Talk:Francisco José Debali

Birthplace

(message copied from Kraxler's talk page) I am referring to my change made in the article "Debály Ferenc József" which you deleted because of the lack of reference.

First of all your reference is also a Hungarian-language source which is completely wrong. If Debály had been an "Austrian subject", he could not have been born in "Oltenia" which was NOT part of the Habsburg Monarchy at the time Debály was born. (See the history of Oltenia in Wikipedia) The second and more important reason is that the name "Kinséen" is a corrupt form whose origin the author was unable to find. However, there is a village in today's Romania, at that time Transilvania, called Chinteni (in Hungarian Kajántó) which had a Hungarian majority population before WW1. Chinteni is pronounced in Romanian with dropping the "i" at the end making it sound like "khinten" Also there are several sources confirming that Debály is from "Transilvania" which is clearly different from "Oltania".

Here is one for instance:

http://epa.oszk.hu/00600/00674/00038/pdf/00038a.pdf

On page 4 middle column it says, "the melody of the anthem of Uruguay was written by a 'man from Transilvania' Debály Ferenc József" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hhgygy (talk • contribs) 18:02, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello, Hhgygy! Thank you for your interest in the article, and for your message. There are several problems with your statements, though. Although I personally think that your proposed identification of "Kinséen" as modern Chinteni is quite likely to be correct, there is still no source that actually says so. Every source on Debali says something different: that he was from Wallachia, Oltenia, Transilvania, Hungarian, Austrian subject etc. The only reliable source I found was this book in Hungarian which quotes from Debali's original passport (or the pertinent files in Hungary) which he used when he left the Austrian Empire in 1829. It is certain that Debali was an Austrian subject, since his first names were the names of the Austrian emperor, and foreigners would not christen their children on these names. The book says "Olahorszag"; contrary to Wikipedia's history of Oltenia, I have found sources that say that Oltenia was occupied by Austrian forces shortly before Debali's birth, and with the patriotic fisrt names, I imagine he was the son of some member of the Austrian military forces. On the other side, Oltenia might have had a slightly different area than today, which included Chinteni. Your "source" mentioned above is a newsletter issued in 2008, so the author might have copied his info from an earlier version of the Wiki article, and it does not mention Chinteni. Anyway, there is no proof either way. All we can do is dig deeper into the sources... I will rewrite the article to take all this into account. Kraxler (talk) 19:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the Caineni, formerly Cîineni, place is most likely his birthplace. I have seen sources saying his birthplace was "Kinnen" or "Kineen", the -s- might have been a misspelling. Against Chinteni speaks the fact that it has a Hungarian name (Kajanto) which would have been used by Hungarian authorities. Since Oltenia had just been occupied by Austrian forces, and was later abandoned again, "Kin(n)e(e)n" might be the phonetic transcription of the Romanian name of the place which was used by the Hungarians while they were there. Some time I will try to get to the bottom of this. Kraxler (talk) 16:42, 8 July 2010 (UTC)