Talk:Vyartsilya

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Move the page to Värtsilä (Russia)

Many names in the Republic of Karelia are in Finnish, eg. Hiitola, Lahdenpohja, Louhi, Pitkäranta, Suojärvi and Värtsilä. In Russian they have been transliterated to "Khiytola", "Lakhdenpokhya", "Loukhi", "Pitkyaranta", "Suoyarvi" and Vyartsilya.
Although the Finnish towns are Hämeenlinna, Jyväskylä, Äänekoski etc, in Russian Хямеэнлинна, Ювяскюля and Яянекоски, nobody insist that they have to be in English Khyameenlinna, Yuvyaskyulya and Yayanekoski.
--WPK (talk) 17:39, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The names may have been in Finnish language, but the Republic of Karelia is a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, and Finnish does not have any legal status in the Republic, thereby, all names in the Republic of Karelia are in Russian, not Finnish, and these articles take their name from the transliteration of Russian, not from the previous Finnish names. I suggest you take it to WP:RM before attempting to move, and get consensus on the talk page before changing article leads as you have been doing. --Russavia ^{Dialogue Stalk me} 17:11, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The names Hiitola, Lahdenpohja, Louhi, Pitkäranta, Suojärvi, Värtsilä etc. are in Finnish language, because Finnish was the official language in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic 1923-40, 1956-91 and in the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic 1940-56.

--WPK (talk) 17:39, 19 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What the official language in a Soviet ASSR was is quite irrelevant. Neither Finnish nor Karelian have official status in the modern Republic of Karelia, so all official names are in Russian (even though many of those Russian names are derived, or transliterated from Finnish/Karelian). Even if Karelian had official status (which it hopefully will some day), our guidelines (which already have consensus) state that the names must be romanized from Russian, not from some other language which may be official in a republic. Furthermore, in English, Russian place names are hardly ever romanized from languages other than Russian, so these guidelines make all the sense. I am yet to see an English-language map/atlas which marks these places as "Hiitola" or "Lahdenpohja".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]