Talk:Urtijëi

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[edit] Ortisei or Urtijëi

This discussion was moved here from Talk:Merano. Markussep 07:38, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice work Markussep; it is nice to keeps things a bit quantitative. I've said above I like the name Meran, but from my own personal experience the city is known in English by the Standard Italian name of Merano. I often visit Ortisei, and I'm willing to bet money that this is the name used most commonly in English as well, not Urtijëi. The locals use the spelling Ortisei with the outside world for the most part. It is exactly the same word actually, and no one is being repressed by putting the article at the Standard Italian name and including the translations in the article. Anyway, want to run your system on that too? :-) Icsunonove 18:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Be my guest ;-) I guess Ortisei or Urtijëi isn't used used often enough in English to give reliable results. Markussep 18:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll try it with Google scholar I guess. Maybe Ortisei is more popular in my mind than in reality. Hmm, speak of the devil, I just heard them say Ortisei on Radio Cortina; of course not English. :)) Icsunonove 19:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Cortina 1 - Milan 0; hockey. LOL. Icsunonove 19:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here we go:

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

I think St. Ulrich picked up some bad results though. Anyway.

from Google USA:

Urtijëi -wikipedia 22,000
Ortisei -wikipedia 622,000

Seems that Ortisei sees roughly 30 times more usage in English. I expected it to be even more..heh. Bottom line, we are just creating confusion.. Anyway, enough for now. Icsunonove 19:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I will comment that some of the Scholar.google.com results are false positives (Ortisei doesn't actually occur in the article); and many are post-office addresses, which we ignore by WP:NCGN (they testify to Italian official usage). One is in Italian, and one attests Ortisei-St. Ulrich. Leaving those aside, we are left with half a dozen attestations. On the other hand, the two testimonies for Urtijëi are in Italian and Ladin. Is this enough evidence to be decisive?

The google results are largely advertising (again, with postal addresses) and pages actually in Italian.

I don't really care whether we call it Ortisei or Urtijëi; as long as we have a good reason for whichever we do pick, and we don't call it, as it used to be, St. Ulrich-Ortisei-Urtijëi. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:22, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess you can get some idea what is really more common when you can reference tourist websites like www.ortizei.com or www.sterzing.com, as to what the locals really use for marketing. They are also incidentally the more longterm names for the towns of Urticetum and Sterzengum, respectively. Where Vipiteno was definitely that Ettore dude playing around with the names. Probably his mentor came up with names like St. Ulrich and Wolkenstein. boh. They are all interesting actually and part of the history. www.altoadige-suedtirol.it. Wow, look at the nice scenery.. :-) Icsunonove 22:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I always like to get Tridentinus' input on these, so maybe he'll pop in. I'm still under the impression Ortisei is the more commonly used name publicly. It is also just plain easier for English users to read/pronounce: Orrrrr-Tea-Say. :} Icsunonove 22:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

A nice point, and the example should be added to WP:NCGN. But let's decide if we are moving this first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:09, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

It stands as a fact that even the official tourist office website uses Ortisei in English - as indeed any commercial site with an English version, which may not be Gospel regarding info but surely worry about recognizability first and foremost. As we're dealing with a renowned resort, I think straying from what they think is most common English usage would be a disservice for users and local economy alike. On the other hand, redirects are there for a reason. I'd say Ortisei is too well-known not to consider the name common ENglish usage, albeit tentatively. Tridentinus 17:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, agreed. I've visited Ortisei many times, and this is the first I learned of the spelling in Ladin. It is definitely interesting and the name should be in the article. A redirect helps too, but I still think having the page at Urtijëi is just really confusing to the average reader. Plus then you start getting the links all over using this spelling as well. I really think for major cities and tourist downs in AA/ST we should use the most common English name, which is usually just the Standard Italian. For small obscure towns, yeah, sure, why not use the local language majority name.. Icsunonove 22:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

In analogy with the case of Meran(o), I would like to defend the local version of the name (i.e. Urtijëi): I do not believe that internet searches are informative at all. How sure can you be that those counts tell you anything about the question at hand, viz. whether there is an established English name for Urtijëi/Ortisei/St.Ulrich? That a place is mentioned in English does not make the particular form chosen an English name. People writing travel diaries cannot be expected to check facts as carefully as I expect from an encyclopedia (such as wikipedia). But let us even assume that all speakers of English do wish to use the same rules as encyclopedia, i.e. to use the local form if an established English one does not exist. She would have to be very well informed indeed to find out that the local form is Urtijëi. First, the local language is so "small" and unknown that short-time visitors unable to speak any of the three languages of the region might not even realise that there is a Ladin language. Second, for several decades, the local form only existed orally when locals spoke to each other, they would not have been visible anywhere. Third, this also means that travelers' guides written in this period can be expected to have used the Italian form, and they, I would concede, represent a more important source of information for foreigners than conversations with local people. Finally, official Italian maps still use the Italian versions of the names (either first or exclusively). In conclusion, a majority of "Ortisei" hits in an internet search can tell us one of two things: (1) There is an established English name for this place, and it is "Ortisei". (And I openly admit that I severely doubt the first part of the conclusion, i.e. that a place as small as Urtijëi/Ortisei/St.Ulrich has an established English name.) Or, (2), most people mentioning Urtijëi/Ortisei/St.Ulrich on the internet are not as well-informed as wikipedia ought to be. Kind regards, 129.241.87.222 17:08, 24 May 2007 (UTC) (Hanno)

I would be happy and interested to see a WP:RM request here; but let me answer Hanno thus: We don't assume that people with travel diaries are trying to do what we do; but we are trying to communicate with English speakers. If the only English writers who mention this small town are writers of diaries, we will take them as English usage. For much more on this, see WP:NCGN. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:15, 12 June 2007 (UTC)