Talk:Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar

Requested move 16 July 2023

Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar → ? – The final part of the article's name should be changed from "Banat of Temeschwar" as

• it is not widely used in English (fails WP:COMMONNAME)
• does not correspond to the native names
• in German "Temeschwar" and "Temescher Banat" are uncommon and were almost never used in any official capacity, with "Temeswar" and "Temeser Banat" used instead. (The Hungarian Temesvár is seemingly more common than either form for the city in German of the period.)

I have no issue with the first part ("Voivodeship of Serbia"), which has already been discussed extensively in the past.

The current title is a result of a move in 2009 (this edit), which was supposedly supported by the sources listed at User:PANONIAN/Sources (see Archive 1 § Article title), although these only seem to cover the "Voivodeship of Serbia" part (and even then not in English but rather the Serbian and German equivalents). As far as I can tell the "Banat of Temeschwar" part has never been substantiated and does not appear to actually be used by English-speaking academics.

I have no definitive position on what is preferable, but I suggest:

• "Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temesvár" seems to be the most common name used in English language sources and "Temesvár" is the name used for the city in almost all official German-language documents of the era.
• "Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeswar" is reasonably common in English sources and "Temeswar" is substantially more common than "Temeschwar" as a German-language name for the city (both today and historically). In official German-language documents which do use an exonym "Temeswar" is the one used, including in the document which established it as a crown land. The official native German term for that part of the crown land uses "Temeser" not "Temescher". During the era in question it was about as common as "Banat of Temesvár" in English sources. This name also matches the article Banat of Temeswar about its pseudo-predecessor. (WP:TITLECON?) By every metric I can think of it is preferable to "...Banat of Temeschwar", if not to "...Banat of Temesvár".
• Possibly "Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temes", as it is much closer to the various native names for the entity, and is seen in English-language sources, although it probably fails WP:COMMONNAME too (although not nearly as badly as "...Banat of Temeschwar"). ("Voivodeship of Serbia and Temes Banat" currently redirects here having been moved in 2016 (supposedly an "uncontroversial technical move").)

Relevant evidence for and further elaboration on these points can be found in the discussion. (I have tried to be succinct but there's rather a lot to mention.) Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 02:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this subsection with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support move to Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temesvar - From what I've gathered, the ngrams supported "Banat of Temesvar" over "Banat of Temesvár" until relatively recently. Similarly, the Google Books results very weakly supported the version without the accent over the version with it. The same can be said for Google Scholar results (I didn't see "Banat of Temesvar" listed in the Google Scholar section provided by the nominator so I went ahead and found that myself [1]). Considering the relative weakness of the lead of the non-accent version over the accent version, I also would support Vovoideship of Serbia and Banat of Temesvár.--estar8806 (talk) ★ 17:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Searching for "Banat of Temesvar" or "Banat of Temesvár" matches against both; you need to use "Banat of Temesvar" -"Banat of Temesvár" (with quotes) to actually filter between them. I have a added a note regarding this (with links) to the discussion. I have also added a breakdown of the books using the same method. I am not sure whether Temesvár should be favoured anyway though. I think the general consensus is to use the native accented version for entities named for foreign cities unless the unaccented version is a genuine exonym (e.g. Zurich rather than Zürich, although that article is currently at Zürich). Historically there has been a tendency in English to simply omit accents (I'm not sure whether down to arrogance or technical limitations or both), but with the rise of computers and particularly Unicode, as well as foreign authors writing in English, this has somewhat declined. (See the post-2010 Google Scholar results for example.) If we simply went by the Ngrams I don't think any of the counties of the Kingdom of Hungary would use accents but all that have them do. However, I cannot find a definitive policy/guideline/etc for this. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 22:40, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I found the relevant guideline: WP:DIACRITICS. It says that "a Google book search of books published in the last quarter-century or thereabouts" should be considered a reliable basis (so the post-2009 results are relevant for another reason). It also mentions the potential problems of optical character recognition errors, which as I mentioned I had found some of myself. (For example, I did a quick check of the first page of results for "Banat of Temesvar" -"Banat of Temesvár" from 2010-today. Both The Habsburg Empire 1700-1918 and The Rise of the Great Powers 1648 - 1815 actually read "Banat of Temesvár" when the printed text is actually viewed. The latter also has the transcription "(Timisoara)" in its preview but the scanned printed text actually reads "(Timişoara)", itself a mistyping of "(Timișoara)". In other words, you cannot trust that results specifically for unaccented "Temesvar" are not actually "Temesvár" in the original.) WP:PLACE#Search engine issues also seems relevant. I tentatively favour "Temesvár" over "Temesvar" but remain unconvinced either way. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 00:39, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

English sources use other terms:

As far as I can tell "Banat of Temeschwar" is not the preferred term in English publications. In fact, it seems to be (almost?) non-existent before this article got its current name in 2009. I did a few Google Ngram searches for various forms of the name in English 1800-2019. The main one I did was (Banat of Temesvar + Banat of Temesvár),Banat of Temeswar,Banat of Temeschwar,Temeser Banat,Temes Banat,Banat of Temes. A case-insensitive search (which required Temesvar and Temesvár to be separate) showed the same patterns. With regard to dates bear in mind that the crown land in question existed 1849–60; anything before that is discussing the 18th century crown land (or possibly the Banat region).

• "Banat of Temesvár" (or Temesvar) has been consistently the most popular (usually by an order of magnitude at least) since the late 1860s, and was roughly equal first (with "Banat of Temeswar") from about 1840. When the two versions were separated:
  • "Banat of Temesvar" was consistently the most common from about 1870 until 2017, when "Banat of Temesvár" took over. (I would speculate that some combination of limitations of accents in English printing, lazy transcription of old printed documents and optical character recognition errors (I found at least a few instances of that in a brief search) may partially account for this use of unaccented a. See WP:DIACRITICS)
  • "Banat of Temesvár" seems to have been the second most common since around 1900, particularly since around 1990, except 2005–09, and had a huge peak between 1914 and 1930.
• "Banat of Temeswar" was the single most common until the 1840s, then it roughly tied with "Banat of Temesvár/Temesvar" until about 1870
• "Temeser Banat" was the second most common from about the mid-1860s until around 1900. This may be quoted German text in English publications (just speculation).
• "Banat of Temes" was a little less common than "Temeser Banat". There was a spike in 1860, but several of these seem to be a few pieces of text repeated across different publications: "The third (head-quarters at Temesvar) comprises the corps of the Banat of Temes ." and "AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, Eastern Sheet - Hungary, Galicia, Transylvania, the Servian Woiwodschafts, and the Banat of Temes, Slavonia, and the Military Frontier." (which refers to Keith Johnston's Royal Atlas of Modern Geography, so specifically to this map, as part of a list of Blackwood and Sons' publications).
• "Temes Banat" and "Banat of Timisoara" were uncommon
• "Temes Banate", "Temeschwar Banate", "Temescher Banat", "Temeschwarer Banat", "Temeschwar Banat", "Banate of Temeschwar", "Banatul Timișan", "Banat of Timiș/Timis", "Timiș Banat", all forms using "Temišvar" and most importantly "Banat of Temeschwar" were not found.

A Google books search returned the following number of results:

• "Banat of Temesvár/Temesvar": both "About 6,470 results", 53 pages of works (although the last page for "Temesvar" has four more works on it than "Temesvár".)
  • "About 2,000 results", 22 pages when restricted to the 19th century.
  • When specific filtering is used (added 22:40, 16 July 2023 (UTC) by Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk)):
    • "Banat of Temesvar" -"Banat of Temesvár" "About 4,460 results", 52 pages of works. Note however that at least some of these actually read "Banat of Temesvár" in their original printed form, with the accent having been lost in digital transcription (presumably by automatic optical character recognition).
      • "About 1,280 results", 22 pages when restricted to the 19th century.
      • "About 3,310 results", 30 pages when restricted to the 20th century.
      • "About 1,220 results", 25 pages when restricted to the 21st century.
        • "About 1,010 results", 19 pages since 2010.
    • "Banat of Temesvár" -"Banat of Temesvar" "About 2,030 results", 46 pages of works
      • "About 574 results", 8 pages when restricted to the 19th century.
      • "About 1,390 results", 19 pages when restricted to the 20th century.
      • "About 792 results", 28 pages when restricted to the 21st century.
        • "About 657 results", 14 pages since 2010.
• "Banat of Temeswar": "About 982 results", 47 pages of works. Also asks Did you mean: "Banat of Temesvar"
  • "About 829 results", 18 pages when restricted to the 19th century.
• "Temeser Banat": "About 775 results", 23 pages
  • "About 370 results", 13 pages when restricted to the 19th century.
• "Banat of Temes": "About 678 results", 31 pages.
  • "About 450 results", 12 pages when restricted to the 19th century, although at least a few of these are "The American Cyclopaedia".
• "Temes Banat": "About 228 results", 19 pages (181 actual works listed).
  • When restricted to the 19th century there are "About 152 results" across 3 pages
  • When restricted to the 20th century there are "About 192 results" across 5 pages
• "Banat of Temeschwar": "About 378 results".
  • When restricted to the 19th century there are no results
  • When restricted to the 20th century there are "About 365 results" and 11 actual works listed, three of which are book catalogues (ends on page 2). None had previews so the inclusion of the phrase "Banat of Temeschwar" cannot be verified online.
  • When restricted to the 21st century there are "About 378 results" and 43 actual works listed (ends on page 5), three of which "primarily [consist] of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online" and a few more seem to be duplicates. Of those which remain, most do not have previews available (so I can't easily check them). Two are repeats of "The Sarmatians 600 BC–AD 450", so probably irrelevant. One is "On the House", a book about "the brutal 1933 killing of Michael Malloy, a New York City drunk". Another is "Interview with History: The JFK Assassination". Of those which do have verifiable inclusions of the phrase "Banat of Temeschwar", none were published before this article got its current name in 2009, so it may be a case of Wikipedia driving usage.

A Google scholar search (restricted to English) turned up:

• "Banat of Temesvár": "About 355 results" ("About 215 results" before 2009)
  • A note regarding the lack of the unaccented "Banat of Temesvar" (@Estar8806:): "Banat of Temesvar" and "Banat of Temesvár" both match against each other as well, so a search for "Banat of Temesvar" -"Banat of Temesvár" or vice versa is required. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 22:40, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
    • "Banat of Temesvar" -"Banat of Temesvár" (i.e. unaccented only) returns "About 251 results" ("About 184 results" before 2009). Of these 13 are before 1900, 144 are 1900–99, 27 are 2000–09, 61 are 2010 or later
    • "Banat of Temesvár" -"Banat of Temesvar" (so only accented) returns "About 97 results" ("About 27 results" before 2009). Of these 1 (a citation) is before 1900, 17 are 1900–99, 9 are 2000–09, 68 are 2010 or later
• "Banat of Temeswar": "About 71 results" ("About 16 results" before 2009)
• "Banat of Temeschwar": "About 35 results", although as with the books there are no mentions before 2009 (and at least one of those also showed up in the book search). The only inclusion in 2009 was a thesis for a masters degree in architecture, which cites several Wikipedia articles among its sources.
• "Banat of Temes": "About 56 results" ("About 18 results" before 2009)
• "Temeser Banat": "About 46 results" ("About 19 results" before 2009), (at least) two of which are German text
• "Temescher Banat": "About 40 results" (11 results before 2009), (at least) two of which are German text
• "Temes Banat": "About 17 results" (4 results before 2009)

("Before 2009" results are included to compare with "Banat of Temeschwar", in order to account for this article's name impacting usage.)

Official German usage prefers Temeser over Temescher for the crown land:

In German the official form of the name seems to use Temeser Banat (i.e. not Temescher Banat). Here are a few relevent pieces official of legislation from the time (in German) and the form they use.

• Patent 25, 1849, which formally established the crown land: Kaiserliches Patent vom 18. November 1849, womit das, die Bacska und das Banat, den Rumáer und Illokér Bezirk umfassende Territorium vorläufig zu einem eigenen Verwaltungsgebiete unter der Benennung: „Woiwodschaft von Serbien und Temeser Banat“ gebildet...
  • Within the body of the patent the formal name is defined without the "von": "Dieses Gebiet hat die Benennung „Woiwodschaft Serbien und Temeser Banat“ zu führen.". It also defines the capital as "Temeswar" (i.e. not Temeschwar"; see below)
• Gesetz 192, 1851, which divided the crown land into Districte and (politische) Bezirke: Verordnung des Ministeriums des Innern vom 17. August 1851, womit die durch Allerhöchste Entschließung sanctionirte Organisation der politischen Verwaltung der Woiwodschaft Serbien und des Temeser Banates kundgemacht wird
  • This also established the Temesvárer District (this was before the German spelling reforms which replaced Cs with Ks) with the (politische) Bezirke of Temesvár (Hungarian name), Lippa (Hungarian and German name), Neu-Arad (German name), Csakova (archaic Serbian name?) and Werschetz (German name). I suspect at least some of these name differences reflect the populations of the settlements
• Gesetz 10, 1853, which laid out Bach's reforms: Verordnung der Minister des Inneren, der Justiz und der Finanzen vom 19. Jänner 1853, womit die Allerhöchsten Entschließungen über die Einrichtung und Amtswirksamkeit der Bezirksämter, Kreisbehörden und Statthaltereien, über die Einrichtung der Gerichtsstellen und das Schema der systemisirten Gehalte und Diätenclassen, sowie über die Ausführung der Organisirung für die Kronländer ..., die serbische Wojwodschaft mit dem Banate, kundgemacht werden
  • When it appears in a list of crown lands to which a law applies such as this it usually seems to take the form die serbische Wojwodschaft mit dem Temeser Banate – 'the Serbian Voivodeship with the Temes Banat'; here though the Temeser has been omitted. (I could not find any other occurrences of the form die serbische Wojwodschaft mit dem Banate between 1848 and 1860.)
  • Also specifies the capital with ...für die serbische Wojwodschaft und das Banat zu Temesvar,...
• Gesetz 28, 1854, which instituted Bach's reforms in the crown land: Verordnung der Minister des Inneren, der Justiz und der Finanzen vom 1. Februar 1854, betreffend die politische und gerichtliche Organisirung der serbischen Wojwodschaft und des Temeser Banates
  • The phrase Die serbische Wojwodschaft mit dem Temeser Banate ... also appears in the body.
  • This also established the Kreis Temesvár/Temesvárer Kreis with Bezirke corresponding to 1851 (and using the same names) + Buziasch (German name)

(For those unfamiliar with German, the endings on "serbisch" and "Banat" – e.g. "Banate", "Banates" – are grammatical inflections, not part of the name. The same applies to the various forms of the definite article (die, dem, der, des); the nominative forms with articles should I think be die Wojwodschaft Serbien und das Temeser Banat or die serbische Wojwodschaft und das Temeser Banat.)

A quick search on the website of the Austrian National Library of (the titles of) entries in the Reichsgesetzblatt (the official publication of laws in the Empire) 1848–60 for "Banat" turns up 220 results; almost all refer to Temeser Banat, none to Temescher Banat and a few to just "the Banat" (and a few refer to the Banat Military Frontier). Another search shows that there are 0 occurrences of "Temesch" in any title from 1848 until 1918 in the Reichsgesetzblatt. (The search on that site matches parts of words, so "Temesch" would match against "Temescher", "Temeschwar" etc.) It does however show up (as Temescher Banat) six times in five different Landesgesetzblätter (the equivalent publications for the individual crown lands: two for Salzburg, one each for Tyrol, Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, and Lombardy). A search for "Temes", in addition to all the instances of "Temeser", brings up three instances of "Temeswar" (all in 1856) and 7 instances of "Temesvár" (1858, 1860, 1861, 1878, 1895×2, and 1909; the two in 1895 are the same document); the few "Temeser"s after 1860 refer to Temes County (Temeser Comitat).

Official German usage of the time prefers Temevár over Temeswar and both over Temeschwar for the city:

The official (German) sources mentioned above (as well as maps etc from the era that I've seen) almost invariably seem to use the Hungarian form for the city, i.e. Temesvár rather than Temes(ch)war, although the 1849 patent says ...mit dem Sitze im Temeswar... when defining the crown land's seat/capital. This does not apply to all settlements though – for example Novi Sad is always referred to as Neusatz. On the Second (mid-19c) and Third (late 19c) Habsburg survey maps, the Generalkarte der Vojvodschaft Serbien und des Temescher Banates (1853), von Czoernig's Ethnographische Karte der Oesterreichischen Monarchie (1855), von Scheda's Karte Des Oesterreichischen Kaiserstaates (1856) etc the city is called Temesvár, although it is worth noting that the Generalkarte... calls it Temescher Banat; von Czoernig uses Temeser Banat; von Scheda does not label the crown land (and in fact still shows eastern Syrmia as part of Slavonia and does not show the other changes to Croatia and Slavonia in this period). (This is obviously not an exhaustive list of maps.)

I did an Ngram search in the German corpus for "Temeschwar", "Temeswar", "Temesvár" and "Temesvar". "Temeschwar" was by far the least common until around the 1940s, when it overtook "Temesvár", although it was still less common than either "Temesvar" or "Temeswar". "Temesvar" was consistently high from at least the late 1840s; "Temeswar" the most common until then. From around 1848 until the 1860s (when the crown land existed) "Temeswar", "Temesvar" and "Temesvár" are about equal; all are an order of magnitude higher than "Temeschwar". "Temeswar" became the most popular again around the 1970s. When "Temesvar + Temesvár" was used instead of the individual queries, it was the most common from c.1848 until 1972, clearly so after about 1860, and was only really overtaken by "Temeswar" in the 1990s; "Temeschwar" was the rarest almost throughout.

From 1845 to the 1950s "Temeser Banat" was also by far more common than "Temescher Banat", although there is a spike for "Temescher Banat" 1804–15 (which seems to be down to various editions of the Annalen der Literatur und Kunst des In- und Auslandes/Annalen der österreichischen Literatur and Statistik der Königreichs Ungern and given the time period was certainly referring to the predecessor entity).

In modern German Temeschwar (and Temeschburg) are considered outdated (see Timișoara). The section Timișoara § Deutsche Namensvarianten der Stadt notes that in the 18th and 19th centuries it was spelled "Temeswar" in German-language texts but that after 1898 "Temesvár" was mandated. The German-language newspaper Die Temesvarer Zeitung (≈'The Temesvar Times'), founded in 1852, used "Temesvar(er)".

All the native names actually seem to refer to the river:

Analysing the term Temeser Banat we get Temes+er Banat, meaning something like "*Temesian Banate" or "Banat of Temes". (The same would apply to Temescher Banat, but with "Temesch" rather than "Temes".) As far as I can tell the other native names use similar forms, i.e. whatever their equivalent of "Temes" with a genitive adjectival suffix is – Tamiški Banat (Tamiš+ski), Temesi Bánság (Temes+i), Banatul Timișan (Timiș+an). None of these mention Timișoara/Temes(ch)war/Temesvár/Temišvar, but rather seem to be referring to the Timiș river (the city is named after the river and basically means ≈"Temes fortress", with the Hungarian -vár suffix being similar to -burg, -grad, -caster etc in other languages). I do not believe this alone is sufficient justification for the name choice in English, but it is worth considering.

Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 02:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)