The place of birth of Ena Begović

24 February 2023

I stumbled accidentally over a discrepancy regarding the place of birth of the Croatian actress Ena Begović, and noticed that if you ask Google for the place of birth, it answers Trpanj, whereas Wikipedia lists Split. I was curious where Google got Trpanj from.

The original article in English Wikipedia was created in August 2005 by Raoul DMR. The article listed her as a "native of Split", which in September 2005 was turned into "born in Split".

In April 2018, Lole484, a user who gets blocked for sockpuppeting later, adds that she was born in "Trpanj near Split". There is no Trpanj near Split, but there is a Trpanj on Pelješac. Realzing that, they remove the "near Split" part. In 2019, Ivan Ladic - a sockpuppet of Lole484 - adds a reference to the city of birth being Trpanj, Večernji list, a well known Croatian news magazine.

In April 2020, an anonymous editor changes the place of birth back to Split, and adds a reference to the Croatian national encyclopedia. Today, I changed it back to Trpanj, accidentally while not being logged in (thus anonymously), to see what happens, after starting a conversation on the talk page on English and Croatian.

Interestingly, immediately after changing the text, Google shows me the Wikipedia article, with the updated snippet as a source. That is impressive.

If you ask Bing, Bing was saying Split for the last three weeks, whenever I checked. Today, it still kept saying Split, referencing two sources, one of them English Wikipedia, although I had already updated that. Not as fresh. Let's see how long this will stick.

The Croatian article was created in 2006 after the English one already stated Split, and Split was presumably copied over from the English version. Lole484 changed it to Trpanj in May 2018, and was later also blocked on Croatian Wikipedia, for unrelated reasons of vandalism. The same anonymous editor as on English Wikipedia changes it back to Split in April 2020.

Serbian and Serbocroatian started their articles in 2007, Russian in 2012, Ukrainian in 2016, Albanian and Bulgarian in 2017, Egyptian Arabic was created in October 2020. They all had Split from the beginning, presumably copied from English, directly or indirectly.

January 2022, Serbian Wikipedia's opening sentence, which includes the place of birth being Split, receives a reference - but the reference actually states Trpanj.

None of the other language editions had their article started in the 2018-2019 window when English and Croatian stated the place of birth as Trpanj.

The only other Wikipedia language edition that saw a change of the place of birth was the Bosnian. Bosnian Wikipedia started a few months after the Croatian, in 2006 (and thus being the third oldest article), and presumably also just copied from either Croatian or English. Lole484 changed it to Trpanj in April 2018, just like on the other Wikipedias. Here it was reverted the next day, but Lole484's sockpuppet Ivan Ladic reinstated that change in January 2019.

On Wikidata, the item was created in 2012, shortly after the launch of the site, based on the existing six sitelinks. The place of birth is added the following year, imported from the Russian Wikipedia.

After I stumbled upon the situation, I added Trpanj as second place of birth, and added sources to both Trpanj and Split.

What's the situation outside of Wikipedia? Both places have pretty solid references going for them:

• Trpanj
  • Večernji list, article from 2016
  • Biografija stated Trpanj, no date, but after 2013 (Archive has the first copy from October 2020)
  • Dubrovački Vjesnik, local newspaper close to Trpanj, lists Trpanj, article from 2020
• tportal.hr has an article on a photography exhibition in Trpanj about Ena Begović, saying the place is chosen because it is her place of birth, published 2016
• Slobodna Dalmacija, a local newspaper from Split, writes Trpanj (but not that Slobodna and Dubrovački belong to the same publisher)
• Juarnji list, published 2020, probably copied from the previous source
• Split
  • Croatian national encyclopedia, published in 2021
  • Filmski leksikon from the same publisher, no date, but after 2008 (Archive has the first copy from 2022)
  • Gloria, a Croatian magazine, says she was born in Split, but Trpanj was her home, published 2020
• film.hr via Archive, from 2007

Some of the sources predate the English Wikipedia article, most notably:

• net.hr published the news of her death and burial in 2000, and lists Split as the place of birth
• IMdb from April 2005 via Archive lists Split, but today's IMDB does not list the place of birth anymore