Talk:Thalmann Battalion

Article name

Is there a reason for the name being "Thalmann Battalion" and not "Thälmann Battalion"? -- Hestemand 19:09, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Only to make it easier (1) to spell for non-literati and non-polyglotti; (2) to find via Search engines and (3) to remember for the future for Anglophones. The tradition / usual rule in English (I pass no judgment on this, I'm merely reporting) is to drop accents. The older literature calls it Thaelmann, by the way; the newer ones Thalmann. Thälmann is probably what I'd use in private correspondence but I think I'd stick with Thalmann for popular publication. Roger 19:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see were you're coming from, but as far as I've seen on Wikipedia, ulauts and even some foreign letters are used. Yet I don't have any guideline or rule to back it up, so all I can do is point to other articles: like Ernst Thälmann. -- Hestemand 16:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, you're right. For future reference, the umlaut should be retained as it shows how the word is pronounced. For a popular take of this, Googling produces the following numbers of hits: Thalmann, 58,000; Thaelmann, 65,000; Thälmann, 809,000. I'll cut and paste the contents into Thälmann Battalion and turn this into a REDIRECT page. Roger 05:14, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]