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

Wed Feb 19 16:48:00 UTC 2003

|From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
|Content-Disposition: inline
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Wed, 19 Feb 2003 03:48:06 -0800
|
|Mirko Thiessen wrote:
|> What do you think about that solution: call it "Oder" in articles
|> relating to German regions (Lower Oder Valley National Park), call
|> it "Odra" in articles relating to Polish regions (Szczecin).
|
|Is this common practice in English?
|
|> So, my vote is to leave the main article where it is now: "Odra",
|> since there are greater portions of the river in Poland.
|
|The location of the river is one factor in determining what we should
|call it in English, but not the only factor.  We know the name in
|Polish, and the name in German, but the question of what the name
|"really" is in English seems to be primarily a question of common
|usage.
|
|It seems like this river is not widely talked about in English at all
|(based on my web searches), so it probably doesn't matter a great deal
|either way.  :-)

Unfortunately, the Oder and Niesse are important in 20th century
history due to their role in settling the border between Germany and
Poland.  The Oder-Neisse line was part of the Iron Curtain.  It was a
great concession to Poland to draw the line there, as it meant that
Danzig (now Gdansk) was unequivocally part of Poland.  When
right-wingers talk about the "give-aways" of the Yalta conference, the
Oder-Neisse line is one of the big ones.  

Google has 1100 hits on Oder-Neisse line, and 12 hits (all in Polish)
on Odra-Nysa.  Wikipedia does not have an entry [[Oder-Niesse line]]
but other encyclopedias do.  However, Wikipedia has numerous mentions
of the Oder-Niesse line, such as in [[German reunification]].

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

|
|--Jimbo
|
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