Talk:Royal Academy of Abo

Why is this article renamed using a Finnish place name although the institution had originally a Swedish place name in it?
Here is a link to the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, 22nd session, New York, 20-29 April 2004, Item 17 of the provisional agenda, Finland. In essence: "In foreign languages, names of monolingual areas should appear in the form they have in the official language of those areas (for instance fi Iisalmi, sv Mariehamn), unless there are no other established names in the languages in question. In bilingual areas, the names in the majority language should be preferred (for instance fi Helsinki, Turku, Vaasa; sv Jakobstad, Nykarleby, Pargas, Ekenäs.)" Hence, if a translation of "Åbo Kungliga Akademi" is introduced into the English language it translates as "Royal Academy of Turku" (better "Turku Royal Academy" and not "Royal Academy of Åbo.


 * I think I'll have to disagree in this case. The Åbo Akademi is a historical institution, and as such, we should refer to it with a name that makes sense in a historical perspective. "Royal Academy of Åbo" sounds better than "Royal Academy of Turku" to me. Compare with the disputes about the English name of Gdansk/Danzig. --Jonik 18:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

What about merging this with University of Helsinki (at least for the time being)?
Referring to the 17th - early 19th century university of Åbo as being located in "Turku" is not only anachronistic, but seems like anti-Swedish and perhaps anti-Finland-Swedish revisionism. The history of this article has also been screwed up by anons doing cut-and-paste moves. I would suggest two things: Whenever that article gets too long, a split of the Åbo part of the history could be discussed. There is a monumental and up-to-date History of the University of Helsinki in three thick volumes, published in both Swedish and Finnish editions not very long ago (1988-1991). At some future point, I hope somebody will actually use that and everything else written about the university to write a good, well-referenced article on the topic. u p p l a n d 06:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Moving stuff back to get the history back in one place (almost all is now in the "Åbo" version of the name),
 * 2) and then actually merging this with the University of Helsinki article which isn't very long, redirecting all possible names there. Using the Finnish name of the city in that case is uncontroversial, as it is a current institution in a city which now has a Finnish-speaking majority and is usually referred to by its Finnish name in English.


 * Hmmm...I disagree and agree. I disagree with the first sentence. Referring to the city as Turku in a contemporary English text is under no circumstance "anachronistic". It is the other way around. Using e.g. the name Viborg or Viipuri in a current English text of the city of VYborg (note the Y from Russian transliteration) would be unacceptable. Tackling this issue seems proper because Wikipedia seems to be full of "historical multiplicities" (i.e. many articles on the same thing from different aspects and time periods). Let's consider the following: 1. There was no English name for the institution in 1640-1809 when it was called something like Åbo Kungliga Akademi in Swedish - to my understanging the official name of the institution was Regia Academia Aboensis. 2. It can be argued that the institution still exists as the University of Helsinki so it is not a past institution. 3. If one wishes to make a contemporary translation of Regia Academia Aboensis into English should the name Åbo really be chosen? I think the best solution in these issues, and here's where I agree, is indeed merging articles and writing ONLY ONE HISTORY for an entity (be it geographic, geopolitical or an institution). This is basically why there's only one article on Turku itself and not one for 'Åbo' (pre 1892) and 'Turku' (post 1892) which would be totally silly. (1892 was when Finnish gained an equal status with Swedish in Finland and both place names became equally "official". The name Turku is of course a lot older as is the name of its forerunner, Koroinen.) I find this article poor and dubious in many ways... not least because of such wordings as "under Swedish occupation"... Clarifer 14:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, please see Talk:Royal_Academy_of_%C3%85bo. Here's how the university of Helsinki writes about its history . For a more extensive history of the university (with the relevant terminology in English), see e.g. Pirkko Forsman Svensson, University of Helsinki Language Centre: . Cheers. Clarifer 15:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

One possibility would be to move the content presently in this article into the history section of University of Helsinki and possibly name the subsection Regia Academia Aboensis and spell out the English-language variants there. As for the debate on this discussion page, I suppose everyone has valid points. Scoo 18:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC)