User talk:TaivoLinguist/Ukrainian names

Your comments concerning User:Taivo/Ukrainian names are welcome here. (Taivo (talk) 20:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC))

--Toddy1 (talk) 05:30, 5 April 2010 (UTC) amended --Toddy1 (talk) 21:11, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) This is English language Wikipedia, not Galician language. Kharkiv is a transliteration of the word Galicians use for Kharkov.  Surely English language Wikipedia should use normal English names for places.  The Galicians have a political agenda and wish to impose their names for places on the rest of us.  However it is against Wikipedia policy to use Wikipedia for this political purpose. WP:NOTADVOCATE
 * 2) Eastern and Central Ukraine have a different history than Western Ukraine. Whereas Western Ukraine was once part of the Kievan Rus' state, Eastern and Central Ukraine were inhabited by nomads.  Large-scale settlement started in the 18th and 19th Centuries.  In the cities the largest group of settlers were generally ethnic Russians - this was the case in Kharkov: according to the 1897 census there were about 110,000 Russian speakers, 45,000 Ukrainian speakers, 10,000 Yiddish speakers, and about 9,000 others. Consequently the historical native languages are Russian and to a lesser extent Ukrainian.  Some cities like Yekaterinoslav (now called Dnepropetrovsk) had a greater proportion of Jews, so that Ukrainian was the the third most common language (see 1897 census). Other census returns show that there must have been some cities in the Kharkov Governate where Russian-speakers were a minority.  And census returns from the Kharkov Governate as a whole show a majority of Ukrainian speakers, which implies that the rural population must have been Ukrainian speaking.  The history of the settlement of this part of Ukraine was complicated - indeed more complicated than I had thought.  All this should suggest that intollerence of Russian-language names for cities in Eastern and Central Ukraine is inappropriate.
 * 3) In modern Ukraine, the dead hand of the state puts Galician spellings for place names on highways. So it is useful to also have the Galician names for places on Wikipedia.


 * So I'm assuming that is a yes, we need to include both Ukrainian and Russian on all places in Ukraine. (Taivo (talk) 07:06, 5 April 2010 (UTC))
 * ✅. I also can't understand why people from Ukraine who bear Russian names and speak only Russian, not Ukrainian, are known in English language Wikipedia under Ukrainian names (e.g. ). Garik 11 (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Well in this case, if one is born X and documents say X and supporting evidence says X, why assume Y is correct because they can speak in Russian?--Львівське (talk) 03:46, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Because most of the people covered in Wikipedia were not born in Ukraine, but in the Ukrainian S.S.R., that is, in the Soviet Union, and their birth documents are in Russian, not Ukrainian. Therefore someone born in the U.S.S.R. in Donetsk will be named Irina, her Soviet passport will say Irina, her mother and father and all her friends will call her Irina, she went to school as Irina, and her graduation certificate will say Irina.  Maybe she even got famous as Irina.  Now along comes a new Ukrainian passport that says "Iryna".  Her name hasn't changed, just the spelling in the passport.  Lvivske, you're over-simplifying a complex issue.  Both Russian and Ukrainian names need to be represented wherever there is a reasonable assumption that a Russian version of the person's name has been used and noted by the person.  Obviously, a Russian form of the name isn't relevant if the person is not famous outside Ukraine and they are from western Ukraine.  But in eastern Ukraine, it's a legitimate question in all cases.  (Taivo (talk) 04:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC))


 * I'm not oversimplifying, I'm saying don't make assumptions on what the person uses. That said, I wish Mykola and Nikolai could sit at the same table, so to speak, and both language's names could co-exist and we can avoid the whole Russifying or Ukrainizing of names contrary to what the person goes by. In a lot of the articles I edit, it's really annoying that names change depending on where the person is located. It's like Russia and Ukraine are stuck 50 years ago when given names were translated rather than today where they are transliterated (ie. my grandfather was Mykhailo in UKR, Michel in FRA, and then Michael in USA)--Львівське (talk) 05:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Good. So you recognize the problem. That said, it's not always possible, especially when dealing with individuals from eastern Ukraine, to know what they use "on the street" or even what their documents say (birth documents from Soviet Union or from Ukraine, passports, etc.). All we have to go on are reliable sources.  Those sources can be of two types:  English origin and foreign origin.  If there are Russian variants in the English sources, then we have to list the Russian option in the Wikipedia article.  We must keep user friendliness in mind and list it because that is a version that our readers may have encountered.  Official Ukrainian documents will usually list the Ukrainian variant, but not necessarily if it's not an official government document that's being referred to.  For example, I taught in Rivne for a year.  I'm connected to a lot of my former students (all of whom are native speakers of Ukrainian) through vKontakte.ru.  But under "city", about half of them list "Ровно" instead of "Рівне".  So Russian is not "non-existent" as an option for use even in the completely Ukrainian western part.  There are going to be cases where both Ukrainian and Russian variants are necessary and cases where only the Ukrainian version is necessary.  But each case must be separately evaluated and we cannot just automatically assume that the Ukrainian version should take precedence.  (Taivo (talk) 12:53, 6 April 2010 (UTC))


 * Yeah, I hate this problem; I deal with it a lot on the sports articles I chip away at. Many Ukrainian athletes go to Russia to play, so Russian sources Russify their names, then on the other hand they might play for the Ukrainian national team, and those sources provide the Ukrainian variants in both english and ukr. It's really a pain, as if a Canadian/American/Czech/Swede athlete plays in Russia, their names are always transliterated (ie. Michael becomes Майкл and not Misha). Then again, I have a friend Oleksiy, and he's from the east, and his name has never been Alex/Alexei; I also met a TA at my university recently, and though he has a heavy russian accent, and his faculty email says alex, he writes his name as Oleksandr. I just want to pull my hair out sometimes...--Львівське (talk) 18:26, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I completely sympathize. My wife is from Dnipropetrovsk, but she was born in Soviet Moldavia with a Russian name.  She is immigrating here and the problems navigating between documents that require the official Ukrainian name that's in her passport (taxes, visas, etc.) and the Russian name that's on her birth certificate (everything else) is a nightmare at times.  We just have to deal with all the alternates as best we can.  (Taivo (talk) 19:29, 6 April 2010 (UTC))


 * Now that I've been doing some digging, I'm seeing BOTH Ukrainian and Russian given names being used by Ukrainian sources. Thank god, just putting it out as it is, no conversions! Here is a Nikita and Mykyta on the same team and Andrei and Andriy / Sergei and Sergiy. Of course, the only issue I'm seeing is that H is always converted to G in all first and last names, like the previous "sergiy", so I'll assume it's a mistake by the translator, but still good to see both names on the same page. --Львівське (talk) 01:14, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Imagine the nightmare at the airport when there are different spellings on documents! Because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that shows up in search engines, it's important that the English article be found even though the search originated in Russian or Ukrainian. USchick (talk) 05:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅. Also use both for names of people. There are many famous people born in a place that changed borders several times and they are claimed by both Russia and Ukraine.USchick (talk) 02:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

My original intent was to write a guideline for place names, so the discussion concerning personal names is a new direction for the issue. My wife deals with the same problem--she was born in the Soviet Union in the Moldavian S.S.R. with a Russian name on her birth documents and moved to Dnipropetrovsk just before she became a teenager. When she got her Ukrainian passport, it was, of course, the Ukrainian version of her name. Now that she's immigrated to the U.S. it's difficult since her name is Russian, but her documents have a Ukrainian name in them. Both are correct, but in different contexts. I'm not sure the best solution for personal names because this guideline was mainly focused on place names. (Taivo (talk) 04:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC))
 * Thank you for starting this very useful discussion. I recommend the outcome of this discussion should apply to proper nouns. USchick (talk) 05:17, 6 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I just noticed that many of my former students in Rivne list "Рівне" on vKontakte.ru as the city where they live and attended the university, but list "Ровно" as their hometown. In other words, they recognize the shift in name between the town where they were born and that their birth documents record and the town where they currently live.  So many individuals in western Ukraine, even though they only speak Ukrainian, recognize that both the Russian name and the Ukrainian name are valid names for the same town, depending on the question that's being asked.  (Taivo (talk) 14:03, 6 April 2010 (UTC))

So what? That doesn't proof anything (how many students are this 10, 100, 2000?) and vKontakte.ru pre-settings are all in Russian (so they might just be lazy). —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  08:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Gaining Consensus
I'd like to see where we stand on a consensus for these principles:


 * Agree. (Taivo (talk) 17:12, 11 April 2010 (UTC))
 * ✅. I also can't understand why people from Ukraine who bear Russian names and speak only Russian, not Ukrainian, are known in English language Wikipedia under Ukrainian names (e.g. ). Garik 11 (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * ✅. Also use both for names of people. There are many famous people born in a place that changed borders several times and they are claimed by both Russia and Ukraine.USchick (talk) 02:55, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
 * . It is to vague for me. I’ll explain below. —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  08:42, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. It is to vague.
Russian and Ukrainian variants of the name always in bold in all articles is nonsense. Russian is not an official language in Ukraine and should not be treated as such. Only prominent city's where know in the English speaking world during Soviet times (Rivne was not) so they getting a double bold name makes sense. Same goes for Rusyn names. WP:COMMONNAME states that articles should be named after the names they are known by in the English speaking world. How the residents name it themselves is no criteria. Moscow hasn’t got Moskva in bold… So why should Ukrainian city’s be treated different?

And what are the criteria for "persons from Ukrainian history that are not know to the English-speaking world by their Ukrainian names, but by their Russian names". Everybody gaining notacibility in independent Ukraine is not? —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  09:16, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * So perhaps there should be some level of "notability" of the name or place to determine whether both names are bolded or not. For example, a search of Google Books would yield the relative numbers of occurrences of both names in books published in English over the past year.  And, actually, Rivne was quite notable because one of the larger massacres of Jews occurred there.  When I was going to Rivne a few years ago to teach, one of my Jewish colleagues had never heard of "Rivne", but knew "Rovno" very well.


 * Your argument about WP:COMMONNAME applies to article titles. That would mean that many of the city articles in Ukraine would need to be renamed to their Russian equivalents since English speakers tend to still know and use those Russian names in many cases.  At this point, only Kiev, Odessa, Chernobyl, and Crimea fall into that category.  (Taivo (talk) 09:36, 12 April 2010 (UTC))

Not sure that "English speakers tend to still know and use those Russian names in many cases"; BBC gives me the idea that the Ukrainian names are most used in current news articles. And I assume most people in England have ever heard of any other Ukrainian place then Kyiv. —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  09:57, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There's the key issue. Do we count "English speakers" in general?  Or do we count "English speakers who are likely to know something"?  If we count the first group, then almost no one knows anything about "the Ukraine" (even its capital city).  So we must only count that second group--people who know more about "Ukraine" than the average English speaker, but who are not necessarily experts on the subject.  How do they learn about Ukraine and what do they know?  That's the question.  I think that we have to consider two different groups here--the group that knows about Ukraine through current events and the group that knows about Ukraine through its history.  People who know about Ukraine through current events might be expected to be more familiar with the Ukrainian names.  However, that isn't necessarily the case as the survey associated with the last move request for Kiev shows--"Kiev" is still the most widely used form of Kyiv's name in the English-speaking world.  BBC is popular in the UK, of course, but it is hardly the gold standard when it comes to measuring the entire English-speaking world.  The New York Times is much more influential in the U.S., for example, and as of October 2009, "Kyiv" had occurred in its pages only once in the previous five years compared to "Kiev" occurring 485 times.  People who know about Ukraine through their reading of history, especially of the Second World War, are going to know the Russian names almost exclusively.  So we do need to cater to both audiences.  But a notability measure might be appropriate.  Some small cities and villages just aren't going to be mentioned in the English-speaking literature at all, while others are going to be much more common.  (Taivo (talk) 10:17, 12 April 2010 (UTC))

Respectable
Shouldn't more users be involved in this discussion? A consensus by 3 or 4 users does not make this guidelines look respectable for me... How about an announcement on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ukraine? —  Mariah-Yulia  • Talk to me!  10:20, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right about a general consensus. I wanted to have a limited discussion first to refine the content before calling in a larger readership.  The next step is, definitely, to make a broader announcement.  (Taivo (talk) 10:25, 12 April 2010 (UTC))

Couple of comments
Generally I like the idea of this but I have a couple of suggestions:
 * 1) These should not be, and should not be presented as, new guidelines.  They should merely be "worked examples" of how our existing, well-established and consensus policies apply to these particular problems.  Direct reference to the policy text in question should be made wherever possible for clarity.
 * 2) Our policies, and this document should emphasise above everything else that our article titles and wording are for the benefit of English-speaking readers.  We use and include various transliterations and spelling because they are useful to those English-speaking readers.  We shouldn't propagate the illusion that we are forced to do so because the population of speakers of a certain language is over a certain arbitrary threshold, or because of certain countries' language laws, or because of certain countries' sovereignty at certain periods.  Which transliterations and spellings are useful to our readers of course depends to greater or lesser extent on these factors, but we choose the ones we choose simply for their utility to the readers and that is our one and only concern.  We include Russian transliterations when they are likely to be encountered by our readers, we include Ukrainian ones when they are likely to be encountered by our readers.  The historic geopolitical reasons why they are likely to be encountered is neither here nor there - our readers want to be able to find articles and read them using terms with which they are familiar, and be shown that alternative names that can help them find further information elsewhere. Knepflerle (talk) 19:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC)