Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Magyarized geographical names


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   merge to Magyarization. v/r - TP 02:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

List of Magyarized geographical names

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As has been stated before, this article has numerous problems yet it still remains. The following deletion criteria apply to this article:

- POV forking: Most (if not all) of these placenames have their own article, where its name in other languages appears (or should). If it doesn't, then that article is where the name in other languages should be included, not in a separate list. Why the need to have an article that just repeats this information? Hardly encyclopedic, and contrary to Wikipedia's general avoidance of lists for list's sake. The obvious conclusion is that this list is an attempt to further a particular POV.

- Overcategorisation: As above. Wikipedia could potentially contain myriads of such articles. For example, Anglicised placenames in Ireland, Germanised placenames in Poland, "Swedishised" placenames in Finland... the ridiculousness could be never-ending, but fortunately common sense prevails sometimes, and therefore they don't exist. (Additionally each one could have it's opposite article). Again, hardly encyclopedic.

- Original research: The contention Panonian that these names are "Magyarised" is not irrefutable, hence it is more than likely that your insistence on doing so is a POV that you are attempting to push. When populations are multilingual, it is inevitable and natural that each will have their own versions of placenames, but for you this seems to be "Magyarization". It just happens to be that in that period of time the Hungarian name was official because they were part of the Kingdom of Hungary; hardly a controversial or unique policy for any government. Whether or not Hungarians were in the minority or not is totally irrevelant and is not the issue here, Hungarian was the official language. Additionally, the source provided in the article is merely a helységnév-azonosító szótár; in English, a dictionary of placenames. Such a source certainly does not provide evidence of a place name being "Magyarised". Hunor-Koppany (talk) 23:11, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - Unsourced original list. Carrite (talk) 01:00, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a source cited in the article; so your comment is no (longer) apropos. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 04:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep or Merge into Magyarization article - Magyarization is very notable historical subject, and google books hits are showing that term "magyarized names" is widely used: . Currently, article is a sort of stub, but it have potential to be expanded with large amount of info. Also, the point of this article was not to show "name versions in various languages", but names that "were magyarized within Hungarian language itself", i.e. to show non-Hungarian place names that were used within Hungarian language in more-less original form and that were changed to "more Hungarian forms" in the time of flourished Hungarian nationalism between 1867 and 1918. I have some published sources about this, but I do not have enough free time to translate them into English at present moment (I might do that in near future, of course). Anyway, here are some online references about this subject: "The government Magyarized place names and 'encouraged' non-Magyar citizens to adopt Magyar surnames", "the list of Magyarized names of persons, places and localities, drawn out in 1893 by the Hungarian Academy", "Magyarized names of localities", etc, etc. So much about accusation for "original research". PANONIAN  07:58, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Even if we accept that the etymology of those names can be demonstrably shown to be non-Magyar, I can't see the purpose of this list. It can grow up to thousands of entries, and the criterion is fairly weak. All toponyms in the world have some etymology, many of those from a different language, and by following such principle, we could have thousands of similar lists, each with thousands of entries, practically unmaintainable. I suppose that hypothetical List of Albanized geographical names would encompass 90% of toponyms on Kosovo, for example. Sure enough, pretty much every nation Foo, while ruling or settling in a certain area, will Foo-icize its toponyms rather than inventing their own. Add to that a difficulty to certainly establish the origin for many, opening a can of worms. No such user (talk) 16:15, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hungary-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Serbia-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Slovakia-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 15:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete: Completely unsourced and most probably unsourceable OR. No encyclopedic value. POV. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 16:03, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Have you even tried to find a source; a quick google book search turned up many - your OR that its "probably unsourceable" is either disingenuous or laziness. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge: not sourced but could be find a few facts to expand the Magyarization article, short of a notable topic on its own. Dzlife (talk) 19:20, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sourced now. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 04:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep the renaming of geographic features and places after conquest is quite notable - especially when accompanied by ethnic cleansing. The lack of sources is not a reason to delete; a quick scan of google books shows among the following discussing the issue: Transylvania, history and reality by Milton G. Lehrer, Austria-Hungary by Louis Leger, The policy of the Hungarian state concerning the Romanian church in Transylvania under the Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918 by Mircea Păcurariu, Lumea: Issue 52, Modern and contemporary European history by Jacob Salwyn Schapiro, etc. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. It's WP:POV and WP:POVPUSH. When not WP:OR, it may be WP:FRINGE (some of the sources cited above are not WP:RS, e.g. Lumea is not a peer-reviewed journal). But mostly WP:POV, as pointed above such a list prompts some questions: what is Magyarization? can we deal with facts and not with (minority) opinions? should we have lists for all places and languages? (just imagine the lists of Akkadianized, Gothicized, Aztecized, Mongolized, Arabized, etc. geographical names) Daizus (talk) 20:36, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Convert to category Unless I'm much mistaken, each of these names should be a redirect from another language (see Category:Redirects from alternative languages). Stuartyeates (talk) 07:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Weak keep The first two of the three reasons given by the nominator for deleting this article are actually at variance with current Wikipedia policy - we have not only Hungarian exonyms but also several dozen similar articles for other languages. And they are accepted apparently because they are useful specifically when editing Wikipedia - if a source gives a name for a place that isn't the generally accepted current one, then one needs an easy means of finding out what the generally accepted name is. The third reason is inaccurate as to fact - there was an official policy of encouraging the Magyarization of place names during the period mentioned by the article, and this explicitly involved officially replacing traditional Hungarian placenames obviously derived from those in the local language by ones which were linguistically fully Hungarian. And Hungary was far from alone in having such a policy - there was certainly a similar policy in German parts of Poland, and I think in Russian areas too. And while Britain does not seem to have had a systematic policy of doing this in Ireland, it certainly sometimes happened (Dunleary - Kingstown - Dun Laoghaire). However, I would agree that names should only be in a list like this where the fact that the name was changed can be reliably sourced (and preferably also at least an approximate date for the change). As such changes would have been a matter of official record, I would expect this to be possible for at least a significant proportion of the names in the list (though possibly only from sources either in Hungarian or the local language of the place concerned), but there is no indication that the current source does this. So the article does need better sourcing and, quite possibly, pruning. PWilkinson (talk) 22:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.