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Talk:Biel/Bienne

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Latest comment: 15 years ago13 comments5 people in discussion

Per WP:PLACE, we do not title geographical articles by their "official names" by preference; we use the most common name in popular use, disambiguating only if that is unavailable. The page should be moved back to whichever of "Bielle" or "Bien" is in most common use in English. I accidentally used automated search/replace when editing the article previously, which caused some problems, but the page title is definitely incorrect according to our naming conventions right now. Unless anyone can refute this I'll make the move back toi Biel, as a comparison of inbound links between Biel and Bienne indicates that the former is the most commonly-used by other WP articles. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:20, 24 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

The name “Biel/Bienne” is correct. This double name is really in use in practical life. You see it at train stations, post offices, on business cards, etc. If people talk to each other, they often use either “Biel” or “Bienne”. This might be quite comparable to Washington, D.C., which is also abbreviated to “Washington” (see article).
There are also other cities/villages with double names in Switzerland (e.g. Disentis/Mustér or Sils im Engadin/Segl). --Leyo 22:09, 24 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
The Washington D.C. analogy is bogus. Nowhere is that city ever referred to by a dual name. And use on street signs in bilingual countries is irrelevant: WP:ENGLISH says that articles should be titled by their most common English names, not by how they appear on signs designed to ensure understanding by speakers of different languages. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:23, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

In addition to Leyo's, Biel is the German name and Bienne is the French name, which can create a lot of confusion to people not aware of this fact. Within the watch industry, the official language being French, many watch companies having their seat in the area might use Bienne rather than Biel. The offical Post Office address is also Biel/Bienne. E.g. I have lived through the experience several times, where I misse some foreign visitor at the Railway station marked Biel/Bienne, as they did not alight, looking either for finally arriving either in Biel or in Bienne, depending upon the basic language spoke by the guy who gave them instructions on how to reach the city by train.

I know, double denominations sound queer for only one official language countries' citizen. Please remember that in Switzerland, there are four national languages, of which three are official languages. Biel/Bienne area is totally bilingual, with all street signs written in both German and French, school systems in both languages, both languages being official languages with all official documents officially translated in both languages. It beats what exists in Quebec! So long

claude (talk) 23:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

That is exactly it. Double denominations do sound "queer" in other countries. As this is not the Swiss Wikipedia, it is not obliged to double-name its articles in order to appeal to different language speakers. This is, in fact, specifically discouraged in favour of using the name most common in English, as stated in WP:ENGLISH. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:23, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

BTW: Have a look at the page and the category on Commons. --Leyo 00:20, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Commons does not follow our naming conventions, but I see nothing which refutes the article I've made on either of those pages anyway. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:23, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
I've posted to WT:ENGLISH for clarification on this matter, at WT:ENGLISH#Swiss localities. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
The lemma of this article has been “Biel/Bienne” for more than five years (from the beginning), until you moved it with the weird reason “we don't disambiguate with slashes”. I guess you haven't ever heard of this city before you came by this article by chance. --Leyo 10:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
It's not a "weird reason"; it's a perfectly sensible move in line with WP:PLACE, which does not contain an exception for bilingual Swiss names. It's unsurprisingly that Swiss editors would think it "weird", but we're not optimising for Swiss editors here. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply
No comment. --Leyo 12:25, 25 July 2009 (UTC)Reply

Just come across this argument now - I think it should be kept as Biel/Bienne - the problem in english is that most English speakers who have heard of the town will refer to it as either Biel or Bienne depending on a) where they heard about it, b)whether they speak German or French. As someone who has lived in a French speaking part of Switzerland, I know it as Bienne. While I admit that German being the more common language in Switzerland, more people will probably know it by its German name, I don't think the town itself is widely enough known to have a standard English version. I'm all for following Wikipedia guidlines, but sometimes common sense has to prevail.--213.94.229.173 (talk) 10:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

A difficult question, compounded by Biel being a fairly common surname, and Bienne not. What I have been able to find is that searching for Biel tends to turn up the surname, and searching for Bienne turns up guides to Switzerland. Also, lives of Louis Agassiz, who went to school here, tend to use Bienne more often than Biel. So if we had to choose, I would choose Bienne, but is it urgent? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Requested move

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Latest comment: 10 years ago17 comments7 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Jenks24 (talk) 14:15, 7 August 2014 (UTC)Reply


Biel/Bienne → Biel – "Biel" already redirects here, so this rename wold not need disambiguation. Wikipedia's WP:COMMONNAME policy tells us that we should use the the most common English name for the title of the article. MOS:SLASH tells us to "avoid joining two words by a slash". I think that the page should be moved to "Biel" because that is the most commons name used in English language sources. Google News search gives those results:

Google books search gives following results:

I think that this is the evidence of the commons use of the name "Biel" in English language. I agree that "Biel/Bienne" is the official name of the city, but Wikipedia's policy os to use the most common name, not the official name (see: WP:OFFICIALNAMES). Vanjagenije (talk) 16:13, 30 July 2014 (UTC)Reply

No, I never said that we should blindly follow WP:OFFICIAL. But, I think we should follow WP:COMMONNAME because that is Wikipedia policy. It says: "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's official name as an article title; it prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources". Anyway, arguments like "That's only an essay" should be avoided (See: WP:ONLYESSAY). Essays are not intended to be followed, but to explain the opinions. Vanjagenije (talk) 10:48, 1 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
You seem to like very formalistic approaches. That's not the solution in this case. --Leyo 11:57, 1 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I completely agree. But, Wikipedia does not use official names. Official name of Burma is Myanmar, but we still use Burma, official name of Derry is Londonderry, but we still use Derry, because that is the the most common English language name. Arguments like "Oppose, this is official name" are totally irrelevant, beacuse there is no Wikipedia policy that says the official name has to be used. Vanjagenije (talk) 10:42, 1 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Per WP:OFFICIALNAME we don't use official names when common ones are available. -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 04:16, 2 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Assessment comment

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The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Biel/Bienne/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

It should be mentioned that in Biel was born the great Swiss authour Robert Walser in 1878 (wrote in German). He lived in the city until the age of 14, and later on from 1913-1921.

Last edited at 08:26, 28 April 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 04:52, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

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Latest comment: 8 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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I am led to believe Biel has an neighbourhood called the East End?

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Could it not be somewhat byword or at least listed herein?

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