If you drive into Valkenswaard on Tuesday, there is a chance that you will enter ‘Valkeswird’ according to the place name sign – the place name in the local language. On Tuesday, a group of journalists will place stickers with the old place names on the ‘normal’ place name signs in ten Brabant towns. They believe that duplicate place name signs are painfully absent in our province.
Passers-by in Valkenswaard are divided about the sticker on the sign. “Is it for carnival? Oh, it’s because people think the dialect names should return. Well, that’s fine actually,” says a cyclist. Another cyclist is less positive. “Why is this necessary? I also think it is nonsense that Friesland has two place names almost everywhere,” she says firmly.
In any case, Rens van de Plas is in favor of it. He is the founder of Woeste Grond, a journalistic collective that focuses on Brabant. Van de Plas investigated how many bilingual place name signs there are in our province and found that that number is surprisingly low. In fact, only in the municipality of Altena there are double place name signs.
Not unusual
It is not unusual in the Netherlands for place names to also be read in the local regional language on the well-known blue signs. There are more than a hundred of such double place name signs throughout the Netherlands. They are very common in Limburg, Friesland and Drenthe, but not in Brabant. “And we would like to start a conversation about that,” says Van de Plas.
On Tuesday he will stick a ‘dialect sticker’ over the normal place name signs in ten different Brabant towns. Starting in Valkenswaard (‘Valkeswird’), but also Wintelre (‘Wentersel’) and Waalwijk (‘Wolluk’) it’s turn today. “In Limburg they do these kinds of actions more often. There you notice that it really makes sense because there is a conversation among residents about the arrival of bilingual signs.”
Van de Plas also wants to start that conversation in Brabant, but he has not yet entered into that conversation with the municipalities themselves. “I can send a letter, but there will be a response six weeks later. This is a much more fun way to start the conversation. I think this also makes much more sense. It would be a successful action for me if there are a number of council members who also think something about it.”
The stickers are also a reason for another conversation, because there are usually several dialect spellings possible per location. ‘Valkeswird’ is also written as ‘Valkenswird’, for example. “I still expect that there will be criticism,” laughs Van de Plas. “The municipality will soon be able to figure that out for itself.”