Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)/Archive 6

Suggested amendment to the Naming Convention

Here's my suggested solution.
current text
Convention: In general, use the most common form of the name used in English and disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format [[{Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country}]] (example: Edward I of England).

General practice is that where there has only been one holder of a specific monarchical name in a state, the ordinal is not used. For example, Victoria of the United Kingdom, not [Victoria I of the United Kingdom], Juan Carlos of Spain not [Juan Carlos I of Spain].

addition

1.1 Given that monarchs in some regions use fundamentally different nomenclature to that specified above, an alternative generally accepted version may be used. The list of monarchies to which they applies to on wikipedia is

China
Japan

1.2. Additional suggested exceptions should be debated on the wiki-list and on the accompanying talk page. Where there is a consensus, they should be entered onto the above list and the relevant rule applied to them.

Reason: Creating a specified excluded list means people can't simple 'do their own thing' but can suggest that in 'x' case an exception could be made. If there is a consensus, then that state can be listed. In the event of a revertion war, you can say - look at rule 1.1 and that means you can kill of a time-wasting war without filling pages disputing it. The specific native form can then be explained in a paragraph, so later people adding a page who don't understand the format will understand how to do it.

1.3. In such cases, the most commonly recognised form in the local language may be used.

The problem is that in many cases the most commonly recognized form in the local language isn't the most commonly used form in English. I might be wrong about this, but I suspect that this is the true in the case of Hirohito

1.4. To avoid confusion a redirect should also also created in the standard form, to allow those who do not understand the native version to still track down the name in a form they recognise.

1.5. Where in the exceptions above, a state's name is not normally included in the monarchical title, to provide clarification for users who might not recognise the geo-identity of the monarch, a state, where one can clearly be identified in the period when the monarch reigned (or where the monarchy still exists and reigns over the equivalent territory as a modern state), should be entered after the name, in brackets. For example, Meiji emperor (Japan) Such an addition is not intended to claim that the emperor reigned over such a state, merely to clarify in a general geographical sense they existed for the benefit of users.

I think there is a bit of confusion here. Meiji emperor is not a monarchal title. What happens is that there are a set of emperors whose most commonly used form is the reign era. In contrast to Akihito, Emperor of Japan, which is a monarchcal title, the Meiji emperor is not a title or even a name, but rather shorthand for "the emperor that ruled during the Meiji era". Fortunately, the number of East Asian emperors who use reign titles is limited (they include Japanese emperors and Chinese Emperors of the Ming/Qing era.) Since the numbers of these emperors are rather limited, and since all of them are historical, I'd rather not include a country designation.

1.6. If possible a link should be put to a page on wiki that explains the history behind that monarch's particular nomenclature.

(Most of the below suggestions would require creating a special talk name, maybe reference on the w-list, etc which to be honest is a pain in the backside for anyone trying it. It is better to include one of two self contained changes than trying to redo a whole passage! - written from experience! - STÓD/ÉÍRE 02:22 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

The problem that I have with this approach is that it doesn't provide any guidance as to why there are special exceptions. I don't think that China and Japan (and Korea and Vietnam and Malaysia) should be exceptions to the rule. Rather we should as much as possible come up with general rules which fit all monarchies, so that we have some clue what to do with Saudi monarchs and sub-Saharan monarchs.

One thing to keep in mind is that East Asian monarchial naming practices are derived from Chinese practice and so the naming convention used in Japan should be applicable to Korea or Vietnam, and if it isn't, there is something wrong.

Also, if the general naming convention contradicts the naming convention for European kings, then something is also wrong.

Something that makes me suspect that (for example) the personal name rule is a good one is that it seems explain why some of the Polish kings have "of Poland" in them and some of them don't.

Roadrunner

What about the following standards:

1) A royal personage will be indexed a name based on the most common form used in English. Where there is no form that is most common in English, the most common form in the local language will be used.

Implications: This means that the names of East Asian emperors will be inconsistent. Under this rule, Hirohito will be referred to as Hirohito, his person name, but the Meiji emperor will be refered to by the era name.

2) When the most commonly used form is the personal name, it will be rendered using standard Wikipedia conventions for names.

Implications: The most common form of monarchical names for European monarchs is never the personal name and in the case of Europe the use of a personal name generally implies that the person is not a legitimate monarch. By contrast, East Asian monarchs are sometimes refered to by personal name.

The only place in Europe were this might be an issue is Napoleon and the kings of Poland.

Examples: Hirohito, Nordom Sihanouk, Cao Cao

3) Where a personal name and a royal name are equally commonly used among English speakers, the royal name is preferred.

Implications: This is the "Napoleon rule"

4) Where the most common English form is an era name. The title of the article should be "X emperor" with emperor in lower case.

Implications: This rule comes into play in Japanese emperors other than Hirohito and Akihito and for Ming and Qing Chinese emperors. The form "Emperor X" is incorrect in this case, and there is no chance for duplication.

I basically agree with this. We should come up with more examples. According to 1), I think most (except Hirohito and era name emperor such as Meiji emperor) of Japanese emperor becomes {name given after death) Emperor. No? -- Taku 04:24 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hi. I don't really want to get involved in a slanging match, but... To start with, when I agreed with JTD's strategy, it was on the basis that I didn't know much about the names of Japanese people - let alone emperors. If "Hirohito" is a common name, such as the average Tokyo man in the street might have, then obviously something has to be added to it to make it apparent that it refers to the emperor of that name. If, however, "Hirohito" is the name of only one person - the emperor in question - then I'm happy for it to be used as an article title.

Something that is different about East Asian names in general is that it is extremely rare for two people to have the same personal name. European convention encourages people to name people after someone else, whereas East Asian convention with personal names strongly frowns on this.

A lot of the work on European royal names is to deal with the fact that you have fifty people named Henry. This situation doesn't arise with personal or reign names. It does arise with temple or posthumous names, but the convention in Japan is to use the dynasty as a surname.

More importantly, we've debated at length about non-ambiguous article titles. We've come to a conclusion that the most common name should be used as the title of the main article, but NOT if it means using a title that is not "correct", eg. "Princess Diana" is not correct; "Diana, Princess of Wales" is. I can't comment on Hirohito. Deb 17:50 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

Just to clarify a basic disagreement that I have with jtdrl. Why does "Henry II of England" have "of England"? I believe that his position is that "of England" is included in order to identify where Henry II is from. I would argue that this isn't why "of England" is there, and that the reason "of England" is there is because there are a lot of other people named "Henry II".

This matters with Japanese and Chinese imperial names using reign eras. Unlike European conventions, there simply is never going to be another emperor anywhere in the world with the reign name "Meiji". Because "Meiji emperor" is and will remain unambigous, I would argue that "of Japan" is redundant. My understanding is that jtdrl disagrees because he believes that the name should provide some information about the subject of the article, whereas I believe that it should not.

--Roadrunner

I don't think you mean that. I'm sure you don't mind if it includes the information necessary to help potential readers to find it. Whatever that may be. Deb 18:33 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

Yes I do mean this, and I think this is one of the basic disputes that needs to be discussed. In my opinion, the title should contain the minimum amount of information needed to uniquely identify a person or things. Anything more descriptive should go into the text of the article. I find the argument that putting this information in the text of the article will help the user find it to be unconvincing. If the user wants to find an emperor of Japan and doesn't know the name, he or she can go to the list of emperors of Japan. If he does know the name, then putting of Japan is redundant. If the user has a fuzzy idea of what emperor he is looking for, then "of Japan" is likely to be insufficient, and so you can put Japan in the text where the search engine is going to find it. Roadrunner

Non-rhetorical question: Can someone come up with a scenario in which adding "of Japan" would help someone actually find the article. I don't understand how this would work. Roadrunner

The whole purpose of the monarch specific naming convention is to overcome the really bad ambiguity problems that exist with European monarchs. Therefore the "of country" is only for disambiguation purposes and not to provide the reader with descriptive information. The fact that is does provide some descriptive information is a secondary consequence of disambiguation and not a goal in and of itself (please read our disambiguation convention). So if there ain't any ambiguity with the names of Asian monarchs (I've always thought of them as despots so never connected them mentally with European monarchs) then there is no reason to use disambiguation - especially if that disambiguation is based on a European naming convention that was developed for European monarchs by European scholars. We don't pre-emptively and needlessly disambiguate unique movie titles by adding (movie) to each page title, so why in the world would we want to pre-emptively disambiguate unique Asian monarch page titles? Asian monarchs have different naming conventions and different needs. It is insane to try and impose a Euro-centric naming convention on Asian monarchs - this breaks the common name naming convention and nobody does it all. If we did this then anybody with any expertise in Asian history would not be able to take Wikipedia seriously. --mav

Again, going to "basic principles". If you do have a situation where there were two emperors in Asia of different countries with the same name, then one should put "of nation" to disambiguate. In Chinese history, you do have the situation in which two emperors of different dynasties have the same name, in which case convention is <dynasty name> <imperial name>. You never have the situation in which two emperors in the same dynasty have the same name. Curiously, in Europe its an honor for someone to name themselves after you. In China it would have been highly offensive for a descendant to chose the same name. --Roadrunner

So how are readers outside Japan to know which is a Japanese emperor and who is a Chinese emperor? Why is it wrong for wiki to refer to the Emperor of Japan but right for the Japanese emperor to call himself 'emperor of Japan', which he does in all english language statements? The same term is used by the Japanese government, the Japanese diplomatic service, the Japanese english language media, Japanese english language websites? If people don't know where someone is from, the information is worthless. I think this is patently absurd and nonsensical. No-one is talking about using english language nomenclature, merely clarifying that a very long list of emperors were based in Japan. Not to do so would make a joke of wiki and make its information worthless to everyone outside Japan, because they would not have a clue what the information is about. The articles themselves refer to the emperors as Emperor of Japan. They are put on lists as emperor of Japan. They call themselves Emperor of Japan. They are referred to in international sourcebooks as Emperor of Japan. BTW Taku has produced so many redirects to redirects to redirects that he has made an utter mess of many of the pages. I went into one, and was bounced between redirects, with no text. This is reducing wiki to a farce, as Zoe has said, as Deb has said. We now have a mess, littered with redirects, unrecognisable names, attached to lists that use the phrase 'Emperor of Japan' that can't be used in title of articles. The pages are now one blurred unworkable joke. (And that's not counting some of the rubbish Taku has placed in the article, which would be laughed at in any political science textbook. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:14 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

PS: Roadrunner has just proved the point. If people can't find something, they have to go to the Emperor of Japan list. Great. Imagine if we said - if you can't find a british monarch, you must go to the list of British monarchs. If you want to find information on Germany, you have to go to a list on Germany. That would be absurd. The whole point of names is that you shouldn't have to do that. This is so absurd it like something from Monty Python.

If I don't know that names of British monarchs, then how do I avoid going to the list of British monarchs to find the name of the monarch whose name I do not know. User Roadrunner:Roadrunner

"So how are readers outside Japan to know which is a Japanese emperor and who is a Chinese emperor?"

They click on the link to the article to read that information about them - this is the same procedure people use for any term a person is not familiar with. Most of the time the place from which they clicked from would have already given that piece of information. Again, page titles are nominative not descriptive. We do, however, add descriptive information when two subjects would otherwise have the same page title. But, there is zero reason to disambiguate a title when there is no ambiguity. That makes as much sense as placing a person's profession as part of their page title when they already have an unambiguous name that does not conflict with the name of anything else we may want to have an article on. A very basic tenet of our naming conventions is to only have enough information in page titles to uniquely ID the subject. Therefore Hirohito is fine - there isn't anything worth noting in Wikipedia that shares that same name. --mav

Let us make a distinction between:

the name of the article (as used in the URL)
the title of the article (usually bold font, somewhere near the head)
the name of the person himself

Now while as an American interested in Japan, I might want to look for an article called Emperor Hirohito, I would be pleased to learn that the man's name is actually Hirohito. I would also be gratified to know how Japanese people referred to him. Was it "the Emperor"? Was it "Hirohito-san" or "Hirohito-sama"? Or what?

Now the king of England long ago was named Henry and called perhaps "King Henry" during his reign and "Henry II" thereafter (especially by historians).

As a reader of this encyclopedia, however, I would really enjoy seeing an article called Henry II of England so I can find it easily. But the first thing I'd like to know is what the guy's name actually was. Surely the "of England" part isn't a piece of his name! So I would expect the article to begin like this:

Henry II reigned over England from 1201 to 1205... (made up example)

--Uncle Ed 21:43 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

Fine with Hirohito. Can you name 5 emperors? If you see their name, can you identify them without any contextual information? I can't. Zoe can't. Deb can't.

Neither can I, but I don't see how this is relevant.

If I want to know what country Emperor Efdfkjdslk comes from, I go to the page Efdfkjdslk and read the text which explains that Emperor Efdfkjdslk comes from the country of Alsfdfs. I'm a little dense here because I don't understand how entitling an article Efdfkjdslk of Alsfdfs helps wikipedia be more usable. If I can't name any emperors of Alsfdfs, then how am I going to find Efdfkhdslk of Alsfdfs in the first place? If I do a title search of Alsfsfd, I'm going to find all of the 150 emperors of Alsfsfd, and Efdfkhdslk is going to be buried in there in some random order, which isn't useful. In order to be useful I'd have to do a search for say the emperors of Alsfsfd in the 16th century, which means that I'm going to have to do a full text search anyway, or I'm going to look at the table emperors of Alsfsfd.

If you could give me a scenario in which Efdkhdslk of Alsfsfd is going to be more useful to the user, let me know.

-- Roadrunner

And I doubt if 90%+ of potential users can. That is the whole problem. We cannot identify them. And neither will the vast majority of people using wiki. So what do you suggest? And what do suggest we do about chaotic links? And do you propose to put a note on the recent changes page 'Wiki pages can be found easily except in the case of Japanese emperors, who have been named in a way that no-non japanese person will understand. So for Japanese emperors, Wiki requires you to go through the 'Emperors of Japan' page.

Yes, but if you don't know the names of the Emperors of Japan, I don't see how you can avoid going to the page Emperors of Japan. If you don't know the names of Emperors of Japan, then can you explain how you managed to end up on the page of a particular Emperor whose name you do not know. (That isn't a rhetoric question. I don't see how you can avoid this.)

More to the point, I don't know the names of most of the Kings of Poland or the Holy Roman Emperors or Popes, so how does "Henry II of Poland" help me find that article since I don't know that Poland had a Henry II. It doesn't, and in my view having Henry II of Poland isn't to help the user find him, it's to avoid confusion with Henry II of Slovakia.

BTW why do we have an 'Emperors of Japan' page? Surely it should just read 'emperors'. That is the logic of the situation, though logic is hardly the right word to use for the mess we know have. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:47 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

No it's not. We have an Emperors of Japan page to avoid confusion with the separate page Emperors of China. It's unnecessary to put of Japan behind Hirohito because while there are emperors of japan and emperors of china, there isn't a hirohito of China. You know that. I know that. But many people who are beginning to learn information won't know which names are japanese and which are chinese. That is the reason you state it. How many countries have had Queen Margrethes? Yet we still state the country as well as the ordinal to help readers. You forget most people don't know Japanese and Chinese and aren't au fait with the differences. It is absurd to ignore this fact and presume that people will just know. How will they know?

I still don't understand your point. Someone is looking for information on some person named Hirohito. He has no idea who this Hirohito person, he could be Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or Swahili. He could be Emperor, Prince, King or shoemaker. So he does a search on Hirohito and finds the Japanese emperor Hirohito and reads in the article that this Hirohito fellow was Emperor of Japan. Now if there was a Hirohito of China, we would have to have an article on Hirohito of China and Hirohito of Japan so that a person searching for Hirohito would realize that there are two Hirohitos and go to the right one, but there aren't so anyone looking for Hirohito would get the emperor of Japan. Anyone looking for Kangxi would get the emperor of China because there isn't another Kangxi. I really don't understand how Hirohito of Japan would help someone find him or is going to be useful to someone who knows nothing about Hirohito. --Roadrunner

Can you identify what bacteriocin is without looking it up? How about kinase, protium, proteomics, Holocene? Contextual information is in the articles on those subjects and will almost certainly be included in any sentence that links to these articles. The way to make sure links don't get too chaotic is to choose a name that is used by a majority of English speakers who are at all familiar with the subject (this is far from a "way that no-non Japanese person will understand" -- we are not talking about using native Japanese names here but the ones that are most often used in English). Usually this is clear-cut but sometimes we need redirects to catch forms that are not as widely used. BTW if you don't know the most common English-language form of the name of something, how does it make it easier to find it with the additional contextual elements? --mav

Political science and history is fundamentally different to the sciences. Someone studying science will have elementary background information on technical matters. But political science knowledge is far more general and doesn't mean that people know details about political systems, titles, names, etc in South Africa, New Zealand, Portugal, Japan, Chile etc. When drafting nomenclature in these areas, encyclopædias invariably supply as much information as possible to contextualise people, titles, offices, identities, etc. They don't throw up the minimum degree of information and say 'now you guess from where this person is from.' If they did, no-one would use them. They would go to sourcebooks that do give that information. I had a Japanese student today burst out laughing when I mentioned this debate. All she could say was 'but he is Emperor of Japan'. I do not understand what is wrong with saying that.' Neither do I, especially when even the Emperor's office itself says that in all english language communication. I have not come across a single person off Wikipedia who understands the logic of this. The most widely used word was 'crazy' (used by 11 people, 3 of them Japanese). The second most common observation was the word 'joke'. Two used four-letter words to refer to it. The central point everyone made was simple. This is an english language version of wiki. The Japanese themselves in the english say 'emperor of Japan' (source: Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies.) So what is the problem? I do not see the slightest element of logic in refusing to use a term that even the Emperor uses. If this was Japanese wiki, it would be understandable. But it isn't. It is the english language version, aimed at english language users worldwide, most of which know very little about Japanese emperors and other than Akihito and Hirohito could not make anyone of them. And if all you give are uncontextualised names, they aren't likely to bother to try to find out more, at least not on wiki. STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:25 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

One of the issues is that I'm not sure you understand what the problem is, and I strongly suspect that in explaining the problem to someone else you are not including what Taku and I think the issue is. Can you exaplain to me why I believe the following....

Akihito, Emperor of Japan (correct but redundant)

Akihito of Japan (acceptable but odd)

Meiji, Emperor of Japan (incorrect)

Meiji of Japan (incorrect)

Meiji emperor (correct)

the Meiji emperor of Japan (correct but redundant)

Emperor Meiji (incorrect)

Akihito emperor (incorrect)

Hirohoto (correct)

Showa emperor (correct, but I doubt many non-Japanese will know that he is Hirohito)

Meiji (incorrect when referring to the emperor)

Kangxi emperor (correct)

Kangxi emperor of China (controversial)

Kangxi, Emperor of China (incorrect)

Emperor Kangxi (incorrect)

Emperor Kangxi of China (incorrect)

Kangxi of China (incorrect)

Han Wuti (correct)

Han Wuti emperor (incorrect)

Han Wuti, Emperor of China (correct but redundant)

Emperor Han Wuti (incorrect)

If you can't explain why I believe that Akihito, Emperor of Japan is correct but redundant and Meiji, Emperor of Japan is just plan wrong, then we need to freeze the discussion and let me explain the issue, before going on. I don't mind if you understand my point and disagree with it, but I still suspect that you don't understand the basic problem and this makes it very difficult to argue the issue. Roadrunner

Something else that would help is if you could argue "in scenario X, this is what would happen if we use X of Japan and this is what would happen if we use X and the former is better." I've mentally run through a lot of scenarios and I've yet to run into one in which X of Japan is better.

Roadrunner

Is there yet a temporary concensus about Japanese Emperor article titles? I'm willing to clean up the endless bloody redirects if there's concensus about what I should do. Arthur 03:53 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

Sorry I made that mess and left them, being afraid of I should change them later again. I recommend not going to clean up them because the debate is still underway and we are not agree with names except Hirohito, Akihito, Meiji emperor and Taisho emperor. If only I have conduced the debate soomthly. I guess I should not do any debate, given that I don't like it, I can't lead it well. I put tentative suggestions for those who need to write an article containing the name of Japanese emperor, but it is likely changed later. You can see it at Naming convention (Japanese). -- Taku 04:33 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

I'm wondering what people think about my "grand unified theory of royal nomenclature." I have problems with Jtdrl's formation because it doesn't explain why China and Japan are exceptions to the general rule, whereas I think that my formulation is a general rule that fits all cases and gives guidnace about what to do about Korean, Vietnamese, Polish, and sub-Saharan African monarchs. Roadrunner

The issue is now being discussed on the w-list. And no, I don't think your 'unified theory' is workable. In any case, it would take weeks of work, of talk pages and wiki-listing, editing, resubmitting, etc before it would have the necessary consensus behind it to go on the page.

Can you explain why you don't think it is workable?

Its wording is unclear and not sufficiently definitionary.
It falls between two stools, not enough clarity while trying to create two many rules.
It contradicts or fails to understand the carefully worded meanings in the current rules, which have evolved over time, not been produced simply by one person.

They would need to be completed re-worked, reworded, then submitted onto a talk page for a debate, then the general idea submitted to the wiki-list for discussion, then the suggestions received would then have to be added into a reworded version, which again would have to be put for discussion on a talk page and passed around on the wiki list, the distilled again, before being included where relevant and workable alongside the current rules.

Grant that they aren't in definitional language, and need to be cleaned up before being added, but rendering them in clean language is pointless if people think that they are completely on the wrong track. So before we attempt to sharpen the wording, I'd like to get some sense as to whether they are at least in the right direction. In particular, I'd like to know of any cases in which they would contradict current monarchial rules for any European monarch (except for Poland). I'm also interested in seeing whether it will produce ambiguous or counterinituitive results in any cases.

In any case, I think the general approach of coming up with a grand unified theory of royal titles is perferable to Balkanizing Wikipedia.

Fair point. I'll mull it over in mo leaba (gaelic for bed). Oh no. This page has hit 30k AGAIN. Is it multiplying like rabbits or what? See you later, STÓD/ÉÍRE 05:19 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

-- Roadrunner

BTW Taku, your naming convention proposal should be on the talk page, not the actual naming convention (Japanese) page, as it is only being discussed. It hasn't been agreed to yet. But this whole issue is now on the wiki-list. Furthermore your suggestion that you did not do the corrections to the links list because they had not yet been agreed is rubbish. Any more changes are simply going to make the entire mess even worse, if such a thing was possible. Any more changes will just add more redirects on top of multiple redirects. If you thought it OK to rename vast numbers of pages, then you should have done the links too, not lazily left them for someone else. Your comments to Zoe, btw, were a disgrace. You have been complained about to the wiki-list as has your system and your refusal having repair screwed up links that were screwed up by you and you alone. STÓD/ÉÍRE