Inconsistency in standardised place names

LegacyUser

Marianne **** said: I’ve noticed that the standard “Sicily, Italy” has now been replaced by the new standard “Sicilia, Italy”. To me this makes no sense at all. The standard should be either all in English (as previously) or all in Italian (Sicilia, Italia), not a mish-mash of both languages.

Furthermore, I have noticed that Lombardy and Sardinia have not been Italianised to Lombardia and Sardegna, so I don’t understand why Sicily’s name has been Italianised. There should be consistency in the spelling of the names of all 20 Italian regions. Either they should be written in English (followed by Italy) or in Italian (followed by Italia).

LegacyUser

Marianne **** said: I forgot to mention that there should also be consistency in the spelling of the names of Italian cities and their associated provinces. Currently some are in English (e.g. Rome, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples), while others are in Italian (e.g. Padova, Torino). In some cases the city is written in English and its associated province is written in Italian. For example Genoa and Milan (cities) and Genova and Milano (provinces). I think Family Search should decide on one language for these place names and apply it consistently.

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Milan: they have the Italian display name as Milan (and I assume it should be Milano). The province only has the Italian display name; it does not have an English version (which I assume would be Milan). If you have the site shown in English, it will pick the English version as the display name if it is programmed in. Otherwise, it will pick the native language name of it I think.

I honestly think it would be a great feature to have the option to show everything in the native language if you want. But FamilySearch would have to implement something like I wrote in this post here before they did for a better user experience...: https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea....
I say to have the option to go with the site language for all records or the language of the country is because many people may not recognize or want to look at another country's spelling of their own country, provinces, etc.

I also like consistency. I standardize all place names in the Netherlands with the English "Netherlands" instead of "Nederland" because it is convenient, but I would rather do it all in the native language of Dutch. If I could change the website into Dutch (which is an upcoming feature), it would display Nederland instead of Netherlands for a standard place name because Nederland is a display name for that country in Dutch. However, I'm not going to change the place name from Netherlands to Nederland for 18000+ events on FamilySearch without programming just to satisfy my OCD.

What you can do, though, is to help update the FamilySearch Places database by including the English version of names on there.

LegacyUser

Marianne **** said: Hi Jordi, thanks for your advice re updating the FamilySearch places database.

I mentioned English in particular, because that’s the site I use. I also understand that most Italian place names do not have equivalents in other languages.

My main concern is with Italian place names that do have equivalents in other languages. In such cases, for each different language’s website, I think the standard place names should be expressed either all in that language or all in Italian. (My own personal preference would be all in Italian.)

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Users have the option of what they want to have displayed (the user-entered field), but when it comes to the standard -- it is a geophysical location (map coordinates), not a name. That location is identified by different names and eventually will be date sensitive, or at least that was the goal. There is a lot more behind-the-scenes development going on that is taking place, and we may see bits and pieces here and there. The inconsistency that you've noted may be part of that.

The displayed standard name is likely dependent upon the user's selected language, something that Jordi pointed out (coming, not yet released).

LegacyUser

Bosch said: I think that it would make sense that names were shown not in the language they were written but in the language of the Internet browser (in fact, that is how it works in memories). I've watched ridiculous edition wars of people changing the name of the place from one language to another one and that is completely unproductive.