Talk:Battle of Monastir

Move to Battle of Bitola
Name of the town is Bitola not Monastir,so it`s changed. --CrniBombarder!!! | † 18:31, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The name of the city today is of course Bitola. However, when the battle took place, the city was in the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottoman name was Monastir. And in English, the battle is invariably called the "Battle of Monastir". Try a Web search on "Battle of Monastir" vs. "Battle of Bitola". Almost all the Bitola search results are from Wikipedia or its mirrors (because of this article). The Encyclopedia of World History (6th ed., 2001) calls it the Battle of Monastir. Can other editors find any English-language references to it as the Battle of Bitola? --Macrakis 22:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Move back to Battle of Monastir
I have rechecked the references here. On Google, there are about equal numbers of reference to Battle of Bitola and Monastir (partly because WP mirrors use 'Bitola'). But on Google Books, there are about 10x as many references to M as to B. If we restrict to publications after 1990 (to exclude old-fashioned material based on old Britannicas etc.) we go down to 3x as many. Google Scholar has too few (4:2) references to be interesting.... So it still seems as though the English name of this battle is "Battle of Monastir", which is not surprising since that was the name of the city at the time the battle took place. --macrakis (talk) 04:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

We have to change the name of the battle. Greek editors accepted the name of the Battle of Sorovoch as such not trying to impose Vevi (not to confuse it with the battle of Vevi of 1942 against the Germans). Turks and Bulgarians editors accepted the name of the Battle of Adrianople as such not trying to impose a battle of Edirne or Odrin. Battle of Bitola means nothing and every WP editor in the articles of that period knows that very well, respecting the consensus about the old names during the time of the battles. --Factuarius (talk) 16:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. Macrakis' argument is convincing. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:22, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Unnecessary clarification. I was not worried that you could be convinced by me. --Factuarius (talk) 19:59, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Heh ;-) Don't worry, I sometimes get convinced through the strangest of sources. But it just so happened that Macrakis hit the most relevant argument here: there isn't a general rule that we always use names contemporary to the historical events we talk about. The general rule is merely that we use whatever is most commonly used in English sources today. Conceivably, English sources might or might not have shifted to the new name for this context; in this case apparently they didn't. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:05, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Aaa..Understand..After 5 years trying, WP failed to persuade the world to change the name of the battle and now has to go back to the old one. Hope to be more lucky with the name of “Macedonia”. Anyway unlike some friends around I do believe that you are a Greek but I don't want to tell you why because sometime you will be again admin and..I remember very well what that means. But that's irrelevant with the article. The end is good everything is good (ref. Giagia mou). --Factuarius (talk) 05:20, 15 August 2009 (UTC)