Talk:Comune

Comune / Commune
There seems to be some confusion as to whether "commune" is a legitimate translation of comune. The OED is a little vague; it only mentions "commune" as specifically a French thing, but has a catchall definition that includes almost any kind of communal association, typically referring in the modern day to hippies sharing a house. :-) It would be the most careful of us just to use comune/comuni everywhere. Stan 11:51, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I second that. (The French commune and the Italian comune share historical roots and in their modern forms are similar; but the English word "commune" sets up strange ideas in the mind of the reader, might as well take advantage of the Italian word, at least, being spelled differently.) Bill 22:36, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. "Commune" is an old-fashioned English spelling and is not correct for an Italian comune. The word "comune" has great historical significance in Italy. The closest equivalent would be municipality or township. The spelling of commune, with 2 m-s, has an immediate connotation of Hippie commune or Israeli kibbutz to anyone under 60 who is experienced, well read and not insulated from current events. Basically the spelling of an Italian comune using 2 mms (commune) is a hold over, generally used by elderly people or people who are more provincial. It is incorrect to use it in reference to an Italian comune even though one will find that definition in some archaic Italian to English dictionaries, which are simply reprints or regurgitations of dictionaries from the 1950s or earlier. Some people use it because an English "spell-check" in Word and other such programs gives a prompt to change comune to commune. This does not make it correct. There are, to this day "hippie communes" in North America, Australia, UK, Belgium, Netherlands and many other places where the "60s" live on or have been recreated by younger generations. They are not identical to an Italian Comune. pmn 06:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Consolidation of Comuni
While there is a trend in that direction, it is partly offset by the opposite trend &#8212; the occasional comune splitting off &#8212; and certainly, it would be wrong to attribute the frazioni and the rural areas inside comuni as being principally, or even very often, due to consolidation. Maybe we need to make it clear that there is no such thing as an unincorporated area (as are common in the USA): every place in Italy, including farmland, belongs to one comune or other; I can't figure out how to state this without unnecessary elaboration. . . . At any rate the composition of the comuni is primarily due to incorporating uninhabited and sparsely inhabited areas. &#8212; Bill 00:34, 16 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I always thought that there has been a huge commune-merging in Italy in recent decades, like what happened in Germany and Belgium. Does somebody has any informations about it ? Revas 01/06/05

Municipio vs. municipalità
There seems to be a mistake in here, and the linked page on the term municipio. "Municipio" is the equivalent of the city/town hall, the seat of the comune government. The political subdivisions are called "municipalità". Perhaps the confusion is due to a collision with the different usage in Spanish? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.25.15.142 (talk) 02:50, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Lazio is a not a comune
"As of February 2017 there were 7,982 comuni in Italy; they vary considerably in area and population. For example, the comune of Rome (Lazio) has an area of 1,307.71 km² and a population of 2,761,477, and is both the largest and the most populated comune in Italy."

No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazio describes Lazio as an administrative region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comuni_of_Italy does not list Lazio as a comune. These are pages directly linked in this article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communes_of_the_Metropolitan_City_of_Capital_Rome lists 121 comuni in the province of Rome, in the region of Lazio.

Ventifax (talk) 19:55, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * , Lazio is a regione. Rome is a comune in that region (also the capital of it and of the whole country). The comune of Rome is the largest in the country, as our article says. Is it the parentheses round "Lazio" that are causing confusion? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:06, 14 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I see now. Ventifax (talk) 22:16, 15 May 2017 (UTC) But why does Rome need "(Lazio)" in parentheses?

Requested move 8 November 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move for the moment. Suggest starting a discussion at WT:Italy on how these pages should be titled. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  15:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Comune → Municipalities of Italy – 1: WP:UE; 2: Categories for discussion/Log/2014 August 15; 3: others in Italy: Regions of Italy, Provinces of Italy, Metropolitan cities of Italy (although there are entities below the level of municipality that use Italian words); 4: comune is ambiguous without mentioning a country and could refer to entities outside Italy, but the article is about those of Italy, it is even used officially in the Italian language, one of the official languages of Switzerland, for municipalities of Switzerland. TerraCyprus (talk) 02:49, 8 November 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. No such user (talk) 14:25, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Examples for usage in English of "municipality": https://www.ccre.org/pays/view/23 "Italy is a unitary state composed of municipalities (Comuni), provinces (Province), metropolitan cities (Città metropolitane) and regions (Regioni).", https://www.istat.it/en/archivio/municipalities , https://www.statista.com/statistics/667138/number-of-municipalities-italy/ ... and more: https://www.google.com/search?q=municipality+site%3Ait TerraCyprus (talk) 03:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: This content should be merged into List of comuni of Italy (and then that title be renamed to your proposed title) and this title should be a disambiguation page for the dozens of lists of communes pages for several countries. Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 03:23, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comune exists since 2004, while List of comuni of Italy was created in 2007. Whether to have type article and list in one page or in several can be discussed later, examples for two pages exist, e.g.:Municipalities of Switzerland and List of municipalities of Switzerland. If consensus for move for the main article is reached, a move of List of comuni of Italy to List of municipalities of Italy can follow. TerraCyprus (talk) 03:33, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is also Fusion of Italian municipalities which could be Fusion of municipalities of Italy and several categories inside Category:Municipalities of Italy using "Comuni" which should be fixed. TerraCyprus (talk) 04:02, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 03:40, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose I think the word has been adopted into the English dictionary, and is a concise and proper title for the page that follows WP:COMMONNAME.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:10, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Commune is the English. There is no evidence that Comune is the common name in English specifically for those in Italy (as this term is used in several parts of the world). Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 19:51, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * User:Ortizesp, you wrote "I think the word has been adopted into the English dictionary". Into which? What you think doesn't matter, please show a link to any English dictionary where it has been adopted into *with* the meaning restricted to municipalities of Italy, i.e. excluding any other usage of the term, specifically for the municipalities in Italian-speaking Switzerland. 77.11.193.68 (talk) 07:05, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I found an English dictionary, made in Cambridge, England, that includes it. It is one used for translation from Italian to English. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/italian-english/comune
 * Translation of comune from the GLOBAL Italian–English Dictionary © 2018 K Dictionaries Ltd: comune noun [ masculine ] /ko’mune/ (SUDDIVISIONE TERRITORIALE) municipality, town/city il Comune di Milano the City of Milan
 * Translation of comune from the PASSWORD Italian–English Dictionary © 2014 K Dictionaries Ltd: comune noun municipality [noun] a town, city, or other district that has its own government
 * 77.11.193.68 (talk) 07:16, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment - Evidence from Switzerland that "comune" is an official term outside Italy (so the current title is ambiguous) in Italian and that there too the English translation is "municipality" :
 * rivasanvitale.ch Comune di Riva San Vitale; in the navigation bar it is translated in English https://www.rivasanvitale.ch/it "COMUNE" https://www.rivasanvitale.ch/en "MUNICIPALITY"
 * https://www.cadenazzo.ch/ Comune di ...
 * http://muralto.ch/ Comune di ...
 * https://www.balerna.ch/ Comune di ...
 * https://www.pura.ch/ Comune di ...
 * https://www.bioggio.ch/ Comune di ...
 * https://www.melide.ch/en/tools/legal-disclaimer.html "The data published on the website of the Municipality of Melide are of a general nature."
 * 77.11.193.68 (talk) 08:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment The whole category tree is currently a mess:
 * Comune
 * List of comuni of Italy
 * Alphabetical list of comunes of Italy
 * Category:Municipalities of Italy
 * Category:Municipalities of the Province of Agrigento
 * List of communes of the Province of Agrigento (not even placed in the above category)
 * Category:Communes of the Province of Alessandria
 * List of communes of the Province of Alessandria
 * Overlap with Switzerland is the least of the problems. First off, we should decide on format of the singular (comune, commune or municipality) and plural form (comuni or com(m)unes) and then apply that consistently. Perhaps withdrawing this and discussing at WT:ITALY could be the best way forward. No such user (talk) 13:59, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In my view, it should be "municipality" and municipalities" in English with the Italian "comune" and "comuni" stated in the lead translations. I've linked to this discussion at WT:ITALY. Vaselineeeeeeee</b>★★★ 14:47, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Even as a non-Italian, I'm reasonably used to comune, and we have often used local terms for administrative divisions (gmina, krai etc.) where they do not have a good English equivalent. Thus we have e.g. Communes of France but I understand why it may sound funny to English speakers. OTOH, some others are translated, such as Gemeinden redirecting to Municipalities of Germany. I don't have a strong preference either way (comune or municipality), but those communes are clearly wrong. And plural comuni in English does look stilted. Anyway, we should agree on one term as the primary, with the other mentioned parenthetically on first text, and be consistent throughout. No such user (talk) 15:29, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it is because "commune" is a French word originally. Overall, I think it would be simpler to have "municipalities" for Italy and put their Italian versions in parentheses in the lead. <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 16:42, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * we have often used local terms for administrative divisions (gmina, krai etc.) where they do not have a good English equivalent. - that is not true, these two each have a "good English equivalent": municipality and territory. 78.54.39.147 (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm just describing the state of affairs, not endorsing it. I can agree that gmina (<Gemeinde) is indeed a municipality, and there was a discussion at Talk:Gmina to that effect, but apparently nobody could be arsed to move thousands of obscure articles in Category:Gminas of Poland. As for krai I don't know, but it appears to be far more established translation than "territory". But I'm not against this move anyway, just pointing out that 1) we should be consistent across Italy and 2) since it can have wide-ranging implications, we should seek a consensus wider than 3-4 editors currently participating here. I'm at loss why Categories for discussion/Log/2014 August 15 referenced above only moved a dozen categories in Sicily and left the others untouched, but we should avoid that to happen here again. No such user (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: See that for most countries the municipality article uses the English-language word "municipality". France (commune), Italy (comune), Poland (gmina) are off.

78.54.39.147 (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the overview. I hope you don't mind that I collapsed it for readability, feel free to un-collapse it. No such user (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * un-collapsed, too easily ignored otherwise. 78.54.39.147 (talk) 11:33, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * @IP thanks! Adjusted Moldova and Trinidad and Tobago. TerraCyprus (talk) 23:09, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Move request for category for Poland made. TerraCyprus (talk) 00:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This appears to be a muddle, where a merge and a page move are being proposed at the same time. I oppose both proposals. The comune is a notable institution with about a thousand years of history; we should definitely have a page on it, just as we do on raion, vilayet, oblast, comarca and the like, and that page should cover both Italy and Switzerland, with links to our lists of comuni in those countries. To complicate matters slightly, in much of Italy the word is used interchangeably for both the administrative subdivision and the building that houses its government and administration.
 * "Comune" is commonly used in reliable English-language publications. The term may sometimes be translated as "municipality" in modern contexts, but never when discussing the mediaeval comuni, where "commune" is sometimes used as a translation; neither translation covers the whole spectrum. There's no evidence presented here that either is the WP:COMMONNAME. A brief series of comparative searches on Scholar for "commune of foo" and "municipality of foo", where foo is an Italian city, did not reveal any pattern; "comune of foo" was consistently less frequent, but consistently non-negligible. I propose that we follow the policy advice at WP:UE and . Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:10, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No, muddle, no merge proposed. Don't make things up. And no, the article is not about the entities of Switzerland, and yes there can be an article about the term, but for that, the current Italy specific article must be moved away. Your oppose makes no sense at all when looking at what you wrote else. 78.54.39.147 (talk) 11:33, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * please remove your offense "This appears to be a muddle, where a merge and a page move are being proposed at the same time." - I didn't do that. Re your Scholar link, what is that supposed to demonstrate? 1640 hits while there are 60400 https://scholar.google.it/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22municipality+of%22+italy&btnG= TerraCyprus (talk) 00:25, 5 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment on WP:UE see another source: https://portal.cor.europa.eu/divisionpowers/Pages/Italy-Introduction.aspx TerraCyprus (talk) 00:34, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

please explain your reasons for closing as "no consensus". This is not a simple vote counting process, is it? TerraCyprus (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, but you did not manage to convince other editors (such as No such user or justlettersandnumbers) that the page should be moved. There were plausible reasons given why not, such as many non-English jurisdiction names having articles on enwiki, particularly when used by more than one country. The overall lack of consistency is a great thing to be working on reducing, but it's better to start a broader discussion than just one article to get a strong consensus on what to do. Stepping out of the closer hat, my 2c is, not unlike justlettersandnumbers that there may be 2 topics here: "municipalities of Italy" and "comune". Thus I would support a split. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  22:45, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * which plausible reasons, given that is the English-language Wikipedia and the term is ambiguous? What broader discussion you aim for, given that AFAICT there are only two articles about a country-specific class of municipalities that don't include the name of the country, namely Comune and Gmina. TerraCyprus (talk) 15:16, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * @Ortizesp 2C0F:FC89:8082:B378:1:0:8B32:F630 (talk) 12:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 10 December 2020
<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;">
 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: page not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Nnadigoodluck  █ █ █  09:32, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Comune → Comune (Italy) – This article is only about the municipalities of Italy. Not about medieval entities, or entities in other current countries. It is practice in Wikipedia to include the country name in the article title for per country administrative division set articles. Make place for a general article about "comune". TerraCyprus (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Would there be enough info to have a general “Comune” page with prose, or should it be a disambiguation page? <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 22:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You moved (for example) List of communes of Calabria to List of municipalities of Calabria, but we have Category:Communes of the Province of Cosenza and the main page is "comune", or "Comune (Italy)"... --151 cp (talk) 22:08, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * That's not really for this discussion, but the categories should also be moved. The double "m" is very wrong—"municipality" or "comune" is the question. <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 00:33, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The proposal is to move "Comune" to "Comune (Italy)", not to "Municipalities of Italy". So: 1) "List of communes of Calabria" could be moved to "List of comunes of Calabria" (and not to "List of municipalities of Calabria"), or 2) "Comune" has to be moved to "Municipalities of Italy". But we can't have, at the same time, List of municipalities of Calabria and "Comune", or "Comune (Italy)". --151 cp (talk) 15:40, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok... so open that discussion—the way it was, it was wrong either way, so no one's stopping you from moving it to "comune" or otherwise. <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 15:41, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that "List of communes of Calabria" had to be moved to "List of municipalities of Calabria", but I think that "Comune" should be moved to "Municipalities of Italy": it. comune = en. municipality, I don't know the reasons why we should use the italian name (see de. Gemeinde, Municipalities of Germany). --151 cp (talk) 15:54, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * see further above, user:Vaselineeeeeeee and user:TerraCyprus supported the move to Municipalities of Italy, two users opposed, but didn't show ANY evidence for why "Comune" should be kept. When their talk contributions were questioned they didn't reply. Then user:Buidhe closed as no consensus, and user:TerraCyprus seems to have interpreted that close as being based only on vote count. user:Buidhe said no, but didn't show evidence that s/he didn't just vote count. So the situation for this article remains to be very messy. Comune (Italy) at least has the benefit to clarify the page is about the entities of Italy. 77.183.163.91 (talk) 22:10, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Italian medieval communes don't correspond to administrative units named "municipalities": they were, de facto, city-states, rather than basic constituent entities. However, the term "comune", as modern subdivision, is generally translated: The Statesman's Year-Book, the main producer of official statistics in Italy, ISTAT and the official website of the European Union use "municipality". In other words, "comune" is not a specific terminology to indicate this type of administrative subdivisions: comunes, and all similar terms, etymologically cognates (f.e., "kommune": municipalities of Denmark), correspond to those administrative units named "municipalities". --151 cp (talk) 19:00, 13 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Given there is no Comune (disambiguation), this is wholly unnecessary. No disambiguation is required. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:28, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that this move is not exactly necessary. What needs to be done, in my view, is just talk about all possible "comunes" from different countries and antiquity here, rather than have it only about Italy, which isn't the whole story. <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 15:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose it doesn't look like this term is that ambiguous with the Switzerland ones per Necrothesp.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 09:48, 17 December 2020 (UTC)


 * please state your reasons for not moving. TerraCyprus (talk) 15:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)


 * you wrote: "I agree that this move is not exactly necessary. What needs to be done, in my view, is just talk about all possible "comunes" from different countries and antiquity here, rather than have it only about Italy, which isn't the whole story." - Nothing is necessary, the whole Wikipedia isn't necessary. But the current title is ambiguous. And regarding your suggestion to remove the article about municipalities of Italy from the English-language Wikipedia, AFAICT for any other country-specific class of municipalities there is an article. TerraCyprus (talk) 15:53, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

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