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Archive 1

Is this...

Is this the station next to Vinohrady tunnel that is discussed in this Radio Praha article? The Radio Praha article mentions that the tunnel is next to the central station, but doesn't give a station name. If it is, was there one of our editors there to get photos of the event (which is currently listed in the News section of Portal:Trains)? Slambo (Speak) 19:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is that station. On this photo on commons tunnel is visible in background. --Jklamo 21:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Name

Why the need to rename "hlavní nádraží", but not "Hauptbahnhof" and station names ending in -bahnhof (c.f. Berlin Hauptbahnhof, Wien Südbahnhof) to "main railway station"? Seems very inconsistent. IMO, this article should stay at Praha hlavní nádraží, the announcements and all literature in English on the Czech railways all use that name without the need to translate it. - filelakeshoe 11:21, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree - I've never seen this word-for-word translation with its odd capitalisation anywhere else. We shouldn't invent Wikipedia-only neologisms through a misunderstanding of WP:UE. I'll move it back to its original title for now - if there is still a desire to move, let's go through WP:RM to get more evidence and discussion. Knepflerle (talk) 22:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Verification

Does this "...of the road cut off the neo-renaissance station hall from the town.[verification needed] The station..." really need verification? It is a fact visible at the station, or on any map.Gordoncph (talk) 21:44, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Move to "Prague Railway Station"

I think the name "Praha hlavní nádraží" was a pretty obvious violation of WP:UE. This version is a parallel construction to Hanoi Railway Station, Saigon Railway Station, Beijing Railway Station, Warszawa Centralna railway station, Amsterdam Centraal railway station, and Roma Termini railway station, Kauffner (talk) 04:53, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

I would disagree on the grounds of WP:COMMONNAME: to the extent that the station is ever explicitly referred to in (British) English, I've only see the Czech name is used. It is parallel to all the Hauptbahnhofs or Gare du Nord etc etc. There is more than one station in Prague, but only one Praha hl.n., so the Wikipedia-only neologism is ambiguous. If an Anglicised name absolutely has to be used, it would be better as Praha hlavní railway station Wheeltapper (talk) 08:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree, "Prague Railway Station" is totally not widely used (check Google). Let us move a page to original name. See also 2009 discussion. --Jklamo (talk) 19:04, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
The Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable and Seat61.com both use the Czech name, and the CD and DB journey planners use "Praha hl.n." under the English options.Wheeltapper (talk) 21:46, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree. All references I've seen in English have used the Czech name - and I've personally used Praha Holešovice nádraží and Praha Masarykovo nádraží, and trains passing through Praha Smichovské nádraží and others, so just "Prague Railway Station" is unacceptable. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested move: Praha hlavní nádraží --> Prague main railway station

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. 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.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move - There appear to be other potential titles for this article that are gaining some support and may be more consistent with Wikipedia's naming conventions about using English as well as with our policy about using common names. Nonetheless, there is no consensus to move to Prague main railway station specifically and it is unlikely that another title is going to gain sufficient support in the current discussion. Neelix (talk) 17:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Praha hlavní nádraží → Prague main railway station – The name of this city is universally given in English as "Prague", which is also the title of our main article about it. The name “Praha hlavní nádraží” is given in some travel guides, but it can hardly be considered a common English language usage. There are no English language examples of “Praha hlavní nádraží" in the Google News Archive. As far as translating a foreign language word corresponding to “railway station" goes, there are many examples: Amsterdam Centraal railway station, Madrid Atocha railway station, Roma Termini railway station, Moskovsky Rail Terminal (Saint Petersburg), Hanoi Railway Station, Saigon Railway Station, Stockholm Central Station, Beijing Railway Station, and Warsaw Centralna Railway Station. Certainly “Prague hlavní nádraží” would be a very peculiar form. Kauffner (talk) 05:22, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you are thinking, “Of course, 'Praha hlavní nádraži' isn‘t in the archive. Why would the name of a train station be in the news?” But this station has been newsworthy on various occasions:

  • A man who "destroyed the statue of President Woodrow Wilson that stood in front of Prague's railway Station, was hanged this afternoon", New York Times, Jan 6, 1946.
  • ”A TANK outside the main Prague railway station was drench in yellow paint...which had been hurled down from a high building.” (AP story) The Sydney Morning Herald - Aug 23, 1968
  • "The trains which also included cars containing cars containing Soviet soldiers came through the western border areas of Czechoslovakia and passed through Prague's Smichov Railway Station." The Press-Courier (UPI story) - Oct 24, 1968 (This is a different station, Nádraží Praha-Smíchov. But this example still shows that Praha becomes “Prague" and Nádraží becomes “railway station.")
  • "Prague officially renamed its railway station in honor of President Woodrow Wilson“ Eugene Register-Guard (AP story), Nov 17, 1990. (It seems that whatever name the city might have chosen on this occasion did not take.)

Not even the official Radio Prague refers to this station as “Praha" anything: See “Italian president opens newly renovated hall of Prague’s main railway station” or here. Kauffner (talk) 05:22, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Rather than Wikipedia-specific neologisms we should use the WP:COMMONNAME name which is in use today, the "real" name which locals, passengers and tourist will see, and which is unambiguous. As well as the travel guides which Kauffner mentions, the "real" name is used in international journey planners[1], Thomas Cook timetables, present-day English-language media[2]. It is commonly abbreviated to hl.n., rather than written out in full, but I've personally never seen Prague Main railway station used.
Inventing new Wikipedia-only names seems pointless (are we going to rename all the Hauptbahnhof articles to Foo Main Station, or Gare Du Nord to Paris North, Roma Termini to Rome Baths?). The 1946 and 1990 quotes about Prague's railway station overlook that there are two or three significant stations, plus various others. The 1968 and Radio Prague quotes are a descriptions rather than names (would we have an article on "London's main airport", rather than "Heathrow"?). The second 1968 quote looks to me like it is carefully phrased to avoid saying "Praha" in an English source.
If we absolutely have to Anglicise, it should be to Praha hlavní railway station - the articles on Amsterdam and Warsaw [update: to be clear, that uses English "Warsaw", but Polish "Centralna" (ie not "Central")] and Rome use the actual names of the stations, they don't translate. Wheeltapper (talk) 07:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
update: Radio Prague in fact does use the Czech name when naming (rather than describing) the station in English: "Prague’s main train station Praha Hlavní nádraží currently resembles a building site ... clean toilets in Hlavní nádraží ... the jewel of Hlavní nádraží ..."[3]Wheeltapper (talk) 09:55, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Ah, yes, the Hauptbahnhof nonsense. I'm hammering away at that one too over here. But this name is even worse. It gives an English-speaking reader no clue that it is a railway station, never mind what city it might serve. There is no need to make it complicated like this since a straightforward translation is both possible and customary. The "official name, used by locals"? Why not put Beijing Railway Station in Chinese characters? There is even a note in the lede that says, "(English: Prague main railway station, abbreviated Praha hl.n)". The English name is supposed to be the title, not a parenthetical remark. Kauffner (talk) 18:11, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
Looking at WP:COMMONNAME: "Titles are often proper nouns, such as the name of the person, place or thing that is the subject of the article": this would surely suggest using the official name. However it does go on to say "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's "official" name as an article title; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources." So, let's have a look at some real-world English-language usage in reliable sources. We have:
* České dráhy, the Czech railway company: "Praha hlavní nádraží"[4] (though the website does slip from English back to Czech at times)
* Deutsche Bahn: "Praha hl.n."[5] (if you enter Prague it knows what you mean, but switches to Praha hl.n)
* Thomas Cook's European Rail Timetable: "Praha hlavni" (July 2010 is the edition I have to hand)
* Railway Gazette International (industry magazine): [6] "Praha Hlavní station"
* Today's Railways Europe (enthusiast magazine): "Praha [...other stations...] Hlavni Nadrazi" (July 2011, p21)
* Radio Prague: "Praha Hlavní nádraží" [7]
* Rough Guides "Praha hlavní nádraží" (The Czech & Slovak Republics, 6th edition, Nov 2002, p57)
* Lonely Planet "the main station, Praha-hlavní nádraží"[8]
* also "some travel guides", mentioned by Kauffner above.
Against that, we have
* some rather antique newspaper reports which avoid giving the station a name at all, and in some cases are actually misleading (there is more than one station in Prague).
Do we actually have any hard evidence that "Prague Main Railway Station" is ever used as a name? Google finds hotel booking websites, but mostly "Prague's Main Railway Station", which is more of a description than a name (cf "London's main airport"). Czech railway stations are perhaps unlikely to be regular topics of English-language conversation outside the rail or travel sectors, both of which seem to use the Czech official name. It is also seemingly the fashion in Britain these days to use local names for places, alphabets permitting (would many people not know where Praha is, or is it like Koeln, Muenchen, Warszawa etc where people know both names?).
Using the local/travel/English-language-media name rather than one created for Wikipedia would also be consistent with stations in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava, Berlin (and lots of other Haupbahnhofs; though I have seen people claim that Hbf should be translated as "Central station", rather than the usual "main station", in which case we risk opening a "Prague Central Station" kettle of worms).
Anyway, at least no-one has suggested "t***n station" yet, so there is some hope for humanity. Wheeltapper (talk) 22:37, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources", per WP:AT. That is our basic, "nutshell" principle on article titling. This title would appear to be a particularly aggressive violation of the "recognizable to readers" principle. Is Praha more recognizable than "Prague"? Nádraží more recognizable than "Railway Station"? The standard post-1980 English-language Google Book test gives us 199 results for "Praha hlavní nádraží". That sounds like a respectable number, but every single hit is a guidebook. That's is to say, the current name is used by English-language authors strictly in the context of explaining local signage to tourists. In any other context, the name is given as some combination of "Prague", "Prague's", "main", "central", "railway station", and "train station" ( 3,680 results). Kauffner (talk) 04:55, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
How does "Recognisable to readers" deal with something which most people in the world have no reason to ever have heard of - there are the proverbial billion Chinamen who will never need to know anything about Prague stations? Surely anyone who has heard of the station (and it is a major hub, and the architecture is fairly famous) will have heard of it under its "real" name, rather than a Wikipedia one? "Unambiguous" - there are multiple stations in Prague, so if we reject the commonly-used name, how does someone know about the Wikipedia-specific terminology we have adopted? "Consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources"" As far as I can see, we do not have any cited examples of Prague Main Railway Station being used as name, whereas we have extensive cited evidence that the Czech/official name is used by officialdom, industry, books, travellers and the media. Google Books finds me 62 references to "Prague Main Railway Station" (less than 1/3 of your 199 for the actual name above!), but almost all are actually "Prague's main railway station", which is a description not a name. The only use of PMRS as a name appears to be in old (German?) books on architecture - some of which, on closer inspection, use the common name as well! Rejecting railway and travel references as sources of info on stations because most people don't work on railways, and rejecting references about the station because they are to help people wanting to know about the station, seems perverse. Wheeltapper (talk) 07:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
If a reader knows that there is city called "Prague" and also understand the concept of a "railway station", he can can immediately understand the phrase "Prague Main railway station." This is true even if he was previously unaware that Prague had a railway station. It is a Wikipedia convention to put the phrase "railway station" at the end of a station's wikititle. Hundreds of stations are named this way, including most of the examples that you yourself cite. So it is not reasonable to complain that the exact form is not found in the sources. Kauffner (talk) 08:13, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
But what problem would ignoring WP:COMMONNAME and inventing a new and unattested Wikipedia-only name actually solve - how many people read Wikipeda by page titles only? We don't have Toronto Main railway station for people who have not heard of Union, while Paris, London and Moscow would be impossible to fit into this format (which is the "main" station?). Why is Prague a special case? Even if rail users can be ignored, the building is of architectural interest, and would be whether many trains stopped there or not. Wheeltapper (talk) 11:47, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
As I think I already explained, I'd say the common English-language name for this station is some combination of "Prague", "Prague's", "Main", "Central", and "railway station." You call this a "description" rather than a name. Whatever. But if you go that route, then it follows that there is no English-language common name. Either way, I am not the one ignoring common name. There are hundreds stations all over the world with names in the form "[city name] [optional descriptor] railway station". I created several more just today. It's the default format when there is no common name. In most cases, the stations were never in the news, there is no old wire service copy to puzzle over, so the issue of common name does even arise. Kauffner (talk) 12:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
I would say that it does indeed follow that there is no English-language name (exonym), only the name that is commonly used by English speakers (ie the Czech name). This is simply because the structure in question is in the Czech Republic, where they don't speak English as a native language - hence the WP:COMMONNAME used in English is the Czech name. Equally, I'd be surprised if there is a specific Czech-language name for Hull Paragon, or an Outer Mongolian name for Ryde Esplande. Is there actually a Wikipedia policy which demands an English name has to be invented for things where English-speakers generally use a foreign name? (Paris Main church?)
As I understand it, Wikipedia prefers WP:VERIFY to "I'd say", and WP:RS is preferred to "Whatever". If "the common English-language name" is Prague Main, should there not be some WP:RS available which actually use that name? As far as I can tell, the attempts to WP:VERIFY through WP:RS evidence so far show that the WP:COMMONNAME when people are using English is "[Praha] hlavní nádraží" or "Praha hlavní [railway] station", with the expected assorted approaches to capitalisation and accents. There is no exonym, and I've not yet seen why we have to ignore the common[ly used] name and invent one just for this station.Wheeltapper (talk) 18:49, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
After deghosting, there are 34 English-language hits for "Prague's main railway station" on the Prague Radio site, compared to 10 for Praha Hlavní nádraží." So that appears to be an official English-language form. I certainly have no objection to it. Using the phrase "main railway station" to refer to this station is supported by 354 post-1980 examples on Google Books, significantly more than than number of examples for "Praha Hlavní nádraží". Kauffner (talk) 03:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Which rather makes my point. Nobody, not even Radio Prague, uses "Prague Main railway station", which is being proposed as the new name for this page. Looking at the content of the Radio Prague links (and many hits are different versions of the same content)
* Masarykovo nádraží is around five minutes walk from Prague’s main railway station, Hlavní nádraží,
* Three years ago Prague’s main railway station Hlavní Nádraží was not a nice place to be
* The modernization of Hlavni nadrazi has been a matter of discussion for some years.
* Much of Prague’s main train station Praha Hlavní nádraží currently resembles a building site,
What you are seeing on your Google results is the phrase "Prague's main railway station", with the 's. So perhaps the article should be called "Prague's main railway station" (note 's and capitalisation). However, when they are naming the station, all reliable English (and local, obviously) sources use "Hlavní". We have had claims that books, local and international media, railway information and industry sources are not admissible, but no evidence that PMRS is ever used outside Wikipedia. Is there any actual policy that WP:UE requires us to ignore WP:COMMONNAME and forces the creation of a new name which does not exist in any reliable sources? 07:10, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

The BBC also says Prague's main railway station,[9] so this form does seem to be official. I have modified the RM accordingly. Railway industry usage is "Praha hl.n." That would certainly be better than the current title. Kauffner (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Oppose, Wheeltapper's examples are persuasive, and as a former professional railwayman in the UK I can confirm that we use the Czech name in railway business circles. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 17:20, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
In the railway business, this station is "Praha hl.n." That's certainly a Czech name, but it is not the form we are using. Kauffner (talk) 03:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:UE. I only wish to point out that Arwel Parry is a former professional railwayman in the UK who said that "we use the Czech name in railway business circles". IMHO the average reader doesn't belong to railway business circles. Flamarande (talk) 20:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Czech Railways use the Czech name in their English-language announcements. - Darwinek (talk) 19:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support per WP:UE. Is not reasonable that content in the English version of Wikipedia be in English whereever possible. -- Mattinbgn (talk) 21:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
  • I can see the arguments on both sides. I certainly don't like the current proposal starting with "Prague's..." - we should use a name rather than a description where possible. Either stick with the Czech name (which is the approach we seem to take with stations in Germany, Italy and so on), or use a commonly used translation of it (Prague Main Station or something like that). --Kotniski (talk) 12:08, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that there is no commonly used translation (as has been shown above ad nauseum). Local English-language and reliable non-Czech railway/travel/book/media sources from the past few decades generally use the Czech name, sometimes with a description (but not a translated name as such). A policy of trying to translate station names would surely be a logistical nightmare and very confusing for readers having to figure out what we mean by Rome Baths, Florence St Mary, Frankfurt (Main) Main, Moscow White Russia, Paris Slavkov near Brno etc Wheeltapper (talk) 12:42, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
Yes, but the difference here is that these stations, except for Frankfurt, have actual names, whereas this one just translates directly to "Prague Main Station", which is more a description. -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:14, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
No, it is an actual name. There are a number of stations in Prague, with some risk of confusion (IIRC some long-distance trains don't call at Hlavni, I've heard of people being caught out by it). A UK equivalent might be Exeter, where "Central" is both a description and the name of one of the stations (I suppose it could just about be argued that countries with a tradition of "<city> <destination served>" station names are using descriptions too; "Paris's main station for Lyon[s]", anyone?). Wheeltapper (talk) 21:15, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
That's not what I meant! I didn't mean it wasn't the station's name. I meant it was a mere description, as opposed to a fanciful name. Exeter Central (descriptive) as against Exeter St Davids (non-descriptive). -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Rename to Prague main railway station. Certainly not to Prague's main railway station, which is horrible. The fact the BBC have used it is irrelevant - they're not using it as a proper name, but as a description, as they might say that Birmingham New Street is "Birmingham's main railway station". I do not generally agree with anglicising names of buildings in foreign countries (something with which some editors on Wikipedia seem to have an obsession), but with utilities such as this it makes sense, particularly since we call the city Prague not Praha, the rest of the name translates directly into English, and the meaning of "hlavní nádraží" is not widely known in the English-speaking world (and is thus a different case from "Hauptbahnhof"). -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:08, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
"Prague's main railway station" is a standard phrase used by Radio Prague whenever they discuss this station, so we can consider it as an official name. The Czech authorities obviously do not want the station to have a formal-sounding English language name such as you suggest. This helps maintain the fiction that the Czech name is also the English language name. Whether we humor them or not is of no great concern to me. But this case cannot be considered comparable to "Birmingham's main railway station." Kauffner (talk) 02:13, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
However to "consider it as an official name" would require ignoring what Radio Prague actually says, and the verifiable fact that they do not use "Prague's main railway station" whenever discussing the station: "Praha Hlavní nádraží currently resembles a building site,"[10], "Prague’s Hlavní nádraží or Main Station was once a dank and depressing place"[11], "the presidential salons at the train stations Hlavní nádraží and Masarykovo"[12], "Three years ago Prague’s main railway station Hlavní Nádraží was not a nice place to be"[13], "And finally, our faithful listener from England, David Eldridge .... Today I passed through Hlavní nádraží"[14], "services between Prague’s Masarykovo nádraží and Vysočany station were disrupted on Saturday, ... trains into and out of Prague’s main station Hlavní nádraží were severely disrupted"[15]," Prague has launched a new railway line connecting the city’s Hlavní nádraží or Main Station with the suburban rail services"[16]. Not a single one of these quotes uses "Prague's main railway station" as the name of the station. If the Czech authorities really are controlling the media to enforce a particular name, that name clearly isn't PMRS. Even if you believe the real name is "fiction", it is fiction verified by reliable sources. I see you use the spelling "humor": could this be the issue - perhaps British English speakers have less problem with seeing European languages than users of other flavours, and are more likely to have come across the station? Wheeltapper (talk) 07:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Since you are still claiming that Praha hlavní nádraži is the common name based on the guidebook hits, here is a specific guideline which covers that: "When a guidebook or roadmap written in English shows an autobahn between München and Nürnberg, it is attesting to local usage, because that is what the signs on the autobahn will say; Munich and Nuremberg are still the English names," per WP:NCGN. Kauffner (talk) 14:45, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
See wp:verify and wp:rs. As far as I can tell there is nothing which requires us to create new names which fail WP:commonname and wp:verify for everything foreign. I'm slightly puzzled as to what wp:rs you expect to find for a railway station if we exclude everything to do with railways, travel and the media - in what other context is a station going to be named? Though there is "Living in freedom: the exhilaration and anguish of Prague's second spring" by Mark Sommer (1992, p31): "Praha Hlavni nadrazi, the city's central station, is little more attractive than it was seven years ago". Wheeltapper (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I think "hlavní railway station" is reasonable, and would support a guideline for all railway station articles to end with "railway station" (no "gare", "nádraží", "kolodvor" or whatever, although hauptbahnhof would cause problems). However I do not agree with:

  • "Prague's". This is a descriptive title, the title should be the name of the thing, not a description of it.
  • "hl. n.". This is an abbreviation. Where abbreviations are used it's really better to have the title at the full name. Hauptbahnhof and not Hbf. Amsterdam Centraal not CS. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine not MDMA. etc etc.
  • Kauffner's related move of Budapest Keleti pályaudvar to Budapest East railway station. The reason I'm bringing this up here is because we can learn something from the interwikis. fr.wiki has an article on "Gare de Budapest-Keleti". ro.wiki on "Gara Keleti-Budapesta". In the same way that "Keleti" is more recognisable than "East" in this context, "hlavní" is surely more recognisable than "main" or "central". So "Prague hlavní railway station" and "Budapest Keleti railway station" are fine titles imho. Kauffner's rationale is one to move Rajská zahrada to Paradise Garden or Łódź to Boat, Poland, and is one I repeatedly state is going too far. - filelakeshoe 15:19, 30 June 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. I wonder how a general plan of translating names would deal with Whittlesea railway station, which has as more-or-less its only claim to fame the fact it has a different spelling to the place it serves. Should this mass debate go to a wider Wikipedia audience? I can see the discussions on Paris Mount Parnassus railway station, New York Main station, Exeter's secondary station etc getting messy, and Breslau/Stettin/etc Hauptbahnofs might be "asbestos suit" time. Wheeltapper (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Well I hope the Breslau/Stettin conflict and the need to use dated German names because pre-war sources did has been resolved. Regarding Poland, Kraków Główny railway station already exists, to illustrate my point. Seeing the word "Dworzec" might be too much of a shock to English speakers, but people searching for information on a station in Poland are going to expect to see a Polish station name, and people knowledgeable about EU rail will know the station as Główny. Overtranslation bugs me, I've seen it in action - I once made a Czech version of the London tube map for someone as a christmas present, went back and researched the etymology of all the station names and place names and translated them, it was great as a joke and my friend spent ages trying to work out what half of them meant despite having lived in London for a year, but it's great just as a joke. Thankfully on cs.wikipedia there is no article titled Nádraží Londýn-Králův Kříž. - filelakeshoe 07:36, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
From Kraków Główny railway station I find this: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (stations in Poland). Seems very sensible to me, and directly applicable to neighbouring countries: "Often the common name of the station is in Polish language, for example Kraków Główny (not Kraków Main) and Warszawa Centralna (not Warsaw Central). The following station names also fall into this category: śródmieście (downtown), miasto (town), północny (north), południowy (south), wschodni (east), zachodni (west)." Wheeltapper (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
Central station would surely be Masarykovo (what does that translate to in English?). And why is the actual name incomprehensible - is it any worse than "Charing Cross" instead of "London Central"? I would expect that trying to dream up "comprehensible" names for every station could get messy, even in the English-speaking world (eg the Whittlesea problem). Wheeltapper (talk) 17:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
As I'm sure you're aware, Masarykovo was named after Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, just as for over 30 years (except WW2) hlavní was named Wilsonovo after Woodrow Wilson. I'm not too keen on the recent renaming of the article on Praha Masarykovo nádraží to Prague – Masaryk Railway Station either, as examination of the history shows that for 3 months in 2008 the article was at "Masaryk Railway Station" before the R and S were decapitalised, then 6 months later the name was Czechified, where it remained for 27 months until recently. There seems to have been an outbreak of unnecessary pedantry, and I support the use of WP:COMMONNAME, i.e. the Czech name. -- Arwel Parry (talk) 12:41, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Careful, someone will want him to be comprehensiblified to "Thomas" Masaryk. The Bratislava hlavná stanica article has recently been renamed to Bratislava railway station, meaning Wikipedia now gives the very false impression that there is only one station in Bratislava, further highlighting the problem of inventing new names. Wheeltapper (talk) 20:15, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
If WP:USEENGLISH overrides WP:COMMONNAME there are going to be huge implications for articles on things like the imperial parliament, Russian castles, IFAF (or even IFS?), Dresden Church of Our Lady and countless others where English-language non-Wikipedia sources use non-English names. Wheeltapper (talk) 17:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
I've just had another read of WP:USEENGLISH. It starts: "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources ... Often this will be the local version". WP:USEENGLISH does not say anything about Wikipedia having to devise a new "English" name in situations where the name which is common in reliable sources is the same as the local name. There is no exonym, as shown by the fact people are proposing lists of suggested new names, some of which would be misleading. Meanwhile, the Czech name appears in lots of reliable English-language sources, as documented ad nauseum to sickness: even if we (bizarrely) decide to ignore official[17] and travel[18] sources, it seems local[19] and international[20] English-language media use the local name.
There has been a suggestion that travel-based reliable sources such as Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, Thos Cook timetable (which all use the Czech name) are not allowed, and thus there is a lack of references. In which case this comes into play: "It can happen that an otherwise notable topic has not yet received much attention in the English-speaking world, so that there are too few English sources to constitute an established usage. [...] If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians, Turkish for Turkish rivers, Portuguese for Brazilian towns etc.)". So that will surely be Czech for Czech railway stations...Wheeltapper (talk) 22:19, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
For example, here in the Philippines places like Cemetery of the Heroes/Libingan ng mga Bayani and University of the City of Manila/Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila keep their Tagalog names. Some foreigners are totally confused with the language barrier. ApprenticeFan work 06:33, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
The Philippines examples seem to further support the case for using the name which is actually used in sources written in English (ie, the Czech name), rather than a name we can create by translating the local name into English. Wheeltapper (talk) 20:15, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose: If emic sources prefer Praha let it be Praha hlavní nádraží. Wikipedia is written in Global English and not its English or American dialects. If any we can have Czech dialect of English, the first way is how proper nouns are handled. Oppose move to Prague. Let us call it the way the Czechs call it. As an analogus example I can quote Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, it is a name, shouldn't be translated.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 08:08, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
    • It is sad day when I see that: "Wikipedia is written in Global English and not its English or American dialects. If any we can have Czech dialect of English, the first way is how proper nouns are handled."
    • First of all there is no Global English but rather bad English. AFAIK no Czech English dialect exists. IMHO that's one of the big problems plaguing the English wiki. A few militant "natives" are determined to twist the English language into an 'international political correct language' where the "native names" have to be used as a demonstration of "respect". The use of the most common English names (i.e.: English translations) is decried as being disrespectful to the proud "native" cultures. God help us all. Flamarande (talk) 12:16, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
That is a swan song.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:50, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. 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.

Name (part 94)

How about "Praha Hlavní railway station"? This has the advantages that it

  • includes the words "railway station" for people who don't like "nadrazi".
  • includes the key part of the official name,[21] which will be needed by anyone who wants to find out more about the station, or to actually use it
  • is unambiguous.
  • reflects the English-language WP:COMMONNAME we can WP:VERIFY from WP:RS in industry,[22] books,[23] local English media,[24] and international media.[25]
  • matches the local common name.
  • avoids using a contrived description instead of a name
  • avoids creating a Wikipedia-only neologism
  • is consistent with the approach taken for similar railway stations in Germany (all those Hbfs), Italy, Slovakia, Poland, France, Hungary etc.
  • is intelligible for English speakers (OK, so English-speakers who have never been to the Czech Republic might not know what "Hlavní" means, but they won't know what "Holesovice" or "Masarykovo" mean either. Southern Cross is less than obvious to outsiders, while countless London commuters survive without knowing much about Dominican friars.

Wheeltapper (talk) 22:02, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I certainly like this name, at least in the sense that if I was chief naming dude for Czech Railways I would be partial to it. If you have seen other station names, you can figure out that the first word is the city name, even you have never seen the word "Praha" before. This represents a big improvement on the current name. You link to a guidebook that use Praha-hlavní nádraží and to railway schedules that use "Praha hl.n." But neither of these support the idea of splitting "hlavní" and "nádraží", treating as one as an integral part of the name and the other as a translatable descriptor. However, I did find an example in Google Books here. Kauffner (talk) 07:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Thomas Cook's European Rail Timetable uses "Praha hlavni"
  • Railway Gazette International uses "Praha Hlavní station"[26]
A name that some wp:rs use strikes me as a better choice than one that none use. Wheeltapper (talk)
  • The worst suggestion so far. It fails to use the English term for the city and fails to treat the station as a proper noun. Either we use the Czech name for the station, or we use an applicable English name which follows English grammar. Arsenikk (talk) 23:33, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
Surely it is hardly going to surprise anyone that something in a non-English speaking country has a non-English name? I'm not sure why it fails to treat the station as a proper noun - can it get more proper-noun-like than using its name? It also seems to fit with (British) English grammar; <location> <specific title> is a common format for station names (London Victoria etc). Who would actually benefit if we did invent a new name which only Wikipedia uses? 22:03, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
I can agree that a non-English speaking country has a non-English name. However we are not living in that country, we are using (living in) the English wiki. The non-English name used by the non-English country is under normal circumstances translated into an English version. An example would be the 'Česká republika' which was translated into 'Czech Republic'. Go figure out why. Flamarande (talk) 01:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm getting sick of these patronising messages in these discussions constantly reminding us that "this is en.wiki". Yes, we're aware of that. We're aware that Česká Republika has an English name. I have no idea what this has to do with this discussion. Just because a name is foreign doesn't mean we have to translate it. We could comfortably translate Háje to "Groves", Łódź to "Boat" or Divoká Šárka to "Wild Charlotte", but we don't, because those names don't exist. - filelakeshoe 04:49, 11 July 2011 (UTC)
Good work Filelakeshoe. Keep it up.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 13:51, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
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