Talk:Dunkirk

Old talk

Proposed moves: Dunkirk → Dunkirk (disambiguation) and Dunkirk, France → Dunkirk - Dunkirk in France is by far the most significant Dunkirk; most, if not all other Dunkirks are named after this one. Discussion at Talk:Dunkirk. Markussep 07:49, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. Dragons flight 05:21, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The Other Little Boats: July 1588

I am posting this here because I don't feel it is appropriate to the Encyclopedia page, and not really sure where else it should go. Hopefully somebody more qualified will move it as appropriate.

The Other Little Boats: July 1588.

by Ed. Shanks

<text of poem redacted>

--Lil Miss Picky 15:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the text of the poem above. It may well still be in copyright. In any case, we would not normally publish the full text of a work, even in an article about that work. SpinningSpark 10:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Infamous Raiders

"In the Eighty Years' War the port was the base of the infamous Dunkirker Raiders until the city was conquered by Louis XIII of France in 1646."

Seeing as these infamous raiders have no article, I was wondering if anyone knew enough to write about this. Also, the Wikipedia main page today has a link to this article mentioning the sale of Dunkirk to France by Charles II of England. However, I see no mention in the article. Can someone who knows of this topic add it to the article? Hiberniantears 15:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, it was mentioned, but I elucidated it a bit.--MWAK 10:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The information on this page is not correct this is not the correct definition to this word!!1

Dunkirk in World War II

The story I heard was so many escaped because Hitler thought the British, being Germanic peoples, were Germany's natural allies. The eased up on the attacks for that reason.

Partner town in Germany

Dunkirk has, apart from Krefeld, another partner town in Germany: the city of Rostock. I think it could be mentioned on the main page for completeness.

--Gzim75 07:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Map?

Why is the map off-center? The larger, zoomed version is correct, but the map is off-kilter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.253.167 (talk) 22:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Louis XIII Error

How could Louis XIII conquer the city in 1646 when he died in 1643?--Syd Henderson (talk) 17:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't know why the Germans delayed their attack...?

It says that it's not known why the Germans were delayed, but I just learned in history class that it was because of fog. Why does it say here that the reason isn't known? 24.141.72.162 (talk) 22:44, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The reason is known, but it's foggy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.3.144.72 (talk) 05:40, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Northernmost Francophone city?

"Nowadays, Dunkirk is the world's northernmost Francophone city (not counting minor Canadian settlements such as Fermont, which does have French as a majority language, but is not classified as a city)." Does anyone have a citation for this? I was sceptical, reading it, and a two-second google search suggests there are definitely arguments to be made for various places in Canada. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.86.196 (talk) 17:04, 8 October 2015 (UTC) -Sept-Îles, Quebec seems to be a close contender, though it's very small and qualifies on the basis of its government structure, not our vernacular use of the word city. I was unable to find a source other than just Wikipedia's longitude. This section is extremely poorly worded in any case and needs some refreshing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.108.96.71 (talk) 19:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Name

The page is clearly in the right spot, but I am just realizing now that this is the only French city I can think of that is not referred to by its French name in English. That is to say, we don't Anglicize any other French place names, so why this one? It would be good if the article could address this.Sylvain1972 (talk) 15:06, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

Some other French cities do have anglicized names, but they have become less common in English. (Doway, Lyons, Marseilles, and Cambray are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. My guess would be that due to Dunkirk's important role in the World Wars, the English name stuck. Genealogizer (talk) 22:14, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Dunkirk. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130705094933/http://www.completefrance.com/language-culture/twin-towns to http://www.completefrance.com/language-culture/twin-towns

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:09, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

WW2 evacuation numbers

Obviously there has to be an error in these numbers from the article:

338,226 men (including 123,000 French soldiers) were evacuated – the miracle of Dunkirk, as Churchill called it. It took over 900 vessels to evacuate the Allied forces and although over two-thirds of those rescued embarked via the harbour, almost 295,000 British and 60,000 French were taken off the beaches.

Two thirds of a total of 338,226 is about 225,000. Now, if you add the 355,000 it says were taken from the beaches nothing adds up.

Cheers!

I spotted that, too. It's saying that 295,000 + 60,000 were taken off the beaches, which comes to 355,000 of the 338,266 men. But two thirds of them were taken off by harbour. I need to look into this further. — MiguelMunoz (talk) 07:55, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing and, although I can't solve it, I might as well share my findings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_evacuation#Analysis and https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/52/195152-004-63549777.jpg and http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/03/dunkirk_facts_figures.shtml agree that 338,226 total were evacuated of which 239,555 (or 239,446 per BBC, small discrepancy -- but isn't it weird that sources agree on the total but not the breakdown?) embarked from the harbor and 98,671 (or 98,780 per BBC, small discrepancy) from the beaches. The British/French breakdown is iffier. The Britannica graphic says 59% British, 41% French and Belgian, which would be about 199,553 British and 138,673 French/Belgian. But I see no breakdown in any source as to how many British and French/Belgian were taken specifically off the beaches rather than the harbor. We need better sources than I can find to straighten this out. It would not surprise me if NO ONE knows the breakdown by nationality that were taken off the beach rather than the harbor. It's surprising enough that they kept as precise a count as is reported in these sources; would they have also kept count of which uniform everyone was wearing as they picked them out of the surf after they'd waded out to a small boat? Sorry I'm not more help. Gms3591 (talk) 13:18, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Dunkirk. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071202110544/http://www.army.cz/avis/areport2005/ar11str.pdf to http://www.army.cz/avis/areport2005/ar11str.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131018043101/http://meteo59-62.com/index.php5?page=climat-nord-pas-de-calais to http://www.meteo59-62.com/index.php5?page=climat-nord-pas-de-calais

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:22, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Native name of Dunkirk

IvanScrooge98 is starting an edit war for inserting a Flemish native name of the town in the infobox. This breaks the WP:NPOV policy, as very few native inhabitants of Dunkirk still talk Flemish, and even less use the Flemish name for their town. For appearing in the infobox, an information must have a significant importance, and be supported by reliable and sources. By "neutral", I mean a source that has no political interest in the subject, such as Flemish nationalists (by the way, by mistake, I have used "Welsh" instead of "Flemish" in an edit summary).

Therefore, I'll revert this again in a few days (because of WP:3RR), unless someone will provide some good reasons for keeping it (by "good" I mean supported by Wikipedia rules).

By the way, the French Flemish and the Dutch names of Dunkirk appear in the first line of the article. The French Flemish name is acceptable for historical reasons, although it would better be placed in section "Etymology and language use". But there is no more reason to give the Dutch name than to give the Italian name or the Chinese name. So, I'll remove the Dutch name form the first line. D.Lazard (talk) 16:30, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@D.Lazard: how many French cities have a separate English name? Not so many, right? So what would be the purpose of a “native name” parameter in the template for French communes if we only considered French as a significant native language? I think you should discuss this at the related talk page. Regarding the Dutch name, it is there as a historically relevant name, as is common in the leads for cities (and actually I believe it is much more useful, being Dutch a live language, than is, e.g. a Latin name as I have seen on a lot of pages). イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 16:41, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

A good example of what is usual in English Wikipedia is Germany: It has very different names in various languages (Deutschland, Allemagne, Germania, ...) and has 8 recognized minority languages. Nevertheless, only Germany (the English name) and Deutchland (the German name) appear in the lead and the infobox. If the reader want to know the name in his preferred language, it has to go to the interlanguage links on the left of the page. The same is true for Dunkirk. The English and French names must appear in the lead and the infobox. The other names (Dutch, Portuguese—a live language that is much more spoken than Dutch—, Catalan, ...) have to be found through the interlanguage links (this is an English Wikipedia article about a French town). As French Flemish is a non-recognized minority language, the French Flemish name is not relevant for the lead and the infobox. Moreover, the Dutch name is not historically relevant, as Dunkirk has never been a colony of Nederland.

Please do not discuss with your personal opinion, but with sourced facts and Wikipedia rules. D.Lazard (talk) 18:01, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Not recognized = not relevant? There is plenty of local languages that are not all over the world, that does not appear like a valid argument. Also, Germany is a country while Dunkirk is a city. And the fact that a town belongs in a country with a nation-wide language does not delete that it is close to the border with another country and that in any case French is not the only language of France (even though I know it is definitely the most spoken one pretty much everywhere in the country). I think this should be discussed for the whole way names are usually listed on Wikipedia. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 18:15, 18 August 2019 (UTC)