Before beginning a major revision of the Germany part of Wikipedia, we need a style guide. I have not been able to find any other summary in one place of naming rules for Germany. What I have offered here is a summary of modern practice by English speaking journalists and authors. Tacitus 15:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
A couple of points. Firstly, "Brunswick" is used at least as often in English as "Hanover" with one "n", and usually in the same contexts - largely historical ones. I would say that most usually, references to the modern cities are "Braunschweig" or "Hannover," but that references to the historical Guelf rulers are almost always "Brunswick" and "Hanover." If "Hanover" is a common english form, it seems to me that "Brunswick" pretty clearly is as well. There are other cities which, in some contexts, at least, are referred to by anglicized names. I've never heard of the Council of Konstanz, for instance, but I don't think there's any clear dominant usage between Konstanz and Constance overall. Similarly, Aachen is, in certain historical contexts, still referred to as "Aix-la-Chapelle," notably in reference to the treaty signed there in 1748, and to the Congress of the Powers held there in 1818. Other formerly used Francizations/Anglicizations like "Mayence," "Ratisbon," "Treves," "Cassel," and so forth seem clearly obsolete. I can't think of any other cities that are normally anglicized, though. I will add that "Mecklenburg-Vorpommern" appears to me to be more common than the translated name. john k 00:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll add that I'd never heard of the "Ore Mountains" before reading this proposal. I've always just heard them called the Erzgebirge. john k 04:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Upper Palatinate for the contemporary administrative region of Oberpfalz does seem to be a case of translation overkill. Would it not be more consistent with Wikipedia practice elsewhere to head the relevant history articles "Upper Palatinate" but just use the German for the grey bureaucrats of today? In the 21st century, the two Palatinates have got nothing to do with one another. Tacitus 12:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
On the Genealogy Wikia, people are writing about places their ancestors lived in. I like to match "en" WP names as closely as possible. This evening I looked up a link to WP, which redirected to County of Bentheim. On the face of it, that style of name is inconsistent with other countries' WP county names such as Los Angeles County.
I know that a significant difference is that the English-speaking ones were never ruled by Counts; but that's a weak reason for difference. An equally valid reason for making them match would be that the U.S. and other modern counties are generally officially called "County of ....", but WP reverses that for them so why not for Bentheim?
No specific standard seen on the couple of pages I've looked at here. Can someone point me to a WP "recommendation" page that I can link to, so that we more easily maintain harmony with "en" WP as far as possible for former placenames (without having to look up each one individually)? Robin Patterson 13:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I just came across this example on the Heilbronn page:
The term Heilbronn County grates to my European ears- and I had to flip to de:wiki to find out that this means Landkreis Heilbronn- and the article to which it links is Heilbronn (district). Has a policy been agreed? If that is the policy- shouldn't it be overturned? What do we do with this example?- It is completely surrounded by the Landkreis, (often translated as the district of) of Heilbronn. - would be my choice as no information has been lost. Then, if this has been done here, how many other articles are similarly unintelligible? -- ClemRutter ( talk) 21:25, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone have any suggestion for a standard practice on referring to Stadt-/Ortsteile? I just translated the Weinstadt article from German to English and found that to be a difficult problem. (And I only just now discovered this conventions page, so hopefully there aren't too many convention errors!) In any case, I've seen Stadtteile described as "city districts" and "neighborhoods", and en.wikipedia links "Stadtteil" to the article on Quarter (country subdivision). None of those terms apply sensibly to the Stadtteile of Weinstadt, which are group of historical (physically separate) towns that are now under the same city administration. In the Weinstadt article, I used the German term (with an explanation at the beginning of the article). Is there a better, recommended, or standard way to handle this? -- Paigemorrison ( talk) 12:06, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
A contributor to the Germany Project page argued for native German names for universities. That does not seem to represent mainstream opinion. In general, Italian, Chinese and other Wikipedians do not seem to force foreign-language university titles on readers. I've suggested here how the headwords for universities can be presented in a way acceptable to the Wikipedia community internationally. As far as I can see, the majority of Wikipedia university entries employ simple descriptive headwords of the form "University of [[Placename]]", which is to say, regardless of what it calls itself, it is "the university" that is situated at that place. Further adornment needs only be prefixed if a town has multiple universities. The "of" form has the advantage of allowing for such a prefix, e.g. Technical University of Wagga-Wagga. In text, Wikipedia articles also naturally take this form, "In 1951, he switched to the University of Heidelberg where he majored in ..." ( Kohl biography). Tacitus 22:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I suggest avoiding "GDR", "BRD" & "FRG", as I doubt that many English speakers outside the German speaking countries will know what they mean - and I suspect that not many more will know what "DDR" means. "East & West Germany", on the other hand, will be understood by almost all those who know what the cold war was. -- 87.187.77.229 16:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
In film titles, the foreign version often becomes the title of the article, so we are having a discussion in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Capitalization in titles, trying to establish what is correct for each language. It is clear the German nouns are capitalized, but how do we we go about the non-noun words? We would appreciate if you could drop us a line about it. Hoverfish Talk 20:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Since there is now a concentrated effort at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Cities to bring articles on municipalities/towns/cities up to standard, perhaps it is time to come up with some sort of format for these articles. At the moment, the focus is on making sure that all articles actually exist. The next step is to add content. We probably don't need something as detailed as de:Wikipedia:Formatvorlage Stadt but some clear guidelines would help. I've started up a page at here, giving what I believe to be the necessary minimum requirements for such articles. Any comments and help with setting this up would be appreciated. - 52 Pickup 15:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Large parts of this should be considered for inclusion on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). There is also a discussion on the possibility of a world-wide convention on its talk-page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Where there is no common English name (like Munich), it seems to be standard practice for articles on German locations to use the correct German name, including ä, ö, ü,and ß. This takes account of the need for correctness.
In order to cater to American readers unfamiliar with both the correct names and the standard transliterations, I suggest making the following additional measures declared recommended practice in the project:
Thus, the article on a place called Füßen would start with
and would have a redirect from Fussen as well as Fuessen.
In this case, of course, Fuessen would have to be a disambiguation link rather than a redirect, because there is als a town called "Füssen". --
Boson
14:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course articles should be intelligible, that's why I'm advocating the "ss" in titles and text (with the original German as an explanation). And we should aim for correctness too, but correct doesn't mean unchanged? Even the German-speaking world can't agree. In Switzerland and Lichtenstein "ss" is always acceptable, so it's not a black and white case at all. And clearly, good practice from the guidebook industry is to make it easy to read for their readers. They don't see it as a problem. I wish English-speakers had a higher literacy of the German language - I hate to hear them mispronounce stuff which is so obvious to me - but the reality is, they don't have...and we should respect that. Even the Wikipedia article on ß says "English speakers unfamiliar with German orthography may also confuse ß with B (the Latin letter which is derived from the Greek beta), which is also incorrect." This is not about me - I love the German language - it's about others, the majority, who don't. But we're not going to agree on this, so let's do some independent research. What do the main written English-language encyclopedias do? I'll go with them. 81.137.199.176 ( talk) 13:36, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes an uninitiated English speaker will have problems reading ß ä ö ü but surely it is the job of an encyclopedia to educate. The correct spelling should be the the article title but the alternative spelling (ss ae ...) should be in the first line. Also the alternative spellings as redirects is a good idea.
Traveler100 (
talk)
19:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that English usage varies. Most texts accept ä, ö and ü; although you occasionally see ae, oe, ue as substitutes. However some sources use the ß and others the ss. Of course the Swiss (and Austrians?) never use ß anyway. I now use the German spelling in my translated articles, not least for consistency. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 09:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the following convention for spelling of German proper nouns: ÄÖÜäöü are retained, because they do not confuse the reader of English, but ß is resolved to ss, because it's not generally recognized as an s-z ligature. This is in keeping with (a) common publishing practice (I'm a translator by trade) and (b) the very EU style sheet cited in the lede here! It says on p. 29: "5.2 Personal names should retain their original accents, e.g. Cañete, Malmström, Šefčovič. However, the German ß is replaced with ss, e.g. Clauss." To get ahead of a few arguments that have appeared in specific cases: The s-z ligature has, in recent decades, come to be considered a letter in German. In English it is not a letter, it is the typographical representation of two letters -- ss (archaically, sz) -- in German too, it was originally two letters, ſ (long s) and z or later s. (Traditional German typography also has ligatures for ck, ch, ſt and tz; we can be glad those have not been carried over into Roman typefaces as well!) Hence the proposed convention is not about German spelling; it's about English typography. Second, Germans readily substitute ss for ß themselves wherever the ß glyph is not available. Until recent typographic reforms, it was customary to do so when hyphenating or when capitalizing. Third, Switzerland has as good a claim to the German language as anyone else, and they do not use the s-z ligature at all. Fourth, persons whose native language is not English are kindly requested to abstain from this debate, since the perceptions of native English speakers (readers) are a considerable part of the issue. Wegesrand ( talk) 15:06, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
is the rule that the German disambiguation system for town names is left out, and not done by brackets still enforced? Towns with brackets in their official German name, like Frankfurt (Oder) and Fürstenwalde (Spree), should be moved by that rule? There has been few support for this rule in Talk:Frankfurt (Oder), when the move has been discussed. Probably because the resulting creations like "Frankfurt an der Oder" could be original thought. I'm active in the German Wikipedia, and we have lots of rules that are not enforced and objected by the "reign of the minority". We even have articles move-protected by admins who don't want to have them at the discussed headword. I don't hope this will also be such a big problem here in en.wiki. -- androl ( talk) 20:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi there, I've asked there: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany/Cities#Naming convention ? about naming conventions of subdivisions. May somebody have a answer for the Hamburg-Foo question or it is the Foo problem ? Plz ;-) Sebastian scha. ( talk) 19:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The guidance on translating placenames so far is extremely useful, but problems and debates still occur in some areas. There are at least 2 relevant rules: "Use English" and "Use the original if there is no established English usage". For proper nouns this would be easy except for one feature of German: the compound noun, where a proper noun and an ordinary noun are combined. Having looked at major dictionaries and tourist guides it is clear that there is no absolute answer, but there appear to be 3 groups:
Use the original full German word, unless there is an accepted English equivalent. "River" may be added for disambiguation purposes:
Split the compound word, do not translate the proper noun, unless it has an accepted English equivalent, and translate the ordinary noun e.g. "tal" as "valley":
Not compound nouns, but added for completeness. There are two words in German; leave the proper noun in the original, but translate the ordinary noun:
A fair question is "Why are the Group B words treated differently from Group A?" In the case of valleys I think it is that they are named after another feature - the river. So you are unlikely to hear an English-speaker refer to the Rheintal or Maintal, he would say the "Rhine Valley" or "valley of the Main". In German it's the same, but the word for valley is added to the end of the proper name to form a compound noun. Perhaps the same doesn't apply to e.g. lakes and mountains because a) valley is always "-tal", whereas mountains can be e.g "-spitze", "-berg", "-kuppe", "-horn", and b) lakes and mountains aren't usually named after a separate geographical feature. Also, even in English, we tend to refer to mountains by their name only: "I've climbed Snowdon", "at the top of Everest"; but we always use e.g. "valley", "bridge" or "pass" to describe other features. What do others think and, just as importantly, what are the precedences in other reliable sources? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 17:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Thank you to all who have commented. I have now added the above to the guidelines and tried to dovetail it into the existing sections. Feel free to improve on this in the normal Wiki fashion. I hope it proves helpful and encourages greater consistency across WikiProject Germany's expanding contribution to Wikipedia. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 19:55, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The guidance on disambiguating place names is generally helpful, but I have just come across one case which it doesn't seem to cover. Currently we have Hassel (Bergen) and Hassel, Lower Saxony. This is not clever because both are in Lower Saxony! The first is in the borough of Bergen, Lower Saxony, the second in the district of Nienburg, Lower Saxony. German Wiki lists them as Hassel (Bergen) and Hassel (Weser), but this approach is deprecated by the convention which suggests the second one at least should be something like Hassel am Weser, but there is no evidence that this is a name used in German. Since both are in Lower Saxony, possible options might be:
Views? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 19:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a logic in following the German convention e.g. Verden (Aller) since it is de facto a disambiguated system already. I would also be happy with the full title e.g. Verden an der Aller which also needs no disambiguation. In either case the text and the redirects need to cover the recognised alternatives. If we go down this route, we may also need to explain to the WikiProject Geography folk why their overall convention isn't optimal for German (and Swiss and Austrian??) place names and seek a refinement of it for the German world. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
A very good point. In which case why not go with e.g. Bleckmar if the name is unique, Hassel (Bergen) if it needs disambiguation within Germany, and Herne, Germany or Worms, Germany if it needs international or English language disambiguation. In other words, if disambiguation is needed let's use the existing official Germany system where possible; if not, follow standard Wiki practice and use "Xxxxx, Germany". Exception: if there is an accepted anglicised name like Munich. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 16:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
We are confusing two practices. First the practice of hyphenating city districts e.g. Berlin-Spandau which is a similar, but separate debate. Second the practice of disambiguation of German village and town names in brackets e.g. Hassel (Bergen) which appears to be officially sanctioned and IIRC is shown on roadsigns. Basing it on personal preference will lead to anarchy, whereas following the authoritative naming system, where disambiguation is needed, will lead to consistency and avoid confusion. In particular, the approach of using the full name works for Hassel an der Weser, but not for Hassel [which is not an der] Bergen. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 20:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I have created a number of articles on Germany's natural regions (see natural regions of Germany) which has entailed tracking down the English equivalents of these regional names where they exist in the sources. I have added a section which briefly summarises this in the convention. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 08:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
I have just noticed this:
- Hyphens: remove (in Groups B and C) unless they would be used in English, e.g. Theodor Heuss Bridge for Theodor-Heuss-Brücke, Main-Neckar Railway for Main-Neckar-Bahn
Shouldn't that be "Main–Neckar Railway", with an en-dash (both here and in the article name), like Rhine–Main–Danube Canal? The English Wikipedia MoS seems to require an en-dash. There should, of course, be a redirect. The German Wikipedia may regard it as a Bindestrich rather than a Streckenstrich, but I think we would have to regard it as a from-to dash, which requires an en-dash.-- Boson ( talk) 15:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
possibly foolishly, I have re-opened the C-or-K naming dispute at Talk:William VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel#Proposed move (3). If you have a strong opinion either way as to whether we should use the C form or the K form in the articles in question, please express it there. — OwenBlacker ( Talk) 09:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Again, to bring a degree of consistency and clear the confusion over whether a Stadt is a town or a city, I would like to propose an addition to the convention along the following lines:
In general, terms for settlements may be translated as follows:
- Weiler as hamlet (place). In Bavaria, a settlement of less than 10 homes. Otherwise loosely defined.
- Dorf as village. A settlement of 10 homes or more (Bavaria) and under 2,000 (in Austria 5,000) inhabitants.
- Stadt as town if between 2,000 and 100,000 inhabitants or as city if over 100,000 (see Großstadt).
- Großstadt as a city, defined in Germany as a settlement of over 100,000 inhabitants.
It should be noted that Stadt is often used more widely than the guideline above, e.g. there are towns such as Arnis, Germany with under 2,000 inhabitants which were granted Stadt status ( town privileges) in the distant past.
Any comments? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Did you know this: Wikipedia:German-English translation requests/Translation guide? Sebastian scha. ( talk) 19:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, yes. That's the EU list of definitions of German administrative units which the convention has already imported. My concern is mainly how to refer to cities, towns and villages when either the context is not clear, or the word Stadt is used which can mean any one of those three. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 21:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
The arbitrary >2000 must go. The key is the German Stadtrecht (see also City#The difference between towns and cities which on very cursory reading suggests that there is an lower limit for giving the right now, but there is no disqualification for going below that number after that. Incidentally the 10000 limit in England is not quite right as Parishes can elect to be a Town and the City of St Davids - don't get me started on that one. I personally was never happy using the term town for cities <100000 but have come to appreciate the consensus that has developed here over the years and the importance of a consistent nomenclature. Agathoclea ( talk) 07:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
When I made a few minor additions to
Johann Friedrich August Gottling, I noticed that the residence had been entered in the infobox as residence =
Germany and the nationality as nationality =
German, and that these entries seem to be incorrect for the dates 1753-1809. The same may well apply to the countries of birth and death, which have been entered as Germany. Are there any guidelines for the correct usage of flags, countries and nationalities in historical articles about Germany?
Coyets (
talk)
10:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Sounds right - no anachronisms in the guise of pretty decoration. The rule is simple: if in doubt, leave it out. If the nationality or appropriate flag is unclear or debateable, remain silent on the matter. It is better to say nothing than risk misinforming. Knepflerle ( talk) 12:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Forgive me if I have this wrong, but the example of a German nobleman's title given in the project page here seems to contradict its own convention which says we should translate their Christian names into English. Unless I am mistaken Ernst August, Prince of Hanover (b. 1954) should be Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover (b. 1954), shouldn't it? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 20:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to know wether there's a convention regarding resulting redundancies in translating names by adding a descrpitive term? Article in qst. is the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery, which currently is listed as "Cemetery Of The Invalids Cemetery" - that's kinda awkward. The issue sounds familiar, but I can't recall where I read it before. -- G-41614 ( talk) 14:29, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I have extracted this discussion from the above section and created a new section header as it is becoming a 'hot topic' for some users. Please do not move articles until this discussion is completed. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 11:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Translation is not an exact science and the convention is not meant to be black and white, implying all other options are wrong. It's meant to bring a consistent and acceptable approach. Höllental is a difficult one. Normally XXXtal refers to a valley through which a river XXX flows. In English we would usually call it the "XXX valley", "XXX Valley" or, in the text, "the valley of the XXX". XXX does not get translated because it is the proper name part of the German compound word. However, Höllental has a least 3 possible derivations:
So what I am saying is that it depends on the derivation of the name for that particular valley and that, unless it is named after a river, we don't have a hard and fast rule, but at least 2 acceptable choices. Exceptions to the main convention are okay, provided we have some logic for them. What do others think about the Höllental question? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 07:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
May I suggest that we now raise the level of the debate and base our convention on what authoritative English sources do in cases where the XXX in XXXtal is not a river. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Anybody got a translation for that title? Should be explained at least, I think. Regards, -- G-41614 ( talk) 08:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
See Talk:Hesse-Kassel. We should really agree on one spelling. I moved the articles that were using "Hesse-Cassel" (and one that was using "Hessen-Kassel") so that all now use "Hesse-Kassel." Then I proposed a move of all articles to "Hesse-Cassel". If there is a consensus for it to be "Hesse-Cassel," so be it. If there is a consensus for them to stay at "Hesse-Kassel," so be it. But can we all agree to just use one form? john k ( talk) 14:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
On the talk page for an article I have made a brief case for why we ought to avoid "ß". It is used extensively in this article, but I think it should not be. This German character, pronounced "ss", is not generally well-known to English speakers who may be interested in learning more about German history. Your thoughts will be welcomed. (Here or there, but I'm not as concerned about that article as I am in learning more and possibly suggesting a change to our conventions. So here is probably best for the philosophical discussion.)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 07:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello, first comment I've made here:
Alphabet The Wikipedia convention is to use the 30-letter German alphabet in proper names, in line with the broader Wikipedia convention of using local Latin alphabets. It is helpful to explain near the top of an article how to convert a name to the 26-letter alphabet.
Well that's my three pennies. In ictu oculi ( talk) 00:05, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
This page recommends and describes the German methods of disambiguation for two places in Germany with the same name. But suppose there is a placename which is ambiguous with something on which we have an article, but is not a place; for example, the village Iven, in Hither Pomerania, is ambiguous with a first name which arises either as a form of Evan or Ivan.
For the particular case, it is possible to leave the first name at Iven (given name), since nobody is called just Iven; but there will be other cases, not so easily soluble. Do we want to disambiguate by the Bezirk, the Land, the region (here Pomerania, rather than Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Germany, or (town)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a proposal to amend the naming of pages describing a Talbrücke.
After finding out different conventions were used for the page names Göltzschtalbrücke and its sister Elster Valley Viaduct, I went searching for the convention and found it here, under Group B. It demonstrates the convention with Weihe Valley Bridge.
I then [[ checked with Grahamec (the author of the Elster article) whether changing it to Elster Valley Bridge would be okay (I am the author of the Göltzsch article and have no problems changing its title), although I was quite curious about the rather consistent use of the word viaduct to describe a bridge of this sort in Wikipedia articles. His response was as follows:
I suppose we go with the convention. On the other hand large bridges built over valleys in English are normally called viaducts and were also called viaducts in mid 19th Germany and still are in German Switzerland. The term Talbrücke was invented as part of 19th century nationalism, when Germans removed many words of Romance origin from their language. Translating it back into English literally seems odd to me because we don't normally use the expression "valley bridge" in English. Göltzschtalbrücke and Elstertalbrücke could of course also be translated as Göltzsch Viaduct or Elster Viaduct.
Based on this response, I would like to discuss the possibility to change the convention and speak of either RIVER Valley Viaduct, or as Grahamec proposes, RIVER Viaduct (RIVER in this case being Elster, Weihe, Göltzsch or other railway and road bridges).
What are your thoughts on this? And if changed to Viaduct, how does this affect other bridge names in Germany? -- Eddyspeeder ( talk) 07:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
(unindent) I agree with your solutions for Brücke and Talbrücke. I would call the Rendsburg High Bridge simply "Rendsburg Bridge". The article de:Hochbrücke gives me the impression that the term is used for a limited set of bridges only. For instance the Köhlbrandbrücke is higher, but isn't termed "Hochbrücke". Markussep Talk 20:22, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
The section on Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions#Contemporary placenames contained two subsections that did not really belong there:
I have provisionally moved these sub-sections to the appropriate sections where they are already mentioned. This makes the redundancy more apparent. I have also tagged one of the (now more obvious) inconsistencies. The current text is unclear or inconsistent on which conventions are German and where they should not be used on English Wikipedia. Also, the material on hyphenated disambiguation really doesn't belong under Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions#German abbreviations, so something will have to be changed there. It's probably best to put it all directly under a revised disambiguation section. Perhaps it would be best to briefly discuss how German disambiguation works (e.g. official names using abbreviations and rivers, use of hyphens for subdivisions of towns, etc.) and then specify how English conventions differ (no use of rivers where not part of official name, no use of German abbreviations, no use of hyphenation for subdivisions, no unnecessary disambiguation of subdivisions, etc.). -- Boson ( talk) 11:51, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
There is an on-going discussion at Talk:East_Germany#Before_an_edit_war_starts concerning whether the article title should remain East Germany or be changed to "German Democratic Republic". - SummerPhD ( talk) 18:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
-- 84.190.85.67 ( talk) 22:54, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
What are the criteria for including a dab article in this category? I was surprised to find it has been added to Talk:Luckenbach (disambiguation) as the article only includes one article link that is to do with Germany - all the others are US places/people/ships etc. Davidships ( talk) 17:02, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
See this discussion about a consistent way to translate the administrative divisions Stadtbezirk, Stadtteil, Ortsteil and Ortschaft into English. Markussep Talk 06:50, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
I note that we have Munich Airport (for Flughafen München) but we have München Hauptbahnhof (for Munich Central Station). Should the rail station be moved to the English name, or should the airport be moved to the German name? Which style is correct? Asking after a conversation with @ DaxServer:. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:55, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
Before beginning a major revision of the Germany part of Wikipedia, we need a style guide. I have not been able to find any other summary in one place of naming rules for Germany. What I have offered here is a summary of modern practice by English speaking journalists and authors. Tacitus 15:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
A couple of points. Firstly, "Brunswick" is used at least as often in English as "Hanover" with one "n", and usually in the same contexts - largely historical ones. I would say that most usually, references to the modern cities are "Braunschweig" or "Hannover," but that references to the historical Guelf rulers are almost always "Brunswick" and "Hanover." If "Hanover" is a common english form, it seems to me that "Brunswick" pretty clearly is as well. There are other cities which, in some contexts, at least, are referred to by anglicized names. I've never heard of the Council of Konstanz, for instance, but I don't think there's any clear dominant usage between Konstanz and Constance overall. Similarly, Aachen is, in certain historical contexts, still referred to as "Aix-la-Chapelle," notably in reference to the treaty signed there in 1748, and to the Congress of the Powers held there in 1818. Other formerly used Francizations/Anglicizations like "Mayence," "Ratisbon," "Treves," "Cassel," and so forth seem clearly obsolete. I can't think of any other cities that are normally anglicized, though. I will add that "Mecklenburg-Vorpommern" appears to me to be more common than the translated name. john k 00:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I'll add that I'd never heard of the "Ore Mountains" before reading this proposal. I've always just heard them called the Erzgebirge. john k 04:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Upper Palatinate for the contemporary administrative region of Oberpfalz does seem to be a case of translation overkill. Would it not be more consistent with Wikipedia practice elsewhere to head the relevant history articles "Upper Palatinate" but just use the German for the grey bureaucrats of today? In the 21st century, the two Palatinates have got nothing to do with one another. Tacitus 12:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
On the Genealogy Wikia, people are writing about places their ancestors lived in. I like to match "en" WP names as closely as possible. This evening I looked up a link to WP, which redirected to County of Bentheim. On the face of it, that style of name is inconsistent with other countries' WP county names such as Los Angeles County.
I know that a significant difference is that the English-speaking ones were never ruled by Counts; but that's a weak reason for difference. An equally valid reason for making them match would be that the U.S. and other modern counties are generally officially called "County of ....", but WP reverses that for them so why not for Bentheim?
No specific standard seen on the couple of pages I've looked at here. Can someone point me to a WP "recommendation" page that I can link to, so that we more easily maintain harmony with "en" WP as far as possible for former placenames (without having to look up each one individually)? Robin Patterson 13:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I just came across this example on the Heilbronn page:
The term Heilbronn County grates to my European ears- and I had to flip to de:wiki to find out that this means Landkreis Heilbronn- and the article to which it links is Heilbronn (district). Has a policy been agreed? If that is the policy- shouldn't it be overturned? What do we do with this example?- It is completely surrounded by the Landkreis, (often translated as the district of) of Heilbronn. - would be my choice as no information has been lost. Then, if this has been done here, how many other articles are similarly unintelligible? -- ClemRutter ( talk) 21:25, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone have any suggestion for a standard practice on referring to Stadt-/Ortsteile? I just translated the Weinstadt article from German to English and found that to be a difficult problem. (And I only just now discovered this conventions page, so hopefully there aren't too many convention errors!) In any case, I've seen Stadtteile described as "city districts" and "neighborhoods", and en.wikipedia links "Stadtteil" to the article on Quarter (country subdivision). None of those terms apply sensibly to the Stadtteile of Weinstadt, which are group of historical (physically separate) towns that are now under the same city administration. In the Weinstadt article, I used the German term (with an explanation at the beginning of the article). Is there a better, recommended, or standard way to handle this? -- Paigemorrison ( talk) 12:06, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
A contributor to the Germany Project page argued for native German names for universities. That does not seem to represent mainstream opinion. In general, Italian, Chinese and other Wikipedians do not seem to force foreign-language university titles on readers. I've suggested here how the headwords for universities can be presented in a way acceptable to the Wikipedia community internationally. As far as I can see, the majority of Wikipedia university entries employ simple descriptive headwords of the form "University of [[Placename]]", which is to say, regardless of what it calls itself, it is "the university" that is situated at that place. Further adornment needs only be prefixed if a town has multiple universities. The "of" form has the advantage of allowing for such a prefix, e.g. Technical University of Wagga-Wagga. In text, Wikipedia articles also naturally take this form, "In 1951, he switched to the University of Heidelberg where he majored in ..." ( Kohl biography). Tacitus 22:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I suggest avoiding "GDR", "BRD" & "FRG", as I doubt that many English speakers outside the German speaking countries will know what they mean - and I suspect that not many more will know what "DDR" means. "East & West Germany", on the other hand, will be understood by almost all those who know what the cold war was. -- 87.187.77.229 16:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
In film titles, the foreign version often becomes the title of the article, so we are having a discussion in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (films)#Capitalization in titles, trying to establish what is correct for each language. It is clear the German nouns are capitalized, but how do we we go about the non-noun words? We would appreciate if you could drop us a line about it. Hoverfish Talk 20:57, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Since there is now a concentrated effort at Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Cities to bring articles on municipalities/towns/cities up to standard, perhaps it is time to come up with some sort of format for these articles. At the moment, the focus is on making sure that all articles actually exist. The next step is to add content. We probably don't need something as detailed as de:Wikipedia:Formatvorlage Stadt but some clear guidelines would help. I've started up a page at here, giving what I believe to be the necessary minimum requirements for such articles. Any comments and help with setting this up would be appreciated. - 52 Pickup 15:28, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Large parts of this should be considered for inclusion on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements). There is also a discussion on the possibility of a world-wide convention on its talk-page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Where there is no common English name (like Munich), it seems to be standard practice for articles on German locations to use the correct German name, including ä, ö, ü,and ß. This takes account of the need for correctness.
In order to cater to American readers unfamiliar with both the correct names and the standard transliterations, I suggest making the following additional measures declared recommended practice in the project:
Thus, the article on a place called Füßen would start with
and would have a redirect from Fussen as well as Fuessen.
In this case, of course, Fuessen would have to be a disambiguation link rather than a redirect, because there is als a town called "Füssen". --
Boson
14:21, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Of course articles should be intelligible, that's why I'm advocating the "ss" in titles and text (with the original German as an explanation). And we should aim for correctness too, but correct doesn't mean unchanged? Even the German-speaking world can't agree. In Switzerland and Lichtenstein "ss" is always acceptable, so it's not a black and white case at all. And clearly, good practice from the guidebook industry is to make it easy to read for their readers. They don't see it as a problem. I wish English-speakers had a higher literacy of the German language - I hate to hear them mispronounce stuff which is so obvious to me - but the reality is, they don't have...and we should respect that. Even the Wikipedia article on ß says "English speakers unfamiliar with German orthography may also confuse ß with B (the Latin letter which is derived from the Greek beta), which is also incorrect." This is not about me - I love the German language - it's about others, the majority, who don't. But we're not going to agree on this, so let's do some independent research. What do the main written English-language encyclopedias do? I'll go with them. 81.137.199.176 ( talk) 13:36, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes an uninitiated English speaker will have problems reading ß ä ö ü but surely it is the job of an encyclopedia to educate. The correct spelling should be the the article title but the alternative spelling (ss ae ...) should be in the first line. Also the alternative spellings as redirects is a good idea.
Traveler100 (
talk)
19:40, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
The problem is that English usage varies. Most texts accept ä, ö and ü; although you occasionally see ae, oe, ue as substitutes. However some sources use the ß and others the ss. Of course the Swiss (and Austrians?) never use ß anyway. I now use the German spelling in my translated articles, not least for consistency. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 09:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I would like to propose the following convention for spelling of German proper nouns: ÄÖÜäöü are retained, because they do not confuse the reader of English, but ß is resolved to ss, because it's not generally recognized as an s-z ligature. This is in keeping with (a) common publishing practice (I'm a translator by trade) and (b) the very EU style sheet cited in the lede here! It says on p. 29: "5.2 Personal names should retain their original accents, e.g. Cañete, Malmström, Šefčovič. However, the German ß is replaced with ss, e.g. Clauss." To get ahead of a few arguments that have appeared in specific cases: The s-z ligature has, in recent decades, come to be considered a letter in German. In English it is not a letter, it is the typographical representation of two letters -- ss (archaically, sz) -- in German too, it was originally two letters, ſ (long s) and z or later s. (Traditional German typography also has ligatures for ck, ch, ſt and tz; we can be glad those have not been carried over into Roman typefaces as well!) Hence the proposed convention is not about German spelling; it's about English typography. Second, Germans readily substitute ss for ß themselves wherever the ß glyph is not available. Until recent typographic reforms, it was customary to do so when hyphenating or when capitalizing. Third, Switzerland has as good a claim to the German language as anyone else, and they do not use the s-z ligature at all. Fourth, persons whose native language is not English are kindly requested to abstain from this debate, since the perceptions of native English speakers (readers) are a considerable part of the issue. Wegesrand ( talk) 15:06, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
is the rule that the German disambiguation system for town names is left out, and not done by brackets still enforced? Towns with brackets in their official German name, like Frankfurt (Oder) and Fürstenwalde (Spree), should be moved by that rule? There has been few support for this rule in Talk:Frankfurt (Oder), when the move has been discussed. Probably because the resulting creations like "Frankfurt an der Oder" could be original thought. I'm active in the German Wikipedia, and we have lots of rules that are not enforced and objected by the "reign of the minority". We even have articles move-protected by admins who don't want to have them at the discussed headword. I don't hope this will also be such a big problem here in en.wiki. -- androl ( talk) 20:16, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi there, I've asked there: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany/Cities#Naming convention ? about naming conventions of subdivisions. May somebody have a answer for the Hamburg-Foo question or it is the Foo problem ? Plz ;-) Sebastian scha. ( talk) 19:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The guidance on translating placenames so far is extremely useful, but problems and debates still occur in some areas. There are at least 2 relevant rules: "Use English" and "Use the original if there is no established English usage". For proper nouns this would be easy except for one feature of German: the compound noun, where a proper noun and an ordinary noun are combined. Having looked at major dictionaries and tourist guides it is clear that there is no absolute answer, but there appear to be 3 groups:
Use the original full German word, unless there is an accepted English equivalent. "River" may be added for disambiguation purposes:
Split the compound word, do not translate the proper noun, unless it has an accepted English equivalent, and translate the ordinary noun e.g. "tal" as "valley":
Not compound nouns, but added for completeness. There are two words in German; leave the proper noun in the original, but translate the ordinary noun:
A fair question is "Why are the Group B words treated differently from Group A?" In the case of valleys I think it is that they are named after another feature - the river. So you are unlikely to hear an English-speaker refer to the Rheintal or Maintal, he would say the "Rhine Valley" or "valley of the Main". In German it's the same, but the word for valley is added to the end of the proper name to form a compound noun. Perhaps the same doesn't apply to e.g. lakes and mountains because a) valley is always "-tal", whereas mountains can be e.g "-spitze", "-berg", "-kuppe", "-horn", and b) lakes and mountains aren't usually named after a separate geographical feature. Also, even in English, we tend to refer to mountains by their name only: "I've climbed Snowdon", "at the top of Everest"; but we always use e.g. "valley", "bridge" or "pass" to describe other features. What do others think and, just as importantly, what are the precedences in other reliable sources? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 17:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Thank you to all who have commented. I have now added the above to the guidelines and tried to dovetail it into the existing sections. Feel free to improve on this in the normal Wiki fashion. I hope it proves helpful and encourages greater consistency across WikiProject Germany's expanding contribution to Wikipedia. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 19:55, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
The guidance on disambiguating place names is generally helpful, but I have just come across one case which it doesn't seem to cover. Currently we have Hassel (Bergen) and Hassel, Lower Saxony. This is not clever because both are in Lower Saxony! The first is in the borough of Bergen, Lower Saxony, the second in the district of Nienburg, Lower Saxony. German Wiki lists them as Hassel (Bergen) and Hassel (Weser), but this approach is deprecated by the convention which suggests the second one at least should be something like Hassel am Weser, but there is no evidence that this is a name used in German. Since both are in Lower Saxony, possible options might be:
Views? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 19:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I think there is a logic in following the German convention e.g. Verden (Aller) since it is de facto a disambiguated system already. I would also be happy with the full title e.g. Verden an der Aller which also needs no disambiguation. In either case the text and the redirects need to cover the recognised alternatives. If we go down this route, we may also need to explain to the WikiProject Geography folk why their overall convention isn't optimal for German (and Swiss and Austrian??) place names and seek a refinement of it for the German world. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:10, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
A very good point. In which case why not go with e.g. Bleckmar if the name is unique, Hassel (Bergen) if it needs disambiguation within Germany, and Herne, Germany or Worms, Germany if it needs international or English language disambiguation. In other words, if disambiguation is needed let's use the existing official Germany system where possible; if not, follow standard Wiki practice and use "Xxxxx, Germany". Exception: if there is an accepted anglicised name like Munich. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 16:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
We are confusing two practices. First the practice of hyphenating city districts e.g. Berlin-Spandau which is a similar, but separate debate. Second the practice of disambiguation of German village and town names in brackets e.g. Hassel (Bergen) which appears to be officially sanctioned and IIRC is shown on roadsigns. Basing it on personal preference will lead to anarchy, whereas following the authoritative naming system, where disambiguation is needed, will lead to consistency and avoid confusion. In particular, the approach of using the full name works for Hassel an der Weser, but not for Hassel [which is not an der] Bergen. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 20:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I have created a number of articles on Germany's natural regions (see natural regions of Germany) which has entailed tracking down the English equivalents of these regional names where they exist in the sources. I have added a section which briefly summarises this in the convention. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 08:25, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
I have just noticed this:
- Hyphens: remove (in Groups B and C) unless they would be used in English, e.g. Theodor Heuss Bridge for Theodor-Heuss-Brücke, Main-Neckar Railway for Main-Neckar-Bahn
Shouldn't that be "Main–Neckar Railway", with an en-dash (both here and in the article name), like Rhine–Main–Danube Canal? The English Wikipedia MoS seems to require an en-dash. There should, of course, be a redirect. The German Wikipedia may regard it as a Bindestrich rather than a Streckenstrich, but I think we would have to regard it as a from-to dash, which requires an en-dash.-- Boson ( talk) 15:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
possibly foolishly, I have re-opened the C-or-K naming dispute at Talk:William VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel#Proposed move (3). If you have a strong opinion either way as to whether we should use the C form or the K form in the articles in question, please express it there. — OwenBlacker ( Talk) 09:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Again, to bring a degree of consistency and clear the confusion over whether a Stadt is a town or a city, I would like to propose an addition to the convention along the following lines:
In general, terms for settlements may be translated as follows:
- Weiler as hamlet (place). In Bavaria, a settlement of less than 10 homes. Otherwise loosely defined.
- Dorf as village. A settlement of 10 homes or more (Bavaria) and under 2,000 (in Austria 5,000) inhabitants.
- Stadt as town if between 2,000 and 100,000 inhabitants or as city if over 100,000 (see Großstadt).
- Großstadt as a city, defined in Germany as a settlement of over 100,000 inhabitants.
It should be noted that Stadt is often used more widely than the guideline above, e.g. there are towns such as Arnis, Germany with under 2,000 inhabitants which were granted Stadt status ( town privileges) in the distant past.
Any comments? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Did you know this: Wikipedia:German-English translation requests/Translation guide? Sebastian scha. ( talk) 19:19, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, yes. That's the EU list of definitions of German administrative units which the convention has already imported. My concern is mainly how to refer to cities, towns and villages when either the context is not clear, or the word Stadt is used which can mean any one of those three. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 21:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
The arbitrary >2000 must go. The key is the German Stadtrecht (see also City#The difference between towns and cities which on very cursory reading suggests that there is an lower limit for giving the right now, but there is no disqualification for going below that number after that. Incidentally the 10000 limit in England is not quite right as Parishes can elect to be a Town and the City of St Davids - don't get me started on that one. I personally was never happy using the term town for cities <100000 but have come to appreciate the consensus that has developed here over the years and the importance of a consistent nomenclature. Agathoclea ( talk) 07:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
When I made a few minor additions to
Johann Friedrich August Gottling, I noticed that the residence had been entered in the infobox as residence =
Germany and the nationality as nationality =
German, and that these entries seem to be incorrect for the dates 1753-1809. The same may well apply to the countries of birth and death, which have been entered as Germany. Are there any guidelines for the correct usage of flags, countries and nationalities in historical articles about Germany?
Coyets (
talk)
10:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
Sounds right - no anachronisms in the guise of pretty decoration. The rule is simple: if in doubt, leave it out. If the nationality or appropriate flag is unclear or debateable, remain silent on the matter. It is better to say nothing than risk misinforming. Knepflerle ( talk) 12:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Forgive me if I have this wrong, but the example of a German nobleman's title given in the project page here seems to contradict its own convention which says we should translate their Christian names into English. Unless I am mistaken Ernst August, Prince of Hanover (b. 1954) should be Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover (b. 1954), shouldn't it? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 20:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to know wether there's a convention regarding resulting redundancies in translating names by adding a descrpitive term? Article in qst. is the Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery, which currently is listed as "Cemetery Of The Invalids Cemetery" - that's kinda awkward. The issue sounds familiar, but I can't recall where I read it before. -- G-41614 ( talk) 14:29, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I have extracted this discussion from the above section and created a new section header as it is becoming a 'hot topic' for some users. Please do not move articles until this discussion is completed. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 11:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Translation is not an exact science and the convention is not meant to be black and white, implying all other options are wrong. It's meant to bring a consistent and acceptable approach. Höllental is a difficult one. Normally XXXtal refers to a valley through which a river XXX flows. In English we would usually call it the "XXX valley", "XXX Valley" or, in the text, "the valley of the XXX". XXX does not get translated because it is the proper name part of the German compound word. However, Höllental has a least 3 possible derivations:
So what I am saying is that it depends on the derivation of the name for that particular valley and that, unless it is named after a river, we don't have a hard and fast rule, but at least 2 acceptable choices. Exceptions to the main convention are okay, provided we have some logic for them. What do others think about the Höllental question? -- Bermicourt ( talk) 07:03, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
May I suggest that we now raise the level of the debate and base our convention on what authoritative English sources do in cases where the XXX in XXXtal is not a river. -- Bermicourt ( talk) 18:27, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Anybody got a translation for that title? Should be explained at least, I think. Regards, -- G-41614 ( talk) 08:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
See Talk:Hesse-Kassel. We should really agree on one spelling. I moved the articles that were using "Hesse-Cassel" (and one that was using "Hessen-Kassel") so that all now use "Hesse-Kassel." Then I proposed a move of all articles to "Hesse-Cassel". If there is a consensus for it to be "Hesse-Cassel," so be it. If there is a consensus for them to stay at "Hesse-Kassel," so be it. But can we all agree to just use one form? john k ( talk) 14:22, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
On the talk page for an article I have made a brief case for why we ought to avoid "ß". It is used extensively in this article, but I think it should not be. This German character, pronounced "ss", is not generally well-known to English speakers who may be interested in learning more about German history. Your thoughts will be welcomed. (Here or there, but I'm not as concerned about that article as I am in learning more and possibly suggesting a change to our conventions. So here is probably best for the philosophical discussion.)-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 07:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
Hello, first comment I've made here:
Alphabet The Wikipedia convention is to use the 30-letter German alphabet in proper names, in line with the broader Wikipedia convention of using local Latin alphabets. It is helpful to explain near the top of an article how to convert a name to the 26-letter alphabet.
Well that's my three pennies. In ictu oculi ( talk) 00:05, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
This page recommends and describes the German methods of disambiguation for two places in Germany with the same name. But suppose there is a placename which is ambiguous with something on which we have an article, but is not a place; for example, the village Iven, in Hither Pomerania, is ambiguous with a first name which arises either as a form of Evan or Ivan.
For the particular case, it is possible to leave the first name at Iven (given name), since nobody is called just Iven; but there will be other cases, not so easily soluble. Do we want to disambiguate by the Bezirk, the Land, the region (here Pomerania, rather than Mecklenburg-Vorpommern), Germany, or (town)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a proposal to amend the naming of pages describing a Talbrücke.
After finding out different conventions were used for the page names Göltzschtalbrücke and its sister Elster Valley Viaduct, I went searching for the convention and found it here, under Group B. It demonstrates the convention with Weihe Valley Bridge.
I then [[ checked with Grahamec (the author of the Elster article) whether changing it to Elster Valley Bridge would be okay (I am the author of the Göltzsch article and have no problems changing its title), although I was quite curious about the rather consistent use of the word viaduct to describe a bridge of this sort in Wikipedia articles. His response was as follows:
I suppose we go with the convention. On the other hand large bridges built over valleys in English are normally called viaducts and were also called viaducts in mid 19th Germany and still are in German Switzerland. The term Talbrücke was invented as part of 19th century nationalism, when Germans removed many words of Romance origin from their language. Translating it back into English literally seems odd to me because we don't normally use the expression "valley bridge" in English. Göltzschtalbrücke and Elstertalbrücke could of course also be translated as Göltzsch Viaduct or Elster Viaduct.
Based on this response, I would like to discuss the possibility to change the convention and speak of either RIVER Valley Viaduct, or as Grahamec proposes, RIVER Viaduct (RIVER in this case being Elster, Weihe, Göltzsch or other railway and road bridges).
What are your thoughts on this? And if changed to Viaduct, how does this affect other bridge names in Germany? -- Eddyspeeder ( talk) 07:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
(unindent) I agree with your solutions for Brücke and Talbrücke. I would call the Rendsburg High Bridge simply "Rendsburg Bridge". The article de:Hochbrücke gives me the impression that the term is used for a limited set of bridges only. For instance the Köhlbrandbrücke is higher, but isn't termed "Hochbrücke". Markussep Talk 20:22, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
The section on Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions#Contemporary placenames contained two subsections that did not really belong there:
I have provisionally moved these sub-sections to the appropriate sections where they are already mentioned. This makes the redundancy more apparent. I have also tagged one of the (now more obvious) inconsistencies. The current text is unclear or inconsistent on which conventions are German and where they should not be used on English Wikipedia. Also, the material on hyphenated disambiguation really doesn't belong under Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Conventions#German abbreviations, so something will have to be changed there. It's probably best to put it all directly under a revised disambiguation section. Perhaps it would be best to briefly discuss how German disambiguation works (e.g. official names using abbreviations and rivers, use of hyphens for subdivisions of towns, etc.) and then specify how English conventions differ (no use of rivers where not part of official name, no use of German abbreviations, no use of hyphenation for subdivisions, no unnecessary disambiguation of subdivisions, etc.). -- Boson ( talk) 11:51, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
There is an on-going discussion at Talk:East_Germany#Before_an_edit_war_starts concerning whether the article title should remain East Germany or be changed to "German Democratic Republic". - SummerPhD ( talk) 18:04, 10 June 2014 (UTC)
-- 84.190.85.67 ( talk) 22:54, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
What are the criteria for including a dab article in this category? I was surprised to find it has been added to Talk:Luckenbach (disambiguation) as the article only includes one article link that is to do with Germany - all the others are US places/people/ships etc. Davidships ( talk) 17:02, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
See this discussion about a consistent way to translate the administrative divisions Stadtbezirk, Stadtteil, Ortsteil and Ortschaft into English. Markussep Talk 06:50, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
I note that we have Munich Airport (for Flughafen München) but we have München Hauptbahnhof (for Munich Central Station). Should the rail station be moved to the English name, or should the airport be moved to the German name? Which style is correct? Asking after a conversation with @ DaxServer:. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:55, 3 October 2022 (UTC)