Talk:Murten

Article title

In English the name of the city is Morat and not Murten. It is obvious in "Battle of Morat". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.106.100.167 (talk) 13:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article is written according to a German point of view! All the names of the places are given in German and not in English. We don't say for instance "The battle of Murten" but "The Battle of Morat". And so on... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.107.49.81 (talk) 10:22, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

it is just impossible to correct this article which contains a lot of mistakes (always reverted and threatened) : please, do not use it for papers!

The official name per Nomenclatures – Répertoire officiel des communes de Suisse] is Murten, regardless whether you look on the French or German site. Also, since less than 13% of the population speaks French, it makes sense to use the form of the name that the majority of the population will use.Tobyc75 (talk) 11:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Totally wrong : it's Murten/Morat ! The city, like Fribourg, is officially bilingual!

Are you kidding ??? So if a lot Mexicans came to live in New York, it would be called Nova Yorka ?? Is this serious ? And what about Florence, Venice, Rome... Have we to replace them by the true pronunciation in their countries? And what about Brussels: now as 90% of its inhabitants speak French, do we have to accept Bruxelles (the French spelling) as the legitimate spelling?

I guess you don't live in Switzerland. I'm an English speaker who lives in the Fribourg area and imagine my astonishment when I saw that the name of the article was 'Murten'. In English, we only refer to the town as "Morat". It is a medieval town and like many medieval towns, it has an English version (see München -> Munich). Why it's written like in French, it has a few reasons to it: it used to be the lingua franca at the time and French used to be a majority as well. So, either we change the name to 'Morat' or at least to the bilingual (and yes, official version: Murten/Morat). When you enter the town by car: it has a bilingual signal and so is the name at the train station. I've got a friend who grew up there: she went to school in French and receives all mediums of communication with the municipality in French. We can't just compare it to New York, Murten/Morat is bilingual, is part of Switzerland and the Canton of Fribourg that are both (at least) francophone and germanophone. Besides, it's the capital of the district of the lake/Seebezirk, which is bilingual, so regardless its number of francophones, it's de jure bilingual. d.murray, 9:00am, 20 November 2015 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daylon.murray (talk • contribs) 08:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello all- This city is not widely known in the anglophone world by either name. Regardless of how the city has been referred to over the years by the relatively few English speakers aware of its existence, I think we should err on the side of titling the article with the official name used by Switzerland, which is Murten. I just traveled through there a few weeks ago, and though many signs made it obvious that the area is bilingual, and most or all of the exchanges I had with locals were in French, every road sign I saw read "Murten"; none read "Morat".

We're in a gray area here for sure. The use of different names for a given place is subjective. For example, in English, I say "Torino", never "Turin"; at the same time, I say "Munich" and not "München". I think that given how infrequently one encounters mention of this city in English, we would do better to go with the Swiss government's choice and title the article "Murten". Alternatively, we might go with either "Murten (Morat)" or "Murten/Morat". I would prefer the parenthesis to the slash, as I find the latter awkward. But in any case, the article should not be titled "Morat (Fribourg)".

Of possible interest: Google's ngram viewer provides stats on the occurrence of the two names in English works. It indicates that Morat occurred much more frequently than Murten a couple hundred years ago, but that the frequency of the two has essentially converged over the last 150 years. Here are comparisons for the past 100 years and from 1700 to the present. Note on the Y-axis the overall infrequency of the two names. Eric ^talk 20:24, 22 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think we ought to stop with this non-sense. Here is an article of a Swiss-German Hochscule that stipulates that bilingual French/German areas need to retain the English variant of a name place. And it even gives Morat as an example. Therefore, I suggest we moved the page. Daylon.murray ^talk 16:45, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Daylon.murray: Daylon, why the interim page moves to gibberish titles? And why did you not move this talkpage to Talk:Murten? Thanks for the link to the Business English place name guide; I changed it from a footnote to an in-line link. Please note that while the suggestions made there are sensible, Hochschule Luzern is not necessarily a Swiss naming convention authority, and that it does not state that anything "needs to" retain the English variant name. A note on English usage: Though sadly quite prevalent in modern American English, the construction "needs to" is poor usage adopted by the masses from bad television and movie writing. Best avoided here. Eric ^talk 16:35, 23 May 2016 (UTC) (added ping one week later) Eric ^talk 17:20, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric: I must admit I am not as good a Wikipedia user as you are and have been confused. Please apologise my poor use of the English language. I do not understand why you stubbornly wish to maintain the German name of the town. It is a neologism imposed by the Swiss-Germans who would rather have their name be said in the same fashion in English as in German. As an English speaker, I do not wish to have the French name be used, but rather the historical and (actually as of today) the most used substantive in English. Proofs have been given to you that the usual name of the town in English is indeed Morat. As Biel/Bienne, we offerred to name the town by its two official names, but it has been refused. According to wikipedia rules, the "most used term in English" should prevail and it is, indeed, Morat. Of course, since the town is inhabited by German speakers and its official name has a German version, we would maintain Murten in bold within the description, but the article name ought to change to its rightful designation. Daylon.murray ^talk 10:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Daylon.murray: (D.murray, Climatelover?) I do not have any "stubborn" view of this question, which I think should be clear from the tone and content of my December post above. If I understand correctly what you are trying to express, you claim that Morat is the definitive English name of the town. I'm no expert on this, but a couple internet searches make me suspect that such a claim might be a stretch. Not that Google search results alone should determine how we proceed in such cases, but they do tell us something: "Morat, Switzerland": 12,500 hits, "Murten, Switzerland": 49,900 hits (using advanced search in verbatim mode). Eric ^talk 14:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric: @Gabriel HM:While it isn't definitive I note that the tourism link from the municipal website uses Murten exclusively as the English name for the town, as does the Swiss Federal Government and the Google results show that the trend is toward Murten. But regardless of how this discussion shakes out, it's ridiculous to have the article title be Murten and then the article say Morat. Reverting Waadt to Vaud, Neuenburg to Neuchâtel and Freiburg to Fribourg all make sense, but the article title needs to match the text.Tobyc75 (talk) 14:36, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Tobyc75:, Hi, I personally don't care how it is spelled, since I have reverted the edit of a disruptive anonymous user that changed all the previous article, the "issue" was about the comment made by Eric with his cancellation (see his talk-page [1]). Since it seems to be a big controversy, when I reversed manually the edit and fix the broken links, I tried to make a mix by keeping half of the previous Morat names, and changed the other part by Murten in order to make everyone happy. What really matters is how it is spelled in English with pertinent sources like britannica and so on. I don't really believe that the city website and google are serious sources for official English toponymy. But once again, I don't really care, I just try to revert the edits from the "special user" that keeps making racist and antisemitic comments and posts in wiki. --Gabriel HM (talk) 21:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm an English-native import to area, I work as an independent translator and the French/German question can be a hot button item for many residents. Although the town itself is largely German-speaking, most of the surrounding countryside is French-speaking. You go to one supermarket, the cashiers will greet you in Swiss-german dialect, the supermarket across the road is staffed predominantly with loval villages, so they will tend to greet you in French. But almost everyone can manage both languages anyway. This is largely due to the close proximity to Bern (definitely German speaking) and the increasing numbers of commuters who are expanding their circle of habitation around Bern. In the past, almost all of the town's street names were in French, and they are almost now all in German. Some of the neighbouring villages are having "issues", because they have traditionally held their community/township meetings in French, but they are fast becoming a language minority in their own place of birth. The recently arrived German-speakers feel a bit put out sometimes, especially when they constitute a majority and try to have a vote on the issue. The Swiss love voting on everything, and unfortunately sometimes the tyranny of the (barely) majority can have curious effects. Now the Swiss are fabulous at getting along with each other and their multiple languages and dozens of dialects, but it can still upset some people, new and old. Recently the train station was OFFICIALLY renamed Murten/Morat, and the town administration is trying hard to maintain and enforce the bilingualism. Unlike Geneva, which has a separate English only name (Genève in French, Genf in German), there is no English only equivalent. One must also be careful of automatically adopting the federal level naming convention, because federally speaking, the Swiss-German dialects are far and away the majority, and a lot of government material originates in German as a result. So you get a bias towards the German names in general. I think it would be quite reasonable to rename the page to be the hybrid Murten/Morat. This is respectful of everyone's sensibilities, and makes the English-speaking native aware of the real situation on the ground. And helps the commune spread the meme. But you're never going to please everyone, certainly not on the internets as we know them :) --Apteryx 12:02, 02 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the input, Apteryx. I moved your post to the bottom of the section to maintain chronological order. I see that no user account with the name "Apteryx" exists. Did you mean to create an account? It might confuse people if you edit while not logged in and sign with what looks like a username. Here's info on creating an account: Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account?. Eric ^talk 22:01, 5 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Page move

@Climatelover, it would have been better to consult with other editors before moving (renaming) this article. As @Tobyc75 cites above, it seems that offical Swiss nomenclature disagrees with your take on the name of this town. Even if a consensus of editors were to go with the French Morat, I don't think they would have agreed with adding (Fribourg) to the title. Eric ^talk 13:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all! Even in Switzerland people use its French name when they write articles about it in English. There is no consensus of editors as you say, but only German speaking editors who want to translate its name into German. What's more : Morat in English is not a "French name" as you say, it's its name in English. Quite logical when we know that French was the language of the majority of its inhabitants till the beginning of the 19th century. But Maybe Lord Byron, not to quote the others, will convince you :

From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

...

 But ere these matchless heights I dare to scan,/
 There is a spot should not be passed in vain,—/
 Morat! the proud, the patriot field! where man/
 May gaze on ghastly trophies of the slain,/
 Nor blush for those who conquered on that plain;/
 Here Burgundy bequeathed his tombless host,/
 A bony heap, through ages to remain,/
 Themselves their monument;—the Stygian coast/
 Unsepulchred they roamed, and shrieked each wandering ghost./
 While Waterloo with Cannæ’s carnage vies,/
 Morat and Marathon twin names shall stand;/

 .....

Shall I give you other writers?

Well, if no-one can contradict that, I'd suggest we move the page to 'Morat'. D.murray ^talk 12:00, 04 December 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:620:400:54:227:EFF:FE15:DFE (talk) [reply]

Murten, Switzerland twinned with Murton, England

I thought Murten, Switzerland and Murton, England are officially twinned being near-spellings with eachother?

Anyway, if so, this is highly noteworthy, as it would break an longstanding EU law about British and mainland European towns being forbidden (for somewhy) from twinning with another if the two towns happen to be cognate in anyway! An utterly fascist law. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:21B:D600:226:8FF:FEDC:FD74 (talk) 01:53, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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