Talk:Croats

Archive 1 (-November 2006)

Croatian upper estimate

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The reference does not state there is a total of 9 million Croats in the world. Somebody simply added the reference's statement of 4 million Croats living abroad to the 4 million census population of Croatia. Do not return this number unless the source says, specifically, that 9 million Croats live in the world. Horvat Den 08:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you an idiot, or do you enjoy pissing people off? The number of Croatian citizens abroad are not counted twice. The number is estimated this large because it counts all people who have at least partial Croat ancestry (people such as myself since I am half Croat). - King Ivan 08:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

You have no idea what you're talking, as most blind nationalists don't. Look at what the source says. "4.5 million Croats live abroad." This does NOT mean that we can simply add 4.5 million to the population of the coutnry of Croatia and get a random number. In the 4.5 million abroad inclue literally hundreds of thousands of people who are simply working abroad and are counted TWICE in the population abroad and the Croatian census. Furthermore, the other source, is from an ethnologue report. I don't need to reiterate for the billionth time what that means. Horvat Den 08:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

You really are a troll aren't you. This page is about an ethnic group, NOT people who are merely citizens of Croatia regardless of ethnicity, so you're argument about foreign workers is flawed since there are Croatian citizens who aren't Croats who live abroad. Also, you really need to learn how to speak English properly since it is hard to communicate with you. - King Ivan 08:49, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Everyone, please keep WP:CIVIL. I addressed the issue on my talk page once before. If one counts just the censuses and estimate numbers abroad (without Croatia and BiH), the figure is around 1.2 mil, which summed up gives 5.7 mil, roughly corresponding with Ethnologue's guesstimate of 6.2 for Croatian speakers. Like Ivan said, the remainder is attributed to persons of Croatian ancestry, chiefly in the New World—while many abroad workers in Western Europe tend to return to the country, those from New World practically always stay there.

The phenomenon of double counting, to which Den tries to attribute the number inflation, perhaps exists, but it's not so statistically significant. Take Austria (page 7) as example: counting together, there is total of 45,000 Burgenland- and "mainland"-Croats of Austrian citizenship but 105,000 Ausländer. However, I'm not sure if Croatian census takes those into account at all. There might be a "double counting" error of 100-300,000 but, taking into account fuzziness of the numbers, it hardly matters. The number of Croatian citizens residing outside of Europe is very small, so that the "double counting" hardly can contribute to the numbers.

I see that Croatian Emmigrant Adresary [1] have updated their site since the reference was added (ref 23 updated by myself), and addresses the issue "hitting the nail":

Prihvaćen je podatak da izvan granica Republike Hrvatske, u susjednim državama i diljem ostalih europskih zemalja i širokog svijeta, živi isto toliko Hrvata koliko i unutar državnih granica. Dakle, 4,5 milijuna ljudi hrvatske narodnosti ili podrijetla. Ta je procjena uvelike pretjerana, a pošto ne postoje bolje mogućnosti statističkog određivanja, prihvatljiv je kriterij da se smatra Hrvatom svaku osobu u svijetu koja po zakonu ima pravo na hrvatsko državljanstvo. A takovih osoba ima preko 1 milijun u Europi, više od 2 milijuna u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama i Kanadi, 500.000 u Južnoj Americi te 300.000 u Australiji i Novom Zelandu. Od njih oko 25 posto govori ili razumije hrvatski.

I'm lazy to translate it at the moment, but I'm willing to if requested. Duja► 11:39, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Duja, I appreciate your input, but one must think about this for a moment. Where would the 4 million Croats be!? There's 300,000 or so in the USA and 500,000 in Germany and probably AT MOST 500,000 in Australia. That still leaves over 2 million! So the double counting (or the counting of nonethnic Croats) is definitely not negligible. Horvat Den 19:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Pictures

According to the picture in the infobox, all distinguished Croats are bearded and all Croats are male. Well, it should be more representative, if you know what I mean... For example, Tito wasn't bearded, and he is very known. And if you don't like Tito, you have Pavelić, Tuđman, Maček - all without beard. Also Krleža, Ujević and Ivo Andrić, who was not Serb, but Croat.

Pavelic? I noticed Adolf is not on the Germans article, nor Benito on Italians. Is there the need to make an exception here? Macek and Tudjman might be good examples, despite their controversial characters... but Tito and Andric simply do not belong there. --PaxEquilibrium 23:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

A Macek is even more controversial personality than Tudjman, considering he is not an ethnic Croat at all. --PaxEquilibrium 23:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

About those pictures, there could be more, Croats gave many famous people to the world.

I disagree. Macek was a Croat. It is a Croatian name. Andric maybe not, with the fact he was raised by a Bosnian Serb family, but Tito was Croatian. Unfortunately, but he was. Josip is a name common to only one nation, Broz a last name common to only that nation as well.

btw. I know why you write these things. And I think Croats themselves are a better judge who is Croatian and who isn't.

Afrika, like I said - Vladko Macek was a Croatian patriot/nationalist, regardless of the fact that he's not an "ethnic" Croat. His father was Slovene and mother Czech. --PaxEquilibrium 09:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Iranian theory

The Origins section of the article currently reads "The "Iranian" theory suggests that the Croats are descendants of ancient Persia (cf. Alans), this theory is based purely on linguistic correlation and development of the Croatian name." However, to my knowledge, the Iranian theory doesn't say that the Croats are descendants of an Iranian tribe, only that the name is of Iranian origin, because the Slavic tribe which settled modern day Croatia putatively had a Iranian ruling caste, which lent its name to the entire tribe/people. So, the text should be changed. Cheers Osli73 01:24, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Diaspora is not the correct word

To refer to people of Croatian ancestry outside of Croatia as a "diaspora" is incorrect. Diaspora is used to refer to peoples who have been forced to leave their homelands. Wikipedia defines diaspora "to refer to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands". To say that people of Croatian descent living abroad have been forced to leave their country is POV and should be changed. Better to use something neutral like "Croats around the world" or other. Please don't take offence, I'm only trying to avoid an incorrect and POV use of words. Regards Osli73 01:30, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

No, a diaspora does not just include people who have been forced to leave their homeland, but also people who have left by choice and the descendant of those who have left —KingIvan 01:37, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Ivan, please read the definition of diaspora (see my quote from Wikipedia above). Osli73 01:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it says "forced or induced" - meaning they don't have to be forced to leave, but were "induced" into leaving for economic reasons and so on. —KingIvan 08:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Image

I don't think Eric Bana is a legitimate representative of the Croat people. He's Australian and only half Croat ethnically. Horvat Den 15:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think he's a pretty good example of the Croat diaspora, but if you truly do believe he shouldn't be included, you could edit the image and replace him with someone else - it's a free image. (I pretty much added him to the image, because I thought it was a bit dull in all black and white, and he was one of the few I could find a free colour image for). —KingIvan 02:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

We should place Nikola Tesla on the images.

I agree. Not only this but could someone tell me who is the person in the first picture? I don't recognize it. Also the 'King Tomislav' picture is of very bad quality, there are images of far better quality such as this http://www.croatianhistory.net/gif/krek24.jpg (painting of Kreković) or a better scan of current picture http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2006-3/1157859/tomislav.jpg

Anyway I think there are people who deserve to be up there far more, people like nobel prize winners Prelog and Ružička. People like Penkala, Gundulić, Bošković...

Also I looked on Google and I have found better quality images for Vrančić http://www.nsk.hr/UserFiles/Image/Bastina/Portreti%20autora/vrancic-portret(1).jpg http://www.nsk.hr/UserFiles/Image/Bastina/Portreti%20autora/vrancic-portret.jpg, Meštrović (portrait of his when he was younger) http://www.mdc.hr/mestrovic/grafika/fundacija/media/aktivnosti/izlozbena/04-ivan-mestrovic-gtdr.jpg

In the end I think the best composite should be made of: Jelačić, Gundulić, Bošković, Ružička, Prelog, Mohorvičić, Vrančić, Meštrović. I don't know about Klović, but maybe he could be squeezed in as well, maybe making a composite of ten people, like 5 upper and lower line instead of four with a bit smaller sized images. --Tar-Elenion 17:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)