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Talk:Décapole

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German or French names

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For the cities that have differing names in German and French, which is appropriate for us to use in English? Most of these cities are now in France and thus officially use the French spelling, but at the time of the Décapole's existence they were not French. I'm not sure which is the course for us to take. 108.254.160.23 (talk) 03:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Coming late (!!) to this, but in general you use the WP:COMMONNAME, whatever is most commonly used by the references when discussing the subject and/or what is most familiar to "casual" readers. So for instance we talk about the Battle of Stalingrad rather than the Battle of Volgograd, whereas eg Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is essentially a modern name. If there's no consistent usage in the sources, then using the modern names in English (which may not be the "official" native spelling eg Rome, Moscow and Munich) is a fairly safe bet.