[WikiEN-l] Re: River names Oder/Odra and Neisse/Nysa

Wed Feb 19 09:18:07 UTC 2003

Magnus Manske wrote:

>Sounds like you've been talking to Helga ;-)
>

Au contraire!

Helga's name is often mentioned in this dispute, although it has nothing to do with Helga 
at all. Probably this is a result of the damage, that Helga has done. There are two 
arguments from the Wikipedians in favour of Odra:

1. Helga called that river "Oder", so we should not call it "Oder".

This is a little bit like Hitler and the can opener. Only because Hitler opened his cans with 
a can opener, this would not be a reason for me to open my cans in another way. "Oder" 
is not a term, which was coined by the Nazis. I stated on Taw's talk page, that this is the 
German name of the river and not the Nazi name. Some people don't appear to be aware 
of this basic fact.

2. "Odra" is the original and the true name of the river.

I doubt this. I would guess, that the original name was neither Oder nor Odra, but 
something completely different. There is nothing like a true name. This is the same 
dispute as for many other placenames (Macedonia, Sea of Japan, etc.)

I've already told, that I would not mind, if we should decide to use the name "Odra". But I 
would like to place a decision in our Naming Conventions, so whenever someone 
changes the name again, we can refer him to that page and simply correct it without 
having a new chauvinist  outcry.

Mirko.

-- 
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de 