Talk:Odesa

OdeSa or OdeSSa?
The name of the Ukrainian city in question - according to Wikipedia - in English is Odessa or Odesa, in Russian Одесса (Odessa), but in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Tuvan and Ukrainian - Одеса (Odesa), in Belarusian Адэса, Czech Oděsa, Silesian Uodesa, in Esperanto Odeso. Odesa is in Asturian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Croatian, Gagauz, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbo-Croatian, Turkmen and Wolapik. Thus, in several languages, the name of the city has only one S.

The proposed change will therefore not be revolutionary on a world scale, while the change of the Russian name to Ukrainian will be another gesture of solidarity with the Ukrainian nation after February 24, 2022 and it will be a departure from yet another Russian geographical name.

This name should be changed in atlases and textbooks. Mir.Nalezinski (talk) 19:19, 10 May 2023 (UTC)


 * What proposed change? —Michael Z. 20:40, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * When was the text changed? Previously it was Odessa (also Odesa) at the beginning, now it is Odesa (also Odessa). Over 300 names of Odessa have been changed to Odesa in this version. The name on the map and the noun and adjective Odessan were also changed to Odesan. This change should also be suggested to Wikipedia in other languages. Unfortunately, in the Polish Wikipedia it is still... Odessa. Mir.Nalezinski (talk) 08:47, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * This article was renamed Odessa &rarr; Odesa and the spelling used in it was updated in July 2022. —Michael Z. 14:00, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Plus the opening sentence does not say what is claimed. It says "Odesa (also spelled Odessa)". In the naming section is says "English: Odesa or Odessa." This is pretty much per sourcing so i see no issue here. What does this user want that has not already been said? English has two spellings with "Odesa" now being prevalent. That's what's in the article. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:44, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
 * "English has two spellings, of which 'Odesa' is currently dominant. That's what the article says." Yes, but just a few months ago it was exactly the opposite - English had two spellings, of which "Odessa" used to be dominant. When I wrote to the Polish Language Council* a proposal to change the name Odessa to Odesa, the English Wikipedia was still dominated by the form Odessa
 * -https://www.salon24.pl/u/mirnalia/1214493,mn-84-odesa
 * Mir.Nalezinski (talk) 10:00, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Why is Wikipedia concerned with "solidarity" with any country at war rather than providing objective information? The common English spelling is "SS" not "S". I see no reason to change it. Rsemmes92 (talk) 23:59, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * this is so 1984 84.172.200.175 (talk) 10:07, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * this is so 1984 84.172.200.175 (talk) 10:07, 31 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Quote "This name should be changed in atlases and textbooks." Wikpedia doesn't issue atlases and textbooks. Wikpedia doesn't take a stand in political issues. You can promote your opinions outside Wikipedia. --21:15, 10 May 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Madglad (talk • contribs)

The city was founded by Russians, with a large contribution of Serbian, Greek, Moldovan, French and German immigrants. This city was founded as part of the Russian Empire under the name Odessa — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.111.119.54 (talk) 11:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * So? New York was founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam.  Kaliningrad was founded by Germans as Königsberg.  Shall I continue?  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 13:08, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Russians ethnically cleansed Crimean Tatars from the region and expunged the evidence of their presence, including by renaming their settlements with “European” names evoking “civilized” Classical antiquity. Including Hacıbey, which was replaced by “Odessa”/Odesa. —Michael Z. 13:37, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
 * le crimean tatars 2800:150:14A:5A5:91C:45B8:8703:F9CE (talk) 16:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

First attested spelling of "Odesa" in Ukranian
Given that the name is non-Slavic, a transliteration of Greek "Odessos", with a Slavic feminine ending provided, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the original spelling in Ukrainian was "Odessa". This appears to be the case with the Ukrainian translation of Homer's classic names of "Odyssey" and "Odysseus". If this correct, then the name has two Ukrainian spellings: "Odessa" the earlier and "Odesa" the later. If the attestation of the first can be confirmed, that may be decisive. A reasonable hypothesis would be that the current Ukrainian spelling is a literal rendering of the pronunciation, where only one "s" is pronounced. I suggest if this hypothesis of 2 Ukrainian spellings can be affirmed, it would place this question in a much more agreeable light. Tachypaidia (talk) 16:40, 17 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Except the name Odesa is not a translation of Greek Ὀδησσός (Odessos): it is a distinct name based on the Slavicization of the Greek name, rendered with the respective native orthographic conventions of Russian or Ukrainian.
 * It appears that for the Classical city Ukrainian uses the spelling Одесос, and also sometimes Одессос, going by content found in uk-wiki. In Russian it is Одессос, and also rarely Одесос.
 * Fine if you look for find sources that say something in so many words. But please don’t speculate on personal theories here, much less use indirect evidence to justify them, per WP:NOR. —Michael Z. 17:06, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * You must have misread "transliteration" as "translation." The name was taken from the Greek "Odessos" and the rather rare Greek 2nd declension feminine suffix "-os" (typically masculine} was replaced with the Slavic feminine suffix "-a". So far it appears that the first attestation of the spelling was in 1850 as it appears in a book as likely a single misprint as all spellings are "Odessa". Tachypaidia (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Odes(s)a is not a transliteration of Ὀδησσός either – I thought that was obvious. Your hypothesis on the names origin is just speculation. Rudnyckyj’s Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, v. 2, reproduces an article on the name. You can probably find that online. —Michael Z. 22:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I must be misinterpreting your response. When I looked at the Rudnyckyj’s Etymological Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, v.2, pp. 869-871 from the Internet Archive, it reads:
 * p. 870
 * The name Odessa originated within the Imperial Academy of Sciences in
 * order to commemorate the ancient Greek colony of Odessos (Ordessos in
 * Ptolemy)’ which, according to Russian beliefs, existed in antiquity in the
 * present place of Odessa. This belief, however, has later on been corrected
 * by archaeological uncoverings which proved that the ancient Odessos was
 * located some 34 miles (50 km) from Odessa in the corner between Taligula
 * Liman and the Black Sea. Furthermore, it should be mentioned here that at
 * the end of the eighteenth century there was some mania in Russia tо name
 * all new places in the South, especially along the Black Sea. in a Greek style,
 * and this is the main reason why the name Hadzhibej was changed tо Odessa.7
 * p. 871
 * Thus the name Odessa is directly derived from the name of Odysseus
 * (Greek form; Latin — Ulixes; English — Ulysses) ... Tachypaidia (talk) 16:11, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, “in Greek style.” Derived from Greek and not directly borrowed from Greek. Most of Catherine’s Greekish-sounding names used to annihilate the Turkic Muslim history of southern Ukraine were made up from whole cloth, but this one was inspired by a place from antiquity. It is clear that it is a different name because the letters make different sounds. We are referring to the derivation from Russian Odessa, not the derivation from Greek Odessos. —Michael Z. 16:22, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * The point made was that this is not a "translation" but a "transliteration", i.e., a "letter-by-letter" transfer from one language to another, thus:
 * Gk: ΟΔΗСС +ΟС
 * Ru: ОДЕСС +А.
 * The letter go over 1 to 1. but the Greek feminine suffix is swapped out for the Slavic feminine suffix.
 * All the sources appear in agreement on this.
 * Returning to the question here: When is the spelling ОДЕСА first attested? Tachypaidia (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That is not transliteration. Which sources “appear in agreement” that the Russian was derived from the Greek by “transliteration”? You haven’t mentioned any sources at all that say “transliteration.” —Michael Z. 22:19, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Historian Timothy Snyder gives the context of the colonial renaming of Ukrainian coastal and peninsular cities, the “mania” to wipe out the heritage of previous inhabitants and establish the myth of terra nullius that Russia uses to claim this “was always Russia”:
 * With the "new" Catherine combined the very old. Herself without any family connection to Russian or east European history, aside from the Russian husband who was murdered so that she could rule, she reached freely into ancient references as she imagined the future of her new lands.  In order to efface the Crimean, Muslim, and Ottoman character of the territory, she reached back to a still older history that was familiar to her: that of classical Greece.
 * It is true that Crimea belongs to the classical world. The southern coast had been continuously settled by Greeks for more than two thousand years.  This history granted Catherine the possibility of imagining all of "New Russia" in classical terms, and thereby imagining her Russian Empire into some sort of continuity with the ancient world.  This of course meant suppressing the history of the peoples and states of the "New Russia," Ukrainian Cossacks and Crimean Tatars.
 * To bring together the old and the "new," Catherine replaced Turkic names in Crimea with Greek(ish) ones. When new cities were built in southern Ukraine, they were also given names with a classical feel.  And thus Kherson, today in embattled southern Ukraine, recalled ancient Greek Chersonesos, which was in Crimea.  Mariupol, which today's Russia has completely destroyed, recalls the ancient Greek Mariampol, which was also in Crimea.  The actual Greeks who lived in Crimea were deported, confusingly, to these new settlements in southern Ukraine -- hence the large Greek population in Mariupol until 2022, when most were killed or forced to flee by the Russian invasion and destruction of their city.
 * Catherine had olive trees planted so that the region would look more Greek (and planted a single apricot tree in Kherson). These south Ukrainian regions, like Crimea, had never been part of Rus.  They did have, however, a very immediate Ukrainian past.  It was precisely in southern Ukraine, on the Dnipro River, that the Ukrainian Cossacks had their strongholds over the centuries.  All of the classicizing in southern Ukraine was meant to efface this very recent history of Ukrainian Cossack politics, just as all of the classicizing of Crimea was meant to efface the history of the Crimean Khanate and the Tatars.
 * It’s a very interesting and relatable history, and we don’t have to invent tales of “transliteration” and “Homer” to tell it. —Michael Z. 15:01, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Michael, the same Timothy Snyder, in his very first lecture on The Making of Modern Ukraine (which another editor once recommended to me with your implicit approbation), also strongly emphasizes that historically the dichotomy has been between the Slavic north and the cosmopolitan south rather than between east-west.
 * No one is claiming that the Russian Empire didn't colonize southern Ukraine and that our lovely friend Sophia Christina Frederika of Anhalt-Zerbst didn't basically enact the fantasies of her girlhood on what is now the territory of Ukraine.
 * However, until relatively recently Odesa itself could hardly be called a "Ukrainian" city either, culturally speaking.
 * Any attempts to paint over its historically multiethnic Russophone identity would make the most hardened anti-Putin émigré academic deeply uncomfortable (thus why you keep banging heads with one of them in move discussions).
 * Any potential instance of willful insensitivity toward the complexity of the several distinct identities that we translate as "Russian" would be far worse than how my very white-American mom used to say "the Ukraine" when I was a kid, which after all the exact "solecism" (your word) you commit to eradicating on your user page.
 * '''To make my own position very clear, in 2023 I fully agree with the previous renaming of the article because COMMONNAME has changed (even if for very political reasons).
 * However, I am equally against any attempts to ignore historical usages prior to 1991/5, and definitely against any kind of pre-1917 shenanigans.'''
 * I mention all this mainly because about an hour ago I noticed that some time ago you used admin tools to engage in exactly that sort of pre-1917 shenanigans without sufficient consensus. Let me take this to your talk page…
 * RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Your argument is about the reconstruction of an unattested early spelling in Ukrainian, and then deducing something (I’m not sure what) from that. So I don’t know how the above is meant to address my objection. I don’t want to paint over anything, but you are asking for help creatively painting between the lines. —Michael Z. 22:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I should add the following on the dictionary entry (p. 869):
 * "ОДÉСА GN. 'Odessa'. Ru.Одéсса,Po.Odessa, etc. - in a recent article about this name
 * published in The Ukrainian Review,vol.29,No2,London 1981,W.T.Zyla offers
 * the following data on this city and its name" Tachypaidia (talk) 16:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * the following data on this city and its name" Tachypaidia (talk) 16:30, 11 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Where's the question about what edit or what improvement to make to the article? This is not a blog or forum. And it doesn't matter if Ukraine originally spelled it Odddeeesssa. What matters is how it is spelled in English. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Edit to the history of the name on first attestation. Tachypaidia (talk) 18:18, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Earlier in this discussion I found, “while the change of the Russian name to Ukrainian will be another gesture of solidarity with the Ukrainian nation after February 24, 2022” and it seems to me that this is what the argument here is about, not how Homer spelled it. After all, the wikipedia policy on neutrality is just a guideline and not a hard-and-fast rule.  Isn’t it?  And the Russians are such swine and the Ukrainians such innocent victims that how could we do otherwise?  I looked up the city in a bunch of books and atlases (okay, they are books too) and it is always “Odessa.”  I suspect that all of the “Odesa” (my spellcheck does not even like that) versions folks are finding were mostly done after 2014.  Should we start getting ready for a massive change from “Vienna” to “Wien” for when the Russians get there? Carptrash (talk) 16:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It’s not a “gesture of solidarity.” It’s a recognition that the language we’ve been using has still been colonial, a remnant from the 1950s and earlier, before Western culture decided to try to respect nations’ self-identification. —Michael Z. 23:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Well before the 1950s. My grandfather's WWII map from perhaps 1944 has Odessa.  And please, we just happened to pick now to wipe this vestige of colonialism off the map, so to speak..  And maybe we should wait until after the war is over and see whose city it is? Carptrash (talk) 03:57, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant from the imperial period up to the 1950s or 1960s, when we stopped calling Inuit people “Eskimos” and First Nations people “Indians,” etcetera, but the Soviet Union remained “Russia” in most discourse and all Ukrainian places were referred to by colonial Russian names for decades afterwards.
 * Wait to give the Russians a chance to capture it? That’s a joke in extremely poor taste. —Michael Z. 06:56, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Well @ Michael, after a long night of pondering this issue, you have convinced me with your colonialism argument, a la Rhodesia, and Rangoon and Bombay, all names that appear in my old atlases, that “Odessa” should go. I promise to stop my carping on this issue. Carptrash (talk) 20:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your consideration. Apologies if you’ve seen it before, but the best simple round-up on the decolonizing of Ukrainian history (formerly an insignificant part of “Russian studies”) that I’ve seen is this article: “Moscow’s Invasion of Ukraine Triggers ‘Soul-Searching’ at Western Universities as Scholars Rethink Russian Studies.” —Michael Z. 21:35, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Colonising? It's a area that used to be populated by Turkic people not Ukrainians, and it was colonised by Russians AND Ukrainians, amongst various other groups that came there due to the citys historical multicultural past, Jews especially were populous, this area has barely any Ukrainian history when counting the last thousand years compared to other nations.
 * I've mentioned this in another page and I will mention it again, "Calling the city Odesa in English is etymologically incorrect, as its name derives from the nearby Ancient Greek settlement of Odessos on the Black Sea coast. The name Odessa had the same standing in English as Warsaw or Venice, and there was no reason to change it." So yes, it is in fact a spelling mistake and it was "Odessa" in previous versions for this reason as well.
 * Ukrainians in this land are no different from Russians, both are colonisers in the end, but of course according to a Ukrainian that religiously tries to justify their own way in almost every talk page only Ukraine can be right and anything tied to Russia should be removed in the name of solidarity, even if said city was founded by a Russian government and Empress, land fought and conquered by Russia from Turks not Ukrainians and named after a ancient site called Odessos.
 * It's really getting ridiculous seeing the same person dominating any talks about "Ukrainian" cities and locking articles.
 * You want to use the Ukrainian spelling swap to uk.wiki, this is not the English spelling and never has been.
 * Hell, there's even a city in Texas named after Odessa back in the 1880s. 209.112.209.85 (talk) 18:28, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * You don't understand the modern meaning of "colonizer". It refers to any people who have artificially dominated another, whether they "came to settle" or just invaded and exerted political power.  And your comment that Ukrainians and russians are the "same people" is just russian propaganda pushed by putin to justify his invasion.  The Ukrainians fought for independence during the Russian Revolution, not FOR the Soviet Union, but against it.  They lost that war and the russians invaded with their communism and dominated Ukrainian life.  During the 1930s the russians starved millions of Ukrainians to death during the Holodomor.  In fact, the Holodomor itself was an act of colonization since it was designed specifically to depopulate the farmland of eastern Ukraine and replace the Ukrainian population with a colonizing russian population.  In 1941, Ukrainians nearly joined Hitler to drive the oppressive russian colonizers from their land, but Hitler didn't recognize a gift horse when he saw it.  The Ukrainians rebelled against the russians again after the conclusion of the war.  In 1991, the Ukrainians finally got their independence, but the marks of the russian colonizers were still on city signs throughout Ukraine.  These colonizer brands were already in the process of being removed throughout the country even before 2014.  I lived in Rivne in 2007-2008.  It was already "Rivne" and not "Rovno" then.  My in-laws live in Dnipro, but in 2007 it was already Dnipropetrovsk and not Dniepropetrovsk.  Kyiv and Odesa are the last two removals of the colonizer brands on Ukraine.  "Colonizer" is, indeed, the correct term in modern usage.  Buy a new dictionary.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 05:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * And your comment about Odessa, Texas is irrelevant, of course, since the city was named by Americans reading then-current maps of the world. Need I mention that maps of the world at that time reflected colonizer names everywhere, not just in Ukraine.  --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 05:25, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Note (a)
This Talk page - and 3 archive pages - is filled with arguments about the spelling of this city dating back to 2005, each based upon the individual editors' geopolitical perspective. (If only such efforts were more fruitfully directed into the development on this still quality=class C article.) I recommend that Note (a) of the article be removed. Two sources do not make a general shift in English spelling, and it only attracts further "excitement" from some editors. Let's get back to building an encyclopedia rather than playing politics. 182.239.152.216 (talk) 03:11, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Honestly, how is this article still rated C-class? I'd argue it's B- or even A-class. Sadustu Tau (talk) 19:59, 27 May 2024 (UTC)