Talk:Mykolaiv

Some corrections

Corrected economics, removing obsolete specializations. All those clothing, knitting and foot-wear are now made in China :((. Also deleted the following:

The city is surrounded by extremely fertile chernozem fields that facilitate good agriculture.

It definitely belongs to Mykolayivs'ka oblast', not here. Also, Novorossiya is an important concept of the Imperial Russian (and Ukrainian) history. Somebody please develop it.

Pryvit, AlexPU

City birthday

The article says that April 27, 1789 is considered the city birth day, yet the celebrations are held in September. Which date is correct? Or, is there a reason for this discrepancy?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

It was a mistake. Birthday of City - 21 August... --Aleksandrit 19:22, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Would you by any chance have a reference to that? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I see that you know Russian. So watch result of google --Aleksandrit 15:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I could google it up alright. What I wanted to see, however, was something that could be used as a reference to the statement that Mykolaiv's city day is August 21. You and me both know it is, but WP:V requires this fact to be verifiable (i.e., sourced). If this date is mentioned in the City Charter or some other official document, that'd make an ideal reference. Would you have anything like that? Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:40, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I apologize to all for Russian, but it will be more comfortable me now to write on it. So… Ezhiki, нашел я неплохой источник Юрия Крючкова, это известный на местном уровне краевед. Здесь ссылка на книгу в формате rar. Так что я думаю нужно подправить статью согласно этому источнику. ~ Aleksandrit 19:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone reading this live in Mykolaiv?

I am trying to figure out some confusing information I have read in other places. According to several articles a large radar site was built about 20 km NE of Mykolaiv in the early 1970s. Does anyone reading this live in the area and can confirm or deny this? The system may have been torn down since it was constructed, but if I am reading the history correctly it likely operated into the 1980s, at a minimum.

Maury 19:59, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Give, please, links to information which you saw ~ Aleksandrit 19:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I have found a link to the coordinates outside Mykolaiv that they say is the radar site. However the Google Maps photography of this area is low quality. Can someone who lives nearby tell me if this is the right place? 47°02′28.33″N 32°11′57.29″E

Maury 12:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this is right place ~ Aleksandrit 19:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Translation? pronounciation?

I see that translations (the meaning of the city's name) are listed for the Russian and Ulranian names of the city. Might these by pronunciations - the way the city's names would be sound in English? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Badger151 (talk • contribs) 16:47, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Regional Shipyards

I've been "slowly" working on expanding (and creating) articles related to shipbuilding in the area. I added links to the three major shipyards to this document. I simply put them in a see also section. I am always open to suggestions and recommendations... thanks chiefhuggybear (talk) 21:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

City’s name

I think, yi in Mykolayiv more accurately reproduces sound /ji/, than i in Mykolaiv. So I suggest to change article’s name to Mykolayiv. Any objections? ~ aleksandrit (talk) 14:24, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Search on Google - pages from UK only:

• Mikolaev = 75
• Mykolaev = 120
• Nikolayev = 4,330
• Mykolayiv = 4,740
• Mykolaiv = 4,940
• Nikolaev = 44,800

Of course there are false positives on all of these, for example people called 'Mykolaiv' or 'Nikolayev'. Why don't you change it to Nikolaev? That is after all the normal English spelling.--Toddy1 (talk) 18:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Romanization of Ukrainian in Wikipedia is subject to the WP:UKR guideline. The "Mykolaiv" spelling is in compliance with that guideline.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:17, July 14, 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian says When possible, use a conventional English name instead of romanization. So why is it not possible to use 'Nikolaev' instead of 'Nikolayev'? And for that matter, why is a romanisation of the Ukrainian language name take preference over the most common English language name?--Toddy1 (talk) 20:17, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a Ukrainian city, and the titles of articles about the Ukrainian cities are romanized using WP:UKR, not WP:RUS. WP:UKR explicitly states that [t]he Ukrainian National system of 1996 defines official place names in Ukraine, and is used by the United Nations. The name of the city in Ukrainian is "Миколаїв", hence the romanization produced by the Ukrainian National System of 1996 is "Mykolaiv".

WP:UKR does go further and says that [s]ome places are also known by familiar or traditional English forms, or names derived from other languages, but, unlike WP:RUS, it unfortunately does not provide any criteria as to what constitutes a "familiar" or "traditional" English form. Since WP:UKR fails us here, we need to consult the guideline that supercedes it in such matters, and in this case it would be WP:UE. WP:UE, in turn, explicitly states that Google hits are an unreliable test. In your case (based on the results you posted above), it exactly suggests that of all available variants no single term is predominant in English. I am discarding "Nikola(y)ev" spike as a fluke, by the way, because it is a fairly common Russian last name (and also a possible genitive form of an even more common first name Nikolay), which skews the results quite a bit. I would imagine that presently "Nikola(y)ev", when referred to the city proper, is about as common as all other variants you listed.

WK:UE further advises to give more weight to the variants used by verifiable reliable sources. This is not something that's easy to do unless one knows the topic fairly well, but the easiest way to approximate the results that would have been achieved by applying this recommendation in practice is to do a Google Books search. Here's what I got: mykolaiv|mykolayiv ukraine=666 hits; nikolaev|nikolayev ukraine=947 hits. As we can see, using this approach "Nikola(y)ev" is a bit more common (I would imagine because of the wealth of historical literature, which, of course, would use the Russified name), but it is hardly a 10:1 case any more.

When WP:UE cannot recommend a definite solution, the best course of action is to go with the default provisions of the most applicable guideline—in this case WP:UKR and its Ukrainian National System recommendation. Which brings us back to "Mykolaiv", of course.

All this, of course, is my interpretation of the guidelines, although thoroughly rooted in experience of dealing with similar matters in the past. In any case, you are very welcome to list this page on WP:RM or perhaps first drop a note at WT:UKRAINE, and see how it goes from there. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 20:52, July 14, 2009 (UTC)

Seems like russification of Ukraine is still continuing. Mykolaiv from Ukrainian Миколаїв is the best translating could be. PERIOD!!!--68.36.49.223 (talk) 03:46, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

According to Ukrainian translation from Ukraine to Latin, the proper way should be Mykolaiv http://life.pravda.com.ua/surprising/4b66e4e1d5c14/ And why make the name more complicated? Mykolaiv is just fine. The best spelling of all the spellings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.52.131 (talk) 15:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Russian variants do no require citation

Standard Wikipedia practice in eastern Ukrainian, where as many as half of the population speaks Russian natively, is to include the Russian variants on placenames. No citation is necessary any more than a citation is necessary for placing the Ukrainian variant in placenames where the majority of the community speaks Russian as their first language (as in the Crimea). The citation tags were nothing more than WP:POINTy editing by an anonymous editor who is pushing an anti-Russian Ukrainian POV. Citations are not necessary for these things. --Taivo (talk) 02:15, 24 October 2011 (UTC)