This article is within the scope of WikiProject South Africa, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
South Africa on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.South AfricaWikipedia:WikiProject South AfricaTemplate:WikiProject South AfricaSouth Africa articles
Thanks for your note. The sources I consulted about the spelling are The Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, the Reader's Digest Atlas of Southern Africa , the AA New Southern African Book of the Road and the Illustrated Guide to Southern Africa. It is named after the Wupper Valley in Germany and the present city is also called
Wuppertal.
Rotational (
talk)
11:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)reply
I moved and merged the pages to use the spelling Wupperthal before I saw this discussion. On digging a bit further (local maps and books), it looks like Wupperthal and Wuppertal are both in use. Even the town's own website is inconsistent (as noted above, but presumably the website address and title graphic, which both have an H, are more "official" than the text on the website, which sometimes doesn't). Beyond the Cederberg: Agter-Pakhuis, Biedouw, Wupperthal by Peter Slingsby (an expert on local names) says the South African town has retained the old German spelling, with the "h". My government map of the area (dated 1988) shows "Wuppertal" for the town but "Wupperthal" for the historic farms in the area. To me this suggests a relatively recent attempt to simplify the spelling in line with Afrikaans usage, and it's possible that government usage and common usage differ.
Zaian (
talk)
19:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)reply