Talk:Byzantine–Bulgarian wars

message: Whoever wrote this article has only vague knowledge on the subject. To say that the Bulgarians "usually lost" from the time of Asparukh's reign to that of khan Krum is ridiculous and I encourage the author to read up on the victories of khan Tervel over Justinian II, and the battles fought by khan Kardam. The Byzantine emperor Constantine V was the only emperor to claim any significant millitary successes, and those never resulted in territorial gains. I don't have time to revise the whole article, but do encourage if you ever want to write something in Wikipedia to at least put in the effort to read up on the subject that you are presenting.
Constantine V the only emperor to lead successful military campaign against the Bulgarians? What about the Macedonian dynasty? "Basil the Bulgar-Slayer"? Forget that one?
68.81.84.122 23:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: Bulgarian army conquering Edessa and killing its governor
No this picture caption is very wrong, the image itself says Thessalonika. The author should have seen that one.Tourskin 20:52, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  
Lol, Bulgarians in Edessa? 

message: I think it be more appropriate for the territorial changes to say something like "Both sides lost and regained territory several times." The Ottoman conquests were largely unrelated to the Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars, and so the territorial changes that resulted from the Ottoman conquests can't be seen as a result of the Byzantine-Bulgarian Wars.
:I think you are right. --Gligan 09:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Territorial Changes 

message: I think a significant chapter, that this article is/would be missing, is one dealing with the wars between Byzantium and the Bulgarians (Bulgars) before the creation of the Bulgarian state on the Danube in 681. The Bulgars were an almost constant menace to the Empire's Balkan frontiers during the 6th century. There is an excellent online source - John Bagnall Bury: History of the Later Roman Empire. Bulgarian readers could look into Zlatarski, History of the Bulgarian State in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, Part I. Dobrin (talk) 16:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Before 681 

message: I think this article needs to have a policy on naming.
Where an English version of a name exists, and it is widely used in English language texts, this should be used. Thus both Symeon and Samuel exist as names in the English language, therefore these forms should be used in preference to Semyon (or similar) or Samuil. Svyatoslav and Omurtag, on the other hand, which do not have an English equivalent are fine as they stand.Urselius (talk) 08:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of English or transliterated names 

message: it's bulgars not bulgarians. bulgarians are the citizens of the newly found modern state of bulgaria.79.126.246.77 (talk) 10:58, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In scholarship the term Bulgar is usually restricted to the Turkic Bulgars, the people resulting from the melding of the Slav tribes and their Bulgar overlords are termed Bulgarians. For convenience this change in nomenclature is often pegged onto the conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity. As an added complexity the state of the Danubian Bulgars is often termed Bulgaria from its inception, partly to distinguish it from the Khaganate of the Volga Bulgars. Urselius (talk) 11:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: if you open an article Second Bulgarian Empire on bulgarian language is written: Второ българско царство, not: Второ българијанско царство. so that means that the Bulgarians were referring to themselves as "Bulgars".79.126.246.77 (talk) 13:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm talking about scholarship in the English language, I have no idea what terminology is used in Bulgarian. Urselius (talk) 17:49, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: i will spell it on english: vtoro blgarsko tzarstvo, not vtoro bulgariyansko tzarstvo.79.126.246.77 (talk) 17:54, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Aside from the fact that this is the English, not the Bulgarian Wikipedia, what you say is simply wrong: "Bulgarian" in Bulgarian is "български" ("blgarski"), not "българијански" ("blgariyanski"). "Bulgar Khanate", "Bulgars" etc can be used for the first two hundred years of the Bulgarian state, when the fusion between the Turkic Bulgars and the local Slavic and pre-Slavic populations had not yet been completed. But after ca. 860, the common term in English scholarship is "Bulgarian". Constantine   ✍  18:34, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  yes, i know it's english, so you should clear up the terms and names. knowing that the bulgars were assimilated by the local indigenous slavic population, not fusioned or slavicized, means that there are no bulgarians. it's bulgars or slavs. it cannot be both. they were just the rulling class or house or whatever. by using these wrong terms the mist in the history just gets bigger. so what if it's official historians term? it cannot be changed?79.126.203.192 (talk) 13:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: it's like calling the British people "Frenchians" or "Vikingians".79.126.203.192 (talk) 13:54, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

text: You are, of course, free to think whatever you like. However, Wikipedia content on any subject is, and has to be, based on the concensus in the published literature. Therefore the treatment of the terms "Bulgar" and "Bulgarian" will remain as it is. Urselius (talk) 18:06, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: yeah right, i didn't expect any other scientific answer. the latins didn't fight bulgarians, they fought slavs or veneti who had turkic rulers. check out florin curta. tnx 4 your time.79.126.213.85 (talk) 01:22, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a copy of Curta. The Second Bulgarian Empire had a great deal of Vlach and Cuman involvement, should we call the people of this empire "Vlach-cuman-slavo-bulgars", or "Bulgarians"? Reductio ad absurdam but in line with your reasoning. Urselius (talk) 08:38, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: they had more involvement than bulgars, that's for sure. it was just a house or ruling dynasty of some khans and that's about all you will find bulgarian in bulgaria.79.126.246.111 (talk) 23:24, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

text: Indeed. I think that WP:DNFTT applies here. Constantine   ✍  07:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: bulgarians

message: "Sviatoslav's invasion and the Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria" is too long, both as a lump of text and as a period of time. The period described in this section is over 40 years, more than a generation. I propose that it should be split into something resembling this: 'Sviatoslav's invasion and the conquests of John I Tzimiskes', 'Tsar Samuel', and the 'Conquest of Bulgaria by Basil II'. Urselius (talk) 19:49, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm glad you mentioned that as I was about to split it up last night.  Thanks for the suggested outline. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 20:18, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlong section 

message: As I have said earlier on this page an article on the English Language Wikipedia needs to relflect usage in English language scholarship. I know that the transliteration of the Bulgarian Cyrillic name is Samuil, however, I have not come across a book on the subject in English which uses this form - all use the standard English form of this Biblical name - Samuel. This applies to most names in foreign languages that have well known English language versions differing from their original pronunciation or spelling, thus we don't have Kikero (Cicero), or Iulius Kaisar (Julius Caesar), or indeed Vasilios (Basil) or Mavrikios (Maurice). In the present context Samuil looks particularly out of place next to the Biblical names of his brothers - David, Moses etc. in their English forms. Also the form Samuil will cause the reader coming from an English language background some confusion - is Samuil the same as Tsar Samuel, or is it a different man? I know that I was confused initially, and I have been interested in Byzantine History since 1980, and am well read in the field. Urselius (talk) 08:12, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Samuel/Samuil transliteration and usage