Talk:Battle of Tannenberg (1410)

In Polish it is certainly Grunwald. And it is in middle of Poland now, so that should be a default spelling on Wikipedia. Not to mention that its simpler (On the other hand this is etymologically clearly a German word.). If German spelling is Grünewald or whatever you can add a note about this spelling. --Taw

Taw, here's my take in it -- if the battle took place when the area had a German name, then the German name is the one most English-speakers would use. In the case of all of those Baltic ex-German places that now have Russian or Polish names, I think we should go by the current name -- the difference is that cities are living things, so to speak -- our point of reference is now, and then we trace back through history to see other names. For a battle or other event, like the Defenestration of Prague (not Praha), we default to the most normally used (in current English) name. Does that make sense? I'm still not sure about the name, though -- does Grunwald mean Green Forest in Polish? or is it a Polanization of a German name? I'll try to look up the Battle in English and see what the norm is. JHK