This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Arabic names raise quite a few problems on Wikipedia. In Arabic, the name can be written under different forms (depending of how many titles and ancestors you want to include - see Arabic name), and what's more, these forms may be transliterated in different ways. Some, like Saladin, have a conventional form in English.
For this reason, articles about a person with an Arabic name typically have many redirect pages (which is not a problem); in addition, many broken links correspond to existing articles with different spellings.
The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic) defines what form should be used. However, it's very likely that some articles have not used the correct form.
Imagine you're writing an article for "Joe ibn Bob al-Builder" ("Joe son of Bob the Builder" - "Builder" would be the "surname" (nisba), Bob's full name might be "Bob ibn Ben al-Builder"). You should probably look for the following variants:
See Arabic name for more fun possibilities with variant names. Also, different transliterations may be used.
You probably don't want to look for all the variants, but the information above should allow you to recognize them, and find enough of them with some searches for the right keywords.
Some extra notes on Arabic:
Note that in some families (mostly living in Morocco or France) it's spelled "ben".
If enough diligent souls help on this, it may become a useful guide to fight the tides of red links to Arabic names! (Or, maybe it could be included in the manual of style?)
This is an
essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of
Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been
thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
Arabic names raise quite a few problems on Wikipedia. In Arabic, the name can be written under different forms (depending of how many titles and ancestors you want to include - see Arabic name), and what's more, these forms may be transliterated in different ways. Some, like Saladin, have a conventional form in English.
For this reason, articles about a person with an Arabic name typically have many redirect pages (which is not a problem); in addition, many broken links correspond to existing articles with different spellings.
The Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Arabic) defines what form should be used. However, it's very likely that some articles have not used the correct form.
Imagine you're writing an article for "Joe ibn Bob al-Builder" ("Joe son of Bob the Builder" - "Builder" would be the "surname" (nisba), Bob's full name might be "Bob ibn Ben al-Builder"). You should probably look for the following variants:
See Arabic name for more fun possibilities with variant names. Also, different transliterations may be used.
You probably don't want to look for all the variants, but the information above should allow you to recognize them, and find enough of them with some searches for the right keywords.
Some extra notes on Arabic:
Note that in some families (mostly living in Morocco or France) it's spelled "ben".
If enough diligent souls help on this, it may become a useful guide to fight the tides of red links to Arabic names! (Or, maybe it could be included in the manual of style?)