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Article name

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Shouldn't this be at Merano instead of Meran-Merano? Wiki naming policy is to have the official name listed- as the city is in Italy, this would therefore be the Italian name. The intro would therefore read "Merano (German: Meran) is a city..." Of course, the German-population majority would also be listed. Olessi 15:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That move would also affect the other Category:Towns in South Tyrol. Both German and Italian are official languages in South Tyrol. This bilingual naming system looks like it has been the result of an edit war, I don't know. It would be a lot easier if there would be common English names for these towns, like Brussels. For a similar situation see the municipalities in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium, they're officially bilingual French/Dutch, but apparently all the articles are at the French names. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I guess it looks more professional than Meran-Merano etc. Markussep 16:08, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I was not aware that the other South Tyrolian localities had the same naming style. IMO, simply Merano is best for the article name, but I don't want to cause an edit war. The current system has led to some interesting names, like Lana-Lana. Olessi 17:35, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would also say keep the current double-name format, we do not want to start an editing war over language, Wikipedia is not the place for such things. Gryffindor 09:06, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Just call it Meran, most South Tirolers would call it that. Plus German is an official language of South Tyrol.

The statements found in this article regarding language use in that part of Tyrol formerly belonging to Austria are not correct.

Check the 'History' chapter:

'Nevertheless, all originally tyrolean geographic names were prohibited and exchanged through Italianised names (even surnames lost their validity until World War II). After 1945, it became one of the most important sites of tourism in the region.'

Now go to

[1],

chapter 'Today' and compare. According to my knowledge, what the author says there about the status of the respective languages reflects the situation.

In other words: The dominating language is german, and so the german names have survived - also officially. There is an italian minority, and they use their italian names for the places.

What about correcting the language statements in the Meran article?

Michael Laudahn 17:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The name is Merano, please don't erase.Keep the righ name —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.15.223.124 (talk) 15:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep the right name, don't change the right name MERANO to the wrong name Meran. Please no more vandalism. Stop to the racism and austrian nationalism! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.54.115.232 (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

July 2010

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Südtirol is not Italy! Even though it belongs (currently) to Italy the language is predominantly German and not Italian. Hence, I don't think the Italian name should be used in the English wikipedia. Btw. The name Merano was invented by the Italian fascists in the 1920s. --91.63.167.111 (talk) 13:50, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

1) Many names were invented by Ettore Tolomei form 1906 onwards and in 1927 then taken over by the fascist authorities, HOWEVER Merano was not - it is along with other names of the major cities a historic name and was in use at a far earlier time, then even Tolomeis birth. 2) Wikipedia naming convention states to use the most common name in English which is in fact Merano 3) therefore no change is required and no change will be done. noclador (talk) 14:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Solution for naming problem

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1. an article about a south tyrolian village should be named like the majority of its population calls it, and the other language just in italics.. what would lead to for example: Bolzano, Salorno, Bruneck, Brixen, Meran this would be the most evident solution or 2. the article should be named with both the german and italian names, and which one first, depending on how its called by the majority of its inhabitants but not with hyphen in between but with slash.. what would lead to Meran / Merano, Bruneck / Brunico Bolzano / Bozen

i dont understand why not everyone comes to this solution when thinking about it of course it should be named either how its called by the majority of its inhabitants, or by both names, with the more used first... so why Merano? Jadran91 (talk) 03:30, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Because this is the version of the Wikipdia in the English language and the first rule we follow is to give a place the name most commonly used in contemporary English writing, where that exists. (See WP:UE). So Florence, rather than Firenze, and Vienna rather than Wien. I say contemporary English because we don’t call Trento Trent (despite the famous congress) or Livorno Leghorn. (Obviously this leaves scope for disagreement: should Apulia be moved to Puglia, or Lazio moved to Latium? That can be argued, and there will never be 100% agreement: personally I would choose Puglia, Lazio, Leghorn and Trent.) In the case of South Tyrol/Alto Adige/Südtirol/[whatever it is called in Ladin], previous (and horrifically protracted) discussions have determined that Bozen and Meran are most commonly called Bolzano and Merano in modern English, so we use those. Most (perhaps all) of the other places in South Tyrol don’t have any particularly strong bias when writing in English, and we have decided to use the name used by the majority of the inhabitants. (German, or occasionally Ladin. (Yes I know Bolzano is mostly Italophone, but we have already named that on the basis of English usage!)) We could have decided to use slashed names, or to have used the Italian names because they are all in Italy, but local majority language seemed to be the best. Naming disputes get absurdly heated, I am afraid, but I hope that this explanation of the current convention helps!Ian Spackman (talk) 13:42, 23 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Name - the official position

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I took the initiative to contact the city, and their reply is availible at User talk:ChrisDHDR/e-mail#Official position on the name of Meran.2FMerano. Obviously the official name in english is Merano-Meran, and I think we can safely move it there without any opposition. ChrisDHDR 15:45, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, sorry, I don't think it works that way. That would be very eccentric, so don't move it to this name as it would obviously be reverted and move wars are heavily frowned upon.
If we asked cities how they want to be called in English we would get all sorts of reasonable answers that would be inconsistent with each other (i.e. article titles would look as if there was no clear underlying principle, i.e. no naming convention), and in some cases also unreasonable answers. Wittenberg might insist on being called "Lutherstadt Wittenberg" or "Luther Town Wittenberg". "Moscow" might insist on being called "Moskva" or even "Москва". It just doesn't work that way. Note also that Rome is under Rome not Roma, Vienna is under Vienna not Wien, Venice under Venice not Venezia. (It's the little villages that we have to put under their local names because there is no English name. Merano, while rather small, does have an English name due to its location. Generations of English travellers have passed through it on their way to Italy.)
Both "Merano" and "Meran" are acceptable names as far as I am concerned. But more English speakers call it "Merano" than "Meran", and more local people call it "Meran" than "Merano". What the English speakers do is of course more relevant for the English language Wikipedia, so Merano is the correct solution. The compound name is silly, eccentric and not even acceptable. I guess it's what the city does in leaflets for tourists, but it's not the kind of thing that we do here. Hans Adler 16:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of people have claimed that Merano is the more used name in English, but I've never seen a word of proof... ChrisDHDR 19:03, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
E.g. if I search in the archive of Google News for "Meran" Italy I get 0 hits. If I change it to "Merano" Italy I get 14. (I am using Italy to get only English results. You might want to try other words instead. Meran or Merano must be in quotes; otherwise we get 14 hits in both cases because Google "knows" it's the same city. Hans Adler 20:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really convinced: Google searches aren't really a fiable source. However the city does use the German version as the default in its website: I think that shows a clear preference for the international community. ChrisDHDR 19:43, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We've tried using double names; the result has always been a spate of move requests to change the order of the names. There's an entry in WP:LAME about Bolzano-Bozen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
to sum up 5-6 years of debate: it's Merano in English. EOD! noclador (talk) 04:02, 11 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the name of this article should be Meran, not Merano. The majority of the population speaks German and we have established the rule to name the cities after the language spoken by the majority. Gryffindor (talk) 20:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gryffindor, that rule applies to places with no common name in English. The majority in Rome call it "Roma", the majority in Munich call it "München", the majority in Florence call it "Firenze" and so on. As is clear from the discussions in the archives, Merano has been established English usage for a very long time.Jeppiz (talk) 14:23, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For how long a time? I. e., was it due to the political changes following to the Second World War (which language-wise should be considered reversed by the creation of an autonomous province with the primary langague German)? Or wasn't it?
If, of course, an Englishman would speak of Merano in the year 1913, then of course the article should remain at Merano.--131.159.0.47 (talk) 16:01, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Move request

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I know there has been a section on that, but let's request a move to Meran again. The city belongs to South Tyrol, and the language of the autonomous province of South Tyrol is German (despite its belonging to the state of Italy - just as Québec's language is French, despite its belonging to the state of Canada). This one here even happens to have a German-speaking majority. If I'm rightly informed the Ladin name is Meran too. I don't even see where there could be a possible discussion. - That is, unless "Merano" would be the established English name, as Cologne is for Köln. In that case: it's the English wikipedia. But while I don't really know, I don't think this is the case. And in that case: it's not the Italian wikipedia.--131.159.0.47 (talk) 15:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is mounting evidence that the name is "Meran", see English language usage from 1800 to 2000: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Meran%2CMerano&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CMeran%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CMerano%3B%2Cc0 , and from 1950 to 2000: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Meran%2CMerano&year_start=1950&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CMeran%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CMerano%3B%2Cc0 . The article also has to be in line with the naming policy of majority-language. Unless someone can refute this evidence, this article will be moved shortly. Gryffindor (talk) 08:51, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It seems quite obvious to me as well, that the current page name is not in line with our policies. There is no evidence that the city has an English name as such (if anything, Meran seems to be more rooted). In that case, WP:NBZ suggests to go with the local linguistic majority. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 13:55, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not particularly against this move, especially if "Meran" is the most common name in English. Anyway, Meran/Merano is basically 50% Italian-speaking and 50% German-speaking, thus there is not a such strong German majority. --Checco (talk) 10:21, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a good idea to reopen difficult issues without first reading the previous discussions. Talk:Merano/Archive 1 has a colossal amount of argument on this very topic. The overriding policy for determining the name of this article is WP:UE, i.e. what is the town most commonly called in modern English. As the region moved from Austrian to Italian control after WWI, we can expect English usage before 1919 to differ considerably from usage after that date. It is therefore no value whatsoever to quote sources dating to the 1800s as a guide to current English usage. I suggest you re-read the debate at Talk:Merano/Archive 1 #Requested move to Merano (5 July 2009), in particular the arguments put forward by Ian Spackman and Pmanderson - not least the usage of Merano in contemporary English encyclopedias like Britannica and Encarta - and the refutation of the list of 19th century books produced in that section as evidence. It is clear from the previous debates that the majority usage in current English is 'Merano'. --RexxS (talk) 15:38, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, I think we shouldn't look back to arguments and dogged discussions from 5-10 years ago, but pause for a moment and have a fresh look at our naming policies and the data. Our most basic naming policy is WP:COMMONNAME. Rexxs, you are right that it would be inappropriate to take a decision based on pre-World War I data. But I guess, you've got to admit, that it's also quite difficult to identify the town's most common English name by looking just at the ngram graphs for Meran and Merano between 1950 and 2000. And please note, that the Google Ngram Viewer was only released after the last extensive naming discussion in the archive and wasn't available to Ian Spackman or Pmanderson. I'd say that it's against all evidence, that either Meran or Merano can be deemed to be a preferred version. Having established that there is no clear evidence for a predominantly used common English name, there is another guideline, which has the precise goal to settle such cases of doubt: WP:NBZ. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 18:42, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have no strong feelings either way, but must point out that WP:NBZ, while normally very useful, is of limited use here. It says that Most municipalities have a large majority, often a 90% majority, of one language group and that is true, but Meran(o) is the complete opposite with 50%-49%, so basically an even split. As for English usage, Merano seems to be (by far) the more common forms in main English newspapers [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. So with an even linguistic split and a clear preference for Merano in English-speaking media, I'd suggest sticking to Merano. Jeppiz (talk) 19:08, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Mai-Sachme: I disagree. It is common courtesy to check the archives for previous debates before re-hashing old chestnuts that have been argued over many times before. There is little doubt that the primary principle that we need to adhere to is that of using the title that is most commonly found in modern English sources. You will note that WP:COMMONNAME has a section dealing with subjects that have undergone a change of name, which guides us to "give extra weight to sources written after the name change" (emphasis as in the policy). The problem with your ngram is that includes all of the editions of books published prior to 1919 that have been re-published since 1950. The list at Talk:Merano/Archive 1 #Requested move to Merano (5 July 2009) shows emphatically how common that is. Without the ability to filter out such spurious results, the ngram is worthless. On the other hand, the archives contain multiple demonstrations that Merano is more commonly used in recent English sources. Here's one reproduced from Talk:Merano/Archive 1 #Straw Poll:

Encyclopedias:

Google scholar (articles from the period 1957-2007, including "italy" to exclude authors with surnames Meran and Merano):

Google news archive (articles from the period 1957-2007, including "italy" to exclude people with surnames Meran and Merano):

Google books (from the period 1957-2007, including "italy" to exclude people with surnames Meran and Merano):

Google English language, only .org, -wiki:

I'm sure several "false hits" slipped through, but the overall picture is clear IMO: both names are used in English, "Merano" more frequently than "Meran". For the statistics enthousiasts: I used a more robust, but very time consuming method in this discussion about Belgian municipalities. - Markussep

See also Ian Spackman's list of 10 modern sources at Talk:Merano/Archive 1 #Requested move to Merano (5 July 2009). Unless you can show that usage has changed dramatically since 2007/9, I think those results are pretty conclusive. --RexxS (talk) 21:21, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, well, I see. The ngram graphs are a result of myriads of reprinted books from imperial times, additionally, those graphs are proved wrong by ten years old raw Google searches, and the ultimate evidence is a list of 10 (!) modern sources. Case closed. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 22:11, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Very clever, sarcasm is so convincing. Do you actually bother to read anything that others have posted? You actually think that the ngrams magically filter out reprinted books? Of the list of 34 quoted in the archive more than half were reprints of works dating back to Edwardian times and earlier. Just how do you adjust for that in your ngrams? And how do you have the nerve to criticise a set of Google searches that's 10 years old, when your ngrams start 65 years ago? If you want more recent searches have a look at these:
In determining which of several alternative names is most frequently used, it is useful to observe the usage of major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals. A search engine may help to collect this data; when using a search engine, restrict the results to pages written in English, and exclude the word "Wikipedia". When using Google, generally a search of Google Books and News Archive should be defaulted to before a web search, as they concentrate reliable sources - Wikipedia:Article titles #Use commonly recognizable names
I've pointed you to the evidence that Merano is used more commonly in quality encyclopedias, in scholarly works and in news outlets of the 21st century, by a factor of about 4 to 1. So what's your evidence showing the opposing view? --RexxS (talk) 00:21, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy to see that you finally bothered to do some research. Your previous posts didn't exactly look like that, to be honest. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 05:18, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Mai-Sachme, we have a rather simple choice here. You can either change behaviour completely and start discussing the topic at hand, and we can go on discussing Meran or Merano. Or you can continue your current behaviour of sarcasm and personal attacks at everybody who disagrees, and we can move the discussion to ANI to discuss whether your behaviour belongs at Wikipedia. The choice is yours, as everybody else is actively and politely discussing the actual topic. I might have read too much into Mai-Sachme's comment, but I'd like to remind everybody that sarcasm is never very helpful. Jeppiz (talk) 08:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Mai-Sachme has been working here for a long time and is extremely experienced, and is neither disrespectful nor sarcastic. Basically this discussion is whether or not the "-o" should be kept at the end, which is a rather small change. If you look in the archives of the previous discussions, it was agreed that municipalities in south Tyrol should go along with the majority-language spoken. I don't see any further merit for discussion here, this case is quite clear. Gryffindor (talk) 11:16, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Gryffindor, you're making a lot of erroneous claims. Your claim that Meran is the more common name has already been thoroughly refuted by RexxS and Markussep. I showed in my previous post that major newspapers in English use Merano. You now move on to claim that the discussions in archives said we should go with the majority-language, which is equally erroneous. There was a move discussion in 2006, the result was to stick with Merano [7]. There was a new discussion in 2007 [8], split opinions but the decision once again was to go with Merano [9]. There was a third discussion in 2009 which did result in a move [10] but the most active supporter of that move changed his/her mind in the face of the evidence of English usage [11] and the page was subsequently moved back to Merano [12]. Jeppiz (talk) 11:38, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
See Talk:Municipalities of South Tyrol#Survey for the naming discussion (in 2006) that Gryffindor refers to. Merano was selected as one of the exceptions to the general scheme (use the local majority language) then, because it has substantial English usage. Markussep Talk 12:18, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Gryffindor: That's a lie and you need to strike it. Mai-Sachme's comments were clearly sarcastic and did nothing to further the debate. You have also misrepresented the archives and failed to understand that the primary policy here is the use of the name in current English sources. The guideline, not policy, referring to the majority language has never been more than a tie-breaker where the policy cannot determine the title because of equal use in modern English sources. That is not the case here as 'Merano' is evidently more commonly used in 21st century English sources. --RexxS (talk) 12:25, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Accusations are always unfortunate especially if they are unfounded, so try to tone down the vitriol, and if you haven't done so already I would suggest you read up on WP:GF. Gryffindor (talk) 13:11, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed accusations are unfortunate. And sad that they are not unfounded. If you don't see that Oh, well, I see. The ngram graphs are a result of myriads of reprinted books from imperial times, additionally, those graphs are proved wrong by ten years old raw Google searches, and the ultimate evidence is a list of 10 (!) modern sources. Case closed. and I'm happy to see that you finally bothered to do some research. are sarcastic, then you are obviously not accustomed to using English and there's no value in attempting to debate further with you. I'm quite familiar with WP:AGF, as well as WP:PACT, thanks. I suggest that you try to understand WP:CIR. --RexxS (talk) 13:36, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that we should prolong this discussion about our behaviour against each other. RexxS, I apologize for my remarks, I should have been more careful. But I must admit, I had hoped that you somehow understood, where my sarcasm came from. I presented the results of a highly regarded research tool, which is heavily used in the field of corpus linguistics. And your replies were ... disappointing: "Have a look at the archives, in 2007 Markussep did some raw Google searches, and in 2009 Ian Speckman investigated 10 modern English sources". Well, I'm not making this up... Of course, you are free to think that the ngram graphs are heavily biased by reprints of more-than-a-century-old books (despite you didn't present any proof for that claim... from what I have seen by skimming thorugh the results this is definitely a very peripheral problem), but the "counter-evidence" you presented was ... odd. But I see, that we won't find commons ground, let's leave it that way. --Mai-Sachme (talk) 16:24, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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Article name reverted

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I reverted a name change made without consensus for this article where there has been prolonged debate on the correct name in the past. Please establish consensus before moving an article where there are varied opinions on what the name should be. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 14:43, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There was a lot of inconclusive discussions about the spelling of this city for a decade, then a month ago the page was moved and nobody even made squeak. Moving it back will open a new round of discussions without end... can we just leave my hometown alone for awhile? No one here cares. noclador (talk) 18:52, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, now that the page has moved back to its correct name let's leave it alone.
the name i german is Meran and in Italian is Merano.Bolzanobozen (talk) 15:24, 29 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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