Talk:Revolt of the Brotherhoods

Article title and expansion possibilities

We have an article on the hermandades, perhaps we need one for the germanies? I notice the other language WPs use the Spanish germanías. Srnec (talk) 17:57, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's because Spanish has long been the default language to discuss Spanish history with. I'd guess that pretty much any reference work before 1985 would use germanías, and quite a few before 2000 as well. However, it seems that English Wikipedia style is to fall back on Catalan usage - place names are a good example, as Jávea is at Xàbia. And non-royal Catalan people seem to keep the Catalan forms of their names, not the Spanish ones. (Royals getting turned into English as usual.) I agree that an article on the guilds themselves not in the context of the revolt would be interesting.

As for the article title, I think Revolt of the Germanies is better (though I agree potentially misleading due to making it sound like it's taking place in Germany). The two history of Spain books I've brushed through called it the Revolt of the Germanías if I recall correctly; if WP standard is to use the Catalan form, then that would become the Revolt of the Germanies. SnowFire (talk) 15:29, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I checked GoogleBooks and founded instances of "Revolt of the Brotherhoods" [1][2]. Frankly, I don't believe Wikipedia can ever invent proper nouns, so unless there is a reliable English source using "Revolt of the Germanies", we shouldn't use it. I don't mind if the Catalan is used anywhere else. "Revolt of the Germanías" is a fine title. Even "Revolta de les Germanies" is more acceptable (to me) than a neologistic hybrid. But I moved the page primarily because my first thought was, "Did the German domains of Charles V revolt while he was in Valencia? I've never heard that..." Srnec (talk) 02:00, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I'm going to disagree with you on the general topic - the problem is that the linguistic standard changed very recently to make it that Catalan is acceptable/preferred, which is why there's little reference to Revolt of the Germanies. More generally, I'd argue that "Revolt of the Germanies" *is* in all English - Germanies is a name and not entirely translatable. I mean, English usage is normally to refer to Franco's Phalange, not Franco's phalanx (though that would be a literal translation of the word his band took for themselves).

That said, on second thought, this title might be the least bad after all. You do have a point that the first three words being English lets people assume that the fourth word is the normal English usage. If the Germanies had been named anything with no legal English variant ("Merganies?"), I'd support "Revolt of the NAME", but due to the risk of confusion, this version will work. SnowFire (talk) 15:15, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

"the first three words being English lets people assume that the fourth word is the normal English usage" ← that's my main point. I think we're on the same page. Srnec (talk) 15:47, 15 October 2008 (UTC)