User:Rublov/City-name redirects
This is a survey of how Wikipedia handles redirects for the former names of cities, particularly those in a different language from the current name. It was compiled for a discussion in April 2021 at Talk:Bratislava about whether Pressburg (the former German name of Bratislava) should redirect to Bratislava or History of Bratislava. A longer list of renamed cities can be found at List of city name changes.
Analogous cases[edit]
- Kattowitz redirects to Katowice.
- Königsberg is a separate article from Kaliningrad.
- Kaschau redirects to Košice.
- Danzig redirects to Gdańsk.
- Breslau redirects to Wrocław.
- Adrianople redirects to Edirne#History.
- Kristiania redirects to Oslo (Christiania is a disambiguation page).
Of these, Kattowitz/Katowice, Königsberg/Kaliningrad, Kaschau/Košice are the closest analogues to Pressburg/Bratislava: all four cases involve a city formerly known by its German name, and now known in both English and in German (at least, according to the article titles on German Wikipedia) by a name in a different language. In the cases of Danzig/Gdańsk, Breslau/Wrocław, and Adrianople/Edirne, the city is still known by its former name in that name's language.
Marginal examples[edit]
- However, it is not clear to me whether Warsaw was ever commonly known as "Warschau" in English. Google Ngrams suggests not.
- A number of Indian cities have been renamed since independence, notably Bombay/Mumbai, Calcutta/Kolkata, Chennai/Madras, and Bangalore/Bengaluru. In each case, the old name redirects to the new name or vice versa depending on which is the article title.
- Londinium is a separate article from London.
- Constantinople and Byzantium are separate articles from Istanbul.
- Peking redirects to Beijing
- This isn't strictly a case of renaming as "Peking" and "Beijing" are different romanizations for the same Chinese name. However, "Peking" was the common English name for the city in the past so from an English speaker's perspective the city was effectively renamed.