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I would like to try and rename most of the articles on the spouses of Royal Peers (ex. Sophie, Countess of Wessex; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Brigitte, Duchess of Gloucester; Katharine, Duchess of Kent) this is because in case you have not realized with these articles located where they are it implies that they are Royal divorceès.(such as Sarah, Duchess of York or Diana, Princess of Wales) Which they arent. what I propose is to make a simple change and move these articles to [name], the [Duchess of..., Countess of..., Princess of....etc.], this is the more correct and accurate location for these articles. I would apreciate it if you could let me know your ideas, and maybe we could bring it to a vote. Thanks Mac Domhnaill
We cant really not include a first name. This is because there have been many Princesses of Wales, Duchesses of York etc. So for disambiguation purposes we need to include a first name, This is just a matter of finding the most correct place to put the article, while still specifically identifying the person. Mac Domhnaill
And you are wrong about the first names of wives of peers not being included see: Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, for just one example. Mac Domhnaill
Okay, since we all agree change is needed, for now why dont we say that all wives British peers, (royal or otherwise) will be titled, [Name], [The Countess of..., The Duchess of.....etc.]. Can we all agree to this?? (And yes Astrotrain, I think that there needs to be a set rule on Princesses aswell, However I would support putting a Princess (by marriage) at the highest style she held during her life. Ex: Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, would remain at Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. I would consider this to be herhighest title. And say Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein at death would move to her higher premarital title of HRH Princess Sophie of Bavaria. What do you think??) Mac Domhnaill
It isn't workable, J. We have to include a first name for disambigulation purposes because not everyone will know the title in isolation, or the first name in isolation. This has been explored at length. First name is necessary. The only issue is WP's decision in using name and title not to use the, which meant that the form for divorced and existing titles of wives were the same. Current wives include the. Ex-wives don't. It looks like we have a clear consensus to fix that. The first name thing is a different issue and from past experience unworkable with them. In articles one may need to refer to the late Princess Royal, Mary and the current Princess Royal, Anne, in the same article. One needs the first name to distinguish between them. The same is true with peers given that many peerages have died out and been reissued. So otherwise you'd have the third earl of 'x' (first issue) and the third earl of 'x' (second issue). Saying John, the third earl of 'x' and William, the third earl of 'x' gets around that. FearÉIREANN 13:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know. In many ways that isn't a problem. The problem is that if one leaves out the the for women one uses the form of name they would have if divorced. '"Diana, Princess of Wales, '"Sarah, Duchess of York mean an ex-wife of the Princ e of Wales and an ex-wife of the Duke of York. The problem is that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall actually implies the ex-wife of the Duke of Cornwall!!! The same problem does not arise with men. Charles, Prince of Wales does not imply . . . um . . . Charles, the ex-husband of the Prince of Wales. There is no problem going down that route if we wish, but the principle problem here is simply that the female name implies that someone is divorced when in reality they may not be. The simple inclusion of the avoids that. FearÉIREANN 16:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, JRawle you bring up a somewhat valid point about the titling of peers in general, however it does not really matter because there is not really and danger in say putting Prince Andrew, Duke of York where it is, because there isnt any danger of someone assuming that he is the ex-wife of the Duke of york. And of course this change would only effect current spouses, this is the whole point. Mac Domhnaill
Maybe this might arise when the law recognises gay marriages, but right now it isn't a major problem. But calling someone who should be Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall by a name that she would only have if she and Charles were to divorce, is a more immediate problem. We can worry about ex-husbands of royal dukes when that happens, which probably won't be for a while. FearÉIREANN 23:06, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Good point, and that might happen sooner or later, and that would upset the applecart. But I would rather see Camilla as Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall. And for deceased consorts we could use Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester. And of course Sarah, Duchess of York would stay where she is. What do you think? Prsgoddess187 23:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes Prsgoddess187, I agree entirely. Except that Princess Alice is okay, because that is the style that she chose to use after her husbands death (otherwise I would agree with you). I think we can now all agree that all, living and current spouses will be at [name], [The Duchess of.....etc] Mac Domhnaill
I have moved all the current wives of British Royal peers, to [name], [The Duchess of....] as we seemed to have reached an agreement. Although I think that we still need to work out the details for deceased peers wives. Thanks Mac Domhnaill 02:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
It isn't necessary. The is required to distinguish divorced former consorts from current consorts. Including the for husbands would be pointless. No-one is going to think that Charles, Prince of Wales is the ex-husband of the Prince of Wales! But Camilla, Duchess of York is the name Camilla would have if she was divorced from Charles. As she hasn't the page had to be moved to a more correct version. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 20:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh dear, I seem to have missed this. Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall just looks absurd. And having a system which necessitates moving articles when people die is inherently bad. Proteus (Talk) 18:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually it is less absurd that using a name that Camilla would have if she and Charles divorced. We couldn't go on having Diana, Princess of Wales for Charles's first wife and Camilla, Duchess of York for his second. It was nonsensical and totally wrong. And of course we do already move wives of royalty when then die anyway (or we should be doing so) to the standard maiden name format. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 20:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I oppose this proposal for past peeresses, as contrary to usage, which is Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. There can be more than one Duchess of Devonshire at a time, btw, even if several of them are dowagers. Septentrionalis 17:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, several things..this really wouldnt be an issue for past peresses because if their dead their no longer The Duchess of...., and this was a move for the wives of royal peers, and as for opposing it if you noticed the dates your over a month to late. We agreed on this proposal and moved the nescesary pages. Mac Domhnaill 21:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I figured that people on this page would know where this article should be, as the "Queen" in the title looks odd to me. My initial impulse is to move it to Rosalie Gicanda, but should it say "of Rwanda"? I find royal/peerage titles baffling. She was actually the Queen Dowager, at a time when the Rwandan monarchy was abolished, if that changes things. Thanks, Banyan Tree 14:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
She is dead, so yes it should be at simply Rosalie Gicanda, if she were alive, it would be correct. Mac Domhnaill
Please see Talk:List of Polish monarchs#Naming for a lengthy discussion on the issue of the titles of these pages. john k 19:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
If I got it correctly (I'm really trying to understand this naming conventions, but am not sure if I do understand them), if a person is born crown prince, he is referred to as crown prince on Wikipedia, no matter whether the monarchy was abolished after he was born or if the country he's crown prince doesn't even exist any more, right? Now, if that's correct, then, how do we refer his descendants? For instance: Prince Peter of Yugoslavia. It is disputable if his father is crown prince (since it is disputable wether Kingdom of Yugoslavia existed in 1945), but, let's say Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia is a crown prince. Prince Peter of Yugoslavia was born on February 5, 1980. Kingdom of Yugoslavia didn't exist then. I does not exist now. Is Peter a prince? -- Dijxtra 15:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, its a confusing point. The answer is simply put yes and no. He is not legally recognized in Yugoslavia as a Prince. However, none of the old German Royals and Aristocrats are recognized either, and they have continued to use and be styled as such ever since WWI. And Prince Peter's is an interesting situation, where unlike the exiled Greek Royals, they have been openly welcomed back into Yugoslavia (or what was), and even live in the old royal palace. So the answer to your question, is that yes Peter is, a Prince (although his title is not legally recognized). Mac Domhnaill 20:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
If he's not legally recognised a prince, how can he be one? He does not enjoy the rank, or title of one, does not get to wear a coronet, his family have no legal nor constitutional power - in short, he is not a prince, he has only the style/name. Pretenders are not royalty. See Caroline, Princess of Hanover. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
I have just been on the Yugoslav royal pages - what IS going on?? Whilst on the Hanover pages it makes quite clear the Hanover throne does not exist anymore (yet still refers to them as Prince/ss and HRH by courtesy) the Yugoslav ones treat the Yugoslav ex-Royal family as if they were still on the throne (even saying "Prince X is third in line to the throne of Yugoslavia") - how can that be so when that throne does not exist anymore? It's misleading and needs to be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
Well clearly what I meant was misunderstood. He is most definatley not legally a Prince, although he will always be styled as one, I have always been aware of that. And the Yugoslavs should probably be treated differently than the Hanoverians, as Yugoslavia welcomed them bakc as the Royal Family, the people there treat them as royals, and they live in the royal palace. And i very clearly stated that he is not legally recognized as a Prince, this doesnt mean hes not. Say Jane Brown marries John Smith, she may not legally change her name but she is still Mrs. John Smith, or Mrs. Jane Smith. Even though this is not legally her name. Just because his title has no legal standing does not mean he isnt. Mac Domhnaill 20:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
So he is in fact not a prince but a courtesy prince? It needs to be acknowledged on every Yugoslav page he's a prince by courtesy only. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
There is no such thing as a "courtesy prince". Either you are or you aren't. A person is a prince by birthright, not by state decision. As the son of a prince, this guy clearly is a prince, under traditional dynastic criteria. The only issue is whether he is referred to as such. In the absence of a monarchy, being a prince carries no constitutional status. Some republics tell princes not to use the titles. Some republics out of courtesy allow them to use it. Serbia allows the prince to use his title out of courtesy. Even if it didn't he would still be a prince, just not be allowed to call himself one in Serbia. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 00:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually I think you'll find that is incorrect. A monarch is no longer a monarch if he has no sovereignty - deposed kings are usually referred to as ex-King so-and-so, e.g. ex-King Constantine of Greece, who by courtesy can be styled King of Greece (but he ISN'T king of Greece as there is no THRONE of Greece). I don't see how if legally he is not recognised as a prince he can still be one. If the government doesn't recognise him as one, who does (other than by courtesy?) They recognise themselves? They are just ordinary citizens by Yugoslav law. You cannot say a title exists if it is not recognised by law. What, exactly, is Prince Peter referred to in Yugoslav law? (NOT styled) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.180 ( talk • contribs)
...and as for a prince being a prince by birthright & not state decision, why was William III of England king? Because he was invited by the British government to take the crown, he certainly wasn't king by birthright. That just goes to show that the state has the last say on these matters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.203 ( talk • contribs)
I have to say that many of you seem to completely lack understanding of what a Prince really is. Jtdirl is completely right, and you cannot compare a King to a Prince. As the title of King is never by birthright, while the title of Prince almost always is (unless through marriage, or the title is bestowed upon someone.) As well please do not use Caroline, Princess of Hanover, as an example, she is a princess by birthright and her titles are legally used in Monaco. Her husband, step-children and youngest daughter are all examples, but not her. And coud you all please sign your comments. Mac Domhnaill 23:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
...so how come James II's descendents were not all titled prince and aren't recognised as such (and hardly referred to as such by the british government? If a king isn't a king by birthright, what is he king by virtue of? I'm not being rude, I genuinely want to know answers to these questions. Can you please tell me who recognises Prince Peter as a prince if it is not the government.-- 130.88.188.14 00:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok....a King is the King by virtue of succeeding a previous king (being king is not a birthright, but being the heir is a birthright)the office of a King or sovereign is a constitional one and needs to be defined by a government. Constantine II of Greece, is still a king because he became King when Greece still had a monarchy, the title of King is one that is held for life (unless lost through abdication, which Constantine did not do), whilist no one is obligated to refer to him as King Constantine after the office is abolished, he will be a King until his death, although he is not The King. As for what you are saying with all the descendents of James II not being Princes, this is because the British government and Royal family have guidlines as to who is a prince by birthright (in the UK this is all children and grandchildren of a monarch in the male line), in Saudi Arabia all the male line descendts are Princes or Princesses (there are thousands of Saudi Royals). Each Royal Family/ House or government sets up its own rules as to who is a Prince merely by birthright. According to the rules established in Yugoslavia by Peters family all the children and grandchildren in the male line are Princes or Princesses. This is why Peter is a Prince by birthright. His father will be forever the Crown Prince, as it is a title that he holds from birthright when it was an established constitutional office. Each Royal family/governemnt or constition has its own set of guidelines as to is a Royal merely by birth. Since the Yugoslav monarchy was abolished, it is up to Peter's family to set those guidlines, as it is in Hanover, Prussia Austria etc. where monarchies have been abolished. As I have been trying to say no one, needs to recognize him as a Prince for him to be one. If you still have any questions dont hesitate to ask either here or on my talk page. Mac Domhnaill 02:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
What are the Yugoslavs princes of exactly? They can't surely be of Yugoslavia? Would anybody be required to kneel/curtsey to them? I don't understand how if no-one needs to recognise him as a prince he still is one, that surely means anybody could style themselves a prince without being recognised? I could believe what you are saying but can you please provide evidence for your points. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am not saying I am wrong either as it is important in these matters to have supporting evidence. What is Prince Peter referred to legally in Yugoslavia? Surely he is just a normal citizen in his own country? The way I see it is this - I'm not saying I am right, but it seems this way: Yugoslav monarchy is dead, therefore monarchical titles are dead. The sovereign is the fount of honour in the royal family since all royal titles derive from him or from being related to him. There is no throne of Yugoslavia, no pageantry, no crown, no legal authority attributed to the royal family. The former royals no longer have precedence over their subjects, they are normal citizens. Monarchical titles have been abolised, therefore the rank and office of "Prince of Yugoslavia" does not exist; they are not legally recognised, there are no letters patent deeming them so, no laws referring to them in the constitution. The ex-royal family is styled as Prince/sses but not titled - i.e. Diana Spencer when Diana, Princess of Wales was not The Princess of Wales (or a princess of any kind) since by law there was no holder of that office. So whilst he may be referred to as HRH Prince Peter, this is courtesy - legally he is a plain Mr. The whole prince/ss thing is a matter of family tradition but has absolutely no validity. They are styling themselves royal when in fact they no longer are royal since they have no sovereign power - it is like the descendents of James II calling themselves Kings of England - they are most certainly not (though you could argue they are "by birthright"). Constantine II is referred to as King of Greece by courtesy, in reality he is ex-King Constantine of Greece, as there is no The King of Greece just as there is no The King of Yugoslavia Can you please give me a definition of a prince - yes he derives his power from birthright (by virtue of being related to the monarch) - but when the monarch's title doesn't exist anymore? If they are Princes of Yugoslavia yet their own country does not recognise them as such, how can they hold that title? Princess of Hanover is different since she is a princess of Monaco and holds the surname "of Hanover" styles herself Princess of Hanover when in fact that title does not exist except as a legal surname. Monaco recognises this style but by courtesy (it has not taken legal action to create her a Princess of Hanover, but merely refers to her as such). The same is true of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester - she was not "Princess Alice" but "The Princess Henry" through marriage, yet combined her title with her name to produce Princess Alice when no legislation was passed to make her so. George VI made his grandchildren Charles and Anne prince/princess of the UK by letters patent i.e. they could not have been prince/ss without letters patent i.e. they were not prince/ss without legal confirmation. Princes of Yugoslavia have no legal confirmation - they style themselves as princes but do not hold the rank and are legally titled as normal citizens.
Please can you tell me why all of the above is wrong (and please don't answer "he just IS a prince" because there's no evidence for that), and also if you think any of my points above are valid. What was the legislation enacted deposing the monarchy? Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.186 ( talk • contribs)
Ok...just because Yugoslavia does not exist does not mean he cannot be a Prince of it. He is a Prince of Yugoslavia. Prussia and Hanover do not exist as independent nations anymore, and their princes are still tyled that way. No, no one would be required to kneel, bow or acknowledge him as a Prince, but he is one. You also cannot bring Princess Alice into this story. British Royal title systems are different than those of Yugoslavia. And yes Constantine is only refffered to as King of Greece as a courtesy, but he is a king. I have explained everything I can and dont feel to be repeating myself, it seems to me you cannont comprehend the concept, that because he is not legally recognized he is not a Prince. Which he is regardless of what the govt says. Mac Domhnaill 02:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I would buy what you say except that you do not use any evidence for this - I asked specifically to not just say "he IS a prince" and asked other questions such as what Prince Peter legally referred to etc. I'm afraid I don't understand the concept because there isn't sufficient evidence for it. Please PLEASE answer my questions thoroughly and don't just excuse this case by saying it is "different". I'm not disagreeing with you, just questioning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
I would like to raise the subject again, this time regarding the even more controversial children of the deposed Greek royal family. I am trying to have a pre-emptive discussion on the matter as I can see there exists no guideline regarding children of deposed monarchs' children, and the ongoing heated debate in the Anne-Marie of Greece article indicates that even more heated discussions could arise regarding them. I am reffering to the following:
All of the above have been born after 1974 when the monarchy was abolished in Greece. Surely they are princes and princesses of Denmark. But are they princes/esses of Greece? I am not argueing weather they are styled as such in royal courts in Europe. I am just questioning the titling of the articles. I would go for it and straightforwardly request a move en masse, but as this could cause problems, I thought I'd bring it up here first.
Now, commenting to what has been said above: to say that X is prince of Y, just because he IS (and excuse the harsh language) is absurd. Nothing is true just because it is. This train of thought is logically twisted and cannot hold. The aformentioned article by Guy Stair Sainty is of course one point of view but that does not in itself validate the argument, since (at least to my better knowledge) there is no such thing as "royalty science". I mean if one says that "The Earth is round because Neil Armstrong observed it" that cannot be denied, it is science. But one can refuse to accept Mr Sainty's analysis without being either inconsistent or paradoxal, just as one can refuse to accept the existence of Classes as Marx described them..
In my understanding they are not princes/esses of Greece. In my understanding of politics, a title is conferred upon individuals by society, under the terms of a Social Contract that permits that. I can accept that Wikipedia articles of deposed monarchs and their immediate relatives are, for the shake of historical accuracy, named with their former title affixes to their names, as they were indeed at some time kings, princes and princesses. But for people who never reigned, such as the ones in the above list, it is IMHO not correct (and in fact misleading) to use monarchical titles. I would also like to point out the following part of this guideline page, point 6 of the first section:
Are not all the above pretenders according to the guideline's definition of pretender? If so, they should not have the titles affixed to the titles of the corresponding articles. Of course it should be mentioned in the article body that they are known as such among other royal courts, but the problem is with the naming of the articles.
I sincerely hope we can produce a guideline out of this discussion, explicitly for such cases, as the Yugoslavian and the Greek former royal families. -- Michalis Famelis 18:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
What is there to consider?
Just to show that this is no mere academic debate: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has a report [1] that some Greek immigrants to Norway are offended that the list of baptismal sponsors for the new son of the Crown Prince of Norway (available on the website of the Norwegian Royal Family) [2] lists "His Royal Highness Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece". The conflict on Wikipedia reflects a conflict in society. There is a practice which has been used in the past (although not without opposition) and continues to be used in the present which some people think just shouldn't be. The challenge on Wikipedia is that some of these people think that only one side of the debate should be presented (i.e. we should state the case of the Greek constitution, and that's the one and only and final word on the topic). That's not intellectually honest. Noel S McFerran 02:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Please, see above #Polish monarchs -- Francis Schonken 17:07, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Have quickly scanned the archives' contents boxes for discussions on the following, so apologies in advance if I've missed anything.
Does anyone else find that "Saint" written out in full – especially in article titles – impedes their reading speed? Or, to put it another way, might there be a consensus to prefer "St." over "Saint" in articles (other than Saint itself)...?
Also, I appreciate the observation that using the abbreviation "St" rather than "St." (or "Mr" instead of "Mr." etc.) aids reading when the text is in a non-proportional font. In a proportional font, however, such as that used on the Wikipedia (Wikimedia) pages, periods within sentences look less obtrusive to me, so I happily include them. Do people think this should be upheld as a policy, particularly in article titles?
Thanks, David Kernow 10:23, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
If a qualifier is used in the title of a page where the content is, it is never abbreviated (apart from Jr./Sr. ...), so: "Saint", not "St." nor "St".
Thanks for your thoughts, Francis. Wikipedia Talk:Naming conventions (people) seems to indicate that a consensus over this kind of policy would be difficult to find, so I think I'll plod on merrily. I don't believe trying to avoid all abbreviations is necessarily a useful approach; whilst "Saint David", "Saint Petersburg" etc. are doubtlessly correct, I and I suspect many have become so used to seeing and reading "St. David", "St. Petersburg", etc. (with the periods/full-stops included when in proportional fonts) that the former look odd, especially within prose. I'm aware, though, that reading habits are necessarily highly subjective and that I don't know how representative my suspicions are.
Presumably all these "Naming conventions (X)" have at some point been through some kind of establishment-by-(small-sized-)consensus process...?
Best wishes, David Kernow 19:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Please help completing the table below. The table is on a separate page, that opens when clicking the "edit" link below.
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Polish rulers) is the place for discussions on the English Wikipedia page names of individual monarchs. -- Francis Schonken 09:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
This came up in regards to the proposed move of Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst: we have no policy on the naming of articles on members of the German nobility. I confess that my own knowledge of the German nobility rests on a shaky foundation, but I'm going to craft a proposal nonetheless and invite criticism.
Titles of German nobility are part of a holder's legal name and should be included in the article title, subject to the following constraints. Families which were formerly sovereign rulers, or who were mediatized Holy Roman Empire nobility, or who were otherwise members of the Hochadel should have their title included in the article in the original German: Chlodwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Weichs. Individuals who ruled as sovereigns during their life time should be referred to by the convention Name Ordinal, Title: Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine.
Lower nobles who gained higher titles after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire should be referred to by their most common name: Otto von Bismarck not Otto Fürst von Bismarck. Non-sovereign titles granted for life only, such as Duke of Lauenburg, should not be mentioned in the article title.
Members of the lower nobility who are commonly known by a title should have that title included in the article title, in the original German: Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz not Colmar von der Goltz or Baron Colmar von der Goltz. Individuals who hail from Baltic regions and have baronial rank should be referred to as Baron, not Freiherr, when appropriate (e.g. Friedrich Baron von Holstein.
I suspect I've made something of a mess here, but it's a messy subject. Mackensen (talk) 18:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Mackensen - this proposal seems like a good starting point...except...Why Otto von Bismarck and Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz? This seems inconsistent. It is also worth noting that noble titles have been officially part of the name since 1919. I'm not sure how one should describe their status before that. It's also worth noting that Austrian nobility all officially lost their titles in 1919, but many still use them. The whole subject is rather a mess. john k 19:01, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
What about Otto Graf Lambsdorff? He, and some other elected politicians, are known by their title. And I'm still uncertain if Hohenlohe counts as a sovereign family... john k 15:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Some google-searching and book-checking reveals that "Prince Bismarck" and "Fürst von Bismarck" are common constructions. In light of this, and in the interests of a more uniform (and sensible) policy, I propose to do away with the differentiation between newer and older titles. Therefore, the article on Bismarck would be located at Otto Fürst von Bismarck (on the other hand, in Bismarck's specific case, I would be receptive to the argument that most common name trumps this usage). We would still exclude lifetime only titles such as Duke of Lauenberg. Mackensen (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Septentrionalis my question (which you still don't seem to understand) is how would an article look like with a title that is difficult to translate (example: Edler, Ritter) and titles that are very cumbersome as in "Reichsfreiherr". So what would the article's name Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein be in English? "Baron of the Empire Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein"? That's why I think it better to leave all titles up to Graf in German, and starting from "Graf" they can be left in English. Gryffindor 21:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC) ps: "Chlodwig, Prince Hohenlohe" is factually wrong and not a good idea anyways, I think the format Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst comes closest to being correct.
You can find out what people are called in English by looking them up in English texts. For Stein, there are four choices actually used in English: H. F. K., Baron Stein; HFK, Baron von Stein; HFK, Baron vom und zum Stein; HFK, Freiherr von und zum Stein. I do not defend the second (which is an error, rather than a translation); I think the third is most common. The fact that his family was ennobled by the Emperor can be mentioned in the article, if relevant. Septentrionalis 18:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
"... of Germany" was intentionally not used back in 1871 by/for Wilhelm I, German Emperor, so Friedrich III of Germany (Hohenzollern) should be moved back to Friedrich III, German Emperor, and Wilhelm II of Germany back to Wilhelm II, German Emperor. See discussions there, as well as the announcement on Wikipedia:Requested_moves#15_June_2006. -- Matthead 23:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering if there was a convention for the naming of Grand Ducal consorts. We have Princess Augusta of Cambridge, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine; but then there is Josephine-Charlotte of Belgium, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. Should their articles be titled in the manner of queen consorts ( Mary of Teck) or not? Just want to make it all uniform. Any ideas/comments?? Prsgodd e ss187 00:22, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that probably for the sake of unity we should also have them at their maiden names. This would avoid any confusion in the future. I myself was also wondering about Grand Ducal consorts, it seems that they are not all titled consistently. But yea, Id have to say that probably all deceased consorts should be at their maiden names. Mac Domhnaill 03:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Charles, we have argued the case of the Queen Mother many times. It is only because she was known as such for a long time. It's not going to make sense for generations in the future to call her Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Maiden names are the more accurate, preferred and uniform way to go. Mac Domhnaill 03:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
To return to the subject of grand dukes, I think the point here is that the title of princess with which some of these consorts were born is (rightly or wrongly) regarded as being in some way superior to the title they acquired by marriage. This brings into play the wikipedia naming convention about using the highest title a person ever used. I'm not saying I agree with that perception, but I think that's what's behind it. Deb 20:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
The "maiden name rule" is a generalization (and a simplification) of actual usage, which does not actually follow it.
Until very recently, royals were disambiguated by any means convenient; often a place name. This could be
This inevitably Anglocentric (or, xince the French used it too - and probably first - Gallocentric) system in part (but only in part) overlaps the maiden-name rule, which is an artificial Wikipedia construct. The cases where it most weverely fails are precisely those where this discussion keeps floundering; Alexandra of Russia and Elizabeth, late Queen-consort of England.
I have a modest proposal: let's follow actual usage. Septentrionalis 02:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Another query on Queen Consorts. There are four
Joan of Englands, all mentioned on that page. Two have 'alternate' names, and have their own articles under those. The other two do not, and the page looks a mess as a result. According to the naming conventions discussed above, these women should both be at
Joan of England, but need to be disambiguated. I have proposed on the talk page turning
Joan of England into a redirect dab page, with links to:
Any thoughts on the article names for the first two? Alternative ways to dab these would be welcome. ::Supergolden:: 11:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
The names for members of this house is an absolute disaster. The use of Bourbon-"Territory" is at best, extremely informal and has only ever been used by few people to describe themselves. It also appears to be applied to every Bourbon princeling one can think of on Wikipedia, certainly even for those who never used it. Bourbon monarchs of states such as Parma, the Two Sicilies, etc are at "of Parma", "of the Two Sicilies", etc. The agnates of such monarchs should share the same territorial designation, be put into categories of Parma, the Two Sicilies, etc, which should be sub-categories of Bourbon. It reflects fact and the few people who seem to be known by such hyphenations would be covered by redirects. For instance, Zita of Bourbon-Parma would be at Zita of Parma, which is shorter, correct and actually looks better. Charles 17:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
In going over the naming convention page and its archives, I haven't come across a discussion of a problem found in many French biographic articles: in Wikipedia article titles, French noble titles of lesser nobles (including artists, writers, statesmen and so forth) are currently listed in two different ways:
Furthermore, in the second case, capitalization is currently chaotic:
It would be helpful if we could come to some sort of consensus which would fit with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles). (Feel free to post discussion on talk page of Wikipedia:France-related topics notice board). -- NYArtsnWords 18:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Since Gryffindor has asked us to try again to move toward a conclusion on the use of, at least, French noble titles in article names, I'll take another stab at that task.
We seem to have agreed on the following:
In other areas where no consensus has been reached, I recommend the following for the reasons indicated:
Yikes, didn't notice this until now. I really hate "Duke de Broglie" or "Viscount de Mirabeau". French titles are sufficiently similar to the English versions that confusion is not likely. Duc>Duke, Comte>Count, Marquis>Marquess, Vicomte>Viscount, Baron>Baron, are all pretty obvious. The hybrid forms suggested by Lethiere are strange and ugly. I would suggest that non-royal French nobility just have its titles given in French, straight up. john k 10:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I think this name may actually be usual usage in English. I would propose making the article title Władysław II Jagiełło of Lithuania and Poland, both for historical order and to avoid any appearance of slighting Lithuania. I don't think there's any risk of confusion with Władysław II the Exile; if necessary there is always the option of using the English form (and yes, it is the English form, as well as the Latin) Ladislaus. Septentrionalis 17:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Poland was a kingdom, Lithuania merely a grand duchy, so Poland should come first. Is it slighting Spain to have Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor? But the Polish monarch articles are currently on their own bizarre plane of article naming, which needs to be cleared up. john k 18:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
The regnal number is impractical, because it may lead to even editwarring, but at least to problem which of those two to use. Are you, then, suggesting Wladyslaw Jagiello of Poland?? That has one sad fault: all the words resemble very much those in Polish (only diacriticals removed from first names, not anglicized nor latinized - and the only country mentioned is Poland), and Lithuanians are then not happy at all. I am saying that compromise is needed with this guy. ObRoy 20:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
A new approval poll about how to name this particular noble's article has been started. Interested editors are invited to participate at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło. -- Elonka 18:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
There is huge inconsistency in the names used for British life peers - some are named using their title and some not. The paragraph on the subject in this article does not clarify matters:
Life peers...use the dignity in the title, unless the individual is exclusively referred to by personal name. For example: Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (not "Quintin McGarel Hogg"), but Margaret Thatcher (not "Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher.")
That allows a vast amount of leeway as to naming, since pretty much no life peer is referred to exclusively by their personal name (even Laurence Olivier, somebody definitely known professionally by his personal name, was frequently referred to as "Lord Olivier", for example). It's interesting that Margaret Thatcher is used as an example. She's not referred to exclusively by her personal name at all - in fact, she is now pretty much exclusively referred to, by the British media at least, as "Baroness Thatcher" or "Lady Thatcher". I think we need a little more clarification on this policy. -- Necrothesp 17:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I have a very very very long argument with Jerzy for a very very very long time.
At the begining, it was only about the oportunity to rename artcles from Pope Stephen III to Pope Stephen X. You can find the whole dispute on this page Talk:Pope_Stephen. Finally, we agree on it: those articles must be renamed. But we definitly don't agree about what the new titles must be.
I wanted to have the opinion of other users. I don't think it has to be dicided only by him and me. In short, here are our opinions:
Pope Stephen III must be renamed Pope Stephen (II or III), ... ,
Pope Stephen X must be renamed Pope Stephen (IX or X). The "former"
Pope Stephen II must be renamed Pope Stephen (unconsecrated). New disambiguation pages must be created for each Pope Stephen n entry.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Švitrigaila (
talk •
contribs) 21:57, 10 April 2006
Pope Stephen III must be renamed Pope Stephen II, ... , Pope Stephen X must be renamed Pope Stephen IX. Pope Stephen X must be kept as a simple redirect to Pope Stephen IX. The "former" Pope Stephen II must be renamed Pope elect Stephen. No disambiguation page has to be created. A simple disambiguation phrase is added at the top of each article (this line can already be seen in those articles: I wrote them myself and surprisingly Jerzy transformed them into a Template, that's a very good idea!)
Note I've renamed the old Pope Stephen II into Stephen (ephemeral pope). I know this title is awkward and the move was not wise.
Now, I don't want further historical arguments about the opportunity of changing the existing titles. The discussion is no more about historical facts. In theory all is explained in Stephen (ephemeral pope). I would like users to decide which system is better for numbering those popes.
Švitrigaila 21:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
And why not renaming Miguel Induráin into Miguel Induráin/Indurain? The answer is you never express variants in the title of an article. Never. You can't find even one counterexample on Wikipedia. And Nunh-huh says "Stephen II/III" is the standard designation for this pope: it's absolutely false. You may find in an encyclopedia a sentence such as "He added to that power after Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to Paris to anoint Pippin in a lavish ceremony at Saint Denis Basilica", or "He added to that power after Pope Stephen III traveled all the way ...", but you'll never find something like "He added to that power after Pope Stephen II/III traveled all the way ..." (this sentence is from the article Pippin the Younger). "Stephen II/III" is not his name. It's only two possible different names for the same person. As Induráin and Indurain are two possible different names for the same man. If you rename the article into Pope Stephen II/III, it would be against the naming conventions. And Jerzy's proposition to rename articles into Pope Stephen (II or III) and to use pipes such as [[Pope Stephen (II or III)|Pope Stephen II]] seems to go expressly against Wikipedia's Manual of style.
He seems to think that if someone goes on Pope Stephen IX and reads Pope Stephen VIII is sometime called Stephen IX, he'll click on Pope Stephen VIII only to read Pope Stephen VII is sometime called Pope Stephen VIII, and the he'll click on Pope Stephen VII and so on... Does he really think a normal reader will conclude Pope Stephen II is sometime called Pope Stephen X? If I'm looking for an article about a man I don't know anything about, let's say "Pope Stephen VII" for example, and if I read his article and I found the phrase "Note: In sources prior to the 1960's, this pope is sometimes called Stephen VIII and Stephen VI is sometimes called Stephen VII. See Stephen (ephemeral pope) for detailed explanations.", that would be enough for me. I won't check all the Pope Stephen pages one by one. I'm stupid, OK, but I am not that stupid.
You all here seem to consider both numbers for each pope Stephen are equally correct. They are not. There is a good number and a wrong one. As I've already said ten times here, Pope Stephen IX was explicitely named "the ninth" during his reign, and it was by mistake he was renamed after. And yes, Jerzy, we have to "get the names right". It is the role of an encyclopedia. If I look for Miguel Indurain or Miguel Induráin in an encyclopedia, I hope the encyclopedia will give me the correct spelling of his name. It's normal to have a redirect from the misspelled entry to the good one, but it's in order to help the user and to correct him, not in order to mean both spelling are correct (and in fact, the English Wikipedia mistakes once again : the correctly spelling of his name is without the accent even in Spanish, but I suppose if there was somewhere on Earth another famous Miguel Indurain without the accent, some would find better to keep the racing cyclist's name with the accent according to Nunh-huh's principle "we do not use the most common ambiguous designation in preference to a common but unambiguous one", that is to say "a wrong information is better than a right one if it is better understood".)
Švitrigaila 23:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło to stop this monstrosity from happening.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
There have been a few moves of pages of the princes/princesses who were simutaneously the children of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. Now, the pages are at "of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha", moved by a user who was moving more pages from "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha". Since the use of the "and" is correct and was in the official name of the duchy (duchies), it should be used. However, does SC&G need to be used with Edinburgh? Charles 16:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The naming convention cannot push any such title to anyone which (s)he has not actually held. For example, prince/princess in titles of medieval cadet members of monarchical families are untenable. This leads to a funny situation, where a large bunch of people (mostly women) have articles which resemble closely those of ruling monarchs and deceased queens, though the individual in question may have been much lower. For example, daughters of the first and second duke of Prussia seem quite similar to later queens consort of various places. Sons of medieval kings that died young, resemble reigning monarchs of those same nations. Funny indeed. Shilkanni 14:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, in the partial question of medieval high women who never married a king, I would like to see a new rule: a rule that leads to "Elisabeth of Hungary, Countess of Thuringia" and analogously the others. Cos, if we apply the "pre-marital terrotorial designation only" to all sorts of royal women who became countesses and duchesses, we end up with a plethora of women "of country" (causing a number of disambig needs) - which also is misleading, making them look like queens and/or reigning monarchs. (and btw, this has me to suggest the ordinal to all of those who were the only monarchs of their name, besides.) The two-part title has the essential part of pre-marital (which is how they are usually known in their fiefs' histories etc) but also has the husband's fief as sort of disambiguation. Shilkanni 20:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I recently create a page Harington Baronets which was a red link from Baronetage of England because I wanted to create a stub for the regicide James Harrington because the link went to his cousin of the same name James Harrington. The article name I initially gave the article about the man was: James Harrington, 3rd Baron of Ridlington. I now know that Baron was wrong and since then the page has been moved to Sir James Harrington, 3rd Baronet.
Looking through the first few baronetage only pages in the list Baronetage of England, it seems to me that the above guidelines are not being followed.
The formulation of "Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg.
Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital title, ie,
Sofia of Greece & Denmark. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." is not good when saying how the person reverts after death, as to the word TITLE. The established use in works of reference clearly does not use any title, it uses the simplified name precisely without any titulary. The word should be changed to "name" or equivalent. Queen Mary is not
Princess Mary of Teck but
Mary of Teck. Marie Antoinette is not
Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria but
Marie Antoinette of Austria. There are some who did not have terrotory, then the surname or something similar is used, as
Anne Boleyn. The wording should reflect that no title is used, but a formulation "first name in its usual version" plus "territorial designation or if not used, then surname".
The formulation of "Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name or pre-marital title, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use
Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine." is not good as to the word TITLE.
Shilkanni 15:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
How about:" Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine. Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg. Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital name, ie, Sofia of Greece. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." The examples THEN make it quite clear that a territory is usual, not any digged-up surname. Shilkanni 16:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I would like to add something to the text:"
Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name (first name as usually used, and a designation, usually a territory, if nonexistent, then surname or equivalent - no actual title is ever used, such as princess), not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use
Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine.
Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg.
Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital name (same as in past consorts: "first name as usually used, and a designation, usually a territory, if nonexistent, then surname or equivalent - no actual title is ever used, such as princess"), ie,
Sofia of Greece. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." Welcome to formulate the
formula to be as precise as possible.
Shilkanni 16:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
(copied from above: The NC does not yet make it sufficiently clear, as there exist some editors who somehow believe that a married woman could be Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. Shilkanni 16:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC) )
I edited her opening paragraph and arrived at the following - it reflects my views what is the task of Wikipedia, which certainly is not to endorse any monarchical pretension.
Shilkanni 16:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Anne (Princess Anne Antoinette Françoise Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma, born
September 18,
1923), is the wife of the former King
Michael I of Romania, however married after his loss of the throne. As such, she is by courtesy also sometimes styled Queen Anne of Romania and treated sometimes as if being a
queen consort. As wife of a nobleman who undisputedly is a Prince of Hohenzollern, she is sometimes referred as Princess Anne of Hohenzollern. Their family has reportedly some decade ago taken the surname "of Romania", whereby she would be known also as Anne of Romania, the title of the book in English that her son-in-law published about her life.
Under Existing Royal Consorts the example of Sofia of Spain is not well formulated and should be corrected: Sofia of Greece and Denmark is too convoluted and good works of reference will not do it in that way. Experts will name her simply as Sofia of Greece in the future. This has been seen in many earlier cases: Elena of Greece was the queen of Romania, and there have also been several princesses of two or more realms to become queens consort and deceased now - of them, only the most usual territory is regularly mentioned. For some reason, there is Marie of Edinburgh, not Marie of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and United Kingdom. This "pre-marital names rule" has always used the simplest territorial designation, thus is is untenable to convolute them here in Wikipedia. Shilkanni 15:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
We have been talking about this topic on and off, I am trying to at least get the parts out that we can all agree upon and which are most uncontroversial IMO. This one concern nobility that is not from the United Kingdom and have titles that are not translatable into English, or no English equivalent exists. Members of the non-British nobility, such as as Ritter, Edler, Chevalier, Sieur, Vidame, etc. have their titles in the original language. Examples: Carl Ritter von Ghega, Richard Edler von Mises, Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert, etc.
Also concerning another point that exists for monarchs already 4. If a person is overwhelmingly best known by a cognomen, or by a name that doesn't fit the guidelines above, revert to the base rule: use the most common English name. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, etc...".
Before we go fiddling with this, I would like some actual source, preferably a reliable secondary source in English, who refers to the author under any other title than Marquis de Sade, which is where almost all English-speakers will expect to find him. Septentrionalis 22:14, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
These two examples are better at Carl von Gheca and Richard von Mises - so they are not valid examples. No need to put their titles in at all. The guideline is possibly needed, but not for these two. Do you have any better examples? Shilkanni 22:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
There is an obvious need to find a NPOV way to disambiguate the Hanoverian claimants with name Ernst August. It seems to me that all attempts to designate one of the various styles to each of them is doomed to fail. More or less, each of them was/is "prince of Hanover" and "duke of Brunswick" and therefore, if one is called by such designation, that name actually should always be a redirect to dab of all of them (= designating any of the names to only one of them is arbitrary). Now, we have a sort of ban to use a monarchical ordinal to any of them who were just pretenders. And however, currently (as of 16th May), thanks chiefly to moving efforts of editor"Cooldoug", all of them enjoy an ordinal.
I am asking whether it really is such a sin to allow them to have ordinals. After all, US bourgeoisie uses quite much those I, II, III... (instead of Sr and Jr) in legal names of commoners. And, one of the sources of ordinals in works of reference has actually been a retrospective assignation by genealogists to persons of antiquity (e.g Ptolemies and Seleucids) and of Middle Ages (Williams of Montferrat...) in order to disambiguate those persons though THEY never themselves used those numerals nor were such in use in their own time. Still, scholarly works are currently full of them. Regarding some of feudal families, the numeral in scholarly use actually sometimes is not the ordinal to show one's number in being a lord of a given territory, but rather a numeral showing that person's sequential place in their genealogy, the ruled territory having been variable (such as some William Nth of Montferrat did not actually rule Montferrat but another Italian place, and Welf Nth does not signify Nth Welf to rule Bavaria but Nth Welf of that pre-Guelph family, and also some female members of a family have got numerals though they did not reign nor rule in any way). Besides, in works of reference, there are numerals applied to holders of "peerage" titles, although some of them have never ruled any territory, them having been just holders of the title (and possibly some seat in a House of lords/peers/grandees/magnates). I admit that now, using numerals (which seem identical to regnal numbers) when a pretender is in question, seems as a support to that pretension and not only a genealogy-scholar way to disambiguate. I oppose giving endorsement to pretensions.
However, it seems to me that the only way to reach a s ustainable disambiguation with those Ernst A:s will simply be some use of numerals. And they have themselves used numerals, so it is not against the requirement not to use anything totally artificial. How about using numerals to those pretenders, but in a form which is not directly resembling a monarchical ordinal, such as Ernst August 4, Ernst August 5, Ernst August 6 and Ernst August 7, or Ernst August 4th, Ernst August 5th, Ernst August 6th and Ernst August 7th?? (you got the idea of the principle, details can be sorted later) - Comments, please. Shilkanni 09:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Dates are messy. (Do you use birth-death dates, dates when they were claimants, what happens when someone is looking for someone they know by ordinal, but by years, etc? I think an ordinal in parentheses is much more workable. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 13:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It seems there is some opposition against giving ordinals to those claimants, and some support for giving them ordinals. There is some opposition against parenthetic titles, but also support for it. Nunh-huh has suggested that ordinals that are different than those which the pretenders themselves used would be acceptable. Shilkanni 17:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
the guy born in 1954 would be Ernst August VII and the guy born in 1983 would be Ernst August VIII. Those are genealogical numerals which are (as I understand) maximized to highest possible. And they have the advantage of being such which were not used by the actual pretenders, but higher. I cannot accept endorsing pretension, therefore the numbers should not be the same. Shilkanni 17:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
There are several problems here.
There are several titles involved. There is no consensus that they, or anyone, are Dukes of Brunswick or Brunswick-Lüneburg (since 1918). There is consensus against their being Dukes of Cumberland (since 1919). WP should not impose such titles if they are not consensus. This leaves Prince of Hanover.
Roman numerals are useful for
What we do do for other pretending houses is to list them under their generally accepted courtesy titles (Duke of Anjou, Count of Paris, or whatever). Fortunately, this has not (yet) produced ambiguity in the French cases: the names are long, and the titles of pretence are getting flashier as the hope of restoration dims.
I would be bold, not bother to disambiguate, and have the following articles:
Oh people, I just realized that Ernest August born in 1914 actually was officially something like Hereditary Duke of Brunswick until 1918, i.e the equivalent of crown prince of that duchy. That was not his main title of pretension, in use, but at least in our current rules, he truly was that and that title can be assigned to him personally also after loss of that monarchy, as they do not lose titles because of revolution. What do you think: a title which he did not use particularly much, would it be the article title here in this situation? Shilkanni 11:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
There is an alternate, simple solution. We have two articles for people named
Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover who have short articles, and are in part notable as father and son. Consider
Easley Blackwood, which deals with the same situation by conbining the two articles. Why not the same here?
Septentrionalis 03:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be clean, provided it were stable. But it probably will not. I predict: if we combine two articles, sooner or later someone will create them anew. Separate them. Resulting in several separate stubs for the same biography. Pessimistic but realistic. If we arrive in that sort of solution, it is not any general rule, and should be talked in these two guys' talkpages (too). A general rule from THIS discussion could be the unconditional ban on ordinals of persons who are pretenders (actually, that rule already exists here). The name of that combined article is not easy, either, as "E.A., Prince of Hanover" is a name that may refer to other biographied persons too. Shilkanni 11:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I would at this stage again remind that this discussion is for seeking opinions and possible consensus about naming the CLAIMANTS with names E.A. - King George V remains what is correct for him, as well as King E.A. I. And duke E.A. III, having been reigning monarch of another state, is presumably named on that basis, though he also claimed Hanover. We can even say that E.A.II, i.e the one currently under Cumberland, is a separate case as he can be Crown Prince of Hanover and there is no ambiguation in that. Effectively this leaves us with decision about policy to the THREE most recent Ernests Augusts. Shilkanni 11:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Currently we have the following situation:
I would suggest either renaming the first four from "Ernest Augustus" to "Ernst August" or the last two to "Ernest Augustus". The ordinals seem fine as they are with only III needing the clarification of Hanover as his family name. We don't accept any pretense by noting who has Head of House and their order as such. There is no confusion when somebody actually opens the article.
"This has been a problem: all sorts of non-notable royals get an own article, usually on basis of them being XXXth on the line to the British throne, and that is often the only individual fact mentioned in the stub. And some people here prevent deletion of such stubs! "
I would be one of them. All the articles you mention are linked from the Line of succession to the British Throne and are part of a series. They do not stand alone and we might have a chance to expand them sooner or later. However I am curious how come there are examples of minor members of a House getting articles even when the Head of House or their direct ancestor do not? How for example did we manage to have an article on Victoria Luise of Prussia when we do not have articles on her father, three brothers, two nephews and four nieces who are all ahead of her in that line? User:Dimadick
About ordinals: For practical reasons, I don't like ordinals that aren't in common use. To assign the correct ordinal to a person, one has to know how many ancestors with the same name there were, and this is often hard to establish, or may even be a question of historical research (in the case of Ernst August: do we start counting in the 19th century, or do we include
Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg?). After all, there is no guarantee that all ancestors with the same name lived shortly before the person in question. Hence, parenthetical years are better; one can establish them without much difficulty.
About translating names: For consistency, only the names of rulers or historic nobles should be translated unless a translated version is in common use. Only in very rare cases people still do it with non-rulers. I don't see the need for an exception for pretenders here.
About the Ernest Augusti:
It must be remembered tthat those who wish an ordinal to be used, have the burden of showing it being overwhelmingly used in real life, and the burden of gathering a clear consensus, as using an ordinal of these three latest guys IS against the guideline. The naming convention forbids ordinals from pretenders. An exception requires consensus.
I conclude that there is a numbe of discussants who have opposed ordinals for these three latest guys, and therefore there is no consensus to allow that exception. The rule (no ordinal to pretender) stands. It will be respected and anyone is allowed to move these articles from locations which incluse an ordinal.
Question: I'm probably opening up a can of worms, however why are some kings named "name of Germany" when Germany did not exist back then? I know that this discussion has been raging on back and forth. The format Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor is fine. However we have "Albert II of Habsburg" who is under Albert II of Germany, but it's Philip of Swabia, and Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg. So why is Philip of Swabia not "Philip of Germany"? I think that Philip is in the right category, however then it should be "Albert II of Habsburg", etc. IMO. Then we have this case here Wenceslaus, King of the Romans. My proposal is to get rid of the "of Germany" part, since I know that creates alot of controversy and confusion (didn't exist, etc etc.) and have a format similar to the Holy Roman Emperors. Either keep them with the dynastic name, such as "Philip of Swabia", or have the format "name, German King", "name, King of the Germans", "name, King of the Romans" or "name, Roman-German King" (Römisch-deutscher König). Gryffindor 18:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Germany most certainly did exist (it was one of three component kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, the other two being Italy and Burgundy), but I agree that it's probably best not to include it in article titles (this would also allow us to move Kaiser Wilhelm's dad to Friedrich III of Germany or Frederick III of Germany). That said, I think we should use the dynastic name if that is the most commonly used, otherwise "Name, King of the Romans." john k 22:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I oppose using those "dynastic names". They are kings of a country, and are to be named equally. There is no sense in putting one to king Philip of Swabia and another to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - and also because an article text very easily goes to express "king Sigismund of Luxemburg" as has happened all too often with consorts, I remember seeing articlev texts resembling "queen Anna of Braganza", "Empress Maria of Savoy" and "queen Frederica of Anhalt" just because it is all too easy to put the title before the name which does not include the name of the kingdom and not to pipe it. Those roman kings who did not have emperor-confirmation, could be format Adolf, German King or rather Adolf, Roman King, which also is good becaise it resembles those emperors who are format Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor. I actually oppose that "of Germany" because it is anachronistic - they were rather "Gunther of East Franks" and "Henry of East Franks", but presumably we do not want to start use the nice name of Kingdom of East Franks or Kingdom of Ostrofrancia and all perquisites then created here. And, besides, I do not like formulation Wilhelm II of Germany as it rather should be "Wilhelm/"William, German Emperor"
The French Wikipedia has a great overview of the titles the various kings used: [8]. Basically, until Otto III they called themselves Kings of the East Franks, and starting with Henry II they called themselves Kings of the Romans instead. So, what to name our articles for the ones that were kings but not emperors? I agree that this is an issue that needs to be decided; it it is confusing that there is no consistent naming scheme.
This leaves the issue of how to fit "King of the Romans" (or "King of the East Franks", for the early ones) into our naming scheme. The problem is that our naming scheme assumes that kings are titled after their country, but "of the Romans" is not immediately a country name. We have a similar situation with the Kings of the Scots, which we have listed under "of Scotland" (see King of Scotland, e.g. James V of Scotland). In analogy, this would give us "of the Holy Roman Empire", e.g. Philip of the Holy Roman Empire. For the earlier ones, it would be "of East Francia" (a separate question is whether East Francia should redirect to Holy Roman Empire). This solution has the advantages that it matches conventions used for other countries, that it is close to the correct historic original, and that it makes clear which country these guys are rulers of (unlike ", King of the Romans", which is more precise, but will make most people believe they are dealing with ancient Rome). Chl 01:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Adolf, King of Romans and Philip, King of Romans are hardly something like original resarch, since a multitude of material, including documents from their own eras, call them such. I have seen transcripts of old documents where these kings call themselves "rex Romanorum" - and there are sources that call them Roman kings, as they are calling crowned ones as Holy roman emperors. I suspect that several accusations of "original research" tend to go too far and may nowadays be used perhaps for non-acceptable purposes. Shilkanni 14:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
"X, King of the Romans," which analogizes to "X, Holy Roman Emperor," seems like the best option. "Roman King" is rarely used in English - "King of the Romans" is by far the more common usage. I am also not certain why Gryffindor believes "Philip, King of the Romans," to be original research. In cases where someone does not have an ordinal and is well known by their dynastic name, though, I'd prefer to include it. Perhaps Philip of Swabia, King of the Romans, Adolf of Nassau, King of the Romans... john k 19:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Aside from the Ernest Augustuses, there seems to be irregularity in the titling of the dukes of Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel line. I have always seen them titled as Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, not simply as Dukes of Brunswick-Lunenburg. All members of the house of Welf were dukes and duchesses of Brunswick and Lunenburg, mostly always shorted to Brunswick-Lunbenburg in English. Additional dignities and territories within the family usually took the a form with the territory hyphenated at the end, (i.e. Brunswick-Lunenburg-Wolfenbüttel, shortened to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel). The form Brunswick-Lunenburg in the article titles for ruling members of the Wolfenbüttel line seems to be misleading and against conventional usage. Can they be renamed to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel? Charles 22:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It's a somewhat complicated situation. The dukes of all subdivisions of Brunswick-Lüneburg always used the title of Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg (Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg). But since at most periods, the duchy consisted of several, almost completely independent parts (such as Wolfenbüttel, Calenberg/Hanover, and Lüneburg/Celle), people often use different territorial names to make clear which subdivision a certain duke was ruler of, e.g. "duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel", or "duke of Brunswick-Celle". There are three problems with these subdivisional designations though:
Additionally, it frequently happened that the same duke ruled over several subdivisions at once, so that naming would become more complicated if he was to be designated by subdivision. Chl 18:14, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
At the very least, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel should be designated by subdivision. Other commonly used ones should probably also be used, like Brunswick-Calenberg, or Brunswick-Celle, and so forth. Obviously, it can get confusing, but better to use the subdivisions than to leave it all as just "Brunswick-Lüneburg". john k 18:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I must disagree with Charles here. "Duke of Brunswick" simpliciter is what is actually used for Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and his nephew, Charles, Duke of Brunswick (So the New Cambridge Modern History. As an example of why hyphenation is so dangerous: when they do hyphenate him, in the indes, it is as Brunswick-Bevern.) Septentrionalis 22:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The title of the article Margaret of Connaught is presently under discussion. There are two issues here:
As whatever decision arrived at might affect other articles as well, I thought it would be a good idea to inform here about the discussion. Any input is, of course, appreciated. -- Jao 21:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The question above loads too many issues into one discussion, imo. Also, it is loaded in another sense: there seems to be an incorrect underlying assumption that some consorts need a title and others do not. That is simply not true. I predict that this discussion, mostly because of having too many elements and too many wrongly loaded assumptions from the beginning, will not lead to anything constructive. Well, I try to address those multiple concerns presented above:
In history books and in other encyclopedias, all wifes of dynasts tend to follow the naming convention here given for "royal consorts". (Royalist cruft material is another thing - there any royal usually is referred with a layer of titles, styles and honorifics. Things we usually regard as POV.) Wifes of junior members of royal dynasties are not basically any different from viewpoint of historians:
Francis I of France's mother has been always referred to as
Louise of Savoy, despite of the fact that she did not become a queen (queen consort or reigning) at any point of history. George III's mother, who neither became a queen, is usually referred to as
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.
Cicely Neville is referred to as such and not as any kind of "Princess Cicely Neville", although she was mother of Edward IV and Richard III, and wife of a royal duke.
Blanche of Lancaster is that and not
Princess Blanche of Lancaster.
Joan of Kent is referred to as such and not as
Princess Joan of Kent or as
Joan, Countess of Kent, etc etc. It is simply not in accordance with academic standards to put pre-marital princess titulary in their names - as they in most cases are referred to in context of their marriages or widowhood.
Sibylla (not Sybilla, don't know who that is) of Saxe-Coburg was not a crown princess, she was wife of a prince who was heir-apparent of a then crown prince. However, in history books, Sibylla is generally referred to as
Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, as we can see even in texts abounding around internet.
There is no principle difference between how history books and other encyclopedias name
Maud of Wales and
Margaret of Connaught - some books name them both as "of Great Britain" or something like that. Most usually, they are treted similarly, whatever is the treatment the academic referencer has adopted. I leave further discussion of British courtesy princesses to a separate thread, as it actually is not helpful for this issue, and however this issue does not depend on its decision.
This has gone to the level of
instruction creepism. My opinion is that it goes simply too far to try imply or signal anything with elaborate choice whether to put princess or not before these names/ the subtlety is lost on most readers, and probably only those who anyway know who they were, understand that subtlety, whereby it actually is unnecessary. So, it is relatively funny how such a big duffy number is made of whether to put a title or not. Such distinction does not belong to an encyclopedia to decide upon - the discussion of which of her titles are to be mentioned and in what way, is dangerously close to decision-making of colleges of heralds and ceremony-masters in monarchical courts. This resembles a lot that sort of wrangling which takes place between persons who elaborate for external signs of their privileges, such as those of nobility who in past fought each other on who gets which seating place in a church and who is entitled to sit in presence of a royal prince/ss, who not. People with any sense would predictably ignore such "rules" here.
Shilkanni 10:46, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Not if they are inaccurate. Margaret of Connaught implies she was a queen consort. She wasn't. So under NC rules she goes in as Princess Margaret of Connaught. As for so-called instruction creepism that is nonsense. All encyclopaedias and sourcebooks develop their structures for name usage. WP is no different. If it didn't it would be the sort of amateurish mess that it was famously was on royalty until about 2 years ago when an attempt was made to co-ordinate name usage and end the farce of 17 (yes 17. I counted them) different formats being used, with the Prince of Wales in as Charles Windsor, the Queen of the United Kingdom referred to as Queen of England (a title not used officially since 1707), French monarchs in under 3 different formats, consorts in in different formats for each, etc. WP was regarded in that area as a complete joke. (It was mentioned in an academic conference I attended, with the royalty pages mentioned as examples of what happens when people who don't know what they are doing make up things.) What Shilkanni may think of as instruction creep is actually what other people regard as professionalism and co-ordination. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 18:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Logically, as there are potentially numerous other spouses of peers with the same title and name, they should all be in at maiden name & title. We do need to become less anglo-centric in naming. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 19:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
It's much more likely that there's multiple people known as "Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel" than that there's multiple people known as "Princess Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge." (I'm quite certain that there's only been one "Princess Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge", and only one "Princess Frederica, Duchess of York," for instance). I cannot, specifically, think of any examples of overlapping names of royal peers' wives, but perhaps you can provide some concrete examples. john k 20:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
The principle is based not on specific examples in specific cases but on something that happens a lot, hence the creation of a generic format. It gets messy to have one set of rules with a PS: It doesn't apply to the Duchess of Cambridge line below it. If there are multiple Princess Augustas then we can work out a disambigulation format. Maybe we should devise a general format for disambigulating names where there are a number of people with the same maiden title. We could include the marital title in parenthesis, for example. It is rather important as Wikipedia grows that it does try to co-ordinate name usage and not have too many opt-outs. We would look amateurish, for example, if we listed US presidents under different formats, for example Washington, Abe Lincoln, President McKinney, FDR, Ronnie Reagan, George II of the United States, etc. Encyclopaedias need co-ordination through manual of style and naming conventions usage, not "we do this page this way, and that page in another way, and we'll make it up as we go along". Wikipedia already has had to untangle the mess of royal namings twice. We need to avoid having all the work of untangling things a third time by following a clear set of generic rules on naming, disambigulation, etc. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 22:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Jtd - it seems to me that with royal peeresses, there are going to be very, very few repetitions, if any, while with German princesses, there's going to be a fair amount of repetition, even if we don't always have articles on the repeats. It would seem perfectly reasonable to me to put all the articles in their "Princess X, Duchess of X" format, and to have this as a standard. This would a) mesh with naming standards of non-royal peeresses, and b) would be perfectly consistent and unproblematic. And I really don't think there are any repetitions. Starting in the 18th century, when this becomes an issue, we have:
That's pretty much it. I don't really see any especial problem with using this format for that small number of women. There might be a few Plantagenet cases that are more awkward, but the Plantagenet situation is more complicated, anyway. john k 12:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Your continuing argument that the way you'd prefer not to do it is "amateurish" remains unsupported by anything save assertion. That said, I don't especially care either way. I'd prefer it be made consistent either way to leaving it in the current mishmash form. john k 12:10, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that the lack of a prefix for royal consorts only applies to female ones? I stumbled across Prince George of Denmark and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and noticed they have now been moved, dropping the Prince. George and Albert were always referred to as Prince G/A when I was at school and Mary of Teck and Alexandra of Denmark as such, amongst others. Have the page moves been a bit overzealous, or was I mistaught? Craigy ( talk) 17:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
The current convention reads as follows:
Deceased Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name or pre-marital title, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine.
Despite what many people seem to think (indeed, I only realised this myself today), there is nothing in that convention which advises against using the word "Princess" in the title, e.g. Frederika of Hanover instead of Princess Frederika of Hanover. Indeed the convention specifically refers to pre-marital title. The only reason, it seems, that a practice has developed of calling an unmarried princess, "Princess X of Y", and her sister married to a sovereign "X of Y", is that the example given is Catherine of Aragon. It makes no sense to me to have a convention distinguishing between an unmarried princess and her married sister - particularly one which forms the titles of consorts so that they appear to be sovereigns of their birth countries (i.e. the article title Frederika of Hanover makes her look just like the sovereigns of Hanover). I suggest that we alter the example of the convention to make it clear that the word "Princess" may be included in an article title for a consort (e.g. Princess Frederika of Hanover). I specifically say may, since I am not advocating the re-naming of hundreds of articles, especially in the case of somebody like Catherine of Aragon who is generally referred to as such without the word "Princess". Noel S McFerran 18:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Background of historical naming: This comes from a long usage starting at least from Middle Ages. Usual works of history were so-called
chronicles. They were usually written and used in approximately one country. And were almost epos of that country. They were not usually much used in other countries. Naming of persons had the perspective of the country in question.
Their princesses, duchesses and queens came almost always from something else than the ruler's seat of that country itself. They may have come from some foreign country. They may have come from the bunch of daughters of a vassal. Or they may have had a surname. The chronicle, usually narrating history about ten or twenty generations, and about many consorts in the same generation (wives of the monarch and wives of important vassals, dukes, counts etc, and there may have been two or three brothers each having a wife), liked to disambiguate these women. They realized the same thing as we here: using consort titles (within that one country), they get a bunch of Queens Marias, etc.
Those writers needed to use names that were respectful enough, and recognizable enough, but sufficiently disambiguate. A natural disambiguation was the name of the country a consort came from. They cannot have been discourteous: when they were not able to add "queen", "duchess" or whatever was the marital honorific, they left it totally away. It is some discourtesy and also misleading to give a honorific that was lower than the highest one the woman actually held.
If you look around at also older literature, all sorts of duchess-consorts and countess-consorts are there without title, just with "name ¨of + country". There are Isabellas of Portugal, some of them wives of dukes. There is Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I.
Middle Ages is not any exception to the historical naming of consorts, it is the source of it. Shilkanni 22:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, Polish monarchs do not need a special system. They are well enough to follow the general naming convention. Shilkanni 12:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
For the record, I support moving all people to their appropriate English names. The English name of the current king of Spain is Juan Carlos and the English name of a certain famous Greek ruler of antiquity who lived before there was an English language or even widespread use of the Latin alphabet is Alexander the Great. Go figure. The Polish monarchs are best known by Anglicisations and should be titled in articles as such. These are convenient for two reasons: they are pronounceable to those unfamiliar with Polish (there are some of us) and they are more common in English literature, especially of the nonspecialist variety. Wikipedia, though it should be scholarly and factual, is nonspecialist. Srnec 18:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I am going to clarify the above comment of mine. Even if modern popular histories are using Polish forms, that doesn't mean Wikipedia should. Older books may be outdated in many respects (or may not be), but in the choice of a nomenclature they are simply following the trend of the times, as are modern writers. I'll be damned if you can find many English refernces to "Władysław" before 1950. Why must Wikipedia become faddish? Finally, I notice that the Polish Wiki uses Polonisations for the monarchs of England. Who's "Ryszard Lwie Serce"?
As for the use of "of Poland": its a policy and a good one to prevent ambiguity. But, if it is impossible to apply (Poland or Lithuania or whatever), please find a happy middle ground for only those which do not fit conventions. Srnec 18:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Calgacus, Elonka and others, focusing on the problem rather than describing some alleged conspiracy of Polish editors or some Piotrus' wrongdoings would be much, much more constructive. Having said that, I don't think Polish monarchs need a special convention and the XY of Poland seems fine to me. However, Piotrus' points cannot and should not be ignored. The case of the Polish names (I mean Polish Christian names of Slavic origin like Władysław or Stanisław) is indeed quite problematic. //
Halibu
tt 20:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Two things I want to address:
Polish monarchs should be treated as any European ones, particularly because so many of their first names are common with other countries. Sigismund, John, Vladislaus, Casimir, August, Henry... Also, I realized that a can of worms, Pandora's Box, in other words Jogaila of Lithuania got a new location recently. (Or how many times was it moved...) I foresee a huge cry from certain of our Polish contributors. And probably Piotrus feels strongly that he has to intervene. But it also seems that certain others (warnings are in air, at least from Elonka) may then draw Piotrus to de-adminning procedure (Arb??). I belöieve that poor Jogaila is a very specific case, which should be solved by some agreement, but that should not be used as precedent in any other naming of Polish monarchs. There sipmly is no systematic exception that could be good for all Polish monarchs, and the problem of Jogaila should not be used as any reason to demand an own system for Polish monarchs. Jogaila is special, because he changed first name, ruled a bigger country with a possibly lower title, did not himself use an ordinal, and as a first name, Wladyslaw Jagiello is very ambiguate, meaning father, son and a grandson at least. Shilkanni 13:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that there's no need for systematic exceptions for Polish monarchs in general. I see no reason for exceptions for the vast majority of Polish monarchs - certainly not for the Piasts, Jadwiga, the later Jagiellonians, the Vasas, or the Wettins. I'm willing to consider the possibility that Jogaila/Jagiello/Wladyslaw II/Wladyslaw V needs some kind of special treatment (I do think that "Jagiello" is by far the more commonly used form in English, though). But what about the monarchs known by their surname? Sobieski is surely better known as "Sobieski" than as "John III". How do we deal with them? john k 14:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
There is the clear mentions that "this convention applies only to European and Muslim covilization, because there the same first names are shared between countriues and disambiguation by using of+country is useful". This disambiguation need does nopt extend topagan Lithuanian monarchs, whose first names are shared ny no other country. Thus of+country is redundant there, systematically redundant. I understand if there were one or a few with names used also in other countrues - then consistency would be a nice thing and alm the others get the of+country too. But none among these. Accordingly, editiors have created their articles under first names only, it means Algirdas, Vytautas the Great, Kestutis, Skirgaila, Jaunutis etc. I think I'll add one example to the guideline page of these and/or mention pagan Lithuania among those where of+country is not needed and not to be used in article names. Maed 10:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Surely the last ruler of (technically) independent Lithuania was Sigismund Augustus, a Christian. And the last ruler of Lithuania who wasn't ruler also of Poland was Alexander I, also a Christian. It also strikes me that Wytautas was at least nominally a Christian. I don't think it matters terribly, but I think that the use of the country name is not terribly problematic. john k 14:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe one of those Lithuanian monarchs would be put as example in that litany with Roman emperors and Pericles. Quite similar cases, firts names were not shared between countries and most of then were pagan. Maed 20:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It does not need to be obvious. A reader comes, learns about Algirdas from the article. No need to list Algirdas' all sorts of characteristics in the title. Besides, when not alloewing "country", we avoid potential "edit discussions" between Lithuanians and Belarusans, both regard themselves, rspectively, Lithuanians and Litvins; "Ruthenia" was mentioned as one of the two main peoples n those monarcs' official title (V.K. of Lithuanians and Ruthenians) - soon we should admit that Algirdas of Lithuania and Ruthenia is more sensitive culturally, and other demands ensue. Besides, these were monarchs more like "of the Goths", so possibly we need to allow Algirdas of the Lithuanians and the Ruthenians... and where will it end? Sigh. Let them be at places like Algirdas. There is anyway no need to disambiguate because names were not shared in those cases. Maed 22:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about my typo higher on this page. Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland was John's proposal, and that was the one to which I agreed. After two passes of eliminating all double redirects, and then yet another change by Maed (making the move to John's choice impossible), I started a WP:RM at Talk:Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland, and await the results of that vote before risking doing useless redirect-cleanup again. Unless some sysop moves Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland to Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland, in which case I'd be glad to assist with the double redirect cleanup.
Again sorry for the typo I made higher on this page. This simple typo proved to be an energy drain. -- Francis Schonken 14:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I think I mostly agree with Francis. Also, there are plenty of articles on monarchs with unique names that still include "of Country". One of the purposes of "of country" is to disambiguate, but it also serves other useful purposes, I think. john k 17:11, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, I did the double redirect cleanup. Then Maed still continued disruptive moves, leading to a second "page move" warning on user talk:Maed.
Then Nightstallion moved Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland back to Władysław II Jagiełło. Cleaning up double redirects (but as far as I can see not yet on the talk page... [15] - could someone follow that up?)
Then I archived the talk page, making clear that I never initiated a vote to move Władysław II Jagiełło to Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland, which I didn't. As far as I know, page moves *during* a WP:RM vote break of that WP:RM vote. I have no intention to start another vote, or "revive" a past WP:RM vote under any form. Instead, I'd like to come back to what I said above, yesterday:
So again, inviting the sysops most acquainted with the names and titles NC guideline, with royalty and with the English language, to put their foot down on this one and move the page. And then, probably again, move-protect the page. Please do some off-wikipedia negotiation with Polish/Lithuanian/etc sysops that they not try to wheel-war over the decision to move this monarch to the page that is most in line with wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles). If they would: desysop them. Piotr has already started a procedure on himself that might soon lead to his desysopment [17] - no problem for me. -- Francis Schonken 06:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe that the article sometimes mentioned as Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland (sic!) needs a unique solution. This is to state clearly that any decision where to put that article, is no precedent to give names to any other articles. On the other hand, this is to state that the "Charlemagne" treatment is acceptable to the "Jagello" we speak about (I am later going to add Jagello to the example list at the Charlemagne exception). Recurring move wars are an obvious result of longer names being always repugnant to some camp involved in some of the nations relevant here, and combined with "so-called Polish cabal's" determination to keep Polish monarchs at names with Polish spelling, disaster is waiting for any attempt to apply any of the formal NC guidelines, as any of such will prefer one natio over others. Shilkanni 11:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
BTW, we should never refer to Polish monarchs named "Wladyslaw" by the name "Ladislas" or "Ladislaus". This is deeply confusing, because the two are not the same name. "Ladislas" is the traditional Latinization of the Hungarian name "Laszlo." However, when Polish "Wladyslaw"'s became kings of Hungary, they were known not as "Laszlo" but as "Ulaszlo" - the two names are not the same. Wladyslaw could be Latinized as "Vladislaus," I think; I've also seen "Vladislav" which is more phonetic to how the Polish name is pronounced in English. But that's stupid. We should just leave it at "Wladyslaw", since there's no clear English alternative. john k 16:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It just seems unnecessarily confusing to me. Whether or not they're "really" the same name seems irrelevant - the Hungarian monarchs "Ulaszlo" are undoubtedly numbered differently from the monarchs "Laszlo", and anglicizing it all to "Ladislaus" would make that situation impossibly confusing. john k 12:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
(transfered from User talk:Švitrigaila)
Would you care to visit at Talk:Wladyslaw_II_Jagiellon_of_Poland#Survey. The simple "Jagiello" - for that there is now a formal listing going on to sign support or opposition. ObRoy 21:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
You actually favor "Ladislaus II" as an article title? That's completely absurd. By the way, I notice that some of your problems are based on the supposed inconsistency between monarch naming conventions and those for everything else. But, at the same timie, you complain about Charles X Gustav of Sweden and Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden...but this is a direct result not of this page, but of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), which tells us to use the name most commonly used in English - Charles X is usually called Charles, and the current king is always called Carl. Charlemagne is also the result not of this naming convention, but of this naming convention deferring to the fact that he is always called "Charlemagne" - note that we also have Charles the Bald, and Louis the Pious, for instance - the Carolingians are difficult to associate with a single country, and are best, known, anyway, by their cognomens (and that includes Charlemagne, which of course just means Charles the Great.) As to the Popes, I don't see the use of "Antipope" or "Avignon Pope" as being a result of this page at all, but of compromises made on individual pages. The Japanese Emperor inconsistency results, also, not from this page, but from the common name rule - Meiji is usually known as "Meiji" in English, while Showa is usually still called "Hirohito" in English. This page is not what is causing inconsistency at all. What is causing inconsistency is the compromises between this page and the common names rule. If you went back to the common names rule, alone, you'd have much, much greater inconsistency in article titling. john k 16:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
The problem isn't the naming conventions. It is individuals making up their own unique versions contrary to the NC that cause the problems. Every so often individuals arrive and do a host of unilateral renamings contrary to the NC. They are the problem, not the NC, which are cohesive and workable if followed. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 19:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that the conventions should be revamped. I actually thought that we can work from bottom up (revise the convention for Polish monarchs first) and when that would gain consensus, we could use it as a basis to reform the main nc for monarchs. Apparently it was not as easy as I suspected, but I am glad to see there are others who agree that the current NC are not good (even if we disagree on the various parts they are not good). Let me shortly propose the following naming scheme:
Comments?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Most nicknames of Polish monarchs are completely unfamiliar to English-speakers. Certainly "Augustus the Saxon"/"Augustus the Corpulent" are not commonly used named for Augustus III in English. Your proposal means that we abandon both the common names rule and the names and titles naming convention. This seems absurd to me. john k 12:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Piotrus's claims differ radically from my experience. I have never seen a case in which "Which name is used in English?" for a foreigner is either difficult or the real point of contention. I see three overwhelming classes of name dispute:
I am therefore opposed to this doubtless well-meant and good-faith proposal. Septentrionalis 20:27, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Opposed, per Septentrionalis. -- Elonka 21:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
My proposal is to stick with the current policy. It has its problems, but is still basically sound. john k 13:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Now I see what Piotrus actually wants. A large part of that is obtainable without drastic revisions, thus:
Please refine. Septentrionalis 23:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I oppose taking Ptolemy II Philadelphus into this discussion at all. These conventions are intended for monarchs and nobles of Western culture where same first names are shareds between countries. It means, basically, later medieval period and era after Middle Ages. It does not mean European countries when they were pagan, as sharing same first names was not usual. It does not fit well to early medieval monarchs, whose "country" is a tribe or something like "of the Goths". This NC should be kept limited to where it has clear disambiguation value and does not produce oddball results. Examples which does not fit to the limits, are not to be used. Marrtel 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Besides, I say that one point in the conventions is stupid and OR: no medieval younger member of monarch's family should be automatically put under "prince", "princess" or like. I hope that clause in conventions is not written to extend automatically to anyone before 17th century. Marrtel 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Septentrionalis 14:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Please list your proposals as level three subheadings above. I suggest waiting for a straw poll at least a week so others can work out their proposals and we will see if any of them have more support then the current one. I suggest using first choice/second choice votes wort 2 and 1 points respectively.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Since this seems to be a more centralized discussion location, I thought I'd bring it up here. There seems to have been another Polish-language issue which was being discussed on a fairly isolated page, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland, which could probably benefit from a more cross-cultural review with a wider variety of participants. As a quick summary: The discussion there is lengthy, but seems to be comprised mostly of members of the Polish noticeboard, and in places even lapses into the Polish language itself, as Piotrus quotes an "expert opinion" from a Polish official, but as near as I can tell, the question is whether the word "Province" should be replaced by the word " Voivodship", with a vote started in March 2006 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Województwa vote. Should this discussion perhaps be moved here instead? I'd like to ensure that it has the opportunity to be reviewed by a genuine cross-section of the Wikipedia community. A related move war seems to be going on at other pages such as Małopolska Voivodship (aka Lesser Poland Voivodship), and a discussion at Talk:Voivodships of Poland, which appears (to me) to have a consensus for the word "Province", though admin Piotrus disagreed. -- Elonka 19:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. This is NOT the correct place for geographical designations. The guideline procuced and maintained by this convention deals mainly with "royalty and nobility" and always with persons. Our rubric is "Names and Titles", which means that this is the place sto seek advice, and to try change guidelines, about namings of such articles that are about persons who have names AND titles. And this is a really lively place, full of enthusiasts, presumably because honorifics are really the interesting, important, flattering and conversational topic over much else in this world. (No wonder that for centuries, even judicial courts have adjudicated cases to decide who is entitled and how and who is not to some honorifics). Anyway, not because I didn't want to deal with Polish provinces (lovely they are, no doubt), but: because this talk will not have so-called jurisdiction over that matter, hush, go away. I presume that the current, valid guidelines for namings of articles about geographical entities is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) and consequently its talk forum is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). Shoo... I might visit also there if you start a debate. Shilkanni 22:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Interested editors are invited to participate in: a poll on whether or not to use diacritics in the titles of Polish monarchs. -- Elonka 18:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Interested editors are invited to participate at the approval poll to decide on an article title at
Talk:Boleslav I of Poland. --
Elonka 00:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
How strict must the form Name of Territory be? The three German Emperors ( William I, Frederick III and William II) are currently up for move. As one may note, my current vote is at weak support. I really feel that the naming conventions ( Monarchial titles 3.1) should be amended to allow these emperors to be titled in the same manner that the Holy Roman Emperors were; that is Name, German Emperor. Since there are only three of these emperors, I feel that it is very non-controversial... Indeed, the use of an anglicized forename seems more controversial than the title itself. Does anyone feel strongly that they should be kept at of Germany? The reason I ask is that I can foresee re-application of the Name of Place rule after a possibly successful move. Charles 05:22, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Matthead does not appear to understand the policy he is discussing nor the reasons for it. Wikipedia expressly chooses common usage rather than any pretense to correctness; when we have failed to do this, the results have been long and pointless quarrels over correct usage. (He also misunderstands American usage; and oversimplifies the Second Reich: When William II abdicated "as German Emperor but not as King of Prussia", he did not in fact keep "his real job".) Septentrionalis 18:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Now, I forgot one thing: What of " Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany"? Shouldn't his titled be affixed to the end of his forename, as with all other past crown princes (who never acceded?) and current crown princes? Depending on whether William or Wilhelm is more appropriate (I prefer William, of course, but common usage may say otherwise), he would be at William, German Crown Prince or Wilhelm, German Crown Prince. Charles 17:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
We should not join the crown prince into this equation. I see nothing serious against him being at "W, Crown Prince of Germany". How about first seeing the result of the emperor naming, and then, if any question remains regarding crown prince, return to that. Shilkanni 17:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
There are a bunch of monarchs in mists of Middle Ages whose titles are not very easy. Possibly the title has no established version in English. Or the translation may be misleading. Or not very much distinguishes these from kings - all we know, they may have been regarded as kings contemporaneously, and only later reconstructs of titles have lead to something else.
And then, totally another example, is William I of Albania whose title in Albanian was King, but abroad Prince.
I recommend to treat those medieval monarchs like they were kings. That would be simplest solution to uncertainty of translation of title, SINCE KINGS ACTUALLY DO NOT HAVE A TITLE IN THE ARTICLE NAME. Doing this, Wikipedia avoids quarrels over the proper title, its translation and its level. In my opinion, it is bad to put something constestable into the article name. With these monarchs, there is a systematical possibility of the translation or interpretation of their titles getting contested.
Examples include Nemanja of Serbia, a reigning prince whose son was the first to be officially crowned as king; Dan I of Wallachia whose realm now is regarded as principality though he was without any real subjugation to any higher king, and therefore much like king in his realm; Boris I of Bulgaria whose son was the first to be officially crowned as Tsar; Vladimir I of Kiev who (titled "grand duke") was more powerful than many kings and was undoubtedly regarded as sort of high king at his time. One of rather common characteristics for those examples is they were Eastern Europeans and their titles only got much later constructs and analogs, which themselves are not necessarily unanimously accepted. Marrtel 12:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
European rulers whose English title is unambiguous and below that of King (e.g. Grand Dukes, Electors, Dukes, Counts, Princes), should be at the location "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". Examples: Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg; but Dan I of Wallachia and Vladimir I of Kiev. Marrtel 19:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
How are we to name the titular Emperors and Empress of Russia? For instance, we have Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia, Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia and Maria Vladimirovna of Russia. The latter I moved to Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia following the format usually used for pretenders or exiled heads to a throne (i.e, George Frederick, Prince of Prussia and Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover). I feel the move was consistent with what is on Wikipedia already (the pretenders and Maria being referred to as Grand Duchess), however I feel it still needs to be discussed. Should we include patronyms and should the title remain in front of the forename or should it be appended to the end? I feel it should be tacked on the end. Charles 04:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I did now my best to help Wikipedia out of potential problems related to giving titles to this pretender. Firstly, there is now the disambiguation page of several similarly-named at Maria Romanova. All general names are intended to redirect to that. And then, the pretender herself is now at Maria Vladimirovna, which does not endorse either her being "of Russia" or only "Romanov/a", not either "Grand duchess" or "princess". Probably not a perfect solution, but contains less inherent POV than most of the other alternatives. And, the fork creations of coolwate, triggered by Charles' move, are now reverted, and the page's edit history is with the actual page. (Pessimistic question: how many minutes does it take until there exists again at least one fork..) ObRoy 09:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's "endorsing" someone's pretensions to use the title of pretension they use for themselves. She calls herself "Grand Duchess MV of Russia," and this is how she is generally referred to in the press and so forth. I don't see why we shouldn't follow that example? That some Russian monarchists/relations do not think she is entitled to the "Grand Duchess" title is no more to the point than that other Russian monarchists think she is de jure Empress Maria I of Russia. The point is what she calls herself and is generally called, not what she is "entitled" to, which doesn't make any sense anyway. john k 17:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Everyone is encouraged to go to Talk:Maria Vladimirovna to try solve her naming there. ObRoy 18:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The desperate situation in Polish monarchs seems to be starting to solve, as some of my requests for move got closed today. Yhe situation has been, how do I say, something like ridiculous. At the polls now closed, there were three sockpuppets of one Polish editor, fabricating the size of the minority, apparently in real terms only some six persons, to about ten. As there usually was a majority of something like 13-16 editors, this meants results that hanged close, closer than they really were. There also was certain delaying tactics from some of the minority's vocal representatives: denials of sockpuppetry, repeated bids for new vote, and move wars over some moved articles. For some reason, representatives of that minority camp always want to start a poll at situation where the page is at their preferred location. Future: there are about 50 articles of Polish monarchs. At this time, about ten to twelve of them are in locations guided by this naming convention, whereas as many as forty may (and will) need moving. It appears that representatives of that minority are demanding that each article's move can happen only as result of a requested move process. It moreover appears that in some cases they are demanding return of their positions and new polls also to those already moved articles. (Interesting development: one of those vocal representatives demanding new votes, got himself blocked for one year today in an unrelated editwarring situation. One vote less for that minority for a period of 365 days.)
The present situation can be viewed at [21].
What is more alarming, is that very many of the remaining wrongly-named monarchs have certain individual problematic features which may make even those who are familiar with this general monarch naming here, to split in opinions.
As you can see from the category link above, the chief wrongs with remaining forty wrongly-nameds are:
By the way, as far as I know usages in Polish language and culture, they have a real custom to call all sorts of monarchs by nickname appellations. There very rarely is any territory as designation, and if such exists, it regularly is for example the province where a king came from to rule the whole country. Like we "could" call Edward IV as Edward IV of York and Henry IV of France as Henry IV of Bourbon. But most usually all appellations are nicknames.
The history of these odd-looking names currently employed, starts from late 2005, half a year ago, when most or all of these monarchs were at places like "Wladislaus V of Poland". A group of editors, it seems all ethnically Polish, started to create a specific scheme to name Polish monarchs, and did it somewhere in a talkpage of some English Wiki's Polish project. Three such editors arrived at their own agreement, and moved all these articles to those so-called Polish names, of which you see many examples yet in the category. Opposition from a few non-Polish editors with that discussion did not deter them. After that, all efforts of others to move any of those monarchs to either their original page names, or to any Naming Convention -compatible name, have been reverted by representatives of said minority, usually by explanations "agreed in naming convention for Polish monarchs" or "discussion is ongoing, do not move". Marrtel 23:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
copied from above:
I do not see any particular need for allowing to use nicknames. We have naming convention which inhibits such additions. Some reasons behind that "prohibition" are:
That all said, there is the exception for nicknames in the naming convention. ("If a monarch or prince is overwhelmingly known, in English, by a cognomen, it may be used, and there is then no need to disambiguate by adding Country. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, Skanderbeg, etc...". But there must be consensus so strong that it would be surprising to omit the epithet; and the name must actually be unambiguous. For example, although Richard the Lionhearted is often used, Richard I is not unusual, so he is at Richard I of England; again, if two kings of different countries are both known in English as Name the Great (for example Louis the Greats of Hungary and France), do not use the epithet but disambiguate them by country (those two are at Louis I of Hungary and Louis XIV of France).) The camp who desires the nickname to be used, should just prove that it is as surprising, to English-speakers, not to see the nickname in article title as it would be in Charlemagne's case - that the nicknamed version is overwhelmingly best known one. Most Polish monarchs do not fulfill that criterion. They can live very well under our general style "Vladislas V of Poland". Perhaps we should start opening way to certain other well-known nicknamed monarchs, beginning rather from such as Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great (I seem to remember what were their territorial acquisitions which were reasons for them to be Great and Stanislas August of Poland not necessarily as great). Would you like to name Frederick II of Prussia as Frederick the Great, Piotrus? Shilkanni 22:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I realized that we have let the Polish monarchs naming evolve to a situation where there may come forth inconsistent results between quite similarly named monarchs. The thing is now somehow fixed with Casimirs I-III which are all now "of Poland", but there was an intention to start polls in each of them - and so, the results could have been individual to each one. One of the problems which should be solved separately, is the anglicized form of certain Polish first names. If the same idea of holding polls in each monarch happens with, for example, Vladyslavs and Boleslaws, we may end up with one Wladyslaw, one Vladislaus, one Ladislas, one diacritical Wladyslaw, etc. an with one Boleslaw, one diacritical Boleslaw, one Boleslas and one Boleslaus. Would you be amused... Those individual polls may very well priduce inconsistent results, since in those polls, all elements are "for sale", both the question of monarchical titles and the question of aglicization. sometimes people trade these when making compromise, thus possibly compromising both the two policies. And, this anglicization of first names actually is a question to be solved to a consistent line by the WP policy Use English, and it actually has next to nothing to do with the formula of how to express the titles/ monarchies of the rulers in question. The title and monarchy question is in scope of this guideline page, whereas Use English is a separate and established policy, not to be trifled here. Would it better to stop all starts of new polls for first names where already one is under poll? And to have a centralized poll over Bolaslas and a centralized poll over Vladislas, dealing with all similaly-named kings and princes of Ooland and dukes of Silesia, Masovia and so forth - under the premise that "if the first name will be anglicized, what is the most favored anglicization". Shilkanni 17:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not mean to have epithets as part of this. I mean only the adoptable form of Boleslas. And adoptable form of Vladislas. (Any other first names to consider? other first names seem to me much easier, or imposible to anglicize.) Yes, it is true that Bohemia also had Boleslases, and Hungary and Bohemia have Vladislases. But would it just be better to refer to results there when the we decide Polish ones? would it make the poll too heavy if we define that the adoptable form will then be the one for Hungary and Bohemia too? Of course it could be good that all countries have the same, but I have my doubts whether supporters of Boleslaw will accept the total drop of their preference from consideration just because to Bohemia it might be nonsensical. Shilkanni 22:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Was anyone here aware that over at Talk:Constantine XI, about a month ago a "new standard" for naming Byzantine emperors was agreed to? The procedure seems to have been as follows:
The result of the vote was about 10 for the first option, 10 for the second, and 7 for the third. Note that this was approval voting. All of the people voting for the first option only voted for the first option, while everybody who voted for the third option also voted for the second option.
At this point, things went into mediation. User:Digitalme was the mediator, and somehow came to the conclusion a) that the important issue was not "common usage in English," but what the "scholarly standard was"; b) that the "scholarly standard" was the ODB usage; and c) that option 1 should be discarded, that option 2 should be temporarily implemented, and that then there should be a vote on whether to move to option 3.
Then, there was a vote between option 2 and option 3. This time, the third option won overwhelmingly, and now all articles at Byzantine Emperors have been moved to places like Alexios I Komnenos and Romanos II and John VIII Palaiologos.
Am I losing it here, or is this a completely bass-ackwards way to come to a new policy? This seems even worse than the Polish issue to me, although a lot more people voted on it. Note that
This procedure seems completely invalid and unjustifiable to me. If anyone else agrees, I'd appreciate some support over at Talk:Constantine XI. john k 13:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
But as said, for me this doesn't really mitigate john k's analysis. -- Francis Schonken 13:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Talk:Constantine XI#Survey on the use of Latinized/Greek names for Byzantine rulers A survey over the substitution of "traitional" Anglo-Latin names for Byzantine rulers with ther "modern" Anglo-Greek counterparts. -- Panairjdde 17:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I came across that discussion. Being interested in Byzantine emperors, basically. I am for the result there now implemented, and would oppose if it is put to poll to be changed. Having now seen that it was announced in current surveys, it suffices for me in procedural view. It is impossible to reach everyone potentially interested editor, and that's why there is the noticeboard of current surveys. Regarding the place to make guidelines (and continue this discussion) for what is the best English form of someone' first name, it undoubtedly is WP:UE, and not this talkpage, since this page produces guidelines how to use royalty and nobility titles in article names, but the "jurisdiction" to guide spellings of foreign names certainly belongs to the division of "Use English". Have you asked input from there? Marrtel 13:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Since these are the names of royalty, for the most part, this page would be just as appropriate as "Use English" - I haven't posted it there as yet, but it would be appropriate to do so. At any rate, the procedural issue is more that it was discussed on an article talk page rather than a regular talk page. but that's not the main issue. The main issue is the farce of a mediation, in which the mediator threw out one of the main options, and then a user on the page decided that it was, thus, settled that that option was thrown out, and proposed a new vote between the two other options. This was a complete farce. john k 14:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The "mediator" decided which side was right, and imposed a decision without discussion. This is a temptation, but he should have just recused himself and voted.
On the substance: John Cantacuzene is English; John VI Kantakouzenos is not, and the usage of one reference work is not enough to make it so. (Oddly, I don;t mind the numeral as much as with Frederick the Great, I'm not sure why. Septentrionalis 17:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
A move proposal has been made dealing with this at WP:RM; please discuss at Talk:List of Byzantine emperors. Septentrionalis 23:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've been unable to find any reference works which refer to this 13th century Piast monarch by the name Władysław I the Elbow-high (more often he seems to be Władysław I the Short, or Wladyslaw Lokietek), so I am going to suggest moving the page to a different title. At the moment, I am collecting data at Talk:Władysław I the Elbow-high as to how he is referred to in different reference works. If anyone has data to add (or suggestions for a new title), please feel free to participate. -- Elonka 17:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. There is a move request for several Palaeologus/Palaiologos dynasty emperors at Talk:List of Byzantine Emperors. It has been requested, infact, as a form to decide the Naming convention for Byzantine Emperors. I tought some of you might be interested in.-- Panairjdde 22:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure this one throws up many issues, but I have started the ball rolling at Talk:David. In many ways it is the start of whether we sould take a more consistent approach towards firstname articles. However in the case of King David, the article is already heavily linked as 'King David' although both the titles 'David' and 'King David' would be at odds with naming guidelines here. -- Solipsist 06:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Some people want to move John II Casimir of Poland to John II Casimir Vasa. I believe that move is against this naming convention which forbids use of nicknames (if not overwhelmisgly best known by it) and surnames when titling kings. Moreover, they want to remove the "of Poland" which is designated as a pre-emtive disambiguation - and there have been monarchs named John Casimir in other places. For some unknown reasons, Polish monarchs have long been a target of desires to always diverge from naming conventions. Could you visit that RM at Talk:John II Casimir of Poland and give your opinion whether the nickname/surname is or isn't really necessary there. Suedois 07:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, let's see what happens if reasons expressed above are applied toother cases. Someone mentioned that because a monarch ruled over several countries, some of which struggle to establish national identity... For example, the current queen-regnant of the United Kingdomhappens to reign over several countries, some of which struggle to establish their national identity... voilá: If we have John II Casimir Vasa, we will accordingly have Elizabeth II Windsor. Suedois 18:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I have put myself up for adminship, partly to deal with the recurrent backlog on WP:RM. This page and the related topics are the closest I have come to administrative responsibilities, and I would appreciate your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Pmanderson. Septentrionalis 20:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone noticed that all of the articles on early Scottish monarchs have been moved to the Gaelic forms? This seems to be in direct violation of all applicable naming conventions. john k 03:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I started a discussion at Talk:Máel Coluim II of Scotland. [Cross post at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). john k 03:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
A requested move has been opened at Talk:Cináed I of Scotland. john k 23:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
All of the following name changes are being discussed at
Talk:Cináed I of Scotland#Requested move:
An
approval poll is in-process, as of August 28. All interested editors are invited to participate. --
Elonka 01:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I would like to try and rename most of the articles on the spouses of Royal Peers (ex. Sophie, Countess of Wessex; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; Brigitte, Duchess of Gloucester; Katharine, Duchess of Kent) this is because in case you have not realized with these articles located where they are it implies that they are Royal divorceès.(such as Sarah, Duchess of York or Diana, Princess of Wales) Which they arent. what I propose is to make a simple change and move these articles to [name], the [Duchess of..., Countess of..., Princess of....etc.], this is the more correct and accurate location for these articles. I would apreciate it if you could let me know your ideas, and maybe we could bring it to a vote. Thanks Mac Domhnaill
We cant really not include a first name. This is because there have been many Princesses of Wales, Duchesses of York etc. So for disambiguation purposes we need to include a first name, This is just a matter of finding the most correct place to put the article, while still specifically identifying the person. Mac Domhnaill
And you are wrong about the first names of wives of peers not being included see: Natalia Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, for just one example. Mac Domhnaill
Okay, since we all agree change is needed, for now why dont we say that all wives British peers, (royal or otherwise) will be titled, [Name], [The Countess of..., The Duchess of.....etc.]. Can we all agree to this?? (And yes Astrotrain, I think that there needs to be a set rule on Princesses aswell, However I would support putting a Princess (by marriage) at the highest style she held during her life. Ex: Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, would remain at Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. I would consider this to be herhighest title. And say Sophie, Hereditary Princess of Liechtenstein at death would move to her higher premarital title of HRH Princess Sophie of Bavaria. What do you think??) Mac Domhnaill
It isn't workable, J. We have to include a first name for disambigulation purposes because not everyone will know the title in isolation, or the first name in isolation. This has been explored at length. First name is necessary. The only issue is WP's decision in using name and title not to use the, which meant that the form for divorced and existing titles of wives were the same. Current wives include the. Ex-wives don't. It looks like we have a clear consensus to fix that. The first name thing is a different issue and from past experience unworkable with them. In articles one may need to refer to the late Princess Royal, Mary and the current Princess Royal, Anne, in the same article. One needs the first name to distinguish between them. The same is true with peers given that many peerages have died out and been reissued. So otherwise you'd have the third earl of 'x' (first issue) and the third earl of 'x' (second issue). Saying John, the third earl of 'x' and William, the third earl of 'x' gets around that. FearÉIREANN 13:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know. In many ways that isn't a problem. The problem is that if one leaves out the the for women one uses the form of name they would have if divorced. '"Diana, Princess of Wales, '"Sarah, Duchess of York mean an ex-wife of the Princ e of Wales and an ex-wife of the Duke of York. The problem is that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall actually implies the ex-wife of the Duke of Cornwall!!! The same problem does not arise with men. Charles, Prince of Wales does not imply . . . um . . . Charles, the ex-husband of the Prince of Wales. There is no problem going down that route if we wish, but the principle problem here is simply that the female name implies that someone is divorced when in reality they may not be. The simple inclusion of the avoids that. FearÉIREANN 16:11, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, JRawle you bring up a somewhat valid point about the titling of peers in general, however it does not really matter because there is not really and danger in say putting Prince Andrew, Duke of York where it is, because there isnt any danger of someone assuming that he is the ex-wife of the Duke of york. And of course this change would only effect current spouses, this is the whole point. Mac Domhnaill
Maybe this might arise when the law recognises gay marriages, but right now it isn't a major problem. But calling someone who should be Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall by a name that she would only have if she and Charles were to divorce, is a more immediate problem. We can worry about ex-husbands of royal dukes when that happens, which probably won't be for a while. FearÉIREANN 23:06, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Good point, and that might happen sooner or later, and that would upset the applecart. But I would rather see Camilla as Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall. And for deceased consorts we could use Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester. And of course Sarah, Duchess of York would stay where she is. What do you think? Prsgoddess187 23:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes Prsgoddess187, I agree entirely. Except that Princess Alice is okay, because that is the style that she chose to use after her husbands death (otherwise I would agree with you). I think we can now all agree that all, living and current spouses will be at [name], [The Duchess of.....etc] Mac Domhnaill
I have moved all the current wives of British Royal peers, to [name], [The Duchess of....] as we seemed to have reached an agreement. Although I think that we still need to work out the details for deceased peers wives. Thanks Mac Domhnaill 02:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
It isn't necessary. The is required to distinguish divorced former consorts from current consorts. Including the for husbands would be pointless. No-one is going to think that Charles, Prince of Wales is the ex-husband of the Prince of Wales! But Camilla, Duchess of York is the name Camilla would have if she was divorced from Charles. As she hasn't the page had to be moved to a more correct version. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 20:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh dear, I seem to have missed this. Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall just looks absurd. And having a system which necessitates moving articles when people die is inherently bad. Proteus (Talk) 18:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually it is less absurd that using a name that Camilla would have if she and Charles divorced. We couldn't go on having Diana, Princess of Wales for Charles's first wife and Camilla, Duchess of York for his second. It was nonsensical and totally wrong. And of course we do already move wives of royalty when then die anyway (or we should be doing so) to the standard maiden name format. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 20:44, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
I oppose this proposal for past peeresses, as contrary to usage, which is Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. There can be more than one Duchess of Devonshire at a time, btw, even if several of them are dowagers. Septentrionalis 17:59, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, several things..this really wouldnt be an issue for past peresses because if their dead their no longer The Duchess of...., and this was a move for the wives of royal peers, and as for opposing it if you noticed the dates your over a month to late. We agreed on this proposal and moved the nescesary pages. Mac Domhnaill 21:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I figured that people on this page would know where this article should be, as the "Queen" in the title looks odd to me. My initial impulse is to move it to Rosalie Gicanda, but should it say "of Rwanda"? I find royal/peerage titles baffling. She was actually the Queen Dowager, at a time when the Rwandan monarchy was abolished, if that changes things. Thanks, Banyan Tree 14:41, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
She is dead, so yes it should be at simply Rosalie Gicanda, if she were alive, it would be correct. Mac Domhnaill
Please see Talk:List of Polish monarchs#Naming for a lengthy discussion on the issue of the titles of these pages. john k 19:36, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
If I got it correctly (I'm really trying to understand this naming conventions, but am not sure if I do understand them), if a person is born crown prince, he is referred to as crown prince on Wikipedia, no matter whether the monarchy was abolished after he was born or if the country he's crown prince doesn't even exist any more, right? Now, if that's correct, then, how do we refer his descendants? For instance: Prince Peter of Yugoslavia. It is disputable if his father is crown prince (since it is disputable wether Kingdom of Yugoslavia existed in 1945), but, let's say Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia is a crown prince. Prince Peter of Yugoslavia was born on February 5, 1980. Kingdom of Yugoslavia didn't exist then. I does not exist now. Is Peter a prince? -- Dijxtra 15:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, its a confusing point. The answer is simply put yes and no. He is not legally recognized in Yugoslavia as a Prince. However, none of the old German Royals and Aristocrats are recognized either, and they have continued to use and be styled as such ever since WWI. And Prince Peter's is an interesting situation, where unlike the exiled Greek Royals, they have been openly welcomed back into Yugoslavia (or what was), and even live in the old royal palace. So the answer to your question, is that yes Peter is, a Prince (although his title is not legally recognized). Mac Domhnaill 20:10, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
If he's not legally recognised a prince, how can he be one? He does not enjoy the rank, or title of one, does not get to wear a coronet, his family have no legal nor constitutional power - in short, he is not a prince, he has only the style/name. Pretenders are not royalty. See Caroline, Princess of Hanover. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
I have just been on the Yugoslav royal pages - what IS going on?? Whilst on the Hanover pages it makes quite clear the Hanover throne does not exist anymore (yet still refers to them as Prince/ss and HRH by courtesy) the Yugoslav ones treat the Yugoslav ex-Royal family as if they were still on the throne (even saying "Prince X is third in line to the throne of Yugoslavia") - how can that be so when that throne does not exist anymore? It's misleading and needs to be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
Well clearly what I meant was misunderstood. He is most definatley not legally a Prince, although he will always be styled as one, I have always been aware of that. And the Yugoslavs should probably be treated differently than the Hanoverians, as Yugoslavia welcomed them bakc as the Royal Family, the people there treat them as royals, and they live in the royal palace. And i very clearly stated that he is not legally recognized as a Prince, this doesnt mean hes not. Say Jane Brown marries John Smith, she may not legally change her name but she is still Mrs. John Smith, or Mrs. Jane Smith. Even though this is not legally her name. Just because his title has no legal standing does not mean he isnt. Mac Domhnaill 20:22, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
So he is in fact not a prince but a courtesy prince? It needs to be acknowledged on every Yugoslav page he's a prince by courtesy only. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
There is no such thing as a "courtesy prince". Either you are or you aren't. A person is a prince by birthright, not by state decision. As the son of a prince, this guy clearly is a prince, under traditional dynastic criteria. The only issue is whether he is referred to as such. In the absence of a monarchy, being a prince carries no constitutional status. Some republics tell princes not to use the titles. Some republics out of courtesy allow them to use it. Serbia allows the prince to use his title out of courtesy. Even if it didn't he would still be a prince, just not be allowed to call himself one in Serbia. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 00:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually I think you'll find that is incorrect. A monarch is no longer a monarch if he has no sovereignty - deposed kings are usually referred to as ex-King so-and-so, e.g. ex-King Constantine of Greece, who by courtesy can be styled King of Greece (but he ISN'T king of Greece as there is no THRONE of Greece). I don't see how if legally he is not recognised as a prince he can still be one. If the government doesn't recognise him as one, who does (other than by courtesy?) They recognise themselves? They are just ordinary citizens by Yugoslav law. You cannot say a title exists if it is not recognised by law. What, exactly, is Prince Peter referred to in Yugoslav law? (NOT styled) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.180 ( talk • contribs)
...and as for a prince being a prince by birthright & not state decision, why was William III of England king? Because he was invited by the British government to take the crown, he certainly wasn't king by birthright. That just goes to show that the state has the last say on these matters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.203 ( talk • contribs)
I have to say that many of you seem to completely lack understanding of what a Prince really is. Jtdirl is completely right, and you cannot compare a King to a Prince. As the title of King is never by birthright, while the title of Prince almost always is (unless through marriage, or the title is bestowed upon someone.) As well please do not use Caroline, Princess of Hanover, as an example, she is a princess by birthright and her titles are legally used in Monaco. Her husband, step-children and youngest daughter are all examples, but not her. And coud you all please sign your comments. Mac Domhnaill 23:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
...so how come James II's descendents were not all titled prince and aren't recognised as such (and hardly referred to as such by the british government? If a king isn't a king by birthright, what is he king by virtue of? I'm not being rude, I genuinely want to know answers to these questions. Can you please tell me who recognises Prince Peter as a prince if it is not the government.-- 130.88.188.14 00:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok....a King is the King by virtue of succeeding a previous king (being king is not a birthright, but being the heir is a birthright)the office of a King or sovereign is a constitional one and needs to be defined by a government. Constantine II of Greece, is still a king because he became King when Greece still had a monarchy, the title of King is one that is held for life (unless lost through abdication, which Constantine did not do), whilist no one is obligated to refer to him as King Constantine after the office is abolished, he will be a King until his death, although he is not The King. As for what you are saying with all the descendents of James II not being Princes, this is because the British government and Royal family have guidlines as to who is a prince by birthright (in the UK this is all children and grandchildren of a monarch in the male line), in Saudi Arabia all the male line descendts are Princes or Princesses (there are thousands of Saudi Royals). Each Royal Family/ House or government sets up its own rules as to who is a Prince merely by birthright. According to the rules established in Yugoslavia by Peters family all the children and grandchildren in the male line are Princes or Princesses. This is why Peter is a Prince by birthright. His father will be forever the Crown Prince, as it is a title that he holds from birthright when it was an established constitutional office. Each Royal family/governemnt or constition has its own set of guidelines as to is a Royal merely by birth. Since the Yugoslav monarchy was abolished, it is up to Peter's family to set those guidlines, as it is in Hanover, Prussia Austria etc. where monarchies have been abolished. As I have been trying to say no one, needs to recognize him as a Prince for him to be one. If you still have any questions dont hesitate to ask either here or on my talk page. Mac Domhnaill 02:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
What are the Yugoslavs princes of exactly? They can't surely be of Yugoslavia? Would anybody be required to kneel/curtsey to them? I don't understand how if no-one needs to recognise him as a prince he still is one, that surely means anybody could style themselves a prince without being recognised? I could believe what you are saying but can you please provide evidence for your points. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am not saying I am wrong either as it is important in these matters to have supporting evidence. What is Prince Peter referred to legally in Yugoslavia? Surely he is just a normal citizen in his own country? The way I see it is this - I'm not saying I am right, but it seems this way: Yugoslav monarchy is dead, therefore monarchical titles are dead. The sovereign is the fount of honour in the royal family since all royal titles derive from him or from being related to him. There is no throne of Yugoslavia, no pageantry, no crown, no legal authority attributed to the royal family. The former royals no longer have precedence over their subjects, they are normal citizens. Monarchical titles have been abolised, therefore the rank and office of "Prince of Yugoslavia" does not exist; they are not legally recognised, there are no letters patent deeming them so, no laws referring to them in the constitution. The ex-royal family is styled as Prince/sses but not titled - i.e. Diana Spencer when Diana, Princess of Wales was not The Princess of Wales (or a princess of any kind) since by law there was no holder of that office. So whilst he may be referred to as HRH Prince Peter, this is courtesy - legally he is a plain Mr. The whole prince/ss thing is a matter of family tradition but has absolutely no validity. They are styling themselves royal when in fact they no longer are royal since they have no sovereign power - it is like the descendents of James II calling themselves Kings of England - they are most certainly not (though you could argue they are "by birthright"). Constantine II is referred to as King of Greece by courtesy, in reality he is ex-King Constantine of Greece, as there is no The King of Greece just as there is no The King of Yugoslavia Can you please give me a definition of a prince - yes he derives his power from birthright (by virtue of being related to the monarch) - but when the monarch's title doesn't exist anymore? If they are Princes of Yugoslavia yet their own country does not recognise them as such, how can they hold that title? Princess of Hanover is different since she is a princess of Monaco and holds the surname "of Hanover" styles herself Princess of Hanover when in fact that title does not exist except as a legal surname. Monaco recognises this style but by courtesy (it has not taken legal action to create her a Princess of Hanover, but merely refers to her as such). The same is true of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester - she was not "Princess Alice" but "The Princess Henry" through marriage, yet combined her title with her name to produce Princess Alice when no legislation was passed to make her so. George VI made his grandchildren Charles and Anne prince/princess of the UK by letters patent i.e. they could not have been prince/ss without letters patent i.e. they were not prince/ss without legal confirmation. Princes of Yugoslavia have no legal confirmation - they style themselves as princes but do not hold the rank and are legally titled as normal citizens.
Please can you tell me why all of the above is wrong (and please don't answer "he just IS a prince" because there's no evidence for that), and also if you think any of my points above are valid. What was the legislation enacted deposing the monarchy? Thankyou. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.243.186 ( talk • contribs)
Ok...just because Yugoslavia does not exist does not mean he cannot be a Prince of it. He is a Prince of Yugoslavia. Prussia and Hanover do not exist as independent nations anymore, and their princes are still tyled that way. No, no one would be required to kneel, bow or acknowledge him as a Prince, but he is one. You also cannot bring Princess Alice into this story. British Royal title systems are different than those of Yugoslavia. And yes Constantine is only refffered to as King of Greece as a courtesy, but he is a king. I have explained everything I can and dont feel to be repeating myself, it seems to me you cannont comprehend the concept, that because he is not legally recognized he is not a Prince. Which he is regardless of what the govt says. Mac Domhnaill 02:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I would buy what you say except that you do not use any evidence for this - I asked specifically to not just say "he IS a prince" and asked other questions such as what Prince Peter legally referred to etc. I'm afraid I don't understand the concept because there isn't sufficient evidence for it. Please PLEASE answer my questions thoroughly and don't just excuse this case by saying it is "different". I'm not disagreeing with you, just questioning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.188.14 ( talk • contribs)
I would like to raise the subject again, this time regarding the even more controversial children of the deposed Greek royal family. I am trying to have a pre-emptive discussion on the matter as I can see there exists no guideline regarding children of deposed monarchs' children, and the ongoing heated debate in the Anne-Marie of Greece article indicates that even more heated discussions could arise regarding them. I am reffering to the following:
All of the above have been born after 1974 when the monarchy was abolished in Greece. Surely they are princes and princesses of Denmark. But are they princes/esses of Greece? I am not argueing weather they are styled as such in royal courts in Europe. I am just questioning the titling of the articles. I would go for it and straightforwardly request a move en masse, but as this could cause problems, I thought I'd bring it up here first.
Now, commenting to what has been said above: to say that X is prince of Y, just because he IS (and excuse the harsh language) is absurd. Nothing is true just because it is. This train of thought is logically twisted and cannot hold. The aformentioned article by Guy Stair Sainty is of course one point of view but that does not in itself validate the argument, since (at least to my better knowledge) there is no such thing as "royalty science". I mean if one says that "The Earth is round because Neil Armstrong observed it" that cannot be denied, it is science. But one can refuse to accept Mr Sainty's analysis without being either inconsistent or paradoxal, just as one can refuse to accept the existence of Classes as Marx described them..
In my understanding they are not princes/esses of Greece. In my understanding of politics, a title is conferred upon individuals by society, under the terms of a Social Contract that permits that. I can accept that Wikipedia articles of deposed monarchs and their immediate relatives are, for the shake of historical accuracy, named with their former title affixes to their names, as they were indeed at some time kings, princes and princesses. But for people who never reigned, such as the ones in the above list, it is IMHO not correct (and in fact misleading) to use monarchical titles. I would also like to point out the following part of this guideline page, point 6 of the first section:
Are not all the above pretenders according to the guideline's definition of pretender? If so, they should not have the titles affixed to the titles of the corresponding articles. Of course it should be mentioned in the article body that they are known as such among other royal courts, but the problem is with the naming of the articles.
I sincerely hope we can produce a guideline out of this discussion, explicitly for such cases, as the Yugoslavian and the Greek former royal families. -- Michalis Famelis 18:20, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
What is there to consider?
Just to show that this is no mere academic debate: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has a report [1] that some Greek immigrants to Norway are offended that the list of baptismal sponsors for the new son of the Crown Prince of Norway (available on the website of the Norwegian Royal Family) [2] lists "His Royal Highness Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece". The conflict on Wikipedia reflects a conflict in society. There is a practice which has been used in the past (although not without opposition) and continues to be used in the present which some people think just shouldn't be. The challenge on Wikipedia is that some of these people think that only one side of the debate should be presented (i.e. we should state the case of the Greek constitution, and that's the one and only and final word on the topic). That's not intellectually honest. Noel S McFerran 02:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Please, see above #Polish monarchs -- Francis Schonken 17:07, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Have quickly scanned the archives' contents boxes for discussions on the following, so apologies in advance if I've missed anything.
Does anyone else find that "Saint" written out in full – especially in article titles – impedes their reading speed? Or, to put it another way, might there be a consensus to prefer "St." over "Saint" in articles (other than Saint itself)...?
Also, I appreciate the observation that using the abbreviation "St" rather than "St." (or "Mr" instead of "Mr." etc.) aids reading when the text is in a non-proportional font. In a proportional font, however, such as that used on the Wikipedia (Wikimedia) pages, periods within sentences look less obtrusive to me, so I happily include them. Do people think this should be upheld as a policy, particularly in article titles?
Thanks, David Kernow 10:23, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
If a qualifier is used in the title of a page where the content is, it is never abbreviated (apart from Jr./Sr. ...), so: "Saint", not "St." nor "St".
Thanks for your thoughts, Francis. Wikipedia Talk:Naming conventions (people) seems to indicate that a consensus over this kind of policy would be difficult to find, so I think I'll plod on merrily. I don't believe trying to avoid all abbreviations is necessarily a useful approach; whilst "Saint David", "Saint Petersburg" etc. are doubtlessly correct, I and I suspect many have become so used to seeing and reading "St. David", "St. Petersburg", etc. (with the periods/full-stops included when in proportional fonts) that the former look odd, especially within prose. I'm aware, though, that reading habits are necessarily highly subjective and that I don't know how representative my suspicions are.
Presumably all these "Naming conventions (X)" have at some point been through some kind of establishment-by-(small-sized-)consensus process...?
Best wishes, David Kernow 19:11, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Please help completing the table below. The table is on a separate page, that opens when clicking the "edit" link below.
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Polish rulers) is the place for discussions on the English Wikipedia page names of individual monarchs. -- Francis Schonken 09:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
This came up in regards to the proposed move of Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst: we have no policy on the naming of articles on members of the German nobility. I confess that my own knowledge of the German nobility rests on a shaky foundation, but I'm going to craft a proposal nonetheless and invite criticism.
Titles of German nobility are part of a holder's legal name and should be included in the article title, subject to the following constraints. Families which were formerly sovereign rulers, or who were mediatized Holy Roman Empire nobility, or who were otherwise members of the Hochadel should have their title included in the article in the original German: Chlodwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Weichs. Individuals who ruled as sovereigns during their life time should be referred to by the convention Name Ordinal, Title: Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine.
Lower nobles who gained higher titles after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire should be referred to by their most common name: Otto von Bismarck not Otto Fürst von Bismarck. Non-sovereign titles granted for life only, such as Duke of Lauenburg, should not be mentioned in the article title.
Members of the lower nobility who are commonly known by a title should have that title included in the article title, in the original German: Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz not Colmar von der Goltz or Baron Colmar von der Goltz. Individuals who hail from Baltic regions and have baronial rank should be referred to as Baron, not Freiherr, when appropriate (e.g. Friedrich Baron von Holstein.
I suspect I've made something of a mess here, but it's a messy subject. Mackensen (talk) 18:36, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Mackensen - this proposal seems like a good starting point...except...Why Otto von Bismarck and Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz? This seems inconsistent. It is also worth noting that noble titles have been officially part of the name since 1919. I'm not sure how one should describe their status before that. It's also worth noting that Austrian nobility all officially lost their titles in 1919, but many still use them. The whole subject is rather a mess. john k 19:01, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
What about Otto Graf Lambsdorff? He, and some other elected politicians, are known by their title. And I'm still uncertain if Hohenlohe counts as a sovereign family... john k 15:17, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Some google-searching and book-checking reveals that "Prince Bismarck" and "Fürst von Bismarck" are common constructions. In light of this, and in the interests of a more uniform (and sensible) policy, I propose to do away with the differentiation between newer and older titles. Therefore, the article on Bismarck would be located at Otto Fürst von Bismarck (on the other hand, in Bismarck's specific case, I would be receptive to the argument that most common name trumps this usage). We would still exclude lifetime only titles such as Duke of Lauenberg. Mackensen (talk) 00:09, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Septentrionalis my question (which you still don't seem to understand) is how would an article look like with a title that is difficult to translate (example: Edler, Ritter) and titles that are very cumbersome as in "Reichsfreiherr". So what would the article's name Heinrich Friedrich Karl Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein be in English? "Baron of the Empire Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein"? That's why I think it better to leave all titles up to Graf in German, and starting from "Graf" they can be left in English. Gryffindor 21:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC) ps: "Chlodwig, Prince Hohenlohe" is factually wrong and not a good idea anyways, I think the format Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst comes closest to being correct.
You can find out what people are called in English by looking them up in English texts. For Stein, there are four choices actually used in English: H. F. K., Baron Stein; HFK, Baron von Stein; HFK, Baron vom und zum Stein; HFK, Freiherr von und zum Stein. I do not defend the second (which is an error, rather than a translation); I think the third is most common. The fact that his family was ennobled by the Emperor can be mentioned in the article, if relevant. Septentrionalis 18:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
"... of Germany" was intentionally not used back in 1871 by/for Wilhelm I, German Emperor, so Friedrich III of Germany (Hohenzollern) should be moved back to Friedrich III, German Emperor, and Wilhelm II of Germany back to Wilhelm II, German Emperor. See discussions there, as well as the announcement on Wikipedia:Requested_moves#15_June_2006. -- Matthead 23:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering if there was a convention for the naming of Grand Ducal consorts. We have Princess Augusta of Cambridge, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine; but then there is Josephine-Charlotte of Belgium, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. Should their articles be titled in the manner of queen consorts ( Mary of Teck) or not? Just want to make it all uniform. Any ideas/comments?? Prsgodd e ss187 00:22, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I think that probably for the sake of unity we should also have them at their maiden names. This would avoid any confusion in the future. I myself was also wondering about Grand Ducal consorts, it seems that they are not all titled consistently. But yea, Id have to say that probably all deceased consorts should be at their maiden names. Mac Domhnaill 03:18, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Charles, we have argued the case of the Queen Mother many times. It is only because she was known as such for a long time. It's not going to make sense for generations in the future to call her Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Maiden names are the more accurate, preferred and uniform way to go. Mac Domhnaill 03:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
To return to the subject of grand dukes, I think the point here is that the title of princess with which some of these consorts were born is (rightly or wrongly) regarded as being in some way superior to the title they acquired by marriage. This brings into play the wikipedia naming convention about using the highest title a person ever used. I'm not saying I agree with that perception, but I think that's what's behind it. Deb 20:32, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
The "maiden name rule" is a generalization (and a simplification) of actual usage, which does not actually follow it.
Until very recently, royals were disambiguated by any means convenient; often a place name. This could be
This inevitably Anglocentric (or, xince the French used it too - and probably first - Gallocentric) system in part (but only in part) overlaps the maiden-name rule, which is an artificial Wikipedia construct. The cases where it most weverely fails are precisely those where this discussion keeps floundering; Alexandra of Russia and Elizabeth, late Queen-consort of England.
I have a modest proposal: let's follow actual usage. Septentrionalis 02:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Another query on Queen Consorts. There are four
Joan of Englands, all mentioned on that page. Two have 'alternate' names, and have their own articles under those. The other two do not, and the page looks a mess as a result. According to the naming conventions discussed above, these women should both be at
Joan of England, but need to be disambiguated. I have proposed on the talk page turning
Joan of England into a redirect dab page, with links to:
Any thoughts on the article names for the first two? Alternative ways to dab these would be welcome. ::Supergolden:: 11:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
The names for members of this house is an absolute disaster. The use of Bourbon-"Territory" is at best, extremely informal and has only ever been used by few people to describe themselves. It also appears to be applied to every Bourbon princeling one can think of on Wikipedia, certainly even for those who never used it. Bourbon monarchs of states such as Parma, the Two Sicilies, etc are at "of Parma", "of the Two Sicilies", etc. The agnates of such monarchs should share the same territorial designation, be put into categories of Parma, the Two Sicilies, etc, which should be sub-categories of Bourbon. It reflects fact and the few people who seem to be known by such hyphenations would be covered by redirects. For instance, Zita of Bourbon-Parma would be at Zita of Parma, which is shorter, correct and actually looks better. Charles 17:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
In going over the naming convention page and its archives, I haven't come across a discussion of a problem found in many French biographic articles: in Wikipedia article titles, French noble titles of lesser nobles (including artists, writers, statesmen and so forth) are currently listed in two different ways:
Furthermore, in the second case, capitalization is currently chaotic:
It would be helpful if we could come to some sort of consensus which would fit with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles). (Feel free to post discussion on talk page of Wikipedia:France-related topics notice board). -- NYArtsnWords 18:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Since Gryffindor has asked us to try again to move toward a conclusion on the use of, at least, French noble titles in article names, I'll take another stab at that task.
We seem to have agreed on the following:
In other areas where no consensus has been reached, I recommend the following for the reasons indicated:
Yikes, didn't notice this until now. I really hate "Duke de Broglie" or "Viscount de Mirabeau". French titles are sufficiently similar to the English versions that confusion is not likely. Duc>Duke, Comte>Count, Marquis>Marquess, Vicomte>Viscount, Baron>Baron, are all pretty obvious. The hybrid forms suggested by Lethiere are strange and ugly. I would suggest that non-royal French nobility just have its titles given in French, straight up. john k 10:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I think this name may actually be usual usage in English. I would propose making the article title Władysław II Jagiełło of Lithuania and Poland, both for historical order and to avoid any appearance of slighting Lithuania. I don't think there's any risk of confusion with Władysław II the Exile; if necessary there is always the option of using the English form (and yes, it is the English form, as well as the Latin) Ladislaus. Septentrionalis 17:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Poland was a kingdom, Lithuania merely a grand duchy, so Poland should come first. Is it slighting Spain to have Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor? But the Polish monarch articles are currently on their own bizarre plane of article naming, which needs to be cleared up. john k 18:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
The regnal number is impractical, because it may lead to even editwarring, but at least to problem which of those two to use. Are you, then, suggesting Wladyslaw Jagiello of Poland?? That has one sad fault: all the words resemble very much those in Polish (only diacriticals removed from first names, not anglicized nor latinized - and the only country mentioned is Poland), and Lithuanians are then not happy at all. I am saying that compromise is needed with this guy. ObRoy 20:46, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
A new approval poll about how to name this particular noble's article has been started. Interested editors are invited to participate at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło. -- Elonka 18:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
There is huge inconsistency in the names used for British life peers - some are named using their title and some not. The paragraph on the subject in this article does not clarify matters:
Life peers...use the dignity in the title, unless the individual is exclusively referred to by personal name. For example: Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (not "Quintin McGarel Hogg"), but Margaret Thatcher (not "Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher.")
That allows a vast amount of leeway as to naming, since pretty much no life peer is referred to exclusively by their personal name (even Laurence Olivier, somebody definitely known professionally by his personal name, was frequently referred to as "Lord Olivier", for example). It's interesting that Margaret Thatcher is used as an example. She's not referred to exclusively by her personal name at all - in fact, she is now pretty much exclusively referred to, by the British media at least, as "Baroness Thatcher" or "Lady Thatcher". I think we need a little more clarification on this policy. -- Necrothesp 17:23, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I have a very very very long argument with Jerzy for a very very very long time.
At the begining, it was only about the oportunity to rename artcles from Pope Stephen III to Pope Stephen X. You can find the whole dispute on this page Talk:Pope_Stephen. Finally, we agree on it: those articles must be renamed. But we definitly don't agree about what the new titles must be.
I wanted to have the opinion of other users. I don't think it has to be dicided only by him and me. In short, here are our opinions:
Pope Stephen III must be renamed Pope Stephen (II or III), ... ,
Pope Stephen X must be renamed Pope Stephen (IX or X). The "former"
Pope Stephen II must be renamed Pope Stephen (unconsecrated). New disambiguation pages must be created for each Pope Stephen n entry.
—Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Švitrigaila (
talk •
contribs) 21:57, 10 April 2006
Pope Stephen III must be renamed Pope Stephen II, ... , Pope Stephen X must be renamed Pope Stephen IX. Pope Stephen X must be kept as a simple redirect to Pope Stephen IX. The "former" Pope Stephen II must be renamed Pope elect Stephen. No disambiguation page has to be created. A simple disambiguation phrase is added at the top of each article (this line can already be seen in those articles: I wrote them myself and surprisingly Jerzy transformed them into a Template, that's a very good idea!)
Note I've renamed the old Pope Stephen II into Stephen (ephemeral pope). I know this title is awkward and the move was not wise.
Now, I don't want further historical arguments about the opportunity of changing the existing titles. The discussion is no more about historical facts. In theory all is explained in Stephen (ephemeral pope). I would like users to decide which system is better for numbering those popes.
Švitrigaila 21:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
And why not renaming Miguel Induráin into Miguel Induráin/Indurain? The answer is you never express variants in the title of an article. Never. You can't find even one counterexample on Wikipedia. And Nunh-huh says "Stephen II/III" is the standard designation for this pope: it's absolutely false. You may find in an encyclopedia a sentence such as "He added to that power after Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to Paris to anoint Pippin in a lavish ceremony at Saint Denis Basilica", or "He added to that power after Pope Stephen III traveled all the way ...", but you'll never find something like "He added to that power after Pope Stephen II/III traveled all the way ..." (this sentence is from the article Pippin the Younger). "Stephen II/III" is not his name. It's only two possible different names for the same person. As Induráin and Indurain are two possible different names for the same man. If you rename the article into Pope Stephen II/III, it would be against the naming conventions. And Jerzy's proposition to rename articles into Pope Stephen (II or III) and to use pipes such as [[Pope Stephen (II or III)|Pope Stephen II]] seems to go expressly against Wikipedia's Manual of style.
He seems to think that if someone goes on Pope Stephen IX and reads Pope Stephen VIII is sometime called Stephen IX, he'll click on Pope Stephen VIII only to read Pope Stephen VII is sometime called Pope Stephen VIII, and the he'll click on Pope Stephen VII and so on... Does he really think a normal reader will conclude Pope Stephen II is sometime called Pope Stephen X? If I'm looking for an article about a man I don't know anything about, let's say "Pope Stephen VII" for example, and if I read his article and I found the phrase "Note: In sources prior to the 1960's, this pope is sometimes called Stephen VIII and Stephen VI is sometimes called Stephen VII. See Stephen (ephemeral pope) for detailed explanations.", that would be enough for me. I won't check all the Pope Stephen pages one by one. I'm stupid, OK, but I am not that stupid.
You all here seem to consider both numbers for each pope Stephen are equally correct. They are not. There is a good number and a wrong one. As I've already said ten times here, Pope Stephen IX was explicitely named "the ninth" during his reign, and it was by mistake he was renamed after. And yes, Jerzy, we have to "get the names right". It is the role of an encyclopedia. If I look for Miguel Indurain or Miguel Induráin in an encyclopedia, I hope the encyclopedia will give me the correct spelling of his name. It's normal to have a redirect from the misspelled entry to the good one, but it's in order to help the user and to correct him, not in order to mean both spelling are correct (and in fact, the English Wikipedia mistakes once again : the correctly spelling of his name is without the accent even in Spanish, but I suppose if there was somewhere on Earth another famous Miguel Indurain without the accent, some would find better to keep the racing cyclist's name with the accent according to Nunh-huh's principle "we do not use the most common ambiguous designation in preference to a common but unambiguous one", that is to say "a wrong information is better than a right one if it is better understood".)
Švitrigaila 23:30, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Please comment at Talk:Władysław II Jagiełło to stop this monstrosity from happening.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 14:45, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
There have been a few moves of pages of the princes/princesses who were simutaneously the children of the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. Now, the pages are at "of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha", moved by a user who was moving more pages from "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha". Since the use of the "and" is correct and was in the official name of the duchy (duchies), it should be used. However, does SC&G need to be used with Edinburgh? Charles 16:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The naming convention cannot push any such title to anyone which (s)he has not actually held. For example, prince/princess in titles of medieval cadet members of monarchical families are untenable. This leads to a funny situation, where a large bunch of people (mostly women) have articles which resemble closely those of ruling monarchs and deceased queens, though the individual in question may have been much lower. For example, daughters of the first and second duke of Prussia seem quite similar to later queens consort of various places. Sons of medieval kings that died young, resemble reigning monarchs of those same nations. Funny indeed. Shilkanni 14:22, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, in the partial question of medieval high women who never married a king, I would like to see a new rule: a rule that leads to "Elisabeth of Hungary, Countess of Thuringia" and analogously the others. Cos, if we apply the "pre-marital terrotorial designation only" to all sorts of royal women who became countesses and duchesses, we end up with a plethora of women "of country" (causing a number of disambig needs) - which also is misleading, making them look like queens and/or reigning monarchs. (and btw, this has me to suggest the ordinal to all of those who were the only monarchs of their name, besides.) The two-part title has the essential part of pre-marital (which is how they are usually known in their fiefs' histories etc) but also has the husband's fief as sort of disambiguation. Shilkanni 20:41, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I recently create a page Harington Baronets which was a red link from Baronetage of England because I wanted to create a stub for the regicide James Harrington because the link went to his cousin of the same name James Harrington. The article name I initially gave the article about the man was: James Harrington, 3rd Baron of Ridlington. I now know that Baron was wrong and since then the page has been moved to Sir James Harrington, 3rd Baronet.
Looking through the first few baronetage only pages in the list Baronetage of England, it seems to me that the above guidelines are not being followed.
The formulation of "Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg.
Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital title, ie,
Sofia of Greece & Denmark. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." is not good when saying how the person reverts after death, as to the word TITLE. The established use in works of reference clearly does not use any title, it uses the simplified name precisely without any titulary. The word should be changed to "name" or equivalent. Queen Mary is not
Princess Mary of Teck but
Mary of Teck. Marie Antoinette is not
Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria but
Marie Antoinette of Austria. There are some who did not have terrotory, then the surname or something similar is used, as
Anne Boleyn. The wording should reflect that no title is used, but a formulation "first name in its usual version" plus "territorial designation or if not used, then surname".
The formulation of "Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name or pre-marital title, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use
Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine." is not good as to the word TITLE.
Shilkanni 15:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
How about:" Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine. Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg. Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital name, ie, Sofia of Greece. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." The examples THEN make it quite clear that a territory is usual, not any digged-up surname. Shilkanni 16:04, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I would like to add something to the text:"
Past Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name (first name as usually used, and a designation, usually a territory, if nonexistent, then surname or equivalent - no actual title is ever used, such as princess), not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use
Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine.
Existing Royal Consorts are referred to by their consort name, eg.
Queen Sofia of Spain. But when she dies, she will revert to her pre-marital name (same as in past consorts: "first name as usually used, and a designation, usually a territory, if nonexistent, then surname or equivalent - no actual title is ever used, such as princess"), ie,
Sofia of Greece. As widow, some appropriate addition (usually announced by the country in question) will be amended to (such as Queen Dowager or Queen Mother), with the new Queen of Spain being referred to by the consort designation. The same rule applies to male royal consorts." Welcome to formulate the
formula to be as precise as possible.
Shilkanni 16:09, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
(copied from above: The NC does not yet make it sufficiently clear, as there exist some editors who somehow believe that a married woman could be Princess Anne of Bourbon-Parma. Shilkanni 16:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC) )
I edited her opening paragraph and arrived at the following - it reflects my views what is the task of Wikipedia, which certainly is not to endorse any monarchical pretension.
Shilkanni 16:55, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Anne (Princess Anne Antoinette Françoise Charlotte of Bourbon-Parma, born
September 18,
1923), is the wife of the former King
Michael I of Romania, however married after his loss of the throne. As such, she is by courtesy also sometimes styled Queen Anne of Romania and treated sometimes as if being a
queen consort. As wife of a nobleman who undisputedly is a Prince of Hohenzollern, she is sometimes referred as Princess Anne of Hohenzollern. Their family has reportedly some decade ago taken the surname "of Romania", whereby she would be known also as Anne of Romania, the title of the book in English that her son-in-law published about her life.
Under Existing Royal Consorts the example of Sofia of Spain is not well formulated and should be corrected: Sofia of Greece and Denmark is too convoluted and good works of reference will not do it in that way. Experts will name her simply as Sofia of Greece in the future. This has been seen in many earlier cases: Elena of Greece was the queen of Romania, and there have also been several princesses of two or more realms to become queens consort and deceased now - of them, only the most usual territory is regularly mentioned. For some reason, there is Marie of Edinburgh, not Marie of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and United Kingdom. This "pre-marital names rule" has always used the simplest territorial designation, thus is is untenable to convolute them here in Wikipedia. Shilkanni 15:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
We have been talking about this topic on and off, I am trying to at least get the parts out that we can all agree upon and which are most uncontroversial IMO. This one concern nobility that is not from the United Kingdom and have titles that are not translatable into English, or no English equivalent exists. Members of the non-British nobility, such as as Ritter, Edler, Chevalier, Sieur, Vidame, etc. have their titles in the original language. Examples: Carl Ritter von Ghega, Richard Edler von Mises, Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert, etc.
Also concerning another point that exists for monarchs already 4. If a person is overwhelmingly best known by a cognomen, or by a name that doesn't fit the guidelines above, revert to the base rule: use the most common English name. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, etc...".
Before we go fiddling with this, I would like some actual source, preferably a reliable secondary source in English, who refers to the author under any other title than Marquis de Sade, which is where almost all English-speakers will expect to find him. Septentrionalis 22:14, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
These two examples are better at Carl von Gheca and Richard von Mises - so they are not valid examples. No need to put their titles in at all. The guideline is possibly needed, but not for these two. Do you have any better examples? Shilkanni 22:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
There is an obvious need to find a NPOV way to disambiguate the Hanoverian claimants with name Ernst August. It seems to me that all attempts to designate one of the various styles to each of them is doomed to fail. More or less, each of them was/is "prince of Hanover" and "duke of Brunswick" and therefore, if one is called by such designation, that name actually should always be a redirect to dab of all of them (= designating any of the names to only one of them is arbitrary). Now, we have a sort of ban to use a monarchical ordinal to any of them who were just pretenders. And however, currently (as of 16th May), thanks chiefly to moving efforts of editor"Cooldoug", all of them enjoy an ordinal.
I am asking whether it really is such a sin to allow them to have ordinals. After all, US bourgeoisie uses quite much those I, II, III... (instead of Sr and Jr) in legal names of commoners. And, one of the sources of ordinals in works of reference has actually been a retrospective assignation by genealogists to persons of antiquity (e.g Ptolemies and Seleucids) and of Middle Ages (Williams of Montferrat...) in order to disambiguate those persons though THEY never themselves used those numerals nor were such in use in their own time. Still, scholarly works are currently full of them. Regarding some of feudal families, the numeral in scholarly use actually sometimes is not the ordinal to show one's number in being a lord of a given territory, but rather a numeral showing that person's sequential place in their genealogy, the ruled territory having been variable (such as some William Nth of Montferrat did not actually rule Montferrat but another Italian place, and Welf Nth does not signify Nth Welf to rule Bavaria but Nth Welf of that pre-Guelph family, and also some female members of a family have got numerals though they did not reign nor rule in any way). Besides, in works of reference, there are numerals applied to holders of "peerage" titles, although some of them have never ruled any territory, them having been just holders of the title (and possibly some seat in a House of lords/peers/grandees/magnates). I admit that now, using numerals (which seem identical to regnal numbers) when a pretender is in question, seems as a support to that pretension and not only a genealogy-scholar way to disambiguate. I oppose giving endorsement to pretensions.
However, it seems to me that the only way to reach a s ustainable disambiguation with those Ernst A:s will simply be some use of numerals. And they have themselves used numerals, so it is not against the requirement not to use anything totally artificial. How about using numerals to those pretenders, but in a form which is not directly resembling a monarchical ordinal, such as Ernst August 4, Ernst August 5, Ernst August 6 and Ernst August 7, or Ernst August 4th, Ernst August 5th, Ernst August 6th and Ernst August 7th?? (you got the idea of the principle, details can be sorted later) - Comments, please. Shilkanni 09:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Dates are messy. (Do you use birth-death dates, dates when they were claimants, what happens when someone is looking for someone they know by ordinal, but by years, etc? I think an ordinal in parentheses is much more workable. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 13:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
It seems there is some opposition against giving ordinals to those claimants, and some support for giving them ordinals. There is some opposition against parenthetic titles, but also support for it. Nunh-huh has suggested that ordinals that are different than those which the pretenders themselves used would be acceptable. Shilkanni 17:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
the guy born in 1954 would be Ernst August VII and the guy born in 1983 would be Ernst August VIII. Those are genealogical numerals which are (as I understand) maximized to highest possible. And they have the advantage of being such which were not used by the actual pretenders, but higher. I cannot accept endorsing pretension, therefore the numbers should not be the same. Shilkanni 17:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
There are several problems here.
There are several titles involved. There is no consensus that they, or anyone, are Dukes of Brunswick or Brunswick-Lüneburg (since 1918). There is consensus against their being Dukes of Cumberland (since 1919). WP should not impose such titles if they are not consensus. This leaves Prince of Hanover.
Roman numerals are useful for
What we do do for other pretending houses is to list them under their generally accepted courtesy titles (Duke of Anjou, Count of Paris, or whatever). Fortunately, this has not (yet) produced ambiguity in the French cases: the names are long, and the titles of pretence are getting flashier as the hope of restoration dims.
I would be bold, not bother to disambiguate, and have the following articles:
Oh people, I just realized that Ernest August born in 1914 actually was officially something like Hereditary Duke of Brunswick until 1918, i.e the equivalent of crown prince of that duchy. That was not his main title of pretension, in use, but at least in our current rules, he truly was that and that title can be assigned to him personally also after loss of that monarchy, as they do not lose titles because of revolution. What do you think: a title which he did not use particularly much, would it be the article title here in this situation? Shilkanni 11:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
There is an alternate, simple solution. We have two articles for people named
Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover who have short articles, and are in part notable as father and son. Consider
Easley Blackwood, which deals with the same situation by conbining the two articles. Why not the same here?
Septentrionalis 03:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
It would be clean, provided it were stable. But it probably will not. I predict: if we combine two articles, sooner or later someone will create them anew. Separate them. Resulting in several separate stubs for the same biography. Pessimistic but realistic. If we arrive in that sort of solution, it is not any general rule, and should be talked in these two guys' talkpages (too). A general rule from THIS discussion could be the unconditional ban on ordinals of persons who are pretenders (actually, that rule already exists here). The name of that combined article is not easy, either, as "E.A., Prince of Hanover" is a name that may refer to other biographied persons too. Shilkanni 11:03, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I would at this stage again remind that this discussion is for seeking opinions and possible consensus about naming the CLAIMANTS with names E.A. - King George V remains what is correct for him, as well as King E.A. I. And duke E.A. III, having been reigning monarch of another state, is presumably named on that basis, though he also claimed Hanover. We can even say that E.A.II, i.e the one currently under Cumberland, is a separate case as he can be Crown Prince of Hanover and there is no ambiguation in that. Effectively this leaves us with decision about policy to the THREE most recent Ernests Augusts. Shilkanni 11:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Currently we have the following situation:
I would suggest either renaming the first four from "Ernest Augustus" to "Ernst August" or the last two to "Ernest Augustus". The ordinals seem fine as they are with only III needing the clarification of Hanover as his family name. We don't accept any pretense by noting who has Head of House and their order as such. There is no confusion when somebody actually opens the article.
"This has been a problem: all sorts of non-notable royals get an own article, usually on basis of them being XXXth on the line to the British throne, and that is often the only individual fact mentioned in the stub. And some people here prevent deletion of such stubs! "
I would be one of them. All the articles you mention are linked from the Line of succession to the British Throne and are part of a series. They do not stand alone and we might have a chance to expand them sooner or later. However I am curious how come there are examples of minor members of a House getting articles even when the Head of House or their direct ancestor do not? How for example did we manage to have an article on Victoria Luise of Prussia when we do not have articles on her father, three brothers, two nephews and four nieces who are all ahead of her in that line? User:Dimadick
About ordinals: For practical reasons, I don't like ordinals that aren't in common use. To assign the correct ordinal to a person, one has to know how many ancestors with the same name there were, and this is often hard to establish, or may even be a question of historical research (in the case of Ernst August: do we start counting in the 19th century, or do we include
Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg?). After all, there is no guarantee that all ancestors with the same name lived shortly before the person in question. Hence, parenthetical years are better; one can establish them without much difficulty.
About translating names: For consistency, only the names of rulers or historic nobles should be translated unless a translated version is in common use. Only in very rare cases people still do it with non-rulers. I don't see the need for an exception for pretenders here.
About the Ernest Augusti:
It must be remembered tthat those who wish an ordinal to be used, have the burden of showing it being overwhelmingly used in real life, and the burden of gathering a clear consensus, as using an ordinal of these three latest guys IS against the guideline. The naming convention forbids ordinals from pretenders. An exception requires consensus.
I conclude that there is a numbe of discussants who have opposed ordinals for these three latest guys, and therefore there is no consensus to allow that exception. The rule (no ordinal to pretender) stands. It will be respected and anyone is allowed to move these articles from locations which incluse an ordinal.
Question: I'm probably opening up a can of worms, however why are some kings named "name of Germany" when Germany did not exist back then? I know that this discussion has been raging on back and forth. The format Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor is fine. However we have "Albert II of Habsburg" who is under Albert II of Germany, but it's Philip of Swabia, and Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg. So why is Philip of Swabia not "Philip of Germany"? I think that Philip is in the right category, however then it should be "Albert II of Habsburg", etc. IMO. Then we have this case here Wenceslaus, King of the Romans. My proposal is to get rid of the "of Germany" part, since I know that creates alot of controversy and confusion (didn't exist, etc etc.) and have a format similar to the Holy Roman Emperors. Either keep them with the dynastic name, such as "Philip of Swabia", or have the format "name, German King", "name, King of the Germans", "name, King of the Romans" or "name, Roman-German King" (Römisch-deutscher König). Gryffindor 18:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Germany most certainly did exist (it was one of three component kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire, the other two being Italy and Burgundy), but I agree that it's probably best not to include it in article titles (this would also allow us to move Kaiser Wilhelm's dad to Friedrich III of Germany or Frederick III of Germany). That said, I think we should use the dynastic name if that is the most commonly used, otherwise "Name, King of the Romans." john k 22:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I oppose using those "dynastic names". They are kings of a country, and are to be named equally. There is no sense in putting one to king Philip of Swabia and another to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor - and also because an article text very easily goes to express "king Sigismund of Luxemburg" as has happened all too often with consorts, I remember seeing articlev texts resembling "queen Anna of Braganza", "Empress Maria of Savoy" and "queen Frederica of Anhalt" just because it is all too easy to put the title before the name which does not include the name of the kingdom and not to pipe it. Those roman kings who did not have emperor-confirmation, could be format Adolf, German King or rather Adolf, Roman King, which also is good becaise it resembles those emperors who are format Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor. I actually oppose that "of Germany" because it is anachronistic - they were rather "Gunther of East Franks" and "Henry of East Franks", but presumably we do not want to start use the nice name of Kingdom of East Franks or Kingdom of Ostrofrancia and all perquisites then created here. And, besides, I do not like formulation Wilhelm II of Germany as it rather should be "Wilhelm/"William, German Emperor"
The French Wikipedia has a great overview of the titles the various kings used: [8]. Basically, until Otto III they called themselves Kings of the East Franks, and starting with Henry II they called themselves Kings of the Romans instead. So, what to name our articles for the ones that were kings but not emperors? I agree that this is an issue that needs to be decided; it it is confusing that there is no consistent naming scheme.
This leaves the issue of how to fit "King of the Romans" (or "King of the East Franks", for the early ones) into our naming scheme. The problem is that our naming scheme assumes that kings are titled after their country, but "of the Romans" is not immediately a country name. We have a similar situation with the Kings of the Scots, which we have listed under "of Scotland" (see King of Scotland, e.g. James V of Scotland). In analogy, this would give us "of the Holy Roman Empire", e.g. Philip of the Holy Roman Empire. For the earlier ones, it would be "of East Francia" (a separate question is whether East Francia should redirect to Holy Roman Empire). This solution has the advantages that it matches conventions used for other countries, that it is close to the correct historic original, and that it makes clear which country these guys are rulers of (unlike ", King of the Romans", which is more precise, but will make most people believe they are dealing with ancient Rome). Chl 01:46, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Adolf, King of Romans and Philip, King of Romans are hardly something like original resarch, since a multitude of material, including documents from their own eras, call them such. I have seen transcripts of old documents where these kings call themselves "rex Romanorum" - and there are sources that call them Roman kings, as they are calling crowned ones as Holy roman emperors. I suspect that several accusations of "original research" tend to go too far and may nowadays be used perhaps for non-acceptable purposes. Shilkanni 14:11, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
"X, King of the Romans," which analogizes to "X, Holy Roman Emperor," seems like the best option. "Roman King" is rarely used in English - "King of the Romans" is by far the more common usage. I am also not certain why Gryffindor believes "Philip, King of the Romans," to be original research. In cases where someone does not have an ordinal and is well known by their dynastic name, though, I'd prefer to include it. Perhaps Philip of Swabia, King of the Romans, Adolf of Nassau, King of the Romans... john k 19:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Aside from the Ernest Augustuses, there seems to be irregularity in the titling of the dukes of Brunswick, Wolfenbüttel line. I have always seen them titled as Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, not simply as Dukes of Brunswick-Lunenburg. All members of the house of Welf were dukes and duchesses of Brunswick and Lunenburg, mostly always shorted to Brunswick-Lunbenburg in English. Additional dignities and territories within the family usually took the a form with the territory hyphenated at the end, (i.e. Brunswick-Lunenburg-Wolfenbüttel, shortened to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel). The form Brunswick-Lunenburg in the article titles for ruling members of the Wolfenbüttel line seems to be misleading and against conventional usage. Can they be renamed to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel? Charles 22:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
It's a somewhat complicated situation. The dukes of all subdivisions of Brunswick-Lüneburg always used the title of Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg (Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg). But since at most periods, the duchy consisted of several, almost completely independent parts (such as Wolfenbüttel, Calenberg/Hanover, and Lüneburg/Celle), people often use different territorial names to make clear which subdivision a certain duke was ruler of, e.g. "duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel", or "duke of Brunswick-Celle". There are three problems with these subdivisional designations though:
Additionally, it frequently happened that the same duke ruled over several subdivisions at once, so that naming would become more complicated if he was to be designated by subdivision. Chl 18:14, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
At the very least, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel should be designated by subdivision. Other commonly used ones should probably also be used, like Brunswick-Calenberg, or Brunswick-Celle, and so forth. Obviously, it can get confusing, but better to use the subdivisions than to leave it all as just "Brunswick-Lüneburg". john k 18:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I must disagree with Charles here. "Duke of Brunswick" simpliciter is what is actually used for Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and his nephew, Charles, Duke of Brunswick (So the New Cambridge Modern History. As an example of why hyphenation is so dangerous: when they do hyphenate him, in the indes, it is as Brunswick-Bevern.) Septentrionalis 22:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The title of the article Margaret of Connaught is presently under discussion. There are two issues here:
As whatever decision arrived at might affect other articles as well, I thought it would be a good idea to inform here about the discussion. Any input is, of course, appreciated. -- Jao 21:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The question above loads too many issues into one discussion, imo. Also, it is loaded in another sense: there seems to be an incorrect underlying assumption that some consorts need a title and others do not. That is simply not true. I predict that this discussion, mostly because of having too many elements and too many wrongly loaded assumptions from the beginning, will not lead to anything constructive. Well, I try to address those multiple concerns presented above:
In history books and in other encyclopedias, all wifes of dynasts tend to follow the naming convention here given for "royal consorts". (Royalist cruft material is another thing - there any royal usually is referred with a layer of titles, styles and honorifics. Things we usually regard as POV.) Wifes of junior members of royal dynasties are not basically any different from viewpoint of historians:
Francis I of France's mother has been always referred to as
Louise of Savoy, despite of the fact that she did not become a queen (queen consort or reigning) at any point of history. George III's mother, who neither became a queen, is usually referred to as
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.
Cicely Neville is referred to as such and not as any kind of "Princess Cicely Neville", although she was mother of Edward IV and Richard III, and wife of a royal duke.
Blanche of Lancaster is that and not
Princess Blanche of Lancaster.
Joan of Kent is referred to as such and not as
Princess Joan of Kent or as
Joan, Countess of Kent, etc etc. It is simply not in accordance with academic standards to put pre-marital princess titulary in their names - as they in most cases are referred to in context of their marriages or widowhood.
Sibylla (not Sybilla, don't know who that is) of Saxe-Coburg was not a crown princess, she was wife of a prince who was heir-apparent of a then crown prince. However, in history books, Sibylla is generally referred to as
Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, as we can see even in texts abounding around internet.
There is no principle difference between how history books and other encyclopedias name
Maud of Wales and
Margaret of Connaught - some books name them both as "of Great Britain" or something like that. Most usually, they are treted similarly, whatever is the treatment the academic referencer has adopted. I leave further discussion of British courtesy princesses to a separate thread, as it actually is not helpful for this issue, and however this issue does not depend on its decision.
This has gone to the level of
instruction creepism. My opinion is that it goes simply too far to try imply or signal anything with elaborate choice whether to put princess or not before these names/ the subtlety is lost on most readers, and probably only those who anyway know who they were, understand that subtlety, whereby it actually is unnecessary. So, it is relatively funny how such a big duffy number is made of whether to put a title or not. Such distinction does not belong to an encyclopedia to decide upon - the discussion of which of her titles are to be mentioned and in what way, is dangerously close to decision-making of colleges of heralds and ceremony-masters in monarchical courts. This resembles a lot that sort of wrangling which takes place between persons who elaborate for external signs of their privileges, such as those of nobility who in past fought each other on who gets which seating place in a church and who is entitled to sit in presence of a royal prince/ss, who not. People with any sense would predictably ignore such "rules" here.
Shilkanni 10:46, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Not if they are inaccurate. Margaret of Connaught implies she was a queen consort. She wasn't. So under NC rules she goes in as Princess Margaret of Connaught. As for so-called instruction creepism that is nonsense. All encyclopaedias and sourcebooks develop their structures for name usage. WP is no different. If it didn't it would be the sort of amateurish mess that it was famously was on royalty until about 2 years ago when an attempt was made to co-ordinate name usage and end the farce of 17 (yes 17. I counted them) different formats being used, with the Prince of Wales in as Charles Windsor, the Queen of the United Kingdom referred to as Queen of England (a title not used officially since 1707), French monarchs in under 3 different formats, consorts in in different formats for each, etc. WP was regarded in that area as a complete joke. (It was mentioned in an academic conference I attended, with the royalty pages mentioned as examples of what happens when people who don't know what they are doing make up things.) What Shilkanni may think of as instruction creep is actually what other people regard as professionalism and co-ordination. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 18:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Logically, as there are potentially numerous other spouses of peers with the same title and name, they should all be in at maiden name & title. We do need to become less anglo-centric in naming. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 19:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
It's much more likely that there's multiple people known as "Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel" than that there's multiple people known as "Princess Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge." (I'm quite certain that there's only been one "Princess Augusta, Duchess of Cambridge", and only one "Princess Frederica, Duchess of York," for instance). I cannot, specifically, think of any examples of overlapping names of royal peers' wives, but perhaps you can provide some concrete examples. john k 20:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
The principle is based not on specific examples in specific cases but on something that happens a lot, hence the creation of a generic format. It gets messy to have one set of rules with a PS: It doesn't apply to the Duchess of Cambridge line below it. If there are multiple Princess Augustas then we can work out a disambigulation format. Maybe we should devise a general format for disambigulating names where there are a number of people with the same maiden title. We could include the marital title in parenthesis, for example. It is rather important as Wikipedia grows that it does try to co-ordinate name usage and not have too many opt-outs. We would look amateurish, for example, if we listed US presidents under different formats, for example Washington, Abe Lincoln, President McKinney, FDR, Ronnie Reagan, George II of the United States, etc. Encyclopaedias need co-ordination through manual of style and naming conventions usage, not "we do this page this way, and that page in another way, and we'll make it up as we go along". Wikipedia already has had to untangle the mess of royal namings twice. We need to avoid having all the work of untangling things a third time by following a clear set of generic rules on naming, disambigulation, etc. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 22:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Jtd - it seems to me that with royal peeresses, there are going to be very, very few repetitions, if any, while with German princesses, there's going to be a fair amount of repetition, even if we don't always have articles on the repeats. It would seem perfectly reasonable to me to put all the articles in their "Princess X, Duchess of X" format, and to have this as a standard. This would a) mesh with naming standards of non-royal peeresses, and b) would be perfectly consistent and unproblematic. And I really don't think there are any repetitions. Starting in the 18th century, when this becomes an issue, we have:
That's pretty much it. I don't really see any especial problem with using this format for that small number of women. There might be a few Plantagenet cases that are more awkward, but the Plantagenet situation is more complicated, anyway. john k 12:05, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Your continuing argument that the way you'd prefer not to do it is "amateurish" remains unsupported by anything save assertion. That said, I don't especially care either way. I'd prefer it be made consistent either way to leaving it in the current mishmash form. john k 12:10, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Am I right in thinking that the lack of a prefix for royal consorts only applies to female ones? I stumbled across Prince George of Denmark and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and noticed they have now been moved, dropping the Prince. George and Albert were always referred to as Prince G/A when I was at school and Mary of Teck and Alexandra of Denmark as such, amongst others. Have the page moves been a bit overzealous, or was I mistaught? Craigy ( talk) 17:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
The current convention reads as follows:
Deceased Royal Consorts are referred to by their pre-marital name or pre-marital title, not by their consort name, as without an ordinal (which they lack) it is difficult to distinguish various consorts; eg, as there have been many queen consorts called Catherine, use Catherine of Aragon not Queen Catherine.
Despite what many people seem to think (indeed, I only realised this myself today), there is nothing in that convention which advises against using the word "Princess" in the title, e.g. Frederika of Hanover instead of Princess Frederika of Hanover. Indeed the convention specifically refers to pre-marital title. The only reason, it seems, that a practice has developed of calling an unmarried princess, "Princess X of Y", and her sister married to a sovereign "X of Y", is that the example given is Catherine of Aragon. It makes no sense to me to have a convention distinguishing between an unmarried princess and her married sister - particularly one which forms the titles of consorts so that they appear to be sovereigns of their birth countries (i.e. the article title Frederika of Hanover makes her look just like the sovereigns of Hanover). I suggest that we alter the example of the convention to make it clear that the word "Princess" may be included in an article title for a consort (e.g. Princess Frederika of Hanover). I specifically say may, since I am not advocating the re-naming of hundreds of articles, especially in the case of somebody like Catherine of Aragon who is generally referred to as such without the word "Princess". Noel S McFerran 18:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Background of historical naming: This comes from a long usage starting at least from Middle Ages. Usual works of history were so-called
chronicles. They were usually written and used in approximately one country. And were almost epos of that country. They were not usually much used in other countries. Naming of persons had the perspective of the country in question.
Their princesses, duchesses and queens came almost always from something else than the ruler's seat of that country itself. They may have come from some foreign country. They may have come from the bunch of daughters of a vassal. Or they may have had a surname. The chronicle, usually narrating history about ten or twenty generations, and about many consorts in the same generation (wives of the monarch and wives of important vassals, dukes, counts etc, and there may have been two or three brothers each having a wife), liked to disambiguate these women. They realized the same thing as we here: using consort titles (within that one country), they get a bunch of Queens Marias, etc.
Those writers needed to use names that were respectful enough, and recognizable enough, but sufficiently disambiguate. A natural disambiguation was the name of the country a consort came from. They cannot have been discourteous: when they were not able to add "queen", "duchess" or whatever was the marital honorific, they left it totally away. It is some discourtesy and also misleading to give a honorific that was lower than the highest one the woman actually held.
If you look around at also older literature, all sorts of duchess-consorts and countess-consorts are there without title, just with "name ¨of + country". There are Isabellas of Portugal, some of them wives of dukes. There is Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I.
Middle Ages is not any exception to the historical naming of consorts, it is the source of it. Shilkanni 22:05, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, Polish monarchs do not need a special system. They are well enough to follow the general naming convention. Shilkanni 12:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
For the record, I support moving all people to their appropriate English names. The English name of the current king of Spain is Juan Carlos and the English name of a certain famous Greek ruler of antiquity who lived before there was an English language or even widespread use of the Latin alphabet is Alexander the Great. Go figure. The Polish monarchs are best known by Anglicisations and should be titled in articles as such. These are convenient for two reasons: they are pronounceable to those unfamiliar with Polish (there are some of us) and they are more common in English literature, especially of the nonspecialist variety. Wikipedia, though it should be scholarly and factual, is nonspecialist. Srnec 18:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
I am going to clarify the above comment of mine. Even if modern popular histories are using Polish forms, that doesn't mean Wikipedia should. Older books may be outdated in many respects (or may not be), but in the choice of a nomenclature they are simply following the trend of the times, as are modern writers. I'll be damned if you can find many English refernces to "Władysław" before 1950. Why must Wikipedia become faddish? Finally, I notice that the Polish Wiki uses Polonisations for the monarchs of England. Who's "Ryszard Lwie Serce"?
As for the use of "of Poland": its a policy and a good one to prevent ambiguity. But, if it is impossible to apply (Poland or Lithuania or whatever), please find a happy middle ground for only those which do not fit conventions. Srnec 18:34, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Calgacus, Elonka and others, focusing on the problem rather than describing some alleged conspiracy of Polish editors or some Piotrus' wrongdoings would be much, much more constructive. Having said that, I don't think Polish monarchs need a special convention and the XY of Poland seems fine to me. However, Piotrus' points cannot and should not be ignored. The case of the Polish names (I mean Polish Christian names of Slavic origin like Władysław or Stanisław) is indeed quite problematic. //
Halibu
tt 20:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Two things I want to address:
Polish monarchs should be treated as any European ones, particularly because so many of their first names are common with other countries. Sigismund, John, Vladislaus, Casimir, August, Henry... Also, I realized that a can of worms, Pandora's Box, in other words Jogaila of Lithuania got a new location recently. (Or how many times was it moved...) I foresee a huge cry from certain of our Polish contributors. And probably Piotrus feels strongly that he has to intervene. But it also seems that certain others (warnings are in air, at least from Elonka) may then draw Piotrus to de-adminning procedure (Arb??). I belöieve that poor Jogaila is a very specific case, which should be solved by some agreement, but that should not be used as precedent in any other naming of Polish monarchs. There sipmly is no systematic exception that could be good for all Polish monarchs, and the problem of Jogaila should not be used as any reason to demand an own system for Polish monarchs. Jogaila is special, because he changed first name, ruled a bigger country with a possibly lower title, did not himself use an ordinal, and as a first name, Wladyslaw Jagiello is very ambiguate, meaning father, son and a grandson at least. Shilkanni 13:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that there's no need for systematic exceptions for Polish monarchs in general. I see no reason for exceptions for the vast majority of Polish monarchs - certainly not for the Piasts, Jadwiga, the later Jagiellonians, the Vasas, or the Wettins. I'm willing to consider the possibility that Jogaila/Jagiello/Wladyslaw II/Wladyslaw V needs some kind of special treatment (I do think that "Jagiello" is by far the more commonly used form in English, though). But what about the monarchs known by their surname? Sobieski is surely better known as "Sobieski" than as "John III". How do we deal with them? john k 14:16, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
There is the clear mentions that "this convention applies only to European and Muslim covilization, because there the same first names are shared between countriues and disambiguation by using of+country is useful". This disambiguation need does nopt extend topagan Lithuanian monarchs, whose first names are shared ny no other country. Thus of+country is redundant there, systematically redundant. I understand if there were one or a few with names used also in other countrues - then consistency would be a nice thing and alm the others get the of+country too. But none among these. Accordingly, editiors have created their articles under first names only, it means Algirdas, Vytautas the Great, Kestutis, Skirgaila, Jaunutis etc. I think I'll add one example to the guideline page of these and/or mention pagan Lithuania among those where of+country is not needed and not to be used in article names. Maed 10:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Surely the last ruler of (technically) independent Lithuania was Sigismund Augustus, a Christian. And the last ruler of Lithuania who wasn't ruler also of Poland was Alexander I, also a Christian. It also strikes me that Wytautas was at least nominally a Christian. I don't think it matters terribly, but I think that the use of the country name is not terribly problematic. john k 14:01, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe one of those Lithuanian monarchs would be put as example in that litany with Roman emperors and Pericles. Quite similar cases, firts names were not shared between countries and most of then were pagan. Maed 20:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It does not need to be obvious. A reader comes, learns about Algirdas from the article. No need to list Algirdas' all sorts of characteristics in the title. Besides, when not alloewing "country", we avoid potential "edit discussions" between Lithuanians and Belarusans, both regard themselves, rspectively, Lithuanians and Litvins; "Ruthenia" was mentioned as one of the two main peoples n those monarcs' official title (V.K. of Lithuanians and Ruthenians) - soon we should admit that Algirdas of Lithuania and Ruthenia is more sensitive culturally, and other demands ensue. Besides, these were monarchs more like "of the Goths", so possibly we need to allow Algirdas of the Lithuanians and the Ruthenians... and where will it end? Sigh. Let them be at places like Algirdas. There is anyway no need to disambiguate because names were not shared in those cases. Maed 22:20, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry about my typo higher on this page. Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland was John's proposal, and that was the one to which I agreed. After two passes of eliminating all double redirects, and then yet another change by Maed (making the move to John's choice impossible), I started a WP:RM at Talk:Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland, and await the results of that vote before risking doing useless redirect-cleanup again. Unless some sysop moves Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland to Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland, in which case I'd be glad to assist with the double redirect cleanup.
Again sorry for the typo I made higher on this page. This simple typo proved to be an energy drain. -- Francis Schonken 14:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I think I mostly agree with Francis. Also, there are plenty of articles on monarchs with unique names that still include "of Country". One of the purposes of "of country" is to disambiguate, but it also serves other useful purposes, I think. john k 17:11, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, I did the double redirect cleanup. Then Maed still continued disruptive moves, leading to a second "page move" warning on user talk:Maed.
Then Nightstallion moved Wladyslaw II Jagiellon of Poland back to Władysław II Jagiełło. Cleaning up double redirects (but as far as I can see not yet on the talk page... [15] - could someone follow that up?)
Then I archived the talk page, making clear that I never initiated a vote to move Władysław II Jagiełło to Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland, which I didn't. As far as I know, page moves *during* a WP:RM vote break of that WP:RM vote. I have no intention to start another vote, or "revive" a past WP:RM vote under any form. Instead, I'd like to come back to what I said above, yesterday:
So again, inviting the sysops most acquainted with the names and titles NC guideline, with royalty and with the English language, to put their foot down on this one and move the page. And then, probably again, move-protect the page. Please do some off-wikipedia negotiation with Polish/Lithuanian/etc sysops that they not try to wheel-war over the decision to move this monarch to the page that is most in line with wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles). If they would: desysop them. Piotr has already started a procedure on himself that might soon lead to his desysopment [17] - no problem for me. -- Francis Schonken 06:30, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe that the article sometimes mentioned as Wladyslaw II Jagiello of Poland (sic!) needs a unique solution. This is to state clearly that any decision where to put that article, is no precedent to give names to any other articles. On the other hand, this is to state that the "Charlemagne" treatment is acceptable to the "Jagello" we speak about (I am later going to add Jagello to the example list at the Charlemagne exception). Recurring move wars are an obvious result of longer names being always repugnant to some camp involved in some of the nations relevant here, and combined with "so-called Polish cabal's" determination to keep Polish monarchs at names with Polish spelling, disaster is waiting for any attempt to apply any of the formal NC guidelines, as any of such will prefer one natio over others. Shilkanni 11:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
BTW, we should never refer to Polish monarchs named "Wladyslaw" by the name "Ladislas" or "Ladislaus". This is deeply confusing, because the two are not the same name. "Ladislas" is the traditional Latinization of the Hungarian name "Laszlo." However, when Polish "Wladyslaw"'s became kings of Hungary, they were known not as "Laszlo" but as "Ulaszlo" - the two names are not the same. Wladyslaw could be Latinized as "Vladislaus," I think; I've also seen "Vladislav" which is more phonetic to how the Polish name is pronounced in English. But that's stupid. We should just leave it at "Wladyslaw", since there's no clear English alternative. john k 16:25, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
It just seems unnecessarily confusing to me. Whether or not they're "really" the same name seems irrelevant - the Hungarian monarchs "Ulaszlo" are undoubtedly numbered differently from the monarchs "Laszlo", and anglicizing it all to "Ladislaus" would make that situation impossibly confusing. john k 12:07, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
(transfered from User talk:Švitrigaila)
Would you care to visit at Talk:Wladyslaw_II_Jagiellon_of_Poland#Survey. The simple "Jagiello" - for that there is now a formal listing going on to sign support or opposition. ObRoy 21:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
You actually favor "Ladislaus II" as an article title? That's completely absurd. By the way, I notice that some of your problems are based on the supposed inconsistency between monarch naming conventions and those for everything else. But, at the same timie, you complain about Charles X Gustav of Sweden and Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden...but this is a direct result not of this page, but of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), which tells us to use the name most commonly used in English - Charles X is usually called Charles, and the current king is always called Carl. Charlemagne is also the result not of this naming convention, but of this naming convention deferring to the fact that he is always called "Charlemagne" - note that we also have Charles the Bald, and Louis the Pious, for instance - the Carolingians are difficult to associate with a single country, and are best, known, anyway, by their cognomens (and that includes Charlemagne, which of course just means Charles the Great.) As to the Popes, I don't see the use of "Antipope" or "Avignon Pope" as being a result of this page at all, but of compromises made on individual pages. The Japanese Emperor inconsistency results, also, not from this page, but from the common name rule - Meiji is usually known as "Meiji" in English, while Showa is usually still called "Hirohito" in English. This page is not what is causing inconsistency at all. What is causing inconsistency is the compromises between this page and the common names rule. If you went back to the common names rule, alone, you'd have much, much greater inconsistency in article titling. john k 16:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
The problem isn't the naming conventions. It is individuals making up their own unique versions contrary to the NC that cause the problems. Every so often individuals arrive and do a host of unilateral renamings contrary to the NC. They are the problem, not the NC, which are cohesive and workable if followed. FearÉIREANN \ (caint) 19:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree that the conventions should be revamped. I actually thought that we can work from bottom up (revise the convention for Polish monarchs first) and when that would gain consensus, we could use it as a basis to reform the main nc for monarchs. Apparently it was not as easy as I suspected, but I am glad to see there are others who agree that the current NC are not good (even if we disagree on the various parts they are not good). Let me shortly propose the following naming scheme:
Comments?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Most nicknames of Polish monarchs are completely unfamiliar to English-speakers. Certainly "Augustus the Saxon"/"Augustus the Corpulent" are not commonly used named for Augustus III in English. Your proposal means that we abandon both the common names rule and the names and titles naming convention. This seems absurd to me. john k 12:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Piotrus's claims differ radically from my experience. I have never seen a case in which "Which name is used in English?" for a foreigner is either difficult or the real point of contention. I see three overwhelming classes of name dispute:
I am therefore opposed to this doubtless well-meant and good-faith proposal. Septentrionalis 20:27, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Opposed, per Septentrionalis. -- Elonka 21:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
My proposal is to stick with the current policy. It has its problems, but is still basically sound. john k 13:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Now I see what Piotrus actually wants. A large part of that is obtainable without drastic revisions, thus:
Please refine. Septentrionalis 23:54, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I oppose taking Ptolemy II Philadelphus into this discussion at all. These conventions are intended for monarchs and nobles of Western culture where same first names are shareds between countries. It means, basically, later medieval period and era after Middle Ages. It does not mean European countries when they were pagan, as sharing same first names was not usual. It does not fit well to early medieval monarchs, whose "country" is a tribe or something like "of the Goths". This NC should be kept limited to where it has clear disambiguation value and does not produce oddball results. Examples which does not fit to the limits, are not to be used. Marrtel 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Besides, I say that one point in the conventions is stupid and OR: no medieval younger member of monarch's family should be automatically put under "prince", "princess" or like. I hope that clause in conventions is not written to extend automatically to anyone before 17th century. Marrtel 20:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Septentrionalis 14:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Please list your proposals as level three subheadings above. I suggest waiting for a straw poll at least a week so others can work out their proposals and we will see if any of them have more support then the current one. I suggest using first choice/second choice votes wort 2 and 1 points respectively.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:15, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Since this seems to be a more centralized discussion location, I thought I'd bring it up here. There seems to have been another Polish-language issue which was being discussed on a fairly isolated page, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland, which could probably benefit from a more cross-cultural review with a wider variety of participants. As a quick summary: The discussion there is lengthy, but seems to be comprised mostly of members of the Polish noticeboard, and in places even lapses into the Polish language itself, as Piotrus quotes an "expert opinion" from a Polish official, but as near as I can tell, the question is whether the word "Province" should be replaced by the word " Voivodship", with a vote started in March 2006 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography of Poland#Województwa vote. Should this discussion perhaps be moved here instead? I'd like to ensure that it has the opportunity to be reviewed by a genuine cross-section of the Wikipedia community. A related move war seems to be going on at other pages such as Małopolska Voivodship (aka Lesser Poland Voivodship), and a discussion at Talk:Voivodships of Poland, which appears (to me) to have a consensus for the word "Province", though admin Piotrus disagreed. -- Elonka 19:10, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi. This is NOT the correct place for geographical designations. The guideline procuced and maintained by this convention deals mainly with "royalty and nobility" and always with persons. Our rubric is "Names and Titles", which means that this is the place sto seek advice, and to try change guidelines, about namings of such articles that are about persons who have names AND titles. And this is a really lively place, full of enthusiasts, presumably because honorifics are really the interesting, important, flattering and conversational topic over much else in this world. (No wonder that for centuries, even judicial courts have adjudicated cases to decide who is entitled and how and who is not to some honorifics). Anyway, not because I didn't want to deal with Polish provinces (lovely they are, no doubt), but: because this talk will not have so-called jurisdiction over that matter, hush, go away. I presume that the current, valid guidelines for namings of articles about geographical entities is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) and consequently its talk forum is at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places). Shoo... I might visit also there if you start a debate. Shilkanni 22:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
Interested editors are invited to participate in: a poll on whether or not to use diacritics in the titles of Polish monarchs. -- Elonka 18:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Interested editors are invited to participate at the approval poll to decide on an article title at
Talk:Boleslav I of Poland. --
Elonka 00:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
How strict must the form Name of Territory be? The three German Emperors ( William I, Frederick III and William II) are currently up for move. As one may note, my current vote is at weak support. I really feel that the naming conventions ( Monarchial titles 3.1) should be amended to allow these emperors to be titled in the same manner that the Holy Roman Emperors were; that is Name, German Emperor. Since there are only three of these emperors, I feel that it is very non-controversial... Indeed, the use of an anglicized forename seems more controversial than the title itself. Does anyone feel strongly that they should be kept at of Germany? The reason I ask is that I can foresee re-application of the Name of Place rule after a possibly successful move. Charles 05:22, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Matthead does not appear to understand the policy he is discussing nor the reasons for it. Wikipedia expressly chooses common usage rather than any pretense to correctness; when we have failed to do this, the results have been long and pointless quarrels over correct usage. (He also misunderstands American usage; and oversimplifies the Second Reich: When William II abdicated "as German Emperor but not as King of Prussia", he did not in fact keep "his real job".) Septentrionalis 18:36, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Now, I forgot one thing: What of " Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany"? Shouldn't his titled be affixed to the end of his forename, as with all other past crown princes (who never acceded?) and current crown princes? Depending on whether William or Wilhelm is more appropriate (I prefer William, of course, but common usage may say otherwise), he would be at William, German Crown Prince or Wilhelm, German Crown Prince. Charles 17:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
We should not join the crown prince into this equation. I see nothing serious against him being at "W, Crown Prince of Germany". How about first seeing the result of the emperor naming, and then, if any question remains regarding crown prince, return to that. Shilkanni 17:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
There are a bunch of monarchs in mists of Middle Ages whose titles are not very easy. Possibly the title has no established version in English. Or the translation may be misleading. Or not very much distinguishes these from kings - all we know, they may have been regarded as kings contemporaneously, and only later reconstructs of titles have lead to something else.
And then, totally another example, is William I of Albania whose title in Albanian was King, but abroad Prince.
I recommend to treat those medieval monarchs like they were kings. That would be simplest solution to uncertainty of translation of title, SINCE KINGS ACTUALLY DO NOT HAVE A TITLE IN THE ARTICLE NAME. Doing this, Wikipedia avoids quarrels over the proper title, its translation and its level. In my opinion, it is bad to put something constestable into the article name. With these monarchs, there is a systematical possibility of the translation or interpretation of their titles getting contested.
Examples include Nemanja of Serbia, a reigning prince whose son was the first to be officially crowned as king; Dan I of Wallachia whose realm now is regarded as principality though he was without any real subjugation to any higher king, and therefore much like king in his realm; Boris I of Bulgaria whose son was the first to be officially crowned as Tsar; Vladimir I of Kiev who (titled "grand duke") was more powerful than many kings and was undoubtedly regarded as sort of high king at his time. One of rather common characteristics for those examples is they were Eastern Europeans and their titles only got much later constructs and analogs, which themselves are not necessarily unanimously accepted. Marrtel 12:22, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
European rulers whose English title is unambiguous and below that of King (e.g. Grand Dukes, Electors, Dukes, Counts, Princes), should be at the location "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". Examples: Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg; but Dan I of Wallachia and Vladimir I of Kiev. Marrtel 19:35, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
How are we to name the titular Emperors and Empress of Russia? For instance, we have Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich of Russia, Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia and Maria Vladimirovna of Russia. The latter I moved to Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia following the format usually used for pretenders or exiled heads to a throne (i.e, George Frederick, Prince of Prussia and Ernest Augustus, Prince of Hanover). I feel the move was consistent with what is on Wikipedia already (the pretenders and Maria being referred to as Grand Duchess), however I feel it still needs to be discussed. Should we include patronyms and should the title remain in front of the forename or should it be appended to the end? I feel it should be tacked on the end. Charles 04:02, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I did now my best to help Wikipedia out of potential problems related to giving titles to this pretender. Firstly, there is now the disambiguation page of several similarly-named at Maria Romanova. All general names are intended to redirect to that. And then, the pretender herself is now at Maria Vladimirovna, which does not endorse either her being "of Russia" or only "Romanov/a", not either "Grand duchess" or "princess". Probably not a perfect solution, but contains less inherent POV than most of the other alternatives. And, the fork creations of coolwate, triggered by Charles' move, are now reverted, and the page's edit history is with the actual page. (Pessimistic question: how many minutes does it take until there exists again at least one fork..) ObRoy 09:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's "endorsing" someone's pretensions to use the title of pretension they use for themselves. She calls herself "Grand Duchess MV of Russia," and this is how she is generally referred to in the press and so forth. I don't see why we shouldn't follow that example? That some Russian monarchists/relations do not think she is entitled to the "Grand Duchess" title is no more to the point than that other Russian monarchists think she is de jure Empress Maria I of Russia. The point is what she calls herself and is generally called, not what she is "entitled" to, which doesn't make any sense anyway. john k 17:49, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Everyone is encouraged to go to Talk:Maria Vladimirovna to try solve her naming there. ObRoy 18:11, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The desperate situation in Polish monarchs seems to be starting to solve, as some of my requests for move got closed today. Yhe situation has been, how do I say, something like ridiculous. At the polls now closed, there were three sockpuppets of one Polish editor, fabricating the size of the minority, apparently in real terms only some six persons, to about ten. As there usually was a majority of something like 13-16 editors, this meants results that hanged close, closer than they really were. There also was certain delaying tactics from some of the minority's vocal representatives: denials of sockpuppetry, repeated bids for new vote, and move wars over some moved articles. For some reason, representatives of that minority camp always want to start a poll at situation where the page is at their preferred location. Future: there are about 50 articles of Polish monarchs. At this time, about ten to twelve of them are in locations guided by this naming convention, whereas as many as forty may (and will) need moving. It appears that representatives of that minority are demanding that each article's move can happen only as result of a requested move process. It moreover appears that in some cases they are demanding return of their positions and new polls also to those already moved articles. (Interesting development: one of those vocal representatives demanding new votes, got himself blocked for one year today in an unrelated editwarring situation. One vote less for that minority for a period of 365 days.)
The present situation can be viewed at [21].
What is more alarming, is that very many of the remaining wrongly-named monarchs have certain individual problematic features which may make even those who are familiar with this general monarch naming here, to split in opinions.
As you can see from the category link above, the chief wrongs with remaining forty wrongly-nameds are:
By the way, as far as I know usages in Polish language and culture, they have a real custom to call all sorts of monarchs by nickname appellations. There very rarely is any territory as designation, and if such exists, it regularly is for example the province where a king came from to rule the whole country. Like we "could" call Edward IV as Edward IV of York and Henry IV of France as Henry IV of Bourbon. But most usually all appellations are nicknames.
The history of these odd-looking names currently employed, starts from late 2005, half a year ago, when most or all of these monarchs were at places like "Wladislaus V of Poland". A group of editors, it seems all ethnically Polish, started to create a specific scheme to name Polish monarchs, and did it somewhere in a talkpage of some English Wiki's Polish project. Three such editors arrived at their own agreement, and moved all these articles to those so-called Polish names, of which you see many examples yet in the category. Opposition from a few non-Polish editors with that discussion did not deter them. After that, all efforts of others to move any of those monarchs to either their original page names, or to any Naming Convention -compatible name, have been reverted by representatives of said minority, usually by explanations "agreed in naming convention for Polish monarchs" or "discussion is ongoing, do not move". Marrtel 23:51, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
copied from above:
I do not see any particular need for allowing to use nicknames. We have naming convention which inhibits such additions. Some reasons behind that "prohibition" are:
That all said, there is the exception for nicknames in the naming convention. ("If a monarch or prince is overwhelmingly known, in English, by a cognomen, it may be used, and there is then no need to disambiguate by adding Country. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, Skanderbeg, etc...". But there must be consensus so strong that it would be surprising to omit the epithet; and the name must actually be unambiguous. For example, although Richard the Lionhearted is often used, Richard I is not unusual, so he is at Richard I of England; again, if two kings of different countries are both known in English as Name the Great (for example Louis the Greats of Hungary and France), do not use the epithet but disambiguate them by country (those two are at Louis I of Hungary and Louis XIV of France).) The camp who desires the nickname to be used, should just prove that it is as surprising, to English-speakers, not to see the nickname in article title as it would be in Charlemagne's case - that the nicknamed version is overwhelmingly best known one. Most Polish monarchs do not fulfill that criterion. They can live very well under our general style "Vladislas V of Poland". Perhaps we should start opening way to certain other well-known nicknamed monarchs, beginning rather from such as Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great (I seem to remember what were their territorial acquisitions which were reasons for them to be Great and Stanislas August of Poland not necessarily as great). Would you like to name Frederick II of Prussia as Frederick the Great, Piotrus? Shilkanni 22:59, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I realized that we have let the Polish monarchs naming evolve to a situation where there may come forth inconsistent results between quite similarly named monarchs. The thing is now somehow fixed with Casimirs I-III which are all now "of Poland", but there was an intention to start polls in each of them - and so, the results could have been individual to each one. One of the problems which should be solved separately, is the anglicized form of certain Polish first names. If the same idea of holding polls in each monarch happens with, for example, Vladyslavs and Boleslaws, we may end up with one Wladyslaw, one Vladislaus, one Ladislas, one diacritical Wladyslaw, etc. an with one Boleslaw, one diacritical Boleslaw, one Boleslas and one Boleslaus. Would you be amused... Those individual polls may very well priduce inconsistent results, since in those polls, all elements are "for sale", both the question of monarchical titles and the question of aglicization. sometimes people trade these when making compromise, thus possibly compromising both the two policies. And, this anglicization of first names actually is a question to be solved to a consistent line by the WP policy Use English, and it actually has next to nothing to do with the formula of how to express the titles/ monarchies of the rulers in question. The title and monarchy question is in scope of this guideline page, whereas Use English is a separate and established policy, not to be trifled here. Would it better to stop all starts of new polls for first names where already one is under poll? And to have a centralized poll over Bolaslas and a centralized poll over Vladislas, dealing with all similaly-named kings and princes of Ooland and dukes of Silesia, Masovia and so forth - under the premise that "if the first name will be anglicized, what is the most favored anglicization". Shilkanni 17:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
I do not mean to have epithets as part of this. I mean only the adoptable form of Boleslas. And adoptable form of Vladislas. (Any other first names to consider? other first names seem to me much easier, or imposible to anglicize.) Yes, it is true that Bohemia also had Boleslases, and Hungary and Bohemia have Vladislases. But would it just be better to refer to results there when the we decide Polish ones? would it make the poll too heavy if we define that the adoptable form will then be the one for Hungary and Bohemia too? Of course it could be good that all countries have the same, but I have my doubts whether supporters of Boleslaw will accept the total drop of their preference from consideration just because to Bohemia it might be nonsensical. Shilkanni 22:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Was anyone here aware that over at Talk:Constantine XI, about a month ago a "new standard" for naming Byzantine emperors was agreed to? The procedure seems to have been as follows:
The result of the vote was about 10 for the first option, 10 for the second, and 7 for the third. Note that this was approval voting. All of the people voting for the first option only voted for the first option, while everybody who voted for the third option also voted for the second option.
At this point, things went into mediation. User:Digitalme was the mediator, and somehow came to the conclusion a) that the important issue was not "common usage in English," but what the "scholarly standard was"; b) that the "scholarly standard" was the ODB usage; and c) that option 1 should be discarded, that option 2 should be temporarily implemented, and that then there should be a vote on whether to move to option 3.
Then, there was a vote between option 2 and option 3. This time, the third option won overwhelmingly, and now all articles at Byzantine Emperors have been moved to places like Alexios I Komnenos and Romanos II and John VIII Palaiologos.
Am I losing it here, or is this a completely bass-ackwards way to come to a new policy? This seems even worse than the Polish issue to me, although a lot more people voted on it. Note that
This procedure seems completely invalid and unjustifiable to me. If anyone else agrees, I'd appreciate some support over at Talk:Constantine XI. john k 13:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
But as said, for me this doesn't really mitigate john k's analysis. -- Francis Schonken 13:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Talk:Constantine XI#Survey on the use of Latinized/Greek names for Byzantine rulers A survey over the substitution of "traitional" Anglo-Latin names for Byzantine rulers with ther "modern" Anglo-Greek counterparts. -- Panairjdde 17:45, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, I came across that discussion. Being interested in Byzantine emperors, basically. I am for the result there now implemented, and would oppose if it is put to poll to be changed. Having now seen that it was announced in current surveys, it suffices for me in procedural view. It is impossible to reach everyone potentially interested editor, and that's why there is the noticeboard of current surveys. Regarding the place to make guidelines (and continue this discussion) for what is the best English form of someone' first name, it undoubtedly is WP:UE, and not this talkpage, since this page produces guidelines how to use royalty and nobility titles in article names, but the "jurisdiction" to guide spellings of foreign names certainly belongs to the division of "Use English". Have you asked input from there? Marrtel 13:54, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Since these are the names of royalty, for the most part, this page would be just as appropriate as "Use English" - I haven't posted it there as yet, but it would be appropriate to do so. At any rate, the procedural issue is more that it was discussed on an article talk page rather than a regular talk page. but that's not the main issue. The main issue is the farce of a mediation, in which the mediator threw out one of the main options, and then a user on the page decided that it was, thus, settled that that option was thrown out, and proposed a new vote between the two other options. This was a complete farce. john k 14:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The "mediator" decided which side was right, and imposed a decision without discussion. This is a temptation, but he should have just recused himself and voted.
On the substance: John Cantacuzene is English; John VI Kantakouzenos is not, and the usage of one reference work is not enough to make it so. (Oddly, I don;t mind the numeral as much as with Frederick the Great, I'm not sure why. Septentrionalis 17:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
A move proposal has been made dealing with this at WP:RM; please discuss at Talk:List of Byzantine emperors. Septentrionalis 23:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I've been unable to find any reference works which refer to this 13th century Piast monarch by the name Władysław I the Elbow-high (more often he seems to be Władysław I the Short, or Wladyslaw Lokietek), so I am going to suggest moving the page to a different title. At the moment, I am collecting data at Talk:Władysław I the Elbow-high as to how he is referred to in different reference works. If anyone has data to add (or suggestions for a new title), please feel free to participate. -- Elonka 17:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi. There is a move request for several Palaeologus/Palaiologos dynasty emperors at Talk:List of Byzantine Emperors. It has been requested, infact, as a form to decide the Naming convention for Byzantine Emperors. I tought some of you might be interested in.-- Panairjdde 22:23, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure this one throws up many issues, but I have started the ball rolling at Talk:David. In many ways it is the start of whether we sould take a more consistent approach towards firstname articles. However in the case of King David, the article is already heavily linked as 'King David' although both the titles 'David' and 'King David' would be at odds with naming guidelines here. -- Solipsist 06:02, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Some people want to move John II Casimir of Poland to John II Casimir Vasa. I believe that move is against this naming convention which forbids use of nicknames (if not overwhelmisgly best known by it) and surnames when titling kings. Moreover, they want to remove the "of Poland" which is designated as a pre-emtive disambiguation - and there have been monarchs named John Casimir in other places. For some unknown reasons, Polish monarchs have long been a target of desires to always diverge from naming conventions. Could you visit that RM at Talk:John II Casimir of Poland and give your opinion whether the nickname/surname is or isn't really necessary there. Suedois 07:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, let's see what happens if reasons expressed above are applied toother cases. Someone mentioned that because a monarch ruled over several countries, some of which struggle to establish national identity... For example, the current queen-regnant of the United Kingdomhappens to reign over several countries, some of which struggle to establish their national identity... voilá: If we have John II Casimir Vasa, we will accordingly have Elizabeth II Windsor. Suedois 18:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I have put myself up for adminship, partly to deal with the recurrent backlog on WP:RM. This page and the related topics are the closest I have come to administrative responsibilities, and I would appreciate your opinion at Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Pmanderson. Septentrionalis 20:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone noticed that all of the articles on early Scottish monarchs have been moved to the Gaelic forms? This seems to be in direct violation of all applicable naming conventions. john k 03:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I started a discussion at Talk:Máel Coluim II of Scotland. [Cross post at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). john k 03:28, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
A requested move has been opened at Talk:Cináed I of Scotland. john k 23:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
All of the following name changes are being discussed at
Talk:Cináed I of Scotland#Requested move:
An
approval poll is in-process, as of August 28. All interested editors are invited to participate. --
Elonka 01:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)