are likely to give rise to difficulty. Johnbod 17:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No. The trigger may have been the dispute on that article but the problem was there long before and some people in this project had already talked about it, even if briefly. Personally (as proponent) I had clear that this discussion had to take place sooner than later because it's a complex issue and some normalization (guideline) was/is very necesary.

There are many other cases that may cause problems and the English names (when they exist at all) are not the main cause of conflict normally. For most Basques it is normal to write down their toponyms in Basque spelling (wether official or not) no matter what language is being used. So we say Lizarra (not Estella), Gasteiz (not Vitoria-Gasteiz) or Iruñea (not Pamplona), no matter what language we're speaking in. This also applies to regional (provincial) names and even to the Basque Country that is most commonly rendered as Euskal Herria. Nevertheless it's not a 100% uniform trend and political preferences and mere custom may influence the particularl renderings of each person, depending on the case.

If you look at the odd cases, there are a lot of them: Donostia (why not San Sebastian?), Álava (why not Araba or Alava?), Vitoria-Gasteiz (why not just Vitoria?). Some sort of standards must be created and therefore I have put forward this proposal for discussion and eventual consensuation of an official guideline.

Guipuscoa (allegedly the English name) has just been moved to Gipuzkoa (Basque and official name)- the more recent example of the chaos surrounding Basque toponymics. --Sugaar 06:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

(Reply to Tutmosis): WP:CITY is utterly ambiguous and what actually does is to redirect you to a zillion of particular regional guidelines. I found no real guidelines in that guideline, so the logical next step was to create the regionally adapted guideline.

The proposal is to basically to follow the official name when there's no valid English one or when there's reasonable doubt about it. In some cases the official name is Basque, in others Spanish or French and in others it's bilingual. It's a local matter.

In some cases, physical geography, Northern Basque Country provinces, there's no official name. Here I suggest that, in absence of a well estabilished English name, the most commonly used by the locals should be used here too.

At least we will have some criteria and not the chaos we live on now. --Sugaar 06:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. My view (as an english-speaker with no particular knowledge of Basque issues) would be that Guernica, Pamplona and San Sebastian pass the "well established English name" test, which as you rightly say should be the criterion. Vitoria and Guipuscoa are border-line, but personally I do not object to the local names being used. For the rest the policy is I think right. In general (ie globally) I am a bit sceptical about official municipal names that are double-barrelled, like Gernika-Lumo or Vitoria-Gasteiz. Is this what the local road-signs have? - is my test on this. I asked this about Gernika-Lumo on that talk page ages ago, and never got a reply. Johnbod 16:14, 31 January 2007 (UTC)