Talk:Odorheiu Secuiesc/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

old comment

Odorheiu Secuiesc is in the Covasna county you dopes! Not in Harghita! --193.226.5.62 20:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure you are wrong. [1] [2] - Jmabel | Talk 03:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Ohh wait. I counfused it with "Targul Secuiesc" :)) ... Sorry, my bad. --193.226.5.62 07:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The Wandering Szekler

About the edits related to this statue: Look, I'm just trying to present the most accurate picture possible of the issue (and there is an issue there, as attested by the references supplied). I took the info from the article on Albert Wass (which, by the way, I also had a hand at editing at some point). If you feel that the info presented does not give a completely accurate picture, feel free to edit. But please supply new references for that -- right now, these sources are the only ones that are mentioned on the wiki, so, absent persuasive info to the contrary, I'd stick with them. Turgidson 15:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I have no objection to the text as it is presently in the article. My source was the homepage of the town (only in Hungarian, you won't be able to read it). Indeed there was an issue there, but please go there, visit the town and have a look at the sculpture park yourself. A nice town. I am not sure it is a Wass Albert statue. Anyway, I am not a supporter of Wass Albert. I read two of his novels, the first was really cute, about a Székely peasant living right on the border set by the vienna treaty, with seven of his apple trees on the Hungarian side, and six other trees on the Romanian side of the new border. (The title is Thirteen apple trees) The other was rather one-sided, written from a viewpoint of a Hungarian noble family starting a new life after Romanian peasants set their villa on fire in 1849. I don't know what he did in 1940 but according to the Wikipedia, mostly Hungarians were convicted by the Peoples' Tribunal in Cluj... --KIDB 15:53, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, yes, I cannot read Hungarian, so I can't tell about that. Also, unfortunately, I'm too far away from Székely Land to visit just like that -- but I was in Ţinutul Secuiesc once, many years ago, and it's just absolutely beautiful land; I'll try to give it a shot, one of these days. As for Albert Wass, and what he did in September 1940, take a look if you wish at the reference I supplied for his article: András W. Kovács, "The History of the Wass de Czege Family", Hamburg, 2005. Sounds serious to me. Turgidson 16:07, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I found this: "The United States of America – finding the accusations to be unsubstantiated – refused the demand for his extradition." --KIDB 12:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. But the death sentence passed by the Cluj tribunal 61 years ago was never overturned, as far as I know -- though many other sentences were commuted and/or shortened afterwards (see Romanian People's Tribunals). To quote from the article: "Albert Wass and his father, Endre Wass, were held responsible for events that happened in September, 1940, when a Hungarian Lieutenant, Pakucs, arrested six inhabitants of Sucutard (Szentgothárd), and then shot to death four of them in Ţaga (Cege), when they attempted to escape. Albert Wass was also held responsible, as the alleged instigator, for the slaughter at Mureşenii de Câmpie (Omboztelke), when Hungarian soldiers, led by Lieutenant Gergely Csordás, killed 11 people." (Info comes from the András W. Kovács reference cited above.) Is there someone else who should be held responsible for these crimes, or should the whole thing just go down the memory hole? Turgidson 13:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I can't comment any more on this, I have not enough information. --KIDB 13:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

In the past year two books were published in Hungary about the Wass' trial that you mentioned above. Some historians claim that the charges were only fabricated by the Communist regime, and the trial was totally unfair. But the witnesses are all dead now and personally I don't know what to think about the whole case. Zello 19:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving the article

This article will be moved to Székelyudvarhely (the current local name), resulting from rule 1 and rule 2
For examples about the application of these rules, please visit Category:Cities and towns in South Tyrol --KIDB 08:31, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Citing from rule 2: We recommend choosing a single name, by some objective criterion, even a somewhat arbitrary one. Simple Google tests are acceptable to settle the matter, despite their problems.

In this particular case, Google reports 1,890,000 (more than 70%) for "Odorheiu Secuiesc" and 808,000 (less than 30%) for "Székelyudvarhely". But the Google results only confirm something I believe everyone agrees: beside any nationalistic debate, for a tourist for example, who is neither Romanian, nor Hungarian, "Odorheiu Secuiesc" is by far the more useful name. At least until he manages to get there. Alexrap 13:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Good point. "Tourists" had an easy life in the 1920s when the Royal Romanian Railways had timetables in Hungarian, too. To help modern tourists, there could be a line of warning at the beginning of the article, like: "This is a town in Romania. The Romanian name of this town Odorheiu Secuiesc is more likely to appear on maps, timetbles, phone directories, etc."

Google search doesn't give uniform results in this type of case. There are many Transylvanian settlements where there are more results for the Hungarian name. Have a look at Csíkmadaras, Nyárádszentimre, Ditró, Nyárádszereda etc. --KIDB 14:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

KIDB asked for my opinion. As for the naming of the article, I have none. I am more familiar with the name Odorheiu Secuiesc, but I speak decent foreigner's Romanian and have almost no Hungarian. Yes, it might be useful to clarify in what contexts one would expect to encounter which name. - Jmabel | Talk 17:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Romanian is Romania's only official language, so I find this proposal unnecessary, as other names are provided in the article. Biruitorul 17:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

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.

Odorheiu Secuiesc → Székelyudvarhely — An ethnic Hungarian settlement in Transylvania. According to the naming conventions, the current local name should be used, which is the Hungarian version. Examples: Swedish settlements in Finnland, or German speaking communities in South Tyrol KIDB 17:42, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add  * '''Support'''  or  * '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~. Please remember that this is not a vote; comments must include reasons to carry weight.

• Support The naming conventions say that the current local name should be used (if there is no English name). The current local name of the town is Székelyudvarhely (as on the official home page of the local government [3]). 97% of the inhabitants is Hungarian, they speak in this language and use the Hungarian name for the town. The practice of how to use local names in Wikipedia can be observed in the articles about eg. Swedish settlements in Finnland or German speaking communities in South Tyrol.--KIDB 17:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. We should make sure that we compare like with like. Swedish is an official language in Finland, just as German is an official language in South Tyrol. In contrast, Hungarian is not an official language in Romania. We should therefore compare the situation with Russian settlements in Estonia and Latvia or Romanian settlements in Ukraine. Alexrap 10:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support Per KIDB.Gepcsirke 19:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - The current local name, meaning the current official name, in Romania's sole official language, which is Romanian, is Odorheiu Secuiesc. Hungarian has no official status in Romania; its speakers do have some official rights in places like Odorheiu Secuiesc, but the official name is not in doubt. If and when the status changes, we'll discuss a move. For now, though, given the lack of any local autonomy and thus the inapplicability of the South Tyrol example, and the fact that the town's Hungarian name and character are prominently mentioned in the text, let the name stay as is. Biruitorul 21:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Per Biruitorul, and Google, see here, and here. Turgidson 21:31, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Have you checked Google books, too? A slightly different result --KIDB 07:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Not so different actually, as the large majority of the books using the Hungarian version of the name are written in Hungarian by Hungarian writers. In contrast, the Romanian version is used by several English writers, including all the books for tourists, e.g. Lonely Planet. Alexrap 09:06, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Yes, they're either Hungarian books, refer to pre-1918 events, or say Odorhei (Székelyudvarhely). This is not convincing evidence for a preference for Székelyudvarhely. Biruitorul 15:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - per Biruitorul. Additionally, this is an issue that was already dismissed elsewhere, and is now moved around on a case-by-case basis, in what I can only suspect is an attempt to create a precedent that would circumvent naming conventions and give us all a headache. I will state this clearly - I would actually endorse territorial autonomy in regions of Transylvania such as the Szekely Land, and I would even consider it for Transylvania as a whole if people there decide this is what they want; but wikipedia is not about generating reality, it is about recording it. Dahn 21:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose Per reasons given above. (I also want the non-romanian name out of the infobox, or at least written in italics, if anyone cares) Anonimu 22:37, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. 1) It's Romanian, not romanian (at least, in English). 2) The name Székelyudvarhely should definitely stay in the infobox (in whatever font is standard for this infobox). Turgidson 23:06, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
    • i write in a form of english only superior people can understandAnonimu 11:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose Dpotop 23:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons stated by Biruitrul and agree with Turgidson on keeping the Hungarian name in the infobox. Argos'Dad 01:43, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. The name of Odorheiul Secuiesc is the official name of the city as used in all official Rumanian documents. If we change the names which are not official there is no end to this. How about changing the name of the Hungarian town of Gyula to Ghiula, because there is a significant Rumanian community in that city. Both the Hungarian and German names should be included in the box. But it should be stated that they are the Hungarian and German names, as they are not alternative names. Afil 01:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support per KIDB. I've had a long think about this, and I think I've understood now what KIDB really meant. It's respectful that, when you're in a neutral language like English, you use the local name for a town. To me, that signifies respect and a more nuanced understanding of that particular location. And the local name for Székelyföld towns is the Hungarian version. This blog for example refers to the city of Miercurea-Ciuc as Csíkszereda in English, and I think if we think about it from a neutral perspective, that makes sense, in the same way that we would refer to this city as Donostia and this city as Jakobstad. Ronline ✉ 02:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - a) what about Bălan (~65% Romanian) or Topliţa (>70% Romanian) - is it the case for them that "the local name for Székelyföld towns is the Hungarian version"? b) not only are blogs unencyclopedic, but of course the author would use the Hungarian name - he's living with Hungarians, surrounded by Hungarians, and has never been to Romania before; his choice of name isn't very impartial and thus doesn't carry much weight. c) the Basque Country has legal autonomy, and Swedish is co-official in Finland, so the situations are not analogous. Biruitorul 02:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Bălan and Topliţa should obviously remain at the Romanian name. I understand that from a legal perspective the Basque and Finland-Swedish situations are not analogous, but I think KIDB's argument is that we should transcend issues of officiality in favour of issues regarding common local usage. Ronline ✉ 02:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Not entirely unreasonable, but that would open wider and wider circles of controversy. Do we start using Kurdish names for eastern Turkish localities? Albanian names for Kosovo (while it's still part of Serbia)? Corsican names for Corsican cities? Maybe, but let's at least have a wider debate, not one centred on this one locality, or let's keep it simple and not transcend issues of officiality - as Dahn says, "wikipedia is not about generating reality, it is about recording it". Biruitorul 02:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
        • I'm not sure about Turkey and Corsica, but I think that the Kosovo answer is simple: we should definitely be using the Albanian names. Particularly considering that Albanian is an official language of the UNMIK administration in Kosovo. I agree that we should have a wider debate. Ronline ✉ 03:03, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
          • A blog is just a blog, while the established widely accepted English name is another thing. Even on that blog, on right hand side of the page you can see the weather forecast (taken from www.wunderground.com) for Miercurea Ciuc, not Csíkszereda. Alexrap 10:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. As the Wikipedia naming convention says, the widely accepted English name should be used. In this case, the widely accepted English name is the Romanian name and the same is true for all Romanian place names. For checking the widely accepted name, the naming convention suggests consultation of other enciclopedias such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Columbia Encyclopedia, Encarta. All these use Romanian names for all Romanian places. Moreover, all tourist guides in English on Romania or Transylvania (Lonely Planet, Michelin, Yahoo Travel etc) use the Romanian names. Finally, Google tests (also suggested by the naming convention) clearly indicate the same thing. In conclusion, moving the article not only is against the Wikipedia naming convention, but would only create confusion for the readers, without any improvement (as the Hungarian name is already included in the article). Alexrap 09:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Naming conventions are not optional. More frequent in English. NikoSilver 10:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose If placenames are renamed to names of ethnic minorities with a lower performance in Google, imagine the uproar if that practice is exported to Kurdistan, FYROM, Kosovo etc. Too much edit warring - stick with Google, it provides an objective yardstick.Ploutarchos 10:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think it would be a good idea to rename the localities of Kosovo to the Albanian name, in the same way that it would be good to rename Macedonia's Albanian-majority localities to Albanian (which is the second official language of the Republic of Macedonia). Ronline ✉ 12:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I disagree -- we should use the English name or the name most commonly used in English. Can you pronounce "Székelyudvarhely"? I sure can't - I haven't got a clue what it sounds like, which probably explains why it's not used often in English.--Ploutarchos 23:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

How about this "eiu" in Odorheiu, or "eui" in Secuiesc? Both names are strange for an English speaker. --KIDB 06:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. There seems to be a slight preference for the Romanian name in English language texts (google news archive, google scholar), the ratios I saw were about 2:1, 3:1. I suppose both Hungarian and Romanian are official languages at the local level, and probably both apply as self-identifying names. Markussep 12:45, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Neutral I would definitely like to see the Hungarian name in the lead with the same emphasis as the official Romanian name, but using the official name as the title is a good convention in my opinion (and I don't think the title of the article makes such a big difference anyway, as long as the significance of each name is clearly explained in the body). That said, as we are talking about a settlement that is one of the centres of a Hungarian-inhabited area (albeit inside Romania where only Romanian is official) and where 96.7% of the population is Hungarian, I can't imagine how the use of the Hungarian name would "create", rather than "record", reality. KissL 14:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Neutral I think Hungarian names should became co-official in Romania where Hungarians constitute a majority. Until that we should probably use the official Romanian name. On the other hand a new guideline, WP:NCGN effectively banned Hungarian names even in historical context which is totally unacceptable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zello (talk • contribs) 15:01, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Hungarian names are practically co-official in areas where Hungarians constitute more than 20% of the population. This official recognition includes things like bilingual signs, access to education, justice and the public administration. For all practical purposes, Hungarian is used a working language (alongside Romanian) in public institutions in these areas. Additionally, the place name signs you see when you enter these localities include both the Romanian and the Hungarian name, in equal size and formatting, meaning that the Hungarian name does have official recognition. The only thing is that the Romanian minority languages law doesn't specifically use the term "official language". It's not like in Corsica, for example, where the Corsican name has no official recognition whatsoever, and only "official" name is the French name. I think it's important to clarify this. Ronline ✉ 05:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. I do not see any evidence here that the Hungarian name is widely accepted in English sources. In such cases, the convention is clear: "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name." Tankred 15:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support The city has a population of 36,948, of which 96.7% are Hungarians. Says this very article, also support per the official website of the city http://www.udvph.ro. I don't think this would lead to a slippery slope as these type of settlements are very very rare 96,7% of one ethnicity is not easy to find even within a nation state. Also guidelines are only guidelines not law or policy of wikipedia so citing them here is most certainly invalid. Odbhss 17:26, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
  • "Invalid" is a big word—do you really mean guidelines cannot be quoted?? Perhaps you meant to say that guidelines are not the "end and be all", or the ne plus ultra? That I'd go with. Turgidson 17:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NCGN. Official name takes precedence over local name. That said, I would think local name can be used throughout the article and in all contexts involving the Hungarin minority. But bottom line is we should have the place on a page with the same map you can expect to find on current local maps, documents or road signs unless it can be shown that English usage is predominantly different.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  18:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support For local and historical reason it would be better to move the article. The so-called official name is no older that 100 years, the hungarian name is used for more than several hundred years (see the History section of romanian and hungarian article). In other hand, Hungarian has official status in settlement where more than 20% of the population is Hungarian, so the hungarian name Székelyudvarhely is official too. Lakeof 21:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - a) the official name (not the "so-called official name"), while only 89 years old, is a settled matter of national (Romanian Constitution) and international (Trianon) law, and won't change any time soon; b) no, it's not official. Hungarian has some additional rights in localities such as Odorheiu Secuiesc, but it is in no way official (see Art. XIII of the Constitution). Biruitorul 21:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I would agree with Lakeof in stating that the Hungarian name is official too. While it may not be official at national level, it is very much officially-recognised by the local authority, which operates bilingually. The local authority recognises both Odorheiu Secuiesc and Székelyudvarhely as official names, as can be seen by the fact that they are both used, with equal formatting on the city hall's stationery, at all entrances to the city, on all signs of the city hall, etc. While the law doesn't explicitly use the term "official language", I disagree with the rather false distinction that the Romanian name is the "official" name while the Hungarian name is just a "local" name. The situation is not analogous to Corsica or Cornwall, where the local name has no official recognition and the only official name is the French or respectively English name. Ronline ✉ 05:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment In the South Tyrol, two -sometimes three- languages are official. Here, if no English preference can be shown, the local official name would be that recognized by the Rumanian Government. If both are recognized, that's a different matter. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The main difference is that no region in Romania has autonomy, and so no language has official status in a sub-national entity. IMO, the Tyrol example was and is quoted out of context. Dahn 05:24, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
    • The problem is that the truth is rather complex. The Romanian minority languages rights law does not explicitly state that Hungarian is "official" in areas where Hungarians make up more than 20% of the population. Mind you, neither does Wales have a language known as "the official language" - Welsh is simply mentioned as having "equal status to English". Additionally, I believe it is rather simplistic to say that "no language has official status in a sub-national entity". Technically and semantically that is correct, but it must also be noted that the name "Székelyudvarhely" is officially-recognised by the city hall in that locality - it is present on the city hall's stationery, on all signs when entering the city, etc. My point is that I think you guys are trying to prove your case using a very narrow definition of what it means for a language to be "official". Just because a language is not specifically codified as being official does not mean that it is not recognised by the government and hence does not have some official capacity. And I believe that, in localities such as Székelyudvarhely, Hungarian, and the Hungarian name, is very much officially-recognised. In fact, all city hall meetings can be conducted in Hungarian, not in Romanian, as long as minutes are also kept in Romanian. Ronline ✉ 05:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
      • It's not codified in Wales because common law doesn't need to declare something as official for it to be official. This is in contrast to Romania's civil law system, where official status must indeed be officially codified. Biruitorul 06:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
        • I appreciate the distinction, and I agree that, if we really want to be legal about it, Hungarian is not an "official language" per se in Romania. However, it is a language that is very much officially-recognised by local authorities where Hungarians make up 20% of the population. I think this point needs to be made clearly because a user above (I think Zello) stated that, "I think Hungarian names should became co-official in Romania where Hungarians constitute a majority." What I'm saying is that, practically, they already are co-official, all that doesn't exist is a formal act stating "the Hungarian language is official in areas where Hungarians make up more than 20% of the population". Ronline ✉ 07:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
          • As i've already proved to you some time ago, names of cities/villages in minority languages have an informative character, and the use of them in official corespondence or documents is punished by the romanian law. So, no, they're not co-official.Anonimu 09:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
            • Well, I know you've said it to me, but I don't know if you've proved it. Firstly, I don't see how using them can be "punished" by Romanian law. Most Szekely city halls have their correspondence with the header also including the Hungarian name. Secondly, if they simply had an informative character, why are they written in equal formatting? I honestly don't believe the idea that they're just "descriptors" and not actually names. "Hermannstadt" is used a descriptor, with informative character. There is a difference between that and the official recognition which the name Szekelyudvarhely has in the local administration. Ronline ✉ 11:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
              • Probably you forgot. Anyway, here's the proof again: H.G. no 1206/2001, art. 10 (hope you still remeber romanian). If they use the hungarian names, they're not legal. Romanian law says so, and punishes violations (see same H.G., art 18.h) ).Anonimu 16:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support "Odorheiu" is a phonetical transference from Hungarian into Romanian. In Hungarian "Udvarhely" means "Court Place" (Udvar + hely), and Székelyudvarhely is "The Székler Court Place". Considering that 97,6% of the inhabitants of the city are Hungarian native speakers, I don't see any problems with moving the article to Székelyudvarhely, name which is furthermore etymological relevant. --Mihai Andrei 17:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose because Romanian language is official on the entire territory of Romania, while Hungarian is not official anywhere. I am not necesarily implying that the second situation is good, I am just looking that this is a legal fact. However, according to the Romanian Law (see art 11 (2) at the reference given by Anonimu above), in road signs the two names of the localities must be of the same size, with the Hungarian name immediately under the Romanian one. This is the second fact. The third fact, as I was told about it, is WP policy that, if a name was used in recent history (I guess 200 years, but not sure) on maps and official documents under other names, then those names should appear in the text in bold. Not necessarily immediately after, as it can be a name no longer in use, and maybe first appears in some section "Names of the locality" several paragraphs later, but it has to be in bold. Khoikhoi explained this to me in relation to names in Moldova (see e.g. Chişinău). :Dc76 17:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, I would like to present two not facts, but just what appears to be WP tradition. Romanian localities in Ukraine, even those that belonged to Romania in recent history must, even those with 95% Romanian, and even those where the Romanian language has legally some (very minor) rights (Hertsa raion), the name in WP still is in Ukrainian. Of course, it should also appear in bold in Romanian, but that is not always the case, since those articles (except 2-3) are generally in very poor condition, noone actually copyedited them. The second "tradition" is names of the localities in Gagauzia, an autonomuous teritorrial unit of Moldova, where Romanian, Gagauz, and Russian have official status. The official acts by Moldova, when writen in English, for some reason always write those localities in Romanian. And I guess because of that the names of the localties appear officially in Romanian, and then Romanian, Gagauz and Russian all three in bold (at least this is the idea b/c most of those articles are worse than very poor, they don't even exist yet!):Dc76 17:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
    • According to the above, the situation where the Hungarian name appears only in italic is wrong, it should be bold. For all cities in Transylvania, at least in my oppinion, all three names (Romanian, Hungarian, German) should appear in bold at the begining of the article (with Romanian first b/c of the legal status). For villages, if there are/were Hungarians or Germans there - the same idea. For small Romanian villages that don't have any Hungarians in them, I would ask, did anyone in the village actually used the Hngarian name 100 years ago, or they simply went to town when needed some official act? For these cases I would keep only the Romanian name. so in short:

With exception of small localities - all three names, and at the very bigining, in R/H/G order, with exception of Sibiu, Brasov, Timisoara, Sighisoara, etc where R/G/H. Cluj-Napoca after me would be R/H/G, while Bistrita or Viseu R/G/H - you get the idea. The title of the article is a different story, that is not a WP convention, that's simply the legal name.:Dc76 17:52, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Forgot about infoboxes - use the official Romanian road convention with >20%. Unfortunately that means Sibiu and Sighisoara will not have their names there, which is a pitty, but there we are. Hence for this article I would only change one thing: Székelyudvarhely in bold. :Dc76 18:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - as per all said above. And as someone said above "wikipedia is not about generating reality, it is about recording it".--Roamataa 18:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Romania has only one official language, and we clearly don't have a precedent. Todor→Bozhinov 08:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Official language of Romania is Romanian!--Yannismarou 17:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - This is the official name in the only official language of Romania. In Romania, changing the original name to the hungarian name is unconstitutional. Eurocopter tigre 21:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. The name is neither official, because the only official language in Romania is Romanian (a minority language allowed to be used in some cases is NOT an official language), nor does the name fulfill the naming convention (not widely accepted, not used etc.). And of course, we will call Buda "Ofen" up to the 1860's then, because it had German inhabitants etc. - I consider this proposal insane. Juro 22:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
• Support. When speaking about Google results, dont forget that in Hungarian exists a longer and officially used version, that is Székelyudvarhely and a shorter informally used version that is Udvarhely. We should add the results for Udvarhely to the results for Székelyudvarhely. --Koppany 01:09, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Although the discussion was always about things more substantial than google hits, I will point out that what works for Udvarhely also works for Odorhei, which most likely preserves the discrepancy in Ro-Hu name usage at the exact same level. Dahn 01:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

You are right, but there is a little difference: The results for Odorheiu Secuies in most of the cases contain the results for Odorheiu because it is written in 2 separate words while the results for Székelyudvarhely dont contain the results for Udvarhely. In order to search for additional and not duplicate Odorhei results, you should use (-Secuiesc) tool. --Koppany 01:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Just for the record: Udvarhely: 106,000 hits, Odorhei: 125,000 hits. Turgidson 01:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I should add this explanation: the search was not for "Odorheiul" (were Koppany's comment applies), but for "Odorhei". In Romanian, "Odorhei Secuiesc" is either ungrammatical (if it stands for the city) or extremely rare (if it stands for the notion - as "un odorhei secuiesc", which is very unlikely). Romanian google tends to merge results for words with suffixes and those for words without suffixes, so there it would indeed be inconclusive. However, I think that Turgidson does not use Romanian google; and even in the unlikely event that he does, I assume he restricted his search. Dahn 01:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I also forgot to mention something: As I know in Romanian langauge the use of suffixes is relatively rare with some exceptions (eg. above mentioned undefined article) while Hungarian is an agglutinative language that is almost always uses suffixes. For examples "from Székelyudvarhely" in Hungarian is "székelyudvarhelyi", or "in Székelyudvarhely" means "Székelyudvarhelyen", thus there are a lot variations that are not quoted when you see only the hits for Székelyudvarhely. You should improve your search trying it with at least 100 possible suffixes. --Koppany 02:21, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to confirm: I'm always using the "standard" Google search, as available at google.com. Didn't cross my mind -- we're all using this at en.wiki when debating google hits, aren't we? And, if you scroll all the way back to the top, you'll see that I discussed the issue of suffixes in google searches for Odorheiu Secuiesc here. Parenthetically, Odorhei may also refer to the interbellic Odorhei County, much as Udvarhely can, and does, refer to the old Hungarian comitatus. Is there a plan to have an article on that old County, or is the whole thing reduced to what's in Counties of Romania? Turgidson 02:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think I have ever actually used it in a debate, actually, so, in my case it would have to be yes (yes, I would use the standard search). On the counties issue, I was discussing alternatives with Biruitorul (the only user I knew to be interested in this issue); knowing his viewpoint, I would say both os agree that Odorhei County should be an article, but disagree on some other issues 9I think it is unnecessary to have two or more articles for, say, Argeş County - one for Argeş before 1937, another one for the post 1968 one -, and would favor sections and details in the same articles were homonymy applies (i.e.: in the totality of present-day counties). This was off-topic, so sorry for spamming. Dahn 02:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Glad to hear others may care about this (somewhat obscure) topic. Maybe we get to pursue it at some point, say, on the Counties of Romania talk page. For now, though, yes, I agree: I'd also have a separate Odorhei County article, but a single Argeş County. Occam's razor! Turgidson 03:34, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Great, and I'm glad we agree. I will not make a promise I don't know if I can keep, but I do plan to do something in that series of articles. Dahn 04:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Remark for Turgidson - interbellic counties have pages in the Romanian wikipedia. Eventually they will have here as well, named e.g. Braşov County (interbellic) :Dc76 13:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we all saw those. The idea was to bypass all the clutter they have come up with over there, by creating separate articles for older counties of the same names, and move beyond simply copying stuff "because they do it". I have stressed this before: on principle, rowiki is a rarely a model to follow. They should have have thought about this more in there as well. So, no, "eventually", they will not - we can come up with a more logical standard, and simply merge homonymous articles (detailing history and past borders in separate sections). Dahn 09:31, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

'Comment; What matters for WP:NCGN is uage in English text, of forms used as the name in English. Therefore Hungarian and Rumanian inflexions really don't matter, unless (as is most unlikely) English is borrowing some other form than the nominative. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:27, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments:

Just to make a few important comments. Firstly, the local name of the town is not only Székelyudvarhely, but also Odorheiu Secuiesc. They are both local names, it's just that Hungarian one is the predominant one. As to Afil's statement: firstly, Gyula does not in any way have a Romanian majority - despite it being an important regional centre for the Romanian community, the demographic weight of Romanians in this city is in fact very small. The Gyula case would be more comparable to Cluj-Napoca rather than Székelyudvarhely. As to the German name issue: there is a significant difference between the German and Hungarian names. Firstly, the German community is very small and for this reason it is mostly used as a historical name. Secondly, the Hungarian name has official recognition, in the form of local government access and the like, while German does not. The German name should be listed in brackets in the lead sentence, but it should not go in the infobox. Ronline ✉ 02:16, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps Gyula was a bad example - do we move Hertsa (95% Romanian) to Herţa? Biruitorul 02:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I believe we should. I would appreciate it if a foreigner would refer to that city as "Herţa" rather than "Hertsa" (even though those two names are actually identical, with the Ukrainian transliteration being the only difference). Ronline ✉ 02:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, at least you're consistent. I too would like to see that move, but since I don't want Odorheiu Secuiesc moved, I need to use a different standard, namely that since Ukrainian is the sole official language of Ukraine, Hertsa should stay where it is, as should Odorheiu Secuiesc, and this should only change when national laws (on autonomy/official language) or borders change. Biruitorul 02:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm consistent because my intention here is not to promote a Hungarian agenda or anything like that. I barely speak a word of Hungarian, and despite living in Oradea for many years, I know very few Hungarian people. However, as you probably know, I'm firmly committed to minority rights causes - and that includes the rights of Romanian minorities abroad. Ronline ✉ 03:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

That's very admirable, and I did not raise the spectre of Hungarian irredentism. However, I still think using official names when a common English name is lacking is simpler, a more correct interpretation of official policy, less prone to conflict, less OR (reflecting rather than creating reality), etc. Nevertheless, if you can find a place to host it, I'd be thrilled to have a wider-ranging policy debate on the matter. Biruitorul 04:02, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Tying the name of a city to the percentage of the population who speaks a certain language at any given time—instead of the official name—is a slippery slope I do not think we should engage on, unless there are extremely sound reasons to do so. To give an admittedly facetious example (reductio ad absurdum, if you wish): Suppose after Hurricane Katrina, the population of New Orleans had become majority Cajun (French speaking); would we have renamed the Big Easy, La Nouvelle-Orléans? I don't think so. Turgidson 02:47, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't compare this case to New Orleans. There were no significant changes in the ethnic setup of Székelyudvarhely in the last cca. 700-900 years. (And this is what I meant by respecting this community.) Your example rather refers to Cluj-Napoca. --KIDB 07:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The naming of a place in English has nothing to do with respecting the local community. Calling Venezia, Venice does not mean that the English-speaking people don't respect the Venetians. Alexrap 09:55, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

There was a little discussion above on whether renaming this page would lead to a slippery slope or not. Let me make a (somewhat rambling) comment here about that. As you may or may not know, the rough analogue in Hungarian for slippery slope is szalámitaktika (salami tactics), a term patented by Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi in the late 1940s. And those tactics led, sure enough, to show trials, such as the famous 1949 show trial of László Rajk, a native of (you guessed it!) Székelyudvarhely, oops, Odorheiu Secuiesc. (I put this info in the article a couple of days ago, once my curiosity was piqued by this discussion.) So I say, before we get too excited about these naming conventions (and they are important, don't get me wrong), let's pause for a second, take a deep breath, count our blessings, and put things a bit into perspective. Whether the town is called Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely or anything in between, it's all much, much better nowadays than way back in 1949. And, remember what Juliet said: "What's in a name? that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet". Turgidson 19:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Historic arguments indicating that the Hungarian version was used for a certain number of centuries which should justify using it as the basic name are extremely dangerous. Take the name of the city of Strasbourg. It was incorporated into France by the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). Before that, is was called Straßburg and that since 12 BC. Should this be a reason for using Straßburg as the basic name of the city? Or the Alsatian Strossburi? Obviously not.

The situation here is much more simple. The name has always been called Székelyudvarhely or Udvarhely by the inhabitants since the 12th-13th centuries. Even in the Ceausescu period when it was forbidden to use Hungarian settlement names in other towns, Székelyudvarhely was allowed because it was declared it was a "translation" of the Romanian name :-). --KIDB 06:28, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually the issue in this case would not be the name of the city. The German name would revive the memory of the German occupation of the Alsace-Lorraine. It would also send the signal that at least the Wikipedian who support this version are unhappy with the French rule and would nostalgically prefer the German rule. But even most Germans today (except a small minority) would be reluctant to raise the problem of the transfer of the rule of Elsaß to Germany. Both France and Germany are part of the European Union and whatever differences of oppinion these countries may have, for instance regarding the European constitution, territorial and language issues do not arise.

At present both Hungary and Rumania have joined the European Union and both countries are trying, maybe using the Franco-German example, to integrate into the EU without reviving old disputes. Neither government is willing to raise the question of national borders and both are trying to reduce ethnic disputes.

As in other cases, healing old wounds may be difficult. In both camps there are hotheaded persons who might think that the conflicts should be revived. It is wrong for Wikipedia to try to side with such views which poison the attempts of building more friendly relations and even worse to try to rewrite history, and to create the impression that it is productive to keep the nationalist conflict awake. Let the politicians work it out and if another solution is found, Wikipedia should adopt it. Until then, keep the names as they are official today and do not encourage confrontation.

And please do not change the name of Strasbourg because for several centuries it had another name, or because from 1940 to 1944 it was part of the German Reich.Afil 01:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point - that reminds me that Odorheiu Secuiesc too was part of Hungary from 1940 to 1944. Biruitorul 01:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Compromise

Having read some of the comments above comparing Transylvania to Kurdistan, Kosovo, or Corsica, also to Finnland or South Tyrol, I realised that there are great differences between these regions. Not only in a historical or cultural sense, but the size of the minority, the behaviour of the majority population is different in every case. Ethnic Hungarians in Romania have never had terrorist organisations to fight for their rights, they always tried to find solutions in a peaceful way.
I think that a solution can be found that is agreed between Hungarian and Romanian users and is endorsed in the naming conventions under a "Romania" heading. I have some suggestions in mind, and I will make the changes on two articles on a temporary basis to show how they would look like. Please don't revert these changes until an agreement is reached. --KIDB 07:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

KIDB, your request, whatever it amounts to, is borderline to WP:POINT. It is also unrealistic in its expectations. What I suggest is either to sandbox the changes in question or to simply illustrate them here. Dahn 07:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the Szekely Land case is different to all of the above, though there are some key similarities. I also agree with Dahn, however, that it's better to simply illustrate the changes here. Aside from renaming the articles for Hungarian-majority localities to the Hungarian name, what else do you believe should be done? Ronline ✉ 07:45, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE: I see the changes are being applied to Miercurea-Ciuc and Ilieni. I really don't see why you're applying these changes to the real articles rather than discussing it here. I mean, I'm not saying I oppose the changes, but to me it borders on a breach of consensus and an interference with the main namespace in order to make a point in a discussion which could just as potently have been made on a talk page. Ronline ✉ 07:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Finally, I fail to see how your changes are a compromise. Are you proposing that we keep the articles at the Romanian name but change the lead sentence so that the Hungarian name is first? I think that is rather inconsistent. Either we change the article name to Hungarian and make the Hungarian name first in the lead sentence, or we leave it at the Romanian name but then put the Hungarian name after the Romanian one in the lead sentence. The current version is rather bewildering to users, aside from the visual clutter it presents. Ronline ✉ 07:55, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

It won't hurt anybody. Have a look at Csíkszereda and Illyefalva, both settlements with Hungarian majority. The third example is Targu Mures which I didn't change, I think that is a good example of a town where the minority is above 20%.
In the places where there is a Hungarian majority, I suggest that the title remains Romanian, but the Hungarian name is the first in the first line, both the Romanian and Hungarian names in bold. In infoboxes, also the Hungarian is the first. In settlements, where the minority is above 20%, the name in the minority language appears in the infobox, in the second row. If there are more than one minorities above 20%, all of them appear n the infobox. This is the compromise I suggest.--KIDB 07:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Alright, so to address both of those points. Firstly, in cases where the minority is above 20% but below 50%, your suggestion is already implemented. See Oradea, Târgu Mureş or Satu Mare. The Hungarian name is also in the infobox, and a lot of these articles explicitly mention the fact that Hungarian is officially-recognised. Secondly, regarding the case of localities where the Hungarian population is above 50%. From what I understand, your proposal is centred on three pillars:

• Maintaining the article title at the Romanian name
• Making the Hungarian name appear first in both the lead sentence and the infobox
• Making both the Hungarian and Romanian names bold (i.e. same formatting)

I don't object to your suggestion in principle, but I believe it introduces inconsistency into the encyclopedia for the sake of WP:POINT. If it were up to me, I would propose that we move the articles to the Hungarian name. However, maintaining the Romanian name in the title but writing the Hungarian name first is inconsistent and confusing. Furthermore, placing the Hungarian name first in the infobox is technically incorrect, since, even though both Romanian and Hungarian can be officially-used in these localities, Romanian has a higher status because of its status as a national official language. Whereas the lead sentence doesn't have to reflect politics, the infobox generally deals with official names - which is why both Romanian and Hungarian are included, but Romanian is included first. In the same way, Irish localities should include the Irish name first and then the English name. Similarly, all the South Tyrol infoboxes (even the German majority localities) include the Italian name first and then the German one. Ronline ✉ 08:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Whatever solution we come to, I can only concur with Ronline that KIDB's proposal is not a good one. I also think it is revertible. Dahn 08:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

KIDB, could you please keep the discussion on talk pages for the time being? Once the dam bursts and one starts making changes, it's very hard to prevent chaos. Let's keep that tide behind the dam for the moment, to prevent some massive edit war from breaking out. For the record, although this is irrelevant: I find this discussion tiring, tendentious, unnecessary, and unproductive - I thought we'd reached consensus on the matter a long while back. I probably wouldn't feel this way if there were a Romanian "Szekelyfold" in Hungary, and I was trying to alter names in the reverse direction, but there you go. Biruitorul 08:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the "role reversal" is a very good exercise :) The problem is that it is very hard for all the peoples surrounding Hungary to gain a real understanding of the Hungarian minority issue. It's only after talking to Hungarians that I've actually understood that most of them do not actually want "irrendentism" (or that most terrible of words, "alipire"). Rather, they actually have very legitimate concerns about the fact that they too were born in this country and feel that they are often treated like foreigners who should "integrate" or who can "always go back to Hungary if they want". Constant comparisons seem to be made with immigrant communities in countries such as the USA or Australia ("Oh, but in America, do Romanians get access to native-language education?"). Many Romanians continue to peddle those arguments without realising how flawed they are. I think very few Romanians seem to understand that the Hungarians are an autochtonous minority who form a rather significant percentage of the Romanian population, to the point where they could be considered a constituent nation of Romania. But, there is no Romanian version of Szekely Land anywhere in the world, so it's often very hard to gain empathy. I suppose the closest would be the Romanian-majority localities in Ukraine. Ronline ✉ 08:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

As to this discussion - I agree that it isn't necessarily leading to any definite consensus. I am fond of the fact that no hardline positions have been taken, which is a wonderful thing, but I think that's resulted in a situation where both Romanian and Hungarian editors are taking an uncertain and rather apathetic stance, perhaps because no-one wants to upset the other side. While I do not agree with the current consensus and believe that the articles should be moved to the Hungarian names, I do not feel strongly enough on this issue to pursue the case. I also think that the consensus has shown that most people do not want a change in the status quo (even if we discount Hungarian and Romanian editors). What then shall we do? Ronline ✉ 08:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Biruitorul, I don't see any danger of chaos here, the changes I made are temporary. I have never used sandboxes but if you would like to, please feel free to move my suggestions there, providing a link in this discussion. --KIDB 08:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, KIDB, that's fine, as long as mass edits don't begin yet. And yes, I do have some sympathy for the position of the Székely. Nevertheless, I think the current set-up (Romanian titles, Romanian above Hungarian in infoboxes, Romanian before Hungarian in the text) strikes an appropriate balance: it reflects both their official names (official, at least, on the national level, which is relevant, since Romania is a unitary state) and the fact that they are almost entirely Hungarian, and have been for many centuries. Biruitorul 08:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I cannot see the point of all this discussion. We already had a lot of people expressing their opinions in the Survey. A large majority of them were against moving the article and they also expressed several valid reasons for that. What is the point of starting implementing similar changes to other articles, without even discussing them first? Could someone explain to me why is it necessary to have so many people wasting energy for such an issue. In all the articles the Hungarian name is already included. Do people feel a lot better if they see the Hungarian name on top of the Romanian one? It's such a silly attitude that doesn't bring any improvement, but introduces instead a lot of confusion (e.g. for a tourist who wants to go there) and violates the Wikipedia practice. And all this just to be able to have the Hungarian name first. What is the point of all this? Alexrap 09:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I am going to undo my temporary edit on the Illyefalva and Csíkszereda articles by tomorrow morning if no agreement is reached here on a "Romania" heading in the naming conventions. --KIDB 12:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to admit that nobody really supported my idea about the compromise between the present situation and the possibility of moving the articles to the native name of these settlements. Also, nobody suggested any other solutions. I never thought that my suggestions were perfect and I supposed that there will be others suggesting better solutions. I go and revert the pages where I wanted to demonstrate my ideas. A few remarks:

• I maintain these settlements deserve that it is indicated: the Romanian name in the article is not their native Hungarian name and the latter should not shy away in brackets. I will be thinking if there is any solution. If anybody has any suggestions, I will be glad to discuss it.
• I still maintain that according to Wikipedia naming conventions the local name should be used and the local name is the Hungarian one where this ethnic group is in majority. I was not convinced by the arguments above.
• I think that a separate heading for Romanian place names should be created here to provide clear guidelines in preventing Transylvanian articles from vandals.

--KIDB 16:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Despite the fact that I "voted" oppose in the survey, I do agree (and I have indicated that above) that there is a problem with the current names in italic. They should be bold. E.g. Alba-Iulia, b/c once had an official Hungarian name, some Ceangai villages b/c of >20% status, Odorhei and Cluj b/c of both. It is actually irrelevant whether >20% is 21% or 95%. I know that in some countries they want 50%+1 for that, but in Transylvania (where as you say "there were no terrorists") 20% is perfect, legal, and the population accepted without any objection, I mean civilized people. The idea to use the "terrorists" argument is a little stretch. We know very well we deal with very civilized people, not with some savages. If Vadim et Co have other oppionions, let him/them shove those oppinions down their own throats (sa se indoape cu ele). I do recognize that eventually there will appear some Vadim-like trolls, and hence we need to settle this convention beforehand.:Dc76 18:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

If consensus does not support a page move to the Hungarian name, then I would support making the Hungarian names bold rather than italic so that they have equal weight to the Romanian variant. This should be applied to all localities where the Hungarian name is officially-recognised (i.e. more than 20% Hungarian population). The German name should only be written in bold if Germans make up more than 20% of the population. The same bold type should be applied to areas where Roma make up more than 20% of the population, such as Budeşti/Budeshti. Ronline ✉ 06:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess I could go for that, provided that it is not done like KIDB did it: for example, we could have both names in bold (I'm guessing that Romanian should go first, Hungarian second - per the article title), both outside of brackets:

"Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely (Romanian: Odorheiu Secuiesc or Odorhei, Hungarian: Székelyudvarhely or Udvarhely; German: Oderhellen)"

Alternatively, we could go with:

Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely is the second-largest etc. etc.

And below a section titled "Name", which would detail

"In Romanian, the town is known as... in Hungarian... in German... in whatever else is relevant..."

Although, I must say, I'd rather have the clear standard format with one bold in Romanian, brackets, and italics. Dahn 07:21, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Another idea: we might place templates in the first line, right after the title. One for those settlements where an ethnic group is in majority in a town and another one for those places where it is over 20%. The rest of the text could stay as it is now (brackets, italic, etc.) Now I have learnt how to use sandboxes.

Examples: User:KIDB/Orasul and User:KIDB/Orasul2 --KIDB 07:54, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate that you're proposing all these different alternatives, and it's hard for me to say this, because I would really support a more prominent coverage of the Szekely/Hungarian character of these towns. However, I think your above proposal hasn't been implemented anywhere else at Wikipedia, and sounds rather stilted. Statements like "This settlement is called Város by the majority of its inhabitants" border on WP:POINT and are also rather unencyclopedic - we don't know officially what the inhabitants of any town call that town, since the census only records native language spoken (and not what name inhabitants use for the town they live in). The one with the 20% is even more arbitrary - it doesn't even mention what group call the town by that name. I suppose a more detailed version would be "This settlement is called Stadt2 in Hungarian, spoken by more than 20% of the inhabitants of this settlement". Once again, however, to any neutral observer, that would sound very much like someone really, really wants to emphasise that aspect, particularly considering that it is in italics at the top. In short, it sounds forced. That part of the article is usually used for disambiguation not for alternative names. Alternative names are generally included in the lead section (as they are now).

Consequently, I believe there are only two real approaches to solving this problem:

1. We move the majority-Hungarian towns to the Hungarian name. This proposal seems to have been opposed, even though I think most people have just shielded themselves with the rather simplistic argument of "Romanian is the only official language of Romania" (which fails to take into account the comprehesive minority rights law). However, it seems there is rather broad opposition to this model: it is supported by five users - me, you, two Hungarian users and Mihai Andrei, a Romanian user.

1. We bolden the Hungarian names to make them equal in weight to the Romanian ones.

What do you think? Ronline ✉ 09:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The boldening of Hungarian names above 20% is fine and thank you all for this suggestion. But I still don't think this would be a solution in places where the locals are mostly Hungarians.

For those settlements I would prefer moving the articles to the name in majority language. If this creates too much conflict, a template could be acceptable, with an agreed text, like yours, or "This settlement is called Város in Hungarian, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of this settlement", or Example. You say that "Alternative names are generally included in the lead section (as they are now)." In my point of view, the native name of a settlement is not an alternative name. --KIDB 13:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

User KIDB asked for my opinion:

I would prefer the first one but since it won't be accepted (because what concerns our views, we are still living in the 1930ies - oh, it's already 2007 and we are living in a so called EU, where all nations love each other and everybody accepts the language of the other one! I didn't even notice it...), the second one would be OK too. Besides, I want to make you arouse attention for an article like Sterzing and ask you: in which country do we find this place? But OK, if we still want to live in the Nazi-time, we can do it! If we want to make Eastern Europe to a place with full hatred and intolerance, why not? Let's smash each other's brain out and swing happily the Swastika-flags! --Öcsi 12:52, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

But if the Romanian users feel attacked by changing article-titles or place names, they are free to do it too: they can add the Romanian name to place-article's titles to Hungarian Romanian villages, Ukranian Romanian villages or whatever. Öcsi

A perfect illustration of Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one". Ah, well. Turgidson 13:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't you think that this discussion is ridiculous? Do you want to know what the normal public thinks about discussions like this? It's only a big joke! What does it change or who does it bother if there is an alternative name in a village's title, which is populated by another "nation", in this case by people with another language? It only bothers some people who don't like this other "nation"; and people who don't like other nations are nationalists - that's an easy definition of this word. "In RO (or H) the only official language is RO (H) " - great opinion, above all in a free encylopedia, it really shows our warm friendship. --Öcsi 13:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

And Mikey-boy would also agree with me that this discussion is a huge nonsense. --Öcsi 13:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Look, Öcsi, I really don't understand what you're trying to get at here other than inflaming spirits. This discussion is not ridiculous because KIDB raised a legitimate concern which was countered by legitimate arguments. There has been very little nationalism and irredentism involved in this discussion, so please don't try to bring any of that here or turn this argument into a minority rights dialectic. I think you guys are really starting to test our patience - no one here, except an anonymous vandal whom I have blocked, has shown anti-Hungarian attitudes. The reasons given for opposing the move to Hungarian names have mostly been pragmatic, rational and based on Wikipedia policy, even though I personally would support moving the page to the Hungarian name. Trying to paint all of the "oppose" votes in the colours of "1930s nationalism" and "hatred and intolerance" only serves to discredit your argument. No one here has shown hatred and intolerance, and both Dahn and I have acted firmly against the vandal who took the Hungarian name out of the Odorheiu Secuiesc infobox. No one here has shown anti-Hungarian sentiment: in fact, several Romanian users have affirmed that they support autonomy, that they support keeping Hungarian names in the infobox, that they support boldening the Hungarian names. In fact, if we look at the people who support KIDB's proposal, two of them are Hungarian and two of them are Romanian. All non-Romanian, non-Hungarian participants (i.e. external participants) in this discussion oppose KIDB's proposal. So please: stop trying to induce feelings of guilt, and try to divert your attention away from sentimental Romanian-Hungarian politics towards Wikipedia policy. Ronline ✉ 13:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, a very useful comment from User Öcsi. It seems that trying to maintain some sort of consistency throughout Wikipedia gets labelled as "lack of respect to the locals", "making Europe a place full of hatred and intolerance". What next?

What's so difficult to understand that Odorheiu Secuiesc is the established English name for the town? Check any important English tourist guide, check any English weather website, check any European Train Timetable in English.

It looks to me that, indeed, Ocsi is right: some people just cannot stand seeing the Romanian name there and will therefore come up with all sorts of interesting and novel ideas to change things. It does not matter that it's against the Wikipedia practice, it does not matter that introduces confusion. Alexrap 13:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

But it is. And it's sad that no one of you even notices it. --Öcsi 13:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

What exactly don't we notice? I agree that it's sad that many Romanians continue to believe there should be no Szekely autonomy. I agree that it's sad that there are some users out there who want to remove the Hungarian name from the infobox. I also agree that it's sad that some users don't see the case for moving these articles to the Hungarian version. However, it's also annoying that you're attempting to stifle legitimate argument - argued on policy grounds rather than xenophobia or anti-Magyarism - by seeking to induce sentiments of guilt or trying to present all opposition to the page move as being trapped in 1930s hatred and intolerance. Ronline ✉ 14:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

That's what you don't notice. The arguments. Most of them are a huge nonsense or simply superfluous, from both sides. Do you know how many pages long you already argue? Still with no result. This is ridiculous. --Öcsi 14:35, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Come on, Öcsi. I could mention 1940s hatred and intolerance of Hungarians toward Romanians in Northern Transylvania, but I won't, because that's simply not the issue here. It simply is not the issue. The issue at hand has the potential to become explosive, but so far it's been a rather dry conversation about naming prerogatives. There is no need to heat things up at this point. Biruitorul 14:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

And why do you mention it now? --Öcsi 14:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

If this question does call for any sort of answer, it would "because it is hard not to think about an elephant" (hope you'll get the reference). Can we please stop poisoning the well now and take this discussion back to its reasonable place, Öcsi? Dahn 14:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes please. FWIW, I concur wholeheartedly with Ronline and Dahn in this matter. KissL 14:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

You do not understand anything. I want to make you realize that you are doing a huge discussion about a thing which simply has no weight. Where there is a mixed (>20%) population, make two titles. Where there is homogenous ethnic population (>90%) make the title in the language of the inhabitants, with the "official" name in brackets. I don't know why this developed to a political discussion, but for a guy who read it today for the first time it is really weird. Not to forget the hard and often intolerant undertone. If you do not realize it - then you are poor guys... --Öcsi 15:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, well, if it is about you deducing our undertones and you being so right and all of us being so wrong, none of us can possibly present a challenge. You are clearly the most enlightened person on wikipedia, so perhaps we should replace all polls by dropping you a note to ask you what is to be done. Dahn 15:22, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly what I wanted to say :). If you don't notice it, of course I am. --Öcsi 15:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

All I can say is that, if you are waiting for the note in question, you shouldn't hold your breath. :) Dahn 15:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Now I think everybody interested expressed their opinions regarding the moving of the article. Thank you for your time and efforts. As I am not experienced in this kind of procedure, can you please suggest what the next step would be? Is it needed to summarise this conversation and the different views? Or there will somebody neutral come and decide about what should be done? Or we have to elaborate a decision? Now I have to go off-line but will come back this evening or tomorrow. regards, --KIDB 14:26, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can see nobody agreed with my suggestions for a compromise. I can't agree with simply writing Székelyudvarhely in bold. We are only a couple of people talking about a name that 35.000 locals consider to be the the real name of their town. I think this deserves to be strongly emphasised and I don't think I should be hiding this opinion of mine. The Romanian translation of Székelyudvarhely is much more emphasised at present, being the title and being used in the article. Öcsi, unfortunately, was not expressing his thoughts politely enough, but he said something important: the Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, not governed by national legislations so it doesn't matter at all what the official language in Romania is. Wikipedia users should be much more open minded about this. But never mind. If there will be an agreement about the bold names in settlements above 20%, I will help you in re-formatting the articles and collecting census data about the settlements concerned.

Will we move the articles when the Romanian Parliament passes a more favourable act on ethnic minorities? No, because Romanian MPs will never make decision like that. --KIDB 17:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I know that it's difficult to maintain an objective eye, especially in such issues, but I belive that an effort is required from both parts. I have the feeling that no matter what a non-Hungarian user will write, you will still consider it less relevant and less valid than an opinion of one of your fellow Hungarians. If you were not able to acknowledge any of the many valid reasons expressed by many people above, but you were able to find a positive thing in what Ocsi wrote, I don't think that it is much more I can say. Honestly.

And your last comment about the Romanian Parliament is very tendentious. They might not be perfect, but the minorities rights in today's Romania are a positive example in Europe. And it's not just me saying that.

A bit off topic: I still can't understand how can some people complain about the rights of the Hungarian minority in today's Romania and say, in the same time, how sad it is that some cities lost their Hungarian majority. In other words they admire the structure and policy of the Kingdom of Hungary, where Romanians for a long time were not allowed to settle within the town limits. That's why the rural parts were overwhelmingly Romanian. Cluj County had an 75% Romanian population, while the city of Cluj had only 20% Romanians. How can some people consider this a natural thing and complain about minorities rights in today's Romania? That's still a mystery for me. What don't we all try to maintain the objective eye when we judge such things? Alexrap 20:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is off topic, but if you are interested in this issue, I am glad to discuss it at anoher place. --KIDB 21:00, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

If you have something reasonable to say, that you believe might solve that mystery for me, feel free to use my talk page. Alexrap 12:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Take 2

I need to ask people involved here: have they at all taken into consideration the two proposals I made in the previous section? Does anyone have any objection to them?

And, yes, I agree with Ronline that the template proposed by KIDB is not moving his solutions further away from WP:POINT, is not consistent with wikipedia norms, and is utterly arbitrary (in disregard for wikipedia's advice that we should look before we leap). Dahn 14:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

My problem with the templates proposed by KIDB is that they are much too intrusive – an unnecessary disturbance for the casual reader. I would go for having the Hungarian names in bold for localities with a Hungarian majority, and no change otherwise (i.e., italics + infobox). KissL 15:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

My opinion about "the templates" is somehow similar to KissL's opinion. The only message they send is that someone is trying really hard to "make a point". And they are not at all consistent with the Wikipedia practice.

About bolding the name in the language of the majority: provided that it is not against the Wikipedia practice, I don't mind doing so. User Dc76 said at some point that Wikipedia actually encourages this. Is there a link for this? Just to make things even clearer. However, I still feel that this whole thing is a bit forced and its only reason is that someone is trying hard to make an irrelevant point. Alexrap 15:25, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Until a change of the legal status of Hungarian in Romania I think the only possible solution is the proposed bolding of the Hungarian names in the form "Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely (German: Odorhellen; Latin: Areopolis)". I think this version also reflects the current Romanian law as the Hungarian name indeed has more official recognition than other - largely extinct - alternative names. I don't know whether we should use this version with 20 or 50 % limit. Obviously it is a sign of goodwill from Romanian users to allow such a change and would be really great to experience a gesture like that. There aren't too much settlements in Hungary with more than 20 or 50 percent minority population but theoretically I'm not against implementing a similar change. Zello 15:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

If you want to discuss till 2100, I have no problem. KIDB only asked about my opinion, and I think this disku is far long enough. --Öcsi 15:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

However, you didn't even notice my suggestions. This shows everything. --Öcsi 15:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

You had suggestions? Hmmm... I musta missed them. As for the compromise mentioned by Alexrap and Zello -- sounds OK with me: if we're down to arguing about bold vs italics, I say let's get it over, and have a Ciuc beer, oops, Csíki sör! Turgidson 16:01, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I met with users here who were able to kill you about bolds and italics, so... :) Zello 17:17, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, so I think we all agree about the boldening of the names. I would propose that this be applied to all areas covered by the minority rights legislation. That is, if the Hungarian population is over 20%, the Hungarian name, which becomes officially-recognised, should be boldened. I have provisionally implemented the change at Miercurea-Ciuc and I, for one, think it's the best solution. I believe we should codify this policy under a Romania heading at the Naming conventions page. Ronline ✉ 02:29, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I concur. Dahn 02:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Ronline and Dahn's rationale in this section as well. Olessi 17:52, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I agreed that it sounds reasonable for Odorheiu Secuiesc, with its 96.7% Székely population. Miercurea-Ciuc, at 81.8%, also sounds OK. But the 20% threshold sounds too low to me -- what if the percentage changes to 19%, then 21%, etc? Keep moving back and forth from italics to bold? I'd say one needs a clear majority (well over 50%) to go to the lengths we've been going to in this debate, in order to overrule the standard WP conventions. Now, I could be wrong, and there could be some other, countervailing arguments, but let's not set the threshold too low, for this will open the floodgates -- and perhaps not just here, but in other corners of WP, too. (Remember, this whole thing started because of the supposed precedent created by the South Tyrol naming conventions!) Turgidson 02:54, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

The reason why I have ultimately accepted the 20% threshold is that the law uses it, and therefore sets a guideline that needn't be subject to additional disputes. The percentage may change from any value to any other value, at 20 or at 80 percent alike (it is hopefully not likely to change from 80 to 20, but, wherever you set the bar, it is just as likely to drop below it). If we go by the official results, we would not have to review the info less than 5-10 years apart, so this in itself should not be a problem. Whether the number is too low, I really couldn't say, but I think Paris is worth a mass. Dahn 03:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I will not argue with the Law, or with Henri IV. But I will argue about the probabilities: the chances that the percentage of a given population will change measurably over a given period I think are higher at 20% than at 97%. In other words, 97% is a more stable equilibrium than 20%. One can think of exceptions, but I'm fairly confident that the hypothesis can be tested empirically. Turgidson 03:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

You are obviously right. Dahn 04:04, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that those areas which barely make the 20% cutoff are more likely to change. However, I believe that, in the context of Wikipedia, making periodical changes should be the least of our worries, particularly since the census is conducted only once every ten years. So, the localities which have Hungarian populations of over 20% based on the 2002 census will not have to be revised until 2012, the date of the next census. If the percentage of Hungarians drops to below 20% in 2012, then the name will no longer be written in bold. That is, if this policy will still be in place. Ronline ✉ 04:13, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I also believe that 20% is too low. We might get into situations where we will have to write A or B or C or D, which will just confuse things, rather than making them any clearer. 50% looks much more like a reasonable threshold. The 20% threshold is already pretty well emphasized in Wikipedia by the fact that the name in the second language is added to the infobox. Alexrap 09:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

C'mon, you want to exclude Targu Mures? --KIDB 15:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't discuss any particular case now, the whole discussion is general here. As I said, the 20% threshold (which is not a lot) is already very well emphasized as the second name is very visible in the infobox (same format as the first name). The solution with writing A or B is not really part of the Wikipedia practice. And, as a matter of fact, it does introduce some sort of confusion, as it's not seen in other articles. Therefore, I believe that doing it for the 50% threshold, it's already a pretty non-standard thing, and, as Zello admitted, it is a sign of goodwill from some Romanian users. Alexrap 19:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I would also go for bolding the H. name only over 50%, or more precisely, for settlements with a plurality of Hungarians. Otherwise, the infobox should be enough. Boldening another name beside that in the title does create some kind of confusion, most notably because the casual reader won't know which language each name is in. This gets clarified if the body text says one name is official while the other is the "plurality local name"; in the other cases, I'm not so sure. As a side note, I have also noticed – for some time now – and appreciate the goodwill shown by Romanian editors. KissL 10:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks :) Just as a note: the user will know quite instantly what language each bold name is in because the names in italics will still be in brackets in the lead sentence, telling them what language they are in. For example the lead at Miercurea-Ciuc reads: Miercurea-Ciuc or Csíkszereda (Romanian: Miercurea-Ciuc, Hungarian: Csíkszereda, German: Szeklerburg) is the county seat of Harghita county, Romania. Later in the body, in the demographics section, the article should state the ethnic composition of the town, indicate that it has a Hungarian majority or plurality, and also state that the Hungarian language is officially-recognised for the purposes of administration, signage, etc. Ronline ✉ 11:07, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a very good compromise to me: plurality as the cutoff point, and the combination of bold/italics as explained above. Have we reached consensus yet, or what? Turgidson 12:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree too. We have had a long discussion... The only thing to decide is the limit: plurality or 20%? I would prefer the 20% rule, like in the case of Kétegyháza. --KIDB 13:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes I support this compromise with the 20% rule. Kétegyháza or Méhkerék are good counterparts. --Koppany 13:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This suggestion, which in fact coincides with the one made my Dahn above, seems ok to me. What treshold ... As a Romanian nationalist I should perhaps say "50%", but as a logical person I must say "as per the law, or wheterever legal provisions exist". However, I would like that the conclusion of this discussion be recommended for inclusion in WP accepted standards/compromizes, so people in other cases can refer to this example - not to automatically use it, as the particulars will always be specific, but to be able to give a precedent. :Dc76 13:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

As I already said above, in my opinion 50% is the best threshold. Alexrap 13:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I personally think the 20% threshold is too low, for various reasons outlined ablove, but also because it does not obey any kind of logical criterion that could be recognized more universally (as Dc76 also says, if I read him correcly). In others words, it is a rather artifial figure, inferred somehow from the Romanian code, which at any rate does not cover this specific question, and is not necessarily what we should follow here at WP. My personal preference would be for the 50% threshold (as Alexrap also says), but, as I said above, I'm willing to settle on the "plurality" compromise, which is also something that anyone can understand as a purely mathematical construct, independent of the particulars of the situation. Turgidson 15:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Any rename of the official name of the town is illegal and unconstitutional in Romania, and it should have the same status on wikipedia also. Odorheiu Secuiesc is the proper name of the town and it won't change! Discussion ended. Eurocopter tigre 17:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thank you for explaining us the Romanian concept of freedom of speech. --Koppany 19:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Fortunately this is not a "Romanian" concept, this is only a personal attitude. Forget it. --KIDB 20:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

You are right. I am sorry I did not want to offend anyone. Of course it was only Eurocopter tigre's attitude and thanks to god it is not general among Romanians. --Koppany 22:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Haha, looks who's talking...Should I remind you that the hungarians opressed the Romanian Minority for centuries in the history - What about the Hungarian freedom of speech?? Odorheiu Secuiesc is in Romania and it should have a romanian name. Although, I have a proposal, we could translate the names of the following hungarian towns , because a romanian minority exists there: Békéscsaba (Bichiş-Ciaba), Szeged (Seghedin), Gyula (Giula). I think it would be fare.... Eurocopter tigre 20:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

No value of revoking real or only imagined offences. In the case of Békéscsaba the use of Slovak name seems to me acceptable, unfortunately I dont know the exact percentage of Romanian inhabitants in Békéscsaba, but I support the idea if the town's name is also written in the city sighn on the language of a certain ethnic minority, this name should be included in wiki articles. --Koppany 22:12, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Békéscsaba (Békéšska Čaba) has 3,4% ethnic minority inhabitants, mostly Slovaks. (And 5,6% declared having a kind of cultural attachment to a minority). --KIDB 06:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Eurocopter tigre, yes, the town is in Romania and the official name is Odorheiu Secuiesc. This is hopefully undisputed. Another undisputed thing is that the town has a Hungarian majority. And this is exactly why, according to the Romanian law, Hungarian has a special status in there. If bad things happened in the past, it does not mean that we have to continue doing similar things. Alexrap 21:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC) It is in everyone's interest to create the right

Summary

List of users who support a compromise (please correct the list if you don't agree) --KIDB 08:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Am I right, the precentage is for two things:

• when to have infobox in 2 or 3 languages
• at the top, when to write in paranthesis after the Romanian name also the Hungarian and/or German one(s) in bold.

Is this what the percentage is about? I assume it was agreed that the title remains in Romanian, right? :Dc76 17:35, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the infoboxes were already in two languages in places above 20% before this discussion started. This is only about the bolding of both names in the first line. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) And yes, the title remains Romanian. --KIDB 20:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

User	%
Dc76	20%
Ronline	20%
Dahn	20%
Zello	20%
Eurocopter tigre	Plurality
Turgidson	Plurality
KissL	Plurality
KIDB	20%
Alexrap	50%
Koppany	20%
user	%
afil	0%	Keep the title as it is. There is nothing to compromise about
Olessi	20%
user	%

Could you explain what sort of compromise? (I'm not being snide - I'm genuinely curious.) Personally, I'm happy with the status quo ante - Romanian titles, Romanian and Hungarian names in the infobox (if ≥20), Romanian names in bold and Hungarian ones (for anywhere in Transylvania, even if <20%) in italics, and also German names if applicable. I think the current compromise looks forced, but I'm not about to launch a counteroffensive against it! Biruitorul 18:03, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The compromise basically makes a distinction between alternative names not used by anybody now (extinct, historical etc) and names used by a significant part of the present-day population. Romanian law also makes the same distinction when allows the usage of the latters in official documents. You should realize there is a difference between the names Székelyudvarhely (used by 97 % of the inhabitants) and Areopolis (not used by anybody) in significance. Zello 18:18, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Those official documents are on the local level, and the Romanian version takes precedence. I do realise that there is a difference, but stylistically, the prior version looks better, and does enough to indicate the Székely character of those places. However, as I said, I don't expect to win this battle, nor am I going to struggle very hard to do so. That is my position, but I will not stand in the way of a compromise. Biruitorul 18:53, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I tottaly agree and support Biruitorul! However, if we don't find a compromise , we could continue this discussion for ages. Eurocopter tigre 19:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The issue is if about the title of the article, if it should be kept or changed. What is the compromise about? Any other discussion about boxes or contents of the article does not answer the basic question. How can you move 20% of the title? Please be serious.Afil 19:48, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The table above is not regarding the title of the article, but rather the boldening of the Hungarian name as per Odorheiu Secuiesc or Miercurea-Ciuc. Under the old model, only the Romanian name was written in bold in the lead sentence, with alternative names, including Hungarian, written in italics in brackets. The debate above is whether the boldening should kick in when a certain language group reaches 20% of the population, when it is plurality, or when it reaches 50% of the population. Some users (myself included) argue that in all localities where Hungarians form more than 20% of the population and where Hungarian is thus officially-recognised, the boldening of the Hungarian name should take place. Other users are stating that we should only bolden the Hungarian name in cases where Hungarians are a plurality, or make up the majority of the population. You can read the explanations behind these differing arguments in the "Compromise" and "Take 2" sections above. Ronline ✉ 10:59, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way, while several of us are trying to bend backwards regarding the name of Odorheiu Secuiesc, and struggling to find a reasonable compromise, I see that one of the participants in this discussion took upon himself to edit Unirea, Alba, adding the following: "(called Felvinc since the middle ages, until the 20th century)". So I guess the name Vinţu de Sus was not in use? Or, there were <20% of inhabitants using it at the time? Or what? My old concerns about the slippery slope and the salami tactics are starting to resurface, in view of this. Can we have a more detailed explanation as to what is the plan here regarding the naming conventions of localities in Transylvania, before we sign on the dotted line? Thank you. Turgidson 15:17, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, less than 20% were Romanians there and it was an admnistrative centre of the neighbouring Székely territories. --KIDB 15:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe so, maybe not--I still think that needs verification. And saying the town "was called Felvinc" negates that it ever had other names (Vinţu de Sus, Oberwinz) -- or at least, denigrates those other historical names as being irrelevant -- which I find rather of ironic, in view of the discussion we've been having here. Remember all the talk about Romanians not being sensitive to minority rights, etc, etc? Well, how about being sensitive to people who lived for centuries in Vinţu de Sus, or Oberwinz, and called it so? Finally, I maintain that "until the 20th century" is way too vague (and "adminsitrative" is misspelled, btw). And, where is the citation establishing that "(Unirea) had a majority Hungarian population until the 20th century"? I still don't see that. Turgidson 16:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any old census data for Unirea, Alba, so I cannot confirm or not the fact that there were less than 20% Romanians in there. Probably KIDB can provide the source for us. In any case, that information (that the place was called Felvinc since medieval times) looks a bit forced in there. Also, following the wikilinks from that article, one can find several "odd" things, such as:

• In the article on Aranyosszék one can find the English translation, but no Romanian equivalent. I presume it does not matter that Romanians lived and still live in there. In the same article, one can find out about the Valley of Aranyos River (today called Arieş). We should probably be reminded that the river was always called Arieş, by the majority of the people living in Transylvania in general, and along the river's banks, in particlurar (see Ţara Moţilor).
• In the article on the River Arieş, one can find out that the town of Aranyosgyéres (Câmpia Turzii) bear the name of the river. Nevermind the fact that the town always had a Romanian majority. The editor strangely considered that this piece of information is really relevant for the article.

Now, I don't know what the others think, but to me all this "campaign" looks quite annoying. If I were from somewhere else and I read such articles, I would be totally confused. It seems that some editors really want to make a point, that not only generates loads of confusion, but is also incorrect. The question is why? Alexrap 16:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

We should't mix to things: names in present-day context and names in historical context. All the above discussion was about names in present-day context while the Unirea problem is about the historical context. Majority of people here agreed in the new form of the lead in topograhic articles. I think that's a good thing but a lot of other questions remained open. The most important is the historical toponymy of the former Kingdom of Hungary and Transylvania. I think we should have a debate about this question but please try to keep things apart because there is no connection. Zello 17:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed there is a difference. But the question remains: why this new "strange edits campaign"? Edits that are confusing, incorrect, (some) irrelevant and also against the Wikipedia practice. Alexrap 17:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I presented a name section in the Unirea article according to the toponymy of Attila M. Szabó about the historical usage of the different names of the town. I think we should write such a name section in every article about the history of the different names. It won't solve all the problems but at least gives the much needed historical data for the discussions. Zello 17:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I also suggest to continue discussion on the Unirea talk page. Zello 17:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I will copy this conversation to the talk page of Unirea and will include the data there. I suggest to continue this discussion there, too. I also invite you to include the missing information about Aranyosszék in that article - unfortunately I don't know how it is in Romanian. (I know Háromszék is Trei Sate) Yes, indeed, Aranyosgyéres in Hungarian is called after the Hungarian name of the river.

I suppose you don't wish to eliminate the results of the above compromise (suggested by others) by attacking me? If not, please continue this discussion on the talk pages of the articles concerned. --KIDB 17:37, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Your supposition is correct. We just made some notes of some of your "not so fair-play" edits in other articles. Háromszék=Trei Scaune. Alexrap 17:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I will be grateful if you find out how Aranyosszék was called in Romanian and include it in the article. See you there--KIDB 17:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Aranyosszék in Rumanian was called "Scaunul Arieş". What is basically missing in the article is the information that the capital of the seat was the village called today Unirea, previously Vinţu de Sus, in hungarian Felvinc, în german Oberwinz or Oberweinsdorf. The presented order should not be interpreted as a preference. It simply indicates the names in various languages. Actually, if we are talking about the seat, the name should be quoted in hungarian first. But I don't want to open Pandora's box again with a question of priorities so I am not including the information myself. However you do it is fine with me. Afil 18:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Formatting

If there is a consensus to bolden the relevant alternate name, I suggest changing the style slightly. The current method seems rather cluttered: Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely (Romanian: Odorheiu Secuiesc, Hungarian: Székelyudvarhely, German: Oderhellen) is the second-largest city...

Instead, I suggest: Odorheiu Secuiesc (Romanian; German: Oderhellen) or Székelyudvarhely (Hungarian) is the second-largest city... Olessi 17:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment and your vote, but I suggest not to change the agreed version now. --KIDB 20:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Another possible solution:

Odorheiu Secuiesc or Székelyudvarhely (Romanian, Hungarian, German: Oderhellen) is the second-largest city... Zello 20:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

IMO, the two new proposals seem rather vague, a bit too innovative in respect to established usage, and potentially confusing for the reader (especially Zello's). Dahn 22:45, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not very enthusiastic about it :) Zello 00:38, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I think the current proposal is the clearest and the best, even if we are writing the Hungarian and Romanian name twice. Ronline ✉ 06:40, 11 May 2007 (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.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 15:29, 13 May 2007 (UTC)