Talk:Buna/Bojana River

Page title

Instead of titling this page "Buna/Bojana River", it would be better to use one name or the other, and then have the other name be a redirect to the article. I would move the page to the correct title, but I don't know which one is more common. Let me know if you would like help moving the page. -- Natalya 01:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't mess with names in the region

Neither the Montenegrins nor the Albanians will accept an article with only one name : there was a war six years ago in the region to decide which part belongs to the Serbs and which to the Albanians; so the only ones who really care about it are those least likely to accept a single solution.

The upper half of the River is in Albania, the rest forms the border with Montenegro, but the whole region is mostly inhabited by Albanians - there is a 90 percent majority of Albanians in the nearby Municiality of Ulqin/Ulcinj, but it was annexed by Serbian-speaking Montenegro in 1913, and the Albanians have been less effective in promoting their interests in the past 150 years -although Presidents Wilson and Clinton understood their claims to nationhood.

The article I have moved was originally written by a Montenegrine, as you will see if you examine the references. What do you think he will do if he sees the Serbian "Bojana" replaced by the Albanian "Buna" -which, according to the preponderance of objective criteria, should be chosen if only one name were retained? And of course, Neither myself nor any Albanian will accept "Bojana", which would be pandering to Serbian annexionism. The best way to start an editing war is to be one-sided on this issue. (Which might nevertheless fade in importance if Montenegro votes for independence next Sunday. The Albanians in Montenegro are for independence, - along with a slight majority of the citizens)

That is why I think the solution I have chosen is the most likely to remain unchallenged. That is also why I have also chosen to leave the name "Skadar" before adding Shkodra to the name of the lake, because two-thirds of the lake's surface is in Montenegro - although the city which gives it its name is in Albania and almost exclusively inhabited by Albanians, and no one outside of the former Yugoslavia knows the name "Skadar": the Italian "Scutari" is much better-known. Kaewa Koyangi 02:31, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that you should have moved the article, and not duplicated it at a different location: I think the new title is monstrous. The river isn't called Buna/Bojana, so neither should we. See Talk:Soča River for a similar discussion (Isonzo/Soča). Markussep 08:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

This is a gratuitous, arbitrary non sequitur. The aim of an encyclopedia is to provide accurate information, not deprive its readers of relevant knowledge because it regards them as incapable of understanding the obvious purpose of a double title. The "Soča" solution strikes me as the worst : If there is a version which is better known in English, it is not Soča. Wouldn't you want to know from the start that the Slovenian Soča almost no one has heard of is none other than the famous "Isonzo" of the Great War?

On the other hand, thank you for recalling the objective critera for naming a river. Kaewa Koyangi 02:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Quoting from Wikipedia:WikiProject Rivers:

Rivers with multiple names

Some rivers have names with multiple spellings which vary with the different countries the rivers pass through. (An example would be the Cunene River in Angola, which is known as the Kunene River in Namibia. Occasionally, a river can have several genuinely distinct names. For example, the Cuando River not only has the variant spelling Kwando, it's also called the Linyanti and the Chobe. The following rules are suggested for choosing a primary name for such a river:

• If the river is particularly famous under one name, then choose that name.
• If the section of the river that uses a particular name is much longer than other sections, then use that as the name.
• If everything else is equal, then choose the name for the section of the river closest to the river's mouth, since generally that is where the river is widest.

(unquote)

I wouldn't know which name is most used in English. If Bojana and Buna (or its indefinite form Bunë) are both used in English, the second rule applies (Buna then). That brings a disambiguation issue with another (smaller) Buna river in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which could be called Buna River (Neretva) (brackets are used for disambiguating rivers). Markussep 08:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

A relevant remark. The only reason for not calling it "Buna" is that there is another Buna in the region. The Buna region in Herzegovina is where the Croat and Serb Bunjevci in Voivodina and Southern Hungary are supposed to come from. That's why i think the first "Buna" should appear under the title "Buna/Bojana" and the second under the title "Buna (Herzegovina)" albeit "no one calls it that way" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaewa Koyangi (talk • contribs) 04:51, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, Kaewa Koyangi, you are looking at this matter from completely wrong perspective. We are discussing how is one river called in English, in English Wikipedia, what's there to be accepted or not accepted by you, me, Albanians, Serbs, Montenegrins? This is not Albanian or Serbian Wikipedia. English (and most of the planet) call your country Albania, even though such a word (so as adjective Albanian) does not exist in your language. Or my city, which they call Belgrade and not Beograd. What's there for Serbs to accept about that? Even when they spell the names the same way, in English they pronounce it with hilariously wrong accentuation from our perspective (Zagreb, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik, Srebrenica) but we are not rioting. And when Serbs and Albanians decided whether to say English Channel or Lamanche did we considered English and French hurt feelings?

In this talk page we need some native-English speaking person with broad knowledge of geography. If in English they predominantly call the river Buna, it will be Buna with other variations redirecting to it. If they call it Bojana, it will be Bojana. If they call it The Miracle Lotus River, it will be The Miracle Lotus River. It is simple as that. The reasons for giving this article the title Bojana when I started it was because I searched other European Wikipedias and found the river in (only ?) two, German and Hungarian, both as Bojana. Also, the most prominent feature of the river is Ada Bojana, not Ada Buna. But, I repeat, if it is Buna in English, it will be Buna. I just don't know what that talk about Albanians supporting Montenegro's independence has to do with anything. PS - Sorry about the Eurovision last night, I liked Zjarr e ftohtë ;o) PajaBG 13:55, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't you see what nonsense you are are talking?

- You assume, on no basis whatsoever, that I am Albanian , while I am just knowledgeable (and "Kaewa Koyangi" is Korean, which I am not either, and I prefer Croatian pop music).

- You insist that English should be your reference and then end up, because there is no such English reference, admitting that you used... other languages as a criterion.
(If you are looking for a specifically English version, let me suggest, no less idiotically, the misspelling "Buena" used by Noel Malcolm in his Kosovo: a short history - ¡ay, caramba!)

- You know which objective criteria may be used for choosing the name of a river:

• If the river is particularly famous under one name, then choose that name. (Not the case.)
• If the section of the river that uses a particular name is much longer than other sections, then use that as the name (the Buna/Bojana would then be a little less than 3/4 Albanian, allowing for the fact that the greater part of the delta is in Montenegro ; but in fact the Buna/Bojana is but the lowest section of the Drin , which provides nine tenths of its flow, the longest part of which, by far, is also in Albania).
• If everything else is equal, then choose the name for the section of the river closest to the river's mouth, since generally that is where the river is widest. (Everything else is definitely not equal.)
  The river would be given its Albanian name under those criteria, but you chose otherwise, according to a different and possibly irrelevant one.

- And you did not even discuss my solution, while it is the one chosen by the experts.
Balkan specialists who want to avoid partiality and geographers with a minimal understanding of local politics also try to apply it - just look at any official report about Kosovo: both name are always given, and the language with the majority population comes first.
It is obvious to them that in such cases where two names are in use, no clear-cut criterion is available, and everything else will cause resentment, that both should be mentioned, in that order.

I might be tempted to conclude that you are not a Balkan specialist, and not a geographer either. Why not follow the experts' example? In an encyclopedia ?

In any case, the choice you made implies a factual error and is therefore partial. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaewa Koyangi (talk • contribs) 02:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...nope, I don't see any nonsense. Saying me or any Albanian is hardly a no basis whatsoever. About Croatian pop music...well we all make wrong choices sometime :o) But you are keep misleading people about the way I posted the article from the beginning, just like you did in the initial discussion on another page, from which I can conclude you are doing this on purpose. You are accusing me of pushing just one name. In my original posting, I did use only one name in the title and in the article, but in the first line of it I named both Serbian and both Albanian variants in bolded letters, which makes them equal. When you butchered the article later with copy/paste to your PC (presumably) which does not support either Cyrillic, Latin letter with diacritics or symbols for cubic and square kilometers, I removed the dual names from it except for the Bojana/Buna. In your immediate reaction you again said that both names should be mentioned, which at this point they really were, so I don't know what do you want about it? And then you got oh so angry and hurt and moved it to Buna/Bojana title. So this is how I reacted to your 'solution' on the river's name: I left what you changed (Bojana/Buna) and said I have absolutely no problem of using only Buna if that's the case in English language. So what do you want again? And no I don't think both names should be in the title and in every mentioning of the name in the article, but they should be noted in the very first line of it. This goes for any article.

Kosovo is not a reference here. It's an occupied territory, some sort of UN Protectorate, so the same rules don't apply. And calling Balkan experts those apparatchiks and scribblers working there for big money is exaggerated, to say at least. There was no war 6 years ago in the Bojana region and Vojvodina is not Voivodina, so your expertise in the Balkan affairs may also not be that perfect. When I checked the OSCE's pages on Kosovo and Metohija all separate pages for municipalities had Albanian version first even though in five of them Serbs are a majority.

It is good that you mentioned 'idiocy' called Buena. It reminded me of one old atlas I have where the river is named Buenë, so I did some googling. And guess what: Buenë is the variant used predominantly in the Britannica (out of three articles it is mentioned in, two have Buenë with Bojana in parenthesis, and one has Bojana without Buenë)...if 3/2 can be a reference. So, there you have it. Shall it be Buenë? It is just the Albanian rendering of word 'bojana' anyway. PajaBG 08:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

On centralizing the discussion

The article con this river was inappropriately copy-pasted to "Buna/Bojana River" (diff. & diff.). When the article was reverted to its original title (diff. & diff.), this talk page remained here.

Please, don't continue any discussion here. Make your comments in the article's talk page instead. - Best regards, Ev 20:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)