Talk:Berlin-to-Kitchener name change

Comments

Amazing how few Kitchenerites know the full history of their own city. The original name was The Eby Settlement. Which later became Eby Towne. Because the many German speaking settlers in the town and general area the name was again changed, this time to Berlin, on the recommendation of Bishop Benjamin Eby. The Eby's, like most original immigrants to the area, were Pennsylvannia Dutch, however, the Dutch part of the name was really a mispronounciation of Pennsylvania Duetch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.64.235.113 (talk) 04:19, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Excellent article! It was featured on the Main Page today, if you hadn't noticed. I've been working on some of the local-area articles, but this is well-researched and a great story to boot. Bravo. Radagast 22:01, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

I second that. Always wondered what the story behind the name was. DJ Clayworth 22:03, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Fun page! Thanks. ;Bear 21:48, 2004 Mar 29 (UTC)

Significant parts of this seem to be taken from James Bow's piece (the last external link). Doesn't this violate copyright? Pha telegrapher 02:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Berlin was not the original name for this town. It was known as Sandhill before the name of Berlin was chosen for the settlement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.227.11 (talk) 21:41, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

How come 346 votes out of 892 were enough to change the name? ( 892 - 346 = 546) Or were there a sugnificant number of invalid or spoiled ballot papers, ie over 200 (so that the vote to retain Berlin was less than 346) Hugo999 (talk) 14:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The vote was a straw poll of several names. Kitchener got the most votes of all the choices. Flyingsquirrel (talk) 21:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you mean that it was "first paste the post", straw polls are defined as votes that have no binding changes. They are used to get a feel to see what will get chosen in the future. Think political surveys on TV versus an actual election. 24.246.40.139 (talk) 18:13, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

June vote discrepancies

There are discrepancies across sources regarding the June 1916 vote totals. If you add up the valid votes most historians provide, it generally comes to 729. Add that to the invalid vote tally of 163 and you end up with 892 total votes. The thing is, most historians write there were 1,055 total votes.

I presume this is what happened: an early historian (maybe Barbara Wilson, 1977) made an arithmetic error by accidentally adding the invalid votes (163) twice (729 + 163 = 892 while 729 + 163 + 163 = 1,055). Later historians cite Wilson but don't correct the error, allowing it to persist through time.

Here are the numbers provided by different sources. If they do not include a figure I just write "?" in its place.

Choice	Wilson (1977)	Moyer (1979)	English & McLaughlin (1983)	McKegney (1991)	Hayes (1997)
Kitchener	346	346	346	346	346
Brock	335	335	335	335	?
Adanac	23	23	23	23	?
Benton	15	15	15	15	?
Corona	7	7	7	7	?
Keowana	3	163 [sic]	3	3	?
Invalid/blank votes	163	"Many"	163	163	163
Total	1,055	?	1,055	892	1,055
Registered voters	?	?	?	4,897	?
Source

In Barbara Wilson's book of original sources, the July 1916 petitioners write the following:

11. The result of this breach of faith, as well as of all the unfairness of the promoters since the outset of the movement, was the insignificant vote of the citizens on the new name, only 729 in an electorate after deducting repeaters of some 4500. ...

The 729 caught my eye since it seems the more likely total for valid votes after looking at the above data. Tkbrett (✉) 20:55, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I will also note here that English & McLaughlin cite Wilson for their numbers, so that is not a separate source. Moyer and Hayes do not say where their numbers come from. Tkbrett (✉) 14:17, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I added McKegney to the table. She cites Wilson throughout her book, yet she is the only one to have resolved the vote total issue by returning to the primary sources. Tkbrett (✉) 16:32, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

References

See Also: Swastika, Ontario

It seems to me that perhaps adding a See Also section with a wikilink to Swastika, Ontario might be appropriate here? Yes, the town was named for Sanskrit symbol before use by the Nazis. During WWII, the province attempted to rename the town to "Winston", but the town replaced the Winston sign with a Swastika sign and a message "To hell with Hitler, we came up with our name first." I just updated the Swastika, Ontario article so that it discusses the temporary name. Normally, I would just make this change, but because this article is on today's DYK front page it seems better to discuss this. Cxbrx (talk) 00:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Cxbrx, That's fascinating. I never knew that existed, so I would support adding that to the see also section.  A S U K I T E  15:14, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

these are good points. ---Sm8900 (talk) 🌍 21:11, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added it. I'd like to avoid having a see also section that becomes burdened with including every other controversial city name, but this one seems apt given that it relates to both Ontario and something controversially German. Outside of my research for the Berlin to Kitchener change, I'm unaware how many more similar cases there are. If the answer is a lot, it could make sense to collect them as List of Canadian place names changed from German names, similar to the article List of Australian place names changed from German names. Tkbrett (✉) 11:23, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

There are a couple of other former Berlins: Genevra, California, Marne, Michigan, Otoe, Nebraska. Anti-German sentiment does a pretty good job of covering this, though, so I don't think the See Also section here is really the best place for other examples. —Kusma (talk) 12:41, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Usage of "Berlin to Kitchener"

In this context, "Berlin to Kitchener" is a compound adjective, modifying the compound noun "name change" and a compound adjective usually requires hyphens, or some similar character, between its parts (consider a "blue-green shade" or a "twice-told tale"). Thus, it seems that the standard typography of the title of this article would be "Berlin-to-Kitchener name change" or something similar. catsmoke (talk) 04:48, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

catsmoke: Sorry, I missed this when you originally commented here two years (!) ago. After reading up on compound adjectives in Garner's Modern American Usage (he terms them "phrasal adjectives"; pp. 625–628), I now understand their importance and I believe you are correct; it should be Berlin-to-Kitchener name change. I do not think this is a drastic and surprising change, so it can probably be moved right away, but I will give it a few days to see if anyone raises any objections. Tkbrett (✉) 14:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Tkbrett: Yes, "phrasal adjective" is the better term. Thank you for your attention to my suggestion. Thank you for the link to Garner's, I find it to be excellent. —catsmoke ^talk 13:22, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

catsmoke: I went ahead and moved the page, as I doubt anyone else is going to comment here. Tkbrett (✉) 15:16, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Tkbrett: A wise and correct move. —catsmoke ^talk 07:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Missing name explanantions

It's a pity not all the unsuccessful proposed names mentioned in the text have explanations provided in the footnotes. I think some should be in reliable sources. I quote unreliable sources from the net in grey and offer speculation in pink:

Significance of proposed names of Berlin/Kitchener

Name	Origin/meaning/significance
Brock	Isaac Brock, a British Army officer from the War of 1812.[85]
Kitchener	the recently deceased British Army officer Horatio Herbert Kitchener.
Adanac	"Adanac" being "Canada" spelled backwards
Bercana	"Bercana" being a portmanteau of "Berlin" and "Canada".
Hydro City	D. B. Detweiler, a local promoter of hydroelectricity, suggested "Hydro City"
Renoma	"which means famous in Esperanto"
Agnoleo	"name of locally-ground flour"
Benton	Main street of the city; "Named after Constable Benton who lived during the 1840's in a pretty little cottage at the western end of the present (1970) Charles Street"]
Corona	"Crown" in Latin, i.e. loyalty to the British monarchy?
Keowana	an indigenous word? There's a Kiowana Beach in Meaford, Ontario
Huronto	portmanteau of Huron and Toronto?
Dunard	Surname? portmanteau? [Irish Dún Ard?

jnestorius^(talk) 17:58, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I found information on the origins of the various name suggestions, but several of those explanations were removed during the FAC process after it became clear that multiple books were not up to the reliable sourcing standard. Many of the details surrounding the specific names are the part of local rumour. It tends to be the folksy self-published researchers who find the name suggestions interesting, while the historians end up focusing on larger aspects of the name change. Tkbrett (✉) 22:11, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I understand the concern. I think it's worth leaving the matter open, in case any RS should come to light for one or more of the unexplained ones. I surmise there is more hope of relevant primary sources surviving for the city council shortlist than the committee of 99's.

Some semi-related points:

• whatever their proposers may have been alluding to, most of the names were seen as gibberish by many commentators [Chadwick pp. 143–144]. The WP article seems to be vaguer: A report in the Berlin News Record wrote that the names became "the joke of the country".
• Chadwick also states [p. 142] that the committee of 99 "stipulated that no name already on the map could be proposed nor any name connected with past or present wars" [ruling out Waterloo, Brock, and Kitchener].

jnestorius^(talk) 13:54, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I entirely avoided using Chadwick when writing the page because I didn't think his book would reach the reliable sourcing standard. Though Kenneth McLaughlin provides a laudatory foreword, describing Chadwick's research as "painstakingly accurate", the book made my historiography senses tingle; when I grabbed it off the shelf at the library, I flipped to the back and saw it did not include a bibliography, nor does it include either footnotes or endnotes to indicate from where he's getting information. That made me think it probably isn't the best book for historical research purposes, but is instead intended as an interesting read for the popular reading non-historian market.

The best book on the subject to my mind is Patricia P. McKegney's The Kaiser's Bust: A Study of War-Time Propaganda in Berlin, Ontario, 1914–1918 (University of Bamberg Press, 1991). She passes over the name suggestions without explaining any of them (besides "Kitchener", of course; pp. 177–178), though she indicates in an endnote that they first ran in the 30 May 1916 issue of the Berlin News Record (pp. 177, 263n28). I'll see if I can get this issue of the newspaper from the Kitchener Public Library, since it may have the information you seek. When they went remote due to the pandemic, they were quite helpful providing me with scans of papers while I worked through both this page and the Berliner Journal. I'm not sure if they're still providing that service or if you have to go check the microfilm yourself, but I'll let you know what I find. Tkbrett (✉) 14:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Is there a danger of doing original research into whether or not a particular source is reliable? Assessing Chadwick in the light of WP:SCHOLARSHIP, it seems to amount to whether Wilfrid Laurier University Press is a "well-regarded academic press". I am not qualified to answer that, but it seems odd to me to suggest a book as "Further reading" if its reliability is in question. Maybe it's only the photos in the book that are worth looking at? Or should the Further-reading entry come with some kind of "accessible-but-not-reliable" health warning? jnestorius^(talk) 16:22, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Historian Geoffrey Hayes reviewed the book in a 1995 issue of Labour/Le Travail. He criticizes the book as poor by the standards of history but an entertaining read. In particular: "Perhaps good history simply makes bad drama. Perhaps also this reviewer may be asking for too much, for Chadwick's book (like the play) is intended primary for a popular audience. Both works deserve a substantial audience, and not just from Kitchener, for what they suffer in historical objectivity is largely offset by their detailed and highly entertaining presentation." (p. 342). With this in mind, I don't have any major issues with including it in the Further reading section provided we don't cite it within the body of the text. Tkbrett (✉) 16:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

In light of Hayes' review, I included information regarding Chadwick's book and play. Tkbrett (✉) 16:52, 29 January 2022 (UTC)