Correct Location for Russian Empire

Question

Hey. Since I go over some German profiles with the Suggestion of (for instance):

Warning 645: Death Location Country not recognized

I often see that they have "Russisches Kaiserreich" as Country. Since these profiles are from former German Territories, or territories mostly populated by Germans (i.e. the Baltic governements of Estland, Livland and Kurland, as well as parts of Congress Poland, Lithuania and the Ukrain), for them the term "Russisches Kaiserreich" would be correct, since they also had German town and city names at that time and regions.

So question: Can we get the "Russisches Kaiserreich" (1721–1917) into the Country table as a German variant for the "Russian Empire"? I see that there is a Polish version already anyways.

Comments

Thx Margaret, I will try that. In the end it is not a big problem to change it into "Russian Empire" to solve the Data error, but I was thinking since there are more than a few profiles involved, it would make sence to find a general solution that is sustainable.

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Danny, I am sure that the country name "Russian Empire" will be sustainable. There are a large number of Wikitree profiles underneath this category.

English will continue to be used for migration categories like https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Saratov_Governorate%2C_Emigrants

Whether more languages are introduced will depend on the number of Wikitree supporters.

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Hey Steve, yes I'm quite sure that English will survive ;o) I just wanted to make sure that when I now change everything into english, not in three week anyone clames that if people of German cultur, speeking German, having German universities and writing German churchbooks also have to have German location feeld entrys. And than we have to chance everything back.

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Yeah, I agree that care is needed. My comments are directed at categories that refer to locations that were a part of Russian Empire. 

The location field entries are different. There is a different set of rules for identifying locations - as Jim has described above. "The WikiTree version is to use their conventions instead of ours. That should neither be the official name nor the English name, but the name used every day by them: the people whose biographies we are writing."

In the case of settlements like Black Sea Germans and Volga Germans, there is a good case for keeping the German language in the location fields. I am sure the best sources like church records and family bibles would have been written in German.

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How well does WikiTree deal with the cyrillic alphabet? 

Российская империя 

 would be the formally correct location name. Is there any way to ensure that profiles for people who spoke different languages - but lived in the same place at the same time - have the correct locations? What about Spanish-speaking Americans who were born and raised in a place they called Nueva York? What should WikiTreers use for Jews born in Warsaw in Congress Poland in, say 1866, Warschau? Varszava? ורשה ? варшава?

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What about Spanish-speaking Americans who were born and raised in a place they called Nueva York?

The official language in "Nueva York" is English, so you put in there "New York City, New York, USA". The case is different in the German city of Bautzen, when you have a person that is obviously from the Sorbs. In Bautzen, the Sorbian language is an official language. So in case you find a Sorbian person born in Bautzen, it is legitimate to write the place of birth as Budyšin.

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Hi Jelena,

thanks for understanding that the "Nueva York" and "Warsaw" examples were intentionally extreme to make the point of my question clear. If I understand correctly, you are saying that WikiTreers should be entering the name as it would have been officially known at the time, and if there were multiple "official" languages at the time, we should use the one which fits the language most probably spoken by the individual being profiled. Is that a fair summary? You used the Sorb character set in your comment - would you suggest use of Cyrillic, Hebrew and other character sets, as well? Or is there a WikiTree consensus concerning transliteration practices for non-ASCII (or non-European) character sets? What about Peking/Beijing?

p.s. (added as an edit): What constitutes an "official" language? I know that many cities and states (including "Neuva York", Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles) print official information and forms in Spanish. But I don't believe that Spanish is formally an "official language" in the contemporary United States.

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would you suggest use of Cyrillic, Hebrew and other character sets, as well? Or is there a WikiTree consensus concerning transliteration practices for non-ASCII (or non-European) character sets? What about Peking/Beijing?

If you have a look at the profile of Tsar Nikolai II., you see a possibility how WikiTree (tries to) deal(s) with cyrillic characters. Also, if you have a look at the Largest Unconnected Branches, you see that there are branches that have Chinese characters. They also have a transcription in Latin letters, because that is currently the easiest version for the internal Search Engine to find duplicates. It is in my opinion not the ideal but currently the best possible way WikiTree can work with.

What constitutes an "official" language?

Taken now from the Wikipedia-article: "An official language is a language having certain rights to be used in defined situations. These rights can be created in written form or by historic usage." In some parts of Germany there are other languages than German that can officially be used. In fact there was a debate in the German Parliament where people talked either in another official German language or in the dialect they talk in the village they are from. The first sentence in the video (from the off) says: "Now it can happen that we don't understand everything."

So all in all, I support the use of the official language that was spoken at the time of the event.

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Thanks, Jelena! That all makes a lot of sense, and I hope non-Russian speakers get as much out of the profile for Tsar Nikolai II as I did - that is quite an impressive mix of cyrillic and latin characters! Still, it leaves us right back where we started as far as the location at birth field is concerned. Tsar Nikolai probably did not use the term "Russian Empire"...  ; )

Would you nevertheless support changing the location field for his place of birth to cyrillic characters? Or "Rossiskaya Imperiya", or one of the other transliteration schemes?

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Cyrillic would be correct, the English version is accepted. So the location field is not wrong now as well.

Answer 1

I knew that some one was going to ask a good question like this.

To answer Can we get the "Russisches Kaiserreich" (1721–1917) into the Country table as a German variant for the "Russian Empire"? . No worries. However it now sits at the back in a long list of a queue . 

 

Answer 2

Researching my Volga German and Black Sea German areas. Most of the VIllages names changed several times. It was the Russian Empire. We need to update several villiages and cities in the 1700-1900's over there.

Answer 3

Looks like Wikitree needs a Russia project soon. Maybe not the best time for that, though.

Comments

I agree. Maybe not so much modern Russia, but there is lot of housekeeping to be done in the Russian Empire before 1917.

Whatever the needs, it needs volunteers to support the work.