Categorisation and Germany

Question

In the Wikitree category structure I find 4 different categories for the Holy Roman Empire:

-Heiliges Römisches Reich

-Holy Roman Empire

-Saint-Empire Romain Germanique

-Imperium Romanum Sacrum

At this moment all these categories have different sub-categories. It seems also to me that these categories are not synchronized. Consequently profiles, which are marked with a certain sub-category in the category Heiliges Römisches Reich will not appear in the same sub-category of the category Holy Roman Empire.

Example: profile https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wensel-71, which I placed in category "Grafschaft Bentheim" does not appear in the category "County Bentheim".

I think there would be only 2 practical solutions:

1. find a software solution so that Wensel-71 will be listed in both categories Grafschaft Bentheim AND County Bentheim.

2. eliminate categories established in more than one language. Keep only the "Holy Roman Empire" OR one of the other three, but not all of them.

If not, and with serious use of these categories, we would get a new Babylon....

I would be pleased to listen to eventual comments to this situation.

Jan

Comments

I added the categorization tag to your post, to get the attention of people who can answer your question. Hope that helps!

Answer 1

The proper name was never Holy Roman Empire. Not even Saint-Empire Romain Germanique. The language at that time was German (various Lower, Middle and Upper German dialects), Slavic languages, Latin (language of the clergy and scholars) as well as the original forms of today's French and Italian.

So why do you want to name all countries in English? There is no, and never was a County Bentheim.

It's also in the help pages Help: Location Fields

Location Field Style Guide

Applied to locations, this means using place names in native languages and using the names that people used at the time, even if they now no longer exist.

 

Comments

I think this would be a very good discussion point on the Germany Project Google Group. I believe all the categories listed under the Germany Project have both an English and a German counterpart.  Is it worth doing the same thing in the Regions categories in English and German?  If you don't understand what I'm asking, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Regions and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Regionen.  

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I agree absolutely! In principle, all my pre-1800 profiles born in what is now the Federal German Republic will be in the German sub-categories of the "Heiliges Römisches Reich", if we can all agree to use here the today's German expression.... In this sens I think that all regional sub-categories in the "Holy Roman Empire" category should not be there, and only those ones be used, which are in the category "Heiliges Römisches Reich" or in a parallel category of the actual regionally spoken language {French, Italian, Dutch,others(?)}.  But since, and as long as the regional sub-cats in the "Holy Roman Empire are used, they should at least be correctly synchronized with the ones in the other languages.....

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I still think the issue would be worth bringing to the entire German Project Google Group, if you want to delete the Holy Roman Empire category and the categories listed under it.  Kylie and a few others may know something about the workings of WikiTree and its categories to say that isn't possible but something else is. Or a project may be begun to put all categories under the German names. Would one of you be willing to bring that to the Google group?

Also, I would suggest that "Holy Roman Empire" really does exist, as does "County of Bentheim" - in English, though not in German.  Unless someone is like me, trying to get the correct words, spelling and pronunciation of a place in its native language, they wouldn't use German place names and honestly may not know what "Heiliges Römisches Reich"  and "Grafschaft Bentheim" mean.  The names in English are truly what all English speakers officially name these places.  That doesn't mean we need to name any categories on WikiTree in English.  But it would be helpful to many if these English place names appear somewhere.  Maybe a one place study, or on a project page?

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Thank you for the star, Klaus.

Answer 2

Jan the AKA is applied from the German language Heiliges Römisches Reich to the English Holy Roman Empire. I just put the AKA in place and it will take 24 hours (at least) for that to be in place. We have category mirroring, so a profile will show up in both the German language and the English language version of the category.

Comments

Thanks Natalie,

I will be patient..... But, if there is mirroring in the categories, why are the sub-categories for the 4 categories I mentioned for the Holy Roman Empire all different in labelling and quantity?

Jan

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only profiles are mirrored.

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Thanks, Natalie, for your work on this.  

So does that mean it would be a good idea for someone to create new categories under each so that they mirror each other, and then ask you to apply the AKA between them?  

There is a category under Heiliges Römisches Reich  called Grafschaft Bentheim and a category under Holy Roman Empire called County of Bentheim, representing the same place.  Since you applies the AKA between Heiliges Römisches Reich and Holy Roman Empire, will the profiles in Grafschaft Bentheim also show up in County of Bentheim?  

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Jan, I can give a partial answer: I set up the French-language categories and only intended to place the entities of the Holy Roman Empire that are "French significant" there - basically those that were part of France at some point. Those would include.... Elsass, Mömpelgard, Dagsburg, Salm... and a select few others. I don't think French language is useful for the rest.

I do think ideally all the sub-categories in German language should have an English counterpart, and at some point in the future it will be the case, but Rome was not built in one day.

@Bertram yes, once the mirroring between County of Bentheim and Grafschaft Bentheim works, all the profiles are shown in both categories.

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When I go now (2020-08-09 16:25) to the page Category: Grafschaft Bentheim I see 8 profiles, when I go now to the page "Category: County of Bentheim", I see 0 profiles.....

Jan

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You must assign the category:County of Bentheim to at least 1 profile for it to work. If the category is not used directly on any profiles, the mirroring won't work.