Talk:Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar

Requested move 16 July 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. However, I would encourage a new move request that is concise and includes one main proposal. After seven days, no consensus has emerged, and there has been limited discussion. I decline to relist the request in light of the issues raised about readability (WP:WALLOFTEXT WP:TLDR), which may have inadvertantly caused inconvenience or discouraged discussion. For illustration, this request appears to have significantly more words than the actual article. Of course, the in-depth analysis contained here will still be available for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of each possible option. (non-admin closure) {{replyto|SilverLocust}} (talk) 09:13, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

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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" 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. "Banat of Temesvár/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. "Banat of Temes" and "Temeser Banat" were also present but less common. "Temes Banat" and "Banat of Timisoara" were uncommon; other forms, including "Banat of Temeschwar" did not return an Ngram at all. 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).

Google Books searches seem to heavily favour "Banat of Temesvár/Temesvar", followed by "Banat of Temeswar", then "Banat of Temes" and the untranslated "Temeser Banat", then "Temes Banat". "Banat of Temeschwar" is a little more common than "Temes Banat" but does not really appear until 2009. Many of these results may be discussing the 18th century crown land (see below).

Google Scholar likewise seems to favour "Banat of Temesvár/Temesvar", followed by "Banat of Temeswar", then "Banat of Temes" and the untranslated "Temeser Banat" and "Temescher Banat", then "Temes Banat". Again "Banat of Temeschwar" is a little more common than "Temes Banat" but does not appear at all until 2009.

NOTE: Occurrences of "Temesvar" cannot be assumed to not actually be instances of "Temesvár" – I found at least a few instances of that in a brief search where Google has it transcribed as "Temesvar" but the original printed text reads "Temesvár", either due to lazy transcription of old printed documents or optical character recognition errors. I would also speculate that limitations of accents in English printing may also have an impact. (See WP:DIACRITICS.)

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).

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).

There are 0 also 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.)

"Temesch" 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).

In an Ngram search "Temeser Banat" was also by far more common from 1845 to the 1950s 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).

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

The official (German) sources mentioned above 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. German maps from the era also favour Temesvár.

I did an Ngram search in the German corpus for "Temeschwar", "Temeswar", "Temesvár" and "Temesvar". During the period in question "Temeswar", "Temesvár" and "Temesvar" were about equal, with "Temesvár" and "Temesvar" combined ("Temesvar" cannot be trusted to not be a transcription error) being clearly the most common from c.1848 until 1972; "Temeschwar" was rare.

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)

A further complication: the 18th century Banat of Temeswar:

There is a further wrinkle to all this data: many of the results are talking about the region or specifically the Banat of Temeswar, a pseudo-predecessor entity which existed in the region 1718–78. Unlike this crown land, the 18th century entity appears to have had various German names, including Temescher Banat and Temeschwarer Banat. For example, it is labelled Temeschwarer Banath on this map (from the Josephinian Land Survey), as Banat Temeswar on this map, as Temeschvarer Banat on this map, Temesvarer Banat on this map etc. Note that these all use the name of the city rather than the river.

When "Serbia/Voivodeship/Vojvodina and (the)" is added to Google Books searches, so as to specifically target the 1850s crown land, the number of results plummets, except for "(Voivodeship of) Serbia and Temes Banat", and "Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar". "Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar" has the same problems as before (i.e. few results before 2009, more evidence of this article driving usage I suspect). "Serbia and Temes Banat" mainly appears in 21st century publications, but is not restricted to post-2009. Other than these there are few which have any significant number of results (all < 20).

I haven't found a reasonable way to search for Ngrams which control for it properly (it only allows up to 5 word strings). The best I could come up with was to add "and"/"and the"/"with"/"with the" to the beginning. There were no Ngrams for any with just "and", "with" or "with the"; there were no Ngrams for and the Banat of Temeswar, and the Banat of Temeschwar, and the Temes Banat; only and the Banat of Temesvár, and the Banat of Temesvar and and the Banat of Temes returned Ngrams, which showed similar patterns to the search without the "and the".

Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 03:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

• This RM is ridiculous. I'd like to participate but I would have to read dozens of paragraphs before. I've done quite long RMs myself in the past but not something like this. Super Dromaeosaurus (talk) 17:33, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh I am aware. To be fair though most of it is lists of data laying out the details of the various Google Ngram/Book/Scholar searches and relevant official documents rather than actual discussion. It wouldn't be nearly as bad if there weren't so many potential names involved (and it the 18c crown land didn't exist and have slightly different native names). If all you want is the conclusions the accompanying paragraphs and the actual nomination contain those. I might try to separate out the lists of data as sort-of appendices to make it more concise. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 03:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Super Dromaeosaurus: I have converted the long lists of data into refs which should make things a lot easier to read without sacrificing rigour. It's still a fair amount of text but should at least be more manageable. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 05:13, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Lists of (mostly raw) data

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.