Talk:'s-Hertogenbosch

Should be merged into some other article, such as The Netherlands. Appears to have been created only because of it's odd spelling: it begins with a punctuation mark. --Ed Poor ^Talk 14:37, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

kind of weird to start an article with a punctuation mark well, it's a quirk of the Dutch language: look at The Hague a.k.a. 's Gravenshage, or the 't Hooft operator in theoretical physics. But while Den Haag is the official name of 's Gravenshage, with Den Bosch and 's Hertogenbosch it is the other way around.

So the move is akin to redirecting New York to The Big Apple.

And Den Bosch just means The Forest, not The Duke's Forest - Hertog / Herzog is duke. The 's is the relict of the article indicating the genitive: Des Hertogens Bosch

On the web-site of 's Hertogenbosch, you won't find the informal name Den Bosch prominently on display: http://www.s-hertogenbosch.nl/

AugustO 14:58, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

You want to take charge of our Dutch geography articles? --Ed Poor ^Talk 15:21, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

That's too big a task (and too desolate a field, I'm afraid). I'm just correcting errors where I find them. AugustO 15:25, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

• the capital of the province of Noord-Brabant is usually called "Den Bosch," but the full, official name is " 's-Hertogenbosch " (The Duke's Forest.) [1]

So if you want to mention the official name, go ahead. (Also, it's more like calling the army's main training college "West Point", when it has a longer and more official name that is hardly ever used. It's not like calling New York the Big Apple. I live in New York and hardly ever hear that. Why would you say such and odd and untrue thing? --Ed Poor ^Talk 15:30, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

• The city's official name is a contraction of the Dutch des Hertogen bosch—"the Duke's forest" (Wikipedia) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ed Poor (talk)

Indeed, 's-Hertogenbosch is a contraction of des Hertogen bosch. I mentioned that above. AugustO 15:53, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

When someone talks about the Big Apple, everyone knows that New York is meant. That's neither odd nor untrue. But this moniker is not the official name of the city, or a generally accepted abbreviation.

Take a look at the official home-page of 's Hertogenbosch: you won't find Den Bosch mentioned. Take a look at the Dutch wikipage of 's Hertogenbosch: the first section is about the name...

De naam Den Haag is officieel toegestaan. Men ziet die naam op wegwijzers en bij de spoorwegen. Voor Den Bosch ligt dat anders: de enige officiële naam is 's-Hertogenbosch. Ook in andere talen wordt 's-Hertogenbosch met de lange naam aangeduid: Bois-le-Duc in het Frans, Boscoducale in het Italiaans, Bolduque in het Spaans en Herzogenbusch in het Duits. De Latijnse naam is Silva Ducis of Buscum Ducis.

That means something like

The name Den Haag is officially accepted. You find this name on road signs and at railways. This is different for Den Bosch: the only official name is 's-Hertogenbosch. In other languages the long name is also used: Bois-le-Duc in French, Boscoducale in Italian, Bolduque in Spanish en Herzogenbusch in German. The Latin name is Silva Ducis or Buscum Ducis.

BTW, the existence of so many translations of the name are an indicator of the historical importance of the city.

AugustO 15:51, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

Supporting AugustO. 's Hertogenbosch is used almost everywhere the official is required, e.g. railway timetables and road signs. But Den Bosch is usually used in informal conversation. PenelopeP 17:29, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

St Petersburg might be a good parallel. The Russians who live there generally just refer to it as "Peter", or sometimes "Petersburg". But the official name is Saint Petersburg and indeed the Conservapedia article is under that name. It would be confusing to list the article under "Peter"!--CPalmer 05:22, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

On the other hand, maybe it's more like Hull. In full, the town is Kingston upon Hull, but that is rarely used and even the local council's website just uses Hull. The Conservapedia page is actually entitled Kingston upon Hull, but I think there would be a reasonably strong case for just using Hull, especially if Den Bosch is kept here.--CPalmer 05:28, 13 June 2012 (EDT)

Conversation in Edit Comments

error? what error? This is like moving The United States to United States'

Moving 's Hertogenbosch to Hertogenbosch is akin to moving The United States of America to The United States America - you are losing the genitive. Moving 's Hertogenbosch to Den Bosch is like moving ''The United States of America to States. AugustO 15:57, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

LOL, touché. --Ed Poor ^Talk 16:38, 9 May 2012 (EDT)

Did you mean this: touché? AugustO 03:24, 16 June 2012 (EDT)

Article move

... could you move this article back to 's-Hertogenbosch? I would have asked you at User talk:Ed Poor, but unfortunately, that page is protected.

AugustO 01:26, 10 May 2012 (EDT)

Didn't you read my objections above? --Ed Poor ^Talk 13:23, 9 June 2012 (EDT)

I read your objections. Frankly, I took your last comment (touché) as a concession to my objections. Nevertheless, I left the decision to move the article to you, but you really should to it: it's the right thing.

I actually currently live in `s-Hertogenbosch. Both names are commonly used (in writing the Den Bosch variant is more often used because it's just easier to type), but the official name is `s-Hertogenbosch. A lot of people don't care that much either way, but some take it very seriously indeed. There's a whole committee to promote the proper use of the official name. This is why you won't find the informal name listed on any official sources. --GTac 11:15, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Graag bedankt! What are the odds... AugustO 11:18, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Well, there are more than 140k people living here, so the odds aren't infinitesimal :-). --GTac 11:37, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

Please write about the campaign to promote the official name. --Ed Poor ^Talk 12:48, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

What do you want to know about them? They're called the Genootschap ter bevordering van het gebruik van de naam 's-Hertogenbosch (the society for the promotion of the name 's-Hertogenbosch) and their mission is to promote the proper use of the official name for clarity and for historical reasons. They have a facebook and a website. They seem to be a bunch of local guys (big surprise), so not sure what you want to know about them. I don't think they're important enough to put in an article, though they're a good indication on how people are very serious about the proper use and spelling of official names.

So let me know if you have any more questions or need anything else translated here. To be honest I don't really understand what the problem is here in the first case. It's an obvious fact that the official name is 's-Hertogenbosch, so why not change the article's name? --GTac 13:45, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

If the society isn't worth writing about, then I don't suppose their cause is worth bothering with; so we should keep using the page title that's easiest for us Americans. --Ed Poor ^Talk 22:06, 14 June 2012 (EDT)

As an American (although I've been living in Europe for several years now), I do not find the official name confusing at all. Out of respect (a conservative value) for other people, other cultures and other languages, I also support moving the article back to 's-Hertogenbosch. Having "Den Bosch" redirect to "'s-Hertogenbosch" is fine and surely required, but also sufficient given that it just an inofficial name. --FrederickT3 12:08, 15 June 2012 (EDT)

West Point

Ed Poor, above you wrote:

So if you want to mention the official name, go ahead. (Also, it's more like calling the army's main training college "West Point", when it has a longer and more official name that is hardly ever used.

But here at Conservapedia West Point redirects to United States Military Academy. And though their web-site uses the name West Point, the web-site's address is www.usma.edu (and not www.wp.edu).

The same should happen with Den Bosch/'s-Hertogenbosch: the unofficial name (Den Bosch) should redirect to the official name ('s-Hertogenbosch). And it's easy to find out the official name: the city has the web-site www.s-hertogenbosch.nl, while www.denbosch.nl doesn't exist. It's the other way round with The Hague: www.denhaag.nl exists, while www.s-gravenhage.nl doesn't.

And please keep in mind that - other than for The Hague there is no traditional English transliteration which would be quite acceptable as an article's title.

Ed Poor, you stated on your talk page: But I also believe in correcting my mistakes. Please correct this mistake of yours and move this article to 's-Gravenshage. You are now informed about the arguments and it shouldn't be necessary to involve other editors with the right to move pages.

BTW: calling your position mistaken is just a factual assessment of the whole situation, not an attack on your person.

AugustO 05:43, 17 June 2012 (EDT)

Sooo, since there apparently are no more objections, shall we just move this? --GTac 02:12, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

I'm for moving, but it should be done the right way: using the command move via redirect which only sysops have. That way, the edit history of the article is preserved - which get muddled if we just copy the article from one place to the other.

I thought to wait that User:Ed Poor (who is a sysop) sees that his position is untenable and moves the article.

If this doesn't happen, I'm all for asking another sysop to review the case - perhaps one week after User:Ed Poor's last edit on this subject...

AugustO 04:23, 21 June 2012 (EDT)

Request for move

The article should be moved to 's-Hertogenbosch. The reason for this move are stated above, and no valid counterargument has been made. Indeed, User:Ed Poor, the only advocate for keeping the article at Den Bosch seemed to have conceded (touché) - until he didn't.

For me the whole thing has becoming at litmus-test for Conservapedia: I was put on probation over this non-issue, at least on other editor was blocked indefinitely. And this over a point which isn't debatable, 's-Hertogenbosch is the official name of the city, Den Bosch isn't. There is no conservative or liberal interpretation of this point (as it is the other way round for The Hague). Is User:Ed Poor not able to correct his mistake - or at least allow his mistake to be corrected? It's a week since his last edit to this talk-page, so I now ask other sysops to move the article.

AugustO 02:54, 22 June 2012 (EDT)

It's been moved by Aschafly. Thanks Aschafly! -GTac 10:18, 24 June 2012 (EDT)

It's now "Hertogenbosch" which seems to be wrong as well. If someone could move it back that would be good.Cmurphynz 05:17, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

merge

A merge seems to be unusual and impractical:

• Conservapedia has many articles on cities, towns and even villages in various countries. Are they all to be merged?
• Ending up with a list of merged towns and some stand-alones (Amsterdam, etc.) looks untidy
• Who decides when an article on a town gets important enough to be recreated? To merge some of the towns into the article of the country is a step which has to be undone later again when the sections grow.
• Editing the article on your home-town is often a starting-point for contributing to an online encyclopedia.

I don't see any compelling official reason for a merge. AugustO 01:31, 26 June 2012 (EDT)

It just seems like a reaction to that whole name discussion debacle, really. -GTac 01:48, 26 June 2012 (EDT)

The proposal to merge this article (and Arnhem, Delft, South Holland and North Brabant) with Netherlands was made on Jun 26, 2012. I'll wait until Jul 3, 2012: a week should be ample time to state a reason for such a merge. If no reason is given, I'll delete the merge-templates on Jul 3, 2012. —AugustO 04:17, 28 June 2012 (EDT)

"leading grammatical bit ('s-) can be distracting to the reader..."

I'm a reader, I don't find it distracting at all. It's how the name of the town is spelled, right? Why spell it incorrectly for the benefit of people who can't focus enough to read? JeffreyB 20:58, 10 July 2012 (EDT)

I have a "Webster's Geographical Dictionary" that belonged to my parents. It is American (as one would assume from the name) published by "G. & C. Merriam Co., Publishers, Springfield, Mass. U.S.A." in 1955. I looked up "Hertogenbosch". It said "See 's Hertogenbosch." I think that if something as intrinsically American as Webster's uses the "apostrophe s" spelling as the main heading for the city, then that is what CP should follow. Or is it thought that the modern American is more easily "distracted" than those of the 1950s and should be mollycoddled accordingly? AlanE 00:01, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

Very interesting to see "'s-Hertogenbosch" being moved to "Hertogenbosch" now. I grant that there are arguments worth considering for moving the article to "Den Bosch" given that that is a popular name given to the city. But Hertogenbosch is just wrong, there is no place that anyone calls "Hertogenbosch". The argument given in the edit summary amounts to not much more than "Americans are stupid" - surely nobody here thinks so? --FrederickT3 16:35, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

Ok, I had a look on the internet, and it seems to confirm what most people here that knew about the netherlands said: the real name is 's-Hertogenbosch. Now I realise that this has become a bit of an 'issue' for some people, so I suggest you leave the article here for a while and then do what FrederickT3 said, and change it to 'Den Bosch' (the common name) or 's-Hertogenbosch (the official name).Cmurphynz 21:51, 12 July 2012 (EDT)

Redirect to 's Hertogenbosch

Oh! I see there has been a long correspondence about the name of this city - I didn't know. I don't understand why there's any controversy because the city is called 's Hertogenbosch, not Hertogenbosch. I've set up a redirect to handle this.StaceyT 17:22, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

I don't know how to rename the Talk page (this page) so it's connected to the correct encyclopedia page, 's Hertogenbosch. Perhaps a more experienced editor could do this? StaceyT 17:22, 11 July 2012 (EDT)

Don't move articles. Only users with move rights can do that. --Ed Poor ^Talk 11:50, 13 July 2012 (EDT)