Place names in Transylvania

ZoltanKelemen4

This small region has been parts of multiple countries through the history, and the current official name database is rather messy

• Current place markers often do not match with historical place markers, so several times places have multiple, unlinked markers.
• Historical names rely on a single source from 1881, which is again, just one slice of history/spelling mode etc.

There is a freely available resource (digitized version of a book in print) for the area, covering present and most known historical locality names: https://www.arcanum.com/en/online-kiadvanyok/ErdelyHelysegnevTar-erdely-bansag-es-partium-torteneti-es-kozigazgatasi-helysegnevtara-1/

Would it be possible to use these resources to improve the places database of this region, ideally in bulk, but if not at least improving it step-by-step?

ZoltanKelemen4

After reading up a bit on Places API, allow me to rephrase my first point:

• Most localities in Transylvania (and apparently this may be true of other former regions of Kingdom of Hungary as well) have two (or more), unrelated place resources in the database. Usually one with current geographical/geopolitical data, and nothing else, and one with some historical data.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yes, most places in Slovakia and Burgenland have this same problem, along with parts of Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia: the historical placename (usually based largely on Dvorzsák's gazetteer) is in the database as a completely separate entity from the current placename (usually based on a current-government database). The only difference between those regions and Transylvania (in its broad, modern interpretation that includes the Partium and the Bánság [which I haven't a clue how to say in English]) is the lack of a handy region-specific gazetteer for them.

What I don't know is whether FS employees have any sort of easy backdoor way to make associations between database entities. Would it be helpful to compile a spreadsheet giving the current name (and number) and the corresponding historical name (and number)?

ZoltanKelemen4

If someone in charge of the FamilySearch Place Authority is reading this, I'm working on getting the data of the above mentioned gazetteer (compiled by Szabo M. Attila and made public by Arcanum) into a json-structured database and hopefully cleaned up (meaning that there are no obvious parsing errors, UTF-8 characters are correctly used and data is consistently well structured)

My next goal would be to identify, if I can, all FamilySearch place resources that relate to a single place based on this database.

I would be more than happy if I can provide you all this information, in order to hopefully improve the place database of FamilySearch for this region.

ZoltanKelemen4

anyone?

russellwaltgeorge1

I am going to pass this on to the Authorities Team. We appreciate you willingness to help.

russellwaltgeorge1

Our Authorities contact has been in contact with the patron, and this has been converted to a Digital AI story.