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See also further requested moves & discussions about titles for the municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region:

— SomeHuman 1 Feb2007 22:27 (UTC)

French names

I'm not agree whit the fact that all the names of the 19 cities in Brussels-Region are in French on Wikipedia EN. Their all original dutch names and the french name is not more important than the dutch name. It should been Ixelles - Elsene (like it was BTW) not only Ixelles for example. — 81.240.94.150 • talk • contribs – 21 Jun2005 14:57 (UTC) (was unsigned, undated) + 81.241.3.123 • talk • contribs – 21 Jun2005 15:55 (UTC) (also unsigned, undated; more-or-less corrected a few words in this comment without changing its intended content)

I Agree. For South Tyrol, another bilingual area, all the titles have a bilingual form. See for examples Communes of South Tyrol. I think this should be done for the communes in the Brussels Region too. The Dutch names are officially equal to the French names, like in South Tyrol the German and Italian names, so let's show that in the titles and make it e.g. Ixelles - Elsene or Woluwe-Saint-Pierre - Sint-Pieters-Woluwe. Like it's already shown in the table and the template on this page. Diemietrie 10:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I requested a move of all communes with both a French and a Dutch official name from the French title to a bilingual title as described above. Diemietrie 10:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

An Englishman, having lived in Brussels for almost a decade and speaking both French and Dutch, and taking an interest in Belgian community issues, I would stress that Brussels has a very large English-speaking community and that within it the words for the 19 Communes (we never say Gemeente) are exclusively the French ones. Flemings may not like this fact and may (or may not) be justified in thinking so, but the fact remains that the French names are the ones in actual usage in English in Brussels. In the same way, the name for Finland in English is Finland (not Suomi/Finland) despite Finland being the name of the country in a local minority language (Swedish). — 82.181.242.2 • talk • contribs – 6 Jun2006 06:31 (UTC) (was unsigned, undated)

I'm another English guy who lives in Brussels. The large English speaking population (not necessarily native English speakers) exclusively use the French names. Putting both the French and Dutch names together would be awkward. Most people in Brussels speak French. Depending where you live English or Dutch is the second language used. No body would ever suggest anglicizing the place names except maybe "Brussels". — 62.235.240.113 • talk • contribs – 10 Oct2006 15:30-17:14 (UTC) (was unsigned, undated)

Requested move

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Oppose. Keep them under one name or the other and mention both names on the first line of the article. Use a redirect for the other name. No one is going to seach on "Saint-Gilles - Sint-Gillis" etc, so both redirects are going to have to exist anyway --Philip Baird Shearer 14:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I am also opposed to the present settlement of South Tyrol. Septentrionalis 00:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose The main name is the French one, there should only be a redirect from the Flemish/Dutch name. --Pylambert 12:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose Although in Brussels one can see many bilingual signs ("Vossenplein / place du Jeu de Balle" to give an example), I don't think it a good idea to introduce multilingual page names in English wikipedia. I'd stick to "the most common" for each of them separately, which, according to Diemietrie should mean some will be in Flemish. For those cases where "most common" can't be determined, I'd give precedence to the French name. --Francis Schonken 15:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. It's simpaly necessary. The dutch name and the french one are both on the same level and so it's not fair for the dutch people that their name is not mentioned in the tittle. Plus, the french names are in almost al the cases old dutch names like Schaerbeek vs. Schaarbeek.--Westermarck 18:55, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - Waerth 16:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC) - Choosing for one language above the other when both are almost equally relevant is POV and we are supposed to be NPOV!
  • Support For NPOV reasons as detailed in discussion below Vremya 22:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Support It is the most neutral solution. --Donar Reiskoffer 20:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Support (if it still matters) I'm a Fleming living in Brussels so I'm not particularly neutral on this topic. Using the French namen when there is no English name is imho the PoV from the Partie des Francophones Henna 21:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongest possible oppose ever per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names). Articles about cities should be at either the local or the English name, but NOT at both. --Rory096 04:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support only neutral solution; apart from Brussels-City, the other 18 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital region have no English name. For those having a French and a Dutch name, it depends on how/where/in which reference work a speaker came upon the name. Since the English language Wikipedia is often used by speakers of another native language, only the double naming may prevent their assumption of some official or common English name and thus unknowingly writing some seemingly biased articles themselves. I do suggest systematically using the French - Dutch order in each article's title and the Dutch - French order on the first content line (in each article that line already states both names with their language). Compare also e.g. article Mechelen, on an always Dutch speaking city that had three common English names: historically and traditionally Mechlin, mainly the early Belgium's French-speaking diplomats influenced Malines, especially since the 1988-89 European football (soccer) achievements of 'KV Mechelen' it is Mechelen (though one may still hear the older English names - when travelling in the UK, I usually say I'm from Mechlin). Wikipedia should not lead which of the currently bilingual names might become a common English name. -- 213.224.87.185 2006-06-02 16:57 (UTC)

Discussion

Philip, this is not a matter of what name people search most. I'm sure that no one will search for Bozen-Bolzano either. It's really a matter of what suits best with respect to the linguistic situation, given the fact that there are no common English names for these communes. For South Tyrol, it was therefore decided to use a joined German-Italian name. I think that the situation in the Brussels Region is exactly the same as in South Tyrol, so I propose the same solution. The alternative would be to search in Google which name is most commonly used in English, but that would mean sometimes the French and sometimes the Dutch name as title. I don't think that is the right solution for an encyclopedia. Neither is it to always use the French name as if Brussels is unilingual French territory. Diemietrie 16:51, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I do believe there has been some fixed usage in the past for Brussels subdivisions in English. Searching through the Gutenberg project, anyone can find old books in English using "Saint Gilles" and other names without alternating between either French or Dutch. Besides most of the names with ae in French and aa in Dutch are just due to a change in Dutch spellings. I'm not saying that we should use one over the other, but there are references that we could find of usage through history, nothing official though. ---moyogo 01:27, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
It is understandable that in the past the French names were most commonly used in English, while French was during long time the only official language in Brussels (untill the first half of the 20th century), a period in which the Brussels Region changed from a Dutch-speaking area to a bilingual metropole with a French-speaking majority. That's why all names in the region are originally Dutch. It's the same situation as in South Tyrol, where the German names are the original ones, but with the Italian names as the more commonly used.
Nevertheless, times have changed and both regions are officially bilingual now. I think this should be reflected in the names used in an encyclopedia. Only when an English name is not available, of course, but that is the case here (except for the city of Brussels). Diemietrie 14:25, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

It is not done for Londonderry in English. The French(fr:Londonderry) and Dutch (nl:Derry) pages do not split it across English and Irish, which would be "Derry - Londonderry - Doire". Are there any small Welsh, Irish or Scottish areas which are so designated in the Dutch or the French? It seems to me that this idea is not a useful one. Philip Baird Shearer 20:23, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is about other Wikipedia's, it's about the English Wikipedia. If one decides to use bilingual titles for South Tyrolian communes, it should be logical to do the same for other bilingual communes without an English name.
Besides that, I think the Gaeltacht areas in Ireland are unilingual Irish and in the Gaelic areas in Wales and Scotland the Gaelic names are put in front. In Brussels and South Tyrol however, both names are treated equally. Diemietrie 23:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I do not believe that anywhere' is unilingual Irish any more. Septentrionalis 00:37, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
As a political observer, I went to several municipal council meetings in five communes of this region (Saint-Josse, Schaerbeek, Ixelles, Saint-Gilles, Molenbeek), all the meetings are hold exclusively in French, only the very few Dutch-speaking councillors speak Dutch, and even some of them speak French during the official meetings. Last December I heard again at the council meeting in Schaerbeek alderman Luc Denys (Groen!) and even councillor Johan Demol (Vlaams Belang) who were respectively answering and asking questions in French, though both are elected as members of Flemish parties. --Pylambert 12:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I can imagine that in a city with a French majority and in a country where French was during a long time the leading language, it's not evident that you can always make yourself heard in Dutch. I think the lack of knowledge of Dutch amongst a lot of French-speaking people may play an important role here. But that does not alter the fact that Brussels is officially bilingual and both languages are treated equally there, according to the constitution. In the Brussels regional government, there has to be an equal number of French and Dutch ministers. No Brussels government can be formed and no law concerning the use of languages, the rights of the linguistic communities etc. can be passed in the Brussels Parliament without the support of a majority of the Dutch-speaking (or French-speaking) MPs. Both linguistic communities have their own community centers, schools, libraries, sport clubs, youth and elderly homes, theatres, museums, etc. All road and street signs are bilingual, even the names of metro stations and bus stops are bilingual. So I don't think there can be any doubt about the fact that Dutch and French are equal languages in Brussels. Diemietrie 18:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
French and Dutch are only officially, artificially and theoretically equal in Brussels, and even migrants who previously lived in Flanders or the Netherlands feel they can't go on living in Brussels without learning French because it is the most common language, not only of the "French majority" but also between a Turk and a Moroccan, a Swede and an Italian. There is a strong minority of people who speak languages other than French and Dutch at home but use (basic or not) French outside. And there are all the time Flemish complaints because they face people who can't understand Dutch in shops or even administrations. --Pylambert 19:13, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


I just looked through the contributions of Diemietrie and it appears this discussion is totally useless for him because he has already changed the titles of all the Brussels-related articles! This contributor seems obsessed by the subject and his contributions on wikipedia consist exclusively with changing French names to Dutch names. I suggest the intervention of an administrator to settle this. --Pylambert 19:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Don't lie. I never changed French names to Dutch ones. I've only started to move the titles from the French to the bilingual names for three communes (after my suggestion to do so in this Talk section), but then I realised that it was impossible for the other communes, so I asked at 'Requested moves' the move of these 9 communes above. Neither moving a page nor asking for it is illegal, I suppose. So please stay to the facts and the discussion instead of telling lies in a attempt to discredit your opponent. Diemietrie 23:03, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Not moved. (Although I'm personally in favour.) —Nightstallion (?) 08:22, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I've created recently an article about Arts-Loi/Kunst-Wet metro station and I moved Het Rad to La Roue/Het Rad but now I remember it was not good to have a slash in the article names. What should we do in this case? It doesn't make sense to have those article names translated in English as it is never used this way... Julien Tuerlinckx 22:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I definitely wouldn't translate into English.
In my experience, English-speaking people in Brussels almost always call it Arts-Loi. For that reason I would have the article at Arts-Loi metro station and redirects to it from both Kunst-Wet metro station and Arts-Loi/Kunst-Wet metro station. (By the way, thanks for adding that article, there's some interesting historical details there!)
I'm not sure whether one name is in most common usage for La Roue/Het Rad, so I can't really comment on that one. --David Edgar 14:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you when you say that English-speaking people in Brussels often call it Arts-Loi, but the problem is that this is not a valid argument to me as anyone can say that in its experience, those people call it Kunst-Wet and we would not be able to check this. Besides, I think that English people call it this way because the name is more often used in French (more French speaking people in Brussels, thus when one is asking his way in English, the answer will generally be with the French name of the station) and also because English-speaking people have good notions of French while they generally know nothing about the Dutch language (so for example when they see "Arts-Loi/Kunst-Wet" they understand its about art and for some about law, but they just never heard of what "kunst" or "wet" is); but this argument is also hard to support. Furthermore, it is no more valid with names like "Maelbeek/Maalbeek" as the pronounciation is the same and who knows which one is in French except Belgian people?

So actually I didn't even find a consensus with myself, and I think it is an important topic in wikipedia as many articles have the same problem (or will have:)), and many votes have been proceeded with always the same decision: to have the french name only, and i understand this hurts the moderate flemish people. Finally I'll make a proposition even if I'm not sure this is the best solution: let's have the french name only as it is now with the municipalities, but as soon as the entity related in the article (metro station, municipality, place, etc.) is officially bilingual, we should have a sentence right after the title (beginning with :'') that would say something like: this article is about a bilingual entity which name in Dutch is ... and in French...

What do people think about this? Julien Tuerlinckx 16:30, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as the Brussels Metro stations issue is concerned, I would argue that the only correct approach is to give both names, for the simple reason that on the ground, these stations are invariably physically referred to by both names: All signs on station platforms and at station entrances are in both languages. All maps show station names in both languages. Destination signs on trains are in both languages or, if space does not permit, alternate between French and Dutch. Public address systems announce station names in both languages. This is an issue that many people in Brussels feel very strongly about (see Crainhem/Kraainem metro station for a real-life example where the initially monolingual name of a station was made bilingual after public protest) and the only way to ensure NPOV is to respect the real-world policy preferred by the actual inhabitants of Brussels. It may be helpful to consider that in quite a number of instances, potentially translatable station names are not in fact translated, because the same form of the name is used locally by both French and Dutch speakers. It would be quite absurd, for example, to refer to Vandervelde as Deschamps, Beaulieu as Mooieplek, Pannenhuis as Maison aux Tuiles, or, for that matter, Maalbeek/Maelbeek as Maalbeek/Ruisseau Meunière because nobody in real life ever uses these translations. Therefore, when they are translated, there is clearly a reason for it, and this should be respected. Nor is following official policy particularly burdensome. The argument that article names using the bilingual convention would be clunky and hard to find, requiring redirect pages for both languages, strikes me as a complete straw man, because whichever single language is chosen as standard, good practice would still require redirects for the other language. If redirects are inevitable anyway, we might as well follow the official, bilingual, and eminently neutral policy. It's not as if redirect pages are hard to create, and it would only have to be done once. Incidentally, this argument could also be applied to the larger issue of "Ixelles - Elsene" versus "Ixelles" alone or "Elsene" alone: Good practice would require three pages, two of which redirect to the third, so the most logical and neutral solution would be to have the main page under the bilingual name. Finally, if there are technical concerns about the use of slashes in article names, these could be easily remedied by using another separator, such as replacing "Sainte Catherine/Sint Katelijne" with "Sainte Catherine — Sint Katelijne" Vremya 22:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Vremya. I can add to this that the French name is often just the old Dutch orthography: Schaerbeek, Haeren, Laeken, Watermael in municipality names; Heysel, Crainhem, Osseghem, Veeweyde, Maelbeek, Stockel in station names. Francophones insist on using them only to underline the differences between French and (the present) Dutch (orthography). For example, Kraainem is a Flemish municipality with language facilities for French-speaking people, but the "French" name Crainhem is not official, while in other municipalities with language facilities both French and Dutch names are used if available. So, when in 1962/1963 the language border in Belgium was fixed and language facilities were set up, one considered no French name for Kraainem available. Only later Francophones began using Crainhem, the old Dutch orthography used in French for many names within the Brussels-Capital Region as well, as the French name.
I still argue to use the bilingual names for articles if there is no English name, as is done for South Tyrol. I see the supporters and offenders are now equal (including my opinion), so I hope that one more supporter will be sufficient to do so. ;-) Diemietrie 10:12, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
It sounds reasonable enough to me, but I'm one of V's personal friends, so if I throw in my support, won't people accuse me of being a "meat puppet"? Nude Amazon 02:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I usually try to avoid jumping back into a debate after having made my own position clear, but I feel I must break that rule here in response to Rory096's strongly worded opposition in the voting section. With all due respect to Rory, I find it deeply disturbing that his comments seem to demonstrate a profound inability (note that I am strenuously assuming good faith by not calling it a refusal) to understand the issue at hand. Among other things, the policy page Rory uses to support his position states that "In the absence of a common English name, the current local name of the city should be used." The whole point of this debate has been that the locations in question do not have a single "current local name"; they have two, one French and one Dutch. Which is why I and others have been advocating following local usage (surely a more honest interpretation of the spirit of the "current local name" guideline than insisting on a misleading and inadequate letter-of-the-law reading) in using bilingual names, which after all are the current local names. In fact, properly understood, the position that Rory096 and other opponents of the proposal seem to be advocating is not to use the "current local name" but an arbitrarily selected part of the current local name based on an arbitrary language preference that is not reflected in local usage. Vremya 09:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

With regards to Rory96's oppose, both these names are the local names, neither of them is the English one, could you try to reexplain your reasons? Henna 19:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

In South-Wales, one may more often hear native speakers of English than of its original language; in Mid- and North-Wales, Welsh is still very much alive. I do not think that any kind of names in the south should be handled differently from names in the north. If on such basis a spelling and/or pronounciation variant would happen to be used in English language texts, both should be mentioned with equal respect, in titles as well as in the content of articles. Being a foreigner, I never heard typical Welsh expressions in any subregion because people simply knew I wouldn't understand it and might not even be able to pronounce it. In case I would write an article on a Welsh subject in the Dutch Wikipedia though, I would definitely show respect for the original and for the currently most heard words. Thus I ask such from an English Wikipedia for English, French and Dutch names of subjects for as long as one must recognize the fully bilingual official status of the municipalities of the Brussels-Capital region, or the presence of an original minority: the Brussels dialect is still being spoken, that is a typical Flemish Dutch with (only slightly more than in Dutch or in English) a number of French influences. The officially upheld bilinguality is rather sneekily breached on the official website of the Brussels-Capital region by mentioning solely French names of its municipalities, not only in the English and Spanish versions but even in German, a language similar to Dutch. Such behaviour may explain why few Flemish people might be inclined to even consider Wikipedia to be neutral, if choosing for a single French language preference whenever the opportunity occurs. -- 213.224.87.185 2006-06-02 20:43 (UTC)

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