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In many bios of dead persons the history is written in past tense, but the writings are described in the present tense. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin#Theology ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Aristotle.27s_scientific_method The MOS only allows past tense for bios of dead persons. I suggest one of these two options: 1. specifying in the MOS: "Writings and theories of dead persons can be described in the present tense." 2. "Writings and theories of dead persons must also be discussed in the past tense." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markewilliams ( talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Somebody pointed out to me that this MOS requires the nationality to be put in the lede? Really? How dumb can you get? It is just silly to put the nationality of a person in the lede when that person's nationality is plainly obvious from the context. That's like saying that Elizabeth II is a (insert nationality here; I'm sure she has a lot of them) is Queen of Canada, Australia, etc., or that Barack Obama is an American politician. In many respects that MOSBIO you cited is just ridiculous. Sorry I am waxing indignant, but that is the way I feel. I have written scores of articles about Notable Americans, and in none of them have I chosen to name their nationalities when it is just obvious that they are Americans. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 05:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
There are many more countries that follow Patronymic#Ethiopia naming convention, specially in East Africa. These need to be included in this section. Some examples of affected articles: Meles Zenawi, Fuad Ibrahim, Tekle Hawaryat, Tewodros II of Ethiopia, Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi, Isaias Afewerki, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and many many more through out the region: in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan. There is are too many articles to correct. I have tried my best to correct them. But it is nearly impossible when all news articles refer to people by their fathers or grandfathers name.
According to this MOS, even though titles of articles will refer to people by their most commonly cited name, in subsequent mentions, the given name is used if the name is patronymic. If no objections, I will be adding these countries to the list of Country-specific usage. አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh) ( talk) 01:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think this recent addition is confusing and should be removed:
Use the present tense when summarizing or quoting written works or other artistic creations:
- In his book, Bob begins his argument with an anecdote ...
If there is a shift in the time frame within the world of the text, you may need to change tense. Write as if the actions of the work exist in an eternal present:
- At this point in John's story, Jack becomes afraid as he considers what he has done and what it will mean for his future.
"Summarizing or quoting written works" is not the subject of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies. -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 02:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
It's definitely not always going to be appropriate to use the past tense when referencing written works. Context is very important, and I think the wording used should be thought about carefully. Consider:
When to use past and when to use present is not very easy to succinctly describe, I think. Perhaps the guidance would be better if it were worded to permit use of the present tense in some cases, rather than require it.
Formerip ( talk) 15:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
This wording is contained in WP:OPENPARA, but it doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. Surely everyone who is notable is "notable mainly for past events"?
I would assume that the guidance should say something like "...people whose notability is substantially in the past and who have fallen into obscurity". But there's an alternative view that it just means "...people who first became famous a long time ago...".
This has come up at Talk:Gérard_Depardieu#In_resp._to_all_the_above:_We_have_a_guideline_for_lead_and_natonality, but I don't think the outcome for that article depends very much on this particular issue, so you don't need to worry too much about the detail of the specific case.
Any thoughts? Formerip ( talk) 21:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, well here is the current wording:
To me this is gobbledygook. Nationality being related to citizenship is fine. But nationality being related to being a national is a tautology and being a permanent resident ( WP:CRYSTAL) clearly does not give nationality (e.g. Piers Morgan is British, not American). Everything from "notable mainly for past events" is useless for the reason I mentioned above (it applies in all cases), and surely it cannot be intended that a person's nationality at the time of becoming notable should be fixed in amber (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger can be described as "Austrian and American", even though he was only Austrian at the time he first became famous).
I think what the wording is trying to say it that nationalities held, for example, during childhood or old age, which constitute biographical detail only, should not be mentioned in the lead.
So, I've tried to render all that into something that makes sense:
Formerip ( talk) 01:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Though it's not called for here, many DMY intros have birthplace & deathplace with the dates. Therefore, which is correct?
1- (18 January 1859, Montreal – 25 January 1959, Quebec City) or
2- (18 January 1859 in Montreal – 25 January 1959 in Quebec City).
GoodDay (
talk) 06:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
3- (18 January 1850 – 25 January 1959)
GoodDay (
talk) 06:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
We have an article on this - Hadrat. The spelling 'Hazrath' is also used in our articles, eg [1], sometimes even in the article's title, eg in this truly dreadful article: Hazrat Sayed Mehboob Ali Shah Chishti Nizami. I came across this at a recent edit here. Dougweller ( talk) 13:57, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
We seem to need help with religious titles and honorifics. I please request that we discuss, achieve a consensus and write down guidelines. Please see the talk page of the article Gandhi for more details, regarding a proposed move to Mahatma Gandhi. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:
[Cross-posted from MoS talk page, not sure which place is appropriate.] 98.234.105.147 ( talk) 04:31, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
I do not seem to be able to explain to User:Cotillards that there is no reason for biographical article, such as Prince Vincent of Denmark, to explain what the subject's middle name (or any first name, for that matter) means. The article about Donald Trump, for example, does not say that "Donald" means "ruler of the world" (hmmm) and that "John" means "God is gracious". That is nothing but trivia. Am I the one who is wrong here? Surtsicna ( talk) 23:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there any guideline on the use of HM and HRH in royal family templates, specifically? I edited some out (HM The King ==> The King); my edit, summarised MOS:HONORIFIC, was reverted with the airy comment "I believe that only applies to the text". (See history of Template:Greek Royal Family). Pol098 ( talk) 23:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The section headed "Occupation Titles" appears to be a misnomer as the examples given in it relate solely to inherited royal titles and styles ('king', 'emperor') and elected offices ('president', 'prime minister'). Here's the wording as it currently appears:
When used to describe the occupation, apply lower case; such as: (De Gaulle was a French president; Louis XVI was a French king; Three prime ministers attended the conference).
When used as part of a person's title, begin such words with a capital letter (President Obama, not president Obama). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper nouns (The British Prime Minister is David Cameron; Hirohito was Emperor of Japan; Louis XVI was King of France). Royal styles are capitalized (Her Majesty; His Highness); exceptions may apply for particular offices.
The definition of 'occupation' in the Oxford English Dictionary in this sense is:
b. A particular action or course of action in which a person is engaged, esp. habitually; a particular job or profession; a particular pursuit or activity.
I won't list here all the examples of historical usage given in the OED for copyright reasons (a subscription is required to the online OED), but none of them, nor the definition itself, suggests that inherited royal positions or elected offices are considered 'occupations'.
I would suggest moving the guidelines in this section which relate to inherited royal titles to the section in the Manual of Style on honorifics, and that the current section either be retitled 'Titles Related to Elected Office', or incorporated into another existing section of the Manual of Style if an appropriate section already exists. NinaGreen ( talk) 19:30, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
Should the lead maybe include a note that this guideline applies only for real people, not for fictional characters (which are imho to be treated as plot devices)? I'm asking since there are many articles about fictional characters where editors are trying to create a fictional biography by following the advice set out in this guideline. -- 89.0.241.3 ( talk) 07:08, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Why are editors forbidden to include the honorary suffixes, such as university degrees, of individuals above their picture in the textbox at the right of the article page? The guidelines in this manual unfortunately evade this issue as every other instructional page does on Wikipedia. As John Stuart Mill described in On Liberty, if the reasons are not repeated, the rule, in this case, loses most of its moral and psychological force. Wikipedia administrators, it is up to you to provide a well-detailed and straightforward answer; otherwise, nonconformity will result. -- RandomKelvin ( talk) 01:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
This is in reference to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Names section.
My question/concern is over the use of "nicknames" vs. just simply shortened names. For example, the article Dizzy Dean begins "Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean". This is obvious nickname that is completely different from his actually first name and "SHOULD'" be included and of course is because its not obvious to decipher from his birth name. Another example would be Bill Clinton which begins "William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton". Although Bill is a common nickname of William, it SHOULD be included because it may not be obvious that the two names are the same because Bill is not an obvious shortened name for William because "Bill" is not included in the word "William". I'm sure there are other examples, but I will leave it at that for now.
In my opinion, biographies about people whose shortened "common name" name is obviously part of the birth name SHOULD NOT be included in the first line. Its overkill if you ask me. Examples are plenty on Wikipedia. A few are Tom Hanks, "Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks", Steve Jobs "Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs", Josh Hartnett "Joshua Daniel "Josh" Hartnett". These shortened names SHOULD NOT be included in the lead because they are obviously just shortened names of the longer birth name and are already included in the birth name, i.e. "Josh"ua, "Steve"n, "T"h"om"as. Most people will get the connection without actually saying it. Anyone who doesn't get the connection is probably living deep in a rain forrest somewhere and probably isn't using a computer anyway.
Either way, a bit of direction should be included in the appropriate section, since there appears to be no discernible guideline on this at all.-- JOJ Hutton 14:13, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Looks like we need to add some more clarifying language to OPENPARA. We are getting a lot of insistence on adding incidental and late-acquired citizenships to the lead sentences of living people. For most living people, we should have a single nationality: the one that they held at the time they first became notable. That has always been the intent of OPENPARA, but it's never been worded clearly enough for some editors to "get it". Many editors insist on "claiming" a subject for their own nationality for incidental reasons, understandably ticking off the nationals of the county with which the subject actually does identify, and precipitating edit wars in the process.
We should make it clearer that we should not include countries which the subject happened to be accidentally born in (example Nicole Kidman who identifies as Australian and not "Australian-Amercan"), or citizenships acquired well after the subject became notable (example Charlize Theron, who despite recently acquiring American citizenship still self-identifies as South African and should not be described with the completely inaccurate phrase "South African-born American", which makes it sound like she was an American incidentally born in South Africa).
Hyphenated nationalities and the bastard expression Country-born Othercountry both give completely incorrect impressions of the actual nationality of the subject and should be strictly avoided. We need to make this explicit. In the rare cases of true dual citizenship at the time of achieving notability, the word "and" should be placed between the two nationalities to avoid these false impressions of the superiority of one nationality over the other. An example might be Cary Grant, but I personally think he achieved notability before being naturalized and so should be described as English. OPENPARA says nothing about adding a nationality under which the subject became even more notable, just when they first achieved notability. Yworo ( talk) 04:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I'll be proposing some rewording and some clarifying guidance soon. Hang on, I'm pretty busy. Yworo ( talk) 16:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Here are some points that we need to include in the revision:
Now, how to reword what we've got to integrate this will take some more work. Yworo ( talk) 16:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
For changed names, it's suggested that the person should be referred to using their name at the time of the mention. While this generally makes sense, it seems a tad disrespectful in the case of someone whose original name never was appropriate for them, specifically transsexuals who have changed their name as part of changing their social, legal and biological sex for all intents and purposes, to bring it inline with their neurological sex.
Indeed, for identity, it's suggested that the person should be referred to using their latest expressed gender self-identification. This seems rather sensible, and I think it might be helpful to clarify whether this should be retroactive or not.
I realise that mentioning such a person's original, inappropriate name is a statement of fact, and may even be relevant to their biography, but I think it's not too helpful to insist upon using their old name on the various other pages that talk about projects they've been involved in before their transition. I think it's safe to say that the person who participated in those projects was the person they actually were, not the person they had to pretend to be at the time.
For example, it seems safe to say that Lynn Conway revolutionised CPU design, or that Lana Wachowski co-created The Matrix (at the very most saying that she was credited as her old name, not that she was her old name). While I understand that reading about Wachowski herself would necessarily entail dealing with her painful past, it would be nice if reading up on tangential works such as the Ghost in the Shell film didn't bring it up.
Would it be possible to have a discussion as to whether the policy on changed names could be amended with such a clause? While it may seem unimportant to most people, I think it would make a welcomed difference to the people affected.
If it's any help, Tobi Hill-Meyer's article Language, Reality, and my Trans Girlhood makes a good argument for this type of phrasing, while Robert Sapolsky has given an interesting lecture on the validity of transsexualism, amongst other things.
Thank you for your time, everyone!
Zoeb ( talk) 17:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
The widespread custom for biographical articles of people of a nationality where the native script is not a Latin alphabet is to give the native script in brackets. There seems, however, to be no guideline in policy about when this is appropriate, or how it should be presented. Should it be for anyone with a Fooian name (although they might be third or fourth generation emigrants), or only those born in Fooland, or only those raised in a Foo-speaking milieu, or only those whose notability was achieved in Fooland? Should the transliteration be bracketed, or comma separated? Should there be a link to the language, or to the alphabet, or an article on Fooian naming conventions, or no link at all.
Anyone care to propose a policy? (Or direct me to something I've missed) Kevin McE ( talk) 19:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I think the person needs to belong to the culture. I'd say the litmus-test is whether the orthography can be called "authentic". This would not be the case, for example, for Muhammad Ali or Tom Selleck, but it would be for Omar Sharif and Yoko Ono. Formerip ( talk) 21:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
The above seem to work fine. I would say add "if possible give the original non Latin-alphabet name in brackets, and again if possible with prounciation)" that's as far as we can go with certainty. The non Latin name for a language like Malayalam for example may be beyond the sourcing abilities of many editors. In ictu oculi ( talk) 17:31, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we should include a brief mention of how to refer to holders of office. I recntly encountered someone who wanted the term "Senator [surname]" throughout an article, rather than just the individual's surname. When I quoted this policy I was told that Senator wasn't an honorific title, so this rule didn't apply. Any thoughts? Paul MacDermott ( talk) 13:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Are any of these birthplace positions wrong for stubs?
In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay I see MOSBIO now says:
Birth and death places should be mentioned in the body if known, and in the lead if they are relevant to the person's notability; they should not be mentioned within the opening brackets.
I see the bold was
added by Giant Snowman being bold. Well it is bold. And annoying. The cleanest format for stubs is that followed by the rest of wp internationally and by encyclopedias
[2]. This is biography style.
See
af:Camille Saint-Saëns,
be:Каміль Сен-Санс,
be-x-old:Каміль Сэн-Санс,
bg:Камий Сен-Санс,
bs:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ca:Camille Saint-Saëns,
cs:Camille Saint-Saëns,
cy:Camille Saint-Saëns,
da:Camille Saint-Saëns,
de:Camille Saint-Saëns,
el:Καμίγ Σαιν-Σανς,
Camille Saint-Saëns,
eo:Camille Saint-Saëns,
es:Camille Saint-Saëns,
et:Camille Saint-Saëns,
eu:Camille Saint-Saëns,
fa:کامی سن-سائن,
fi:Camille Saint-Saëns,
gl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
he:קאמי סן-סנס,
hr:Camille Saint-Saëns,
hu:Camille Saint-Saëns,
hy:Քամիլ Սեն-Սանս,
id:Camille Saint-Saëns,
it:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ja:カミーユ・サン=サーンス,
ka:კამილ სენ-სანსი,
ko:카미유 생상스,
la:Camillus Saint-Saëns,
lt:Camille Saint-Saëns,
lv:Kamijs Sensānss,
nl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
nn:Camille Saint-Saëns,
no:Camille Saint-Saëns,
oc:Camille Saint-Saëns,
pl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
pt:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ro:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ru:Сен-Санс, Камиль,
simple:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sk:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sr:Камиј Сен-Санс,
sv:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sw:Camille Saint-Saëns,
th:กามีย์ แซ็ง-ซ็องส์,
tr:Camille Saint-Saëns,
uk:Каміль Сен-Санс,
vi:Camille Saint-Saëns,
zh:卡米爾·聖桑.
In ictu oculi (
talk) 02:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Common practice across English Wikipedia, appears to be date & place. GoodDay ( talk) 12:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Here is a data set: Category:Stub-Class_Composers_articles. I think there is a fair amount of variation. Anyone like to do some stats? Klein zach 15:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I added the bold part of the quote above merely to clarify what was already said, not to try and change the MOS. The existing "Birth and death places should be mentioned in the body if known, and in the lead if they are relevant to the person's notability" indicates (to me at least) that they should not be included in the opening brackets. Good Day, your arguments of "common practice" mean nothing on Wikipedia - it is, after all, common practice to vandalise articles, create articles on your friends etc. Personally I don't use it and don't like it, and I have never seen a featured article which includes the POB/POD in the opening brackets. That probably tells us all we need to know about this. Giant Snowman 17:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It's quite pathetic, when this much fuss is caused by 2 gnome edits. I don't wanna fight In ictu oculi on this minor topic & therefore I'll get out of his way. GoodDay ( talk) 18:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not taking the time to read all the dispute above, but I really prefer to keep things simple, viz.: Joe Blow (1932-1955) was a . . . " This serves to differentiate Blow from all the other Blows with different birth and death dates. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 06:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
My two bits worth – the proper place for stating a biographical subject's place of birth and place of death is in the article's infobox and in the main body text of the article. (The places of birth and death should also be included in the completed persondata template for searchability.) I can vouch that this is the majority practice in the overwhelming majority of American biographies, which include tens of thousands of articles, and this standard formatting has been widely enforced by various WikiProjects in my four years on Wikipedia.
Individual editors can and will continue to resist the Wikipedia-wide standard practice of not including POB and POD in the birth date parenthetical in the lead sentence, but I suspect in this case the practice is at least partly a function of another non-standard practice that has been the subject of ongoing controversy for several years: the refusal to include infoboxes in musician biographies. It's not an accident that Infobox person includes fields for both POB and POD. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 12:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm just gonna keep puttering along, as I have been. Adding dashes where required, rearranging PoB, PoD where required, etc etc. I use the Random button to seek out such articles. GoodDay ( talk) 03:14, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer1, forgive me we're not familiar with each other so I just dropped by your User page to see in what area you create articles and your User page lists many sport bios such as, first entry,
Buster Bishop, former Gators men's golf coach. Two comments to add to Michael Bednarek's (a) (b) above. (c) with sport bios the POB and POD are often not remotely significant. Buster Bishop was born, lived, died in Florida. Not particularly interesting. (d) Buster Bishop has POB and POD in an infobox. That is something generic to sports bios, even the tiniest stub has an infobox, it seems.
To randomize a non-sports bio I picked
Gábor Fodor (completely at random, I just picked a common East European first name and surname without knowing what I'd get) and got a chemist and a politician.
I'm impressed with the results. Though that's probably not typical, to benchmark I'll just input "Gábor hungarian footballer", ... and they are about 3/5 with POB in brackets, 2/5 without. Anyway, the point being that bios which are really encyclopaedically notable - chemists, politicians, etc. tend to have interesting relevant places of birth/death, and tend to display them in standard print encyclopaedia format. I have no objection at all to sports bios having a html playerinfo style, standard infoboxes and so on. But I do object to a rule banning everything other than sports bio-infobox style from the encyclopaedia and making 100% of chemists, poets, composers and politicians fit some non-print supported player database style. Why should I as an editor of medieval composer bios have to follow football infobox style - when there hasn't been an RfC to make this a rule? That's my question to you as a colleague. [To make a further comment, I see many of the MOS issues as distractions from WP:IRS, the main priority for time and talk]. Cheers. In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:51, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Any discussion about making changes to this MoS, should be held here & not between 2 editors on their talkpages. GoodDay ( talk) 14:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Where are the guidelines for adding this information to BLPs, and what sources are considered reliable? BollyJeff | talk 01:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I hoped to find some advice here on this topic. Evelyn Hooker got her PhD under her maiden name, then married, divorced, and married again. She took the names of her husbands. How should the prose refer to her as it is describing these phases of her life? -- ke4roh ( talk) 16:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
The proposed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) has been quiet for a year now, but discussions such as Talk:A._C._Bhaktivedanta_Swami_Prabhupada#Honorifics seem to reflect a yen for honorifics on the part of some editors. I'm thinking it's about time to stir the pot on NCIN and see if it is ready to serve up an RFC. Comments at the relevant talkpage from editors here would be welcome. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:15, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
(This may well have been clarified elsewhere, in which case please signpost me onwards). If a biog article has an infobox which contains dates of birth and death, does this mean that the dates of birth and death should be removed from the opening sentence? I think that this would be incorrect, and that the dates should appear both in the opening sentence AND in the infobox, but am perplexed by an editor who consistently removes the dates in the opening sentence if they are included in an infobox, on the grounds that the dates don't need to be given twice. I'd be grateful for views, before I get into a battle over it. Jsmith1000 ( talk) 12:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
This topic is currently under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Exact birth and death dates in the lede. Feel free to add your voice there. — sroc ( talk) 23:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I have a "gut feel" objection to describing people as "Joe Blow, former plumber from Anyville" particularly when Joe is dead. This happens a lot with former office-holders or athletes - "John Doe, former Olympic swimmer and former mayor of Anyville". It is particularly prevalent in lists of people.
I think the use of "former" needs to be explicitly deprecated in such contexts. If the person's notability stems from them having won a medal at the Olympics they should be simply described as "John Doe, Olympic swimmer, gold meddalist and world record holder." The fact that the record has been broken umpteen times in the 56 years since he set it, is irrelevant so describing him as a former record holder is incorrect - unless the record itself is the subject, then naming former holders as such is correct. Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 08:49, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
The question is should we attach the Mahatma (meaning ′the great soul′) before Gandhi or should the article title be his real name → Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or just Gandhi? For full disclosure, in a previous discussion (discussion can be found here) it was moved from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi. (here is the latest → move request) Mr T (Talk?) (New thread?) 08:12, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I made this revert and now I am starting to wonder about it. Basically, the editor had replaced a general term in a BLP ("director of governance studies") with an instition-specific title ("Douglas Dillon chair in governance studies"), and I removed it on the grounds that the institution-specific title (which I assume is based on some institution-internal award) is not particularly meaningful for most readers. But since then I've noticed that WP:CREDENTIAL does not have a specific guideline regarding the use of these sorts of titles. I also noticed that some articles do use these titles, if the titles are notable enough that they have their own articles: Noam Chomsky and Stephen Hawking (the latter of which is an example in WP:CREDENTIAL) are both like this. I haven't done a comprehensive survey, but I also found some pages that list institution-specific titles that don't have their own articles (e.g. Howard Lasnik and Barbara Partee). Should there be an explicit guideline regarding these cases? rʨanaɢ ( talk) 13:56, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I added another country specific exception - for India - for subsequent use. This was done in order to accommodate names like Bhagat Singh, which should not be subsequently referred to as Singh, but always as Bhagat Singh, in line with the conventions in everyday life and in scholarly references, as referrenced in the Bhagat Singh talk pages. Khaydock ( talk) 19:19, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, an editor dropped a question off at the Help Desk. They wanted to know Wikipedia's stance on the use of "the late" to describe a deceased person, because it could be perceived an honorific. Does anybody know what the stance is about this, and can we please add a summary of the prevailing attitude (whatever it is) to MOS:BIO#Honorifics, as it seems useful to be there. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb ( talk) 19:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
LeadSongDog come howl! 22:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
Just to put this in context, the original questioner said "The use of the word "late" (i.e. dead) is particularly common in articles about people and places in the Indian subcontinent, where it is a form of honorific prefix." I don't know whether this is correct or not, but it would still be helpful to have some guidance about when to use the term.-- Shantavira| feed me 07:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
Is the subject's birth length and weight relevant biographical information? Is it relevant when the subject is not a baby? Surtsicna ( talk) 20:59, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
The MOS guideline on dates of birth could be (and has been) interpreted by some to be in conflict with WP policy on biographies of living persons, specifically the policy on listing exact dates of birth found at WP:DOB. While ignoring rules is an important part of WP, it is widely accepted that policies trump guidelines; most editors would say that this is particularly true in the case of BLPs.
May I suggest adding to #2 under the opening paragraph section wording to effect of:
"In the case of biographies of living persons, consider the policy on dates of birth before including the exact birth date."
Any thoughts? - Wine Guy ~Talk 15:36, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
So, I edited the page to give Petrarch's correct nationality/citizenship in accordance with WP:OPENPARA, which reads in part: "In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable". Petrarch was born in, became notable in, and lived in until his death, the independent city-state of Arezzo. He was an Aretine throughout his life. My edit was, however, reverted by User:Rjensen with the comment "Petrarch helped invent the Italian language -- "Italian" does not mean citizenship (which did not exist) but culture".
I don't see anything in the guidance here which says that people should be attributed a nationality based on the language they are reputed to have helped to invent, nor that "culture" should replace citizenship in specific cases; the assertion that citizenship did not exist is one which I find highly dubious given the considerable importance attached to citizenship in Trecento Italy (see for example the citizenship of the Serenissima obtained de intus in 1334 by Iacopo Dondi), but that's one for the mediaeval scholars to deal with. I suggest that nationality or citizenship is based on the national entity of which the subject is a member or citizen. I further suggest that Petrarch is thus not a very good example here, as few will know what an Aretine is; and that these guidelines urgently need some careful thought and attention. Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 22:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Despite the useful remarks above, this has now gone a while without further comment. Perhaps it doesn't matter? I'm not clear if there is consensus here to replace the present wording of the Petrarch example with the wording from the current version of the article, which, following an edit that I made there, gives his nationality/citizenship as Aretine. I suggest that we do that, and remove the word "modern-day" from the guideline as there is no reason to restrict it to modern examples. I'm no classical scholar, but I note that Xenophon is described here as "Greek", while Alcibiades is considered "Athenian"; is there any reason for such a discrepancy? Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 10:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
In an article like Dance Moms, the line between whether the dancers and mothers should be considered as "characters" or not. The issue is that in the article about the show, many of the subjects are only refereed to by first name only or by first and last once and then just first thereafter. If this was an article about the person, then we would be using only the last name throughout the rest of the article after the lead. However, if we treat them as characters in a work such as a movie, play, TV show, then we generally find it ok to use first names only to refer to them. For example, in Death of a Salesman we refer to Willy Loman (the character) as Willy. However, the actor that played him originally has his own article and there we use "Cobb." In the article for the play, we use Lee J. Cobb.
I am in the camp at the moment of thinking that we should treat them as we do any Living person (the show does present itself as "reality" even though parts of it, if not much of it is scripted). So, should the references to the individuals in the Dance Moms article be changed from first name only after the initial full name mention, to last name only after the first full name mention? The other problem being that, on the show they are referred to the majority of the time by only their first names. Thoughts? - Aaron Booth ( talk) 03:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
Recently I have been involved in a discussion about whether it is appropriate to use the terms 'Dr' and 'PhD' as an academic credential and postnomial respectively in an article about a research scientist. I had referred to WP:CREDENTIAL to point out that we invariably do not put 'Dr' and 'PhD' in articles (or in infoboxes). I was then told that this practice does exist in some articles and I did a search to check this out. The results of the search produced a fair number of examples. I'm not sure those articles should have that style (I will list them somewhere at some point) and I think those articles may have been written by people who were unaware of the preferred style. From a brief glance, I think some of the articles are borderline notable, and are examples of people using the credentials more the way you would in a CV, rather than in an encyclopedia article. Am I right in saying that 'Dr' and 'PhD' should be removed from those articles, or is there a reason to allow that style? Carcharoth ( talk) 23:10, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
The examples given were contradictory, confusing, and just plain wrong. Sammy Davis, Jr. uses the comma. And who exactly is "George Welton III"? There is no such article. This subject was last broached in a 20112 archive, where someone suggested using the comma and linking. I don't know offhand of a good example that doesn't use the comma.
And sometimes the suffix isn't used in the article title, even though there is evidence the person used it; for instance, Fulton Lewis was actually Fulton Lewis, Jr. (This sticks in my mind because of a 1960s Laugh-In joke where someone calls Sammy Davis Jr. "Fulton Lewis Jr.".
Another example is the radio and voice actor Alan Reed. This was a stage name he invented, until he had a son Alan Reed Jr., after which he used Alan Reed Sr. professionally. He was known and billed that way as the voice of Fred Flintstone, until his death.
Are there any policies or recomendations (consensus) about this, or is it pretty much catch-as-catch can? Can someone help, please? JustinTime55 ( talk) 21:45, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
There is some debate who? on how to handle first and subsequent mentions of proper names in non-biographical articles (specifically, film articles, and more specifically, actors' names in film plots). WP:LASTNAME does not necessarily offer general guidance on this, if the scope is inferred to be biographical articles only. What is the preferred style? Is there a more clear guideline elsewhere? If not, can this one be made more clear on the matter? Thanks! -- Fru1tbat ( talk) 13:08, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to use "X was a prominent Y" in the lead section of an article?-- Mycomp ( talk) 00:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
(Specifically Naveen Jain ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views))
I'm assuming that biographies should be structured chronologically, with exceptions of highlighting highly notable events in the person's life. Am I missing something? Is this included in a guideline or essay somewhere? -- Ronz ( talk) 16:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should templates in Category:Royal and noble family templates use the article titles or the honorifics? Fram ( talk) 14:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
The above is the required neutral statement of the RfC subject, the below is my reason for starting this and my position on this: according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Honorific prefixes, "In general, styles and honorifics should not be included in front of the name". There is no reason why these links to other articles should be in the honorific format instead of the normal article title format. I tried to change this on Template:British Royal Family and Template:Belgian Royal Family, but got reverted. A discussion at Template talk:British Royal Family#Removal of HM/HRH followed. Note also problems like the "Prince Harry" / "Prince Henry" discussion [5], where the template doesn't follow the article title.
For consistency, neutrality, and clarity, I propose that these templates should always use the article titles and nothing but the article titles, dropping all honorifics and all variations of titles and names. Fram ( talk) 14:18, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
Can we please keep the templates formal. Can we please restore the royal style infobo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.211.194.136 ( talk) 23:19, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
The manual currently says:
For second generation immigrants, I think the suggested style is fine but for first-generation immigrants, including those naturalised, I think this suggestion is too simplistic and gives too much emphasis to the host country. I agree that the description should not be too cumbersome as in 'born of X parents in country Y then moved to Z where he was naturalised'; detailed descriptions of this nature should be reserved for the body of the article.
This is a hotly disputed subject in many articles and I suggest that this is the place to have a cool and rational discussion of the subject, away from national feelings. To that end, I suggest that in this discussion we try to avoid discussing real examples directly but only refer to country X or fictional countries like ' Rubovia', 'Borsovia' and 'Humperstein' for example.
My suggestion is that, for first-generation immigrants, we adopt the general description 'Rubovian-Borsovian' where the nationalities are in chronological order; details to be worked out here. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 09:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be some agreement that nationality at the time of notability is not the only important thing. On the other hand the current style has the advantage of simplicity. Country of birth can be important but so can nationality of parents, and nationality for most of their life. This can get complicated which is why I am suggesting say 'Rubovian-Borsovian-Humperstein' rather than 'Rubovian born Humperstienian who lived most of his life in Borsovia'. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 18:24, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
It is indeed a good idea to try to have a consensual and precise wordings of the guideline on this issue. It typically can generate many endlessly repetitive discussions on some articles. I do not know if it would receive support, but my personal proposition would be to ban ANY reference to nationality/country/ethnicity in the opening section: can't we just say that Einstein was a scientist without having to mention his possible nationalities/religion/etc? That could go a long way in preventing the "I want to claim this famous guy for my country/ethnicity/etc." attitude. Interested readers could then make their own opinions when reading the body of the article. There would probably still be some battle about the wording of the body, but that would hopefully be a bit less passionate, as there would be room to expand on each issue. That would also emphasize the "universal" role of scientists and artists. Of course the problem is that about every current Wikipedia biography go against this, so this would take effort and might not be very consensual. Also, there might be a need to make an exception for professions such as politician. Tokidokix ( talk) 12:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
This can range from none, through the simple W-Y-Y-Z, to a condensed description as in 'X-born of Y parents, Z educated W'.
This is a much harder question, the question of ethnicity being the hardest of all. It is tempting to stick to the current concept of not mentioning ethnicity at all but it might be considered that this discriminates against displaced groups who may have no nationality other than that of their host nation. This is likely to be a very contentious topic, which may be the reason that the current guidance is not to mention ethnicity.
We also need to decide how we give weight to: nationality of parents, birth, residency, education, and possibly other factors. This will not be easy but it is undoubtedly the subject of many disputes and, in my opinion, it is best discussed here, away from national feelings and loyalties. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 08:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps we should begin by defining " nationality". Is it citizenship, ethnicity, sense of national identity? What of the case when an independent sovereign state does not exist (e.g., Kurds, Basques, Jews prior to the establishment of Israel, Poles between 1795 and 1918) but the individual's national identity is nevertheless important—perhaps most important? Nihil novi ( talk) 20:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Given the diversity of potentially applicable concepts of "nationality", it may not universally be the case that "one size fits all", and we may just have to settle for treating individual biographees on a case-by-case basis. Nihil novi ( talk) 21:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
If a person is most commonly known as, say, "John Smith" but that article title is already in use and not available for an article about the person, is it better to use the person's middle initial "John Q. Smith" or a parenthetical "John Smith (author)" for the article title? By my thinking, the middle initial is substandard in that the two-part name is more common than the three-part name, and the parenthetical is substandard because it is not the person's name at all; e.g., the parenthetical looks funny in categories. 216.66.5.53 ( talk) 18:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Under the section Names the sub-section Changed names tells editors to use "the name they were using at the time of the mention", but only when "a person is named in an article in which they are not the subject". I don't see where there is any instruction about what to do with a biography article where the person named is the subject. Many articles use name-at-the-time, so Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is referred to in his own article as "Alcindor" for descriptions of his life before the name change and "Abdul-Jabbar" for after. But John Wayne, who was born "Marion Morrison" and even credited in his first film as "Duke Morrison" is referred to as "Wayne" even when writing about his early years (eg; "As a teen, Wayne worked in an ice cream shop...."). With married names, Margaret Thatcher is referred to as "Roberts" (her birth name) for her life before marriage and "Thatcher" after, but Demi Moore is referred to as "Moore" throughout, even when describing meeting here future first husband ("Moore met musician Freddy Moore at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour.") Cat Stevens is referred to as "Georgiou" (his birth name) for his pre-recording life, but hockey player Mike Danton is "Dantin" throughout, even though his birth name is "Jeffereson" and he was drafted into the NHL as "Mike Jefferson" (which the 2000 NHL Entry Draft page correctly reports).
So my question is: Is there any general style policy about what name to use for people in biography articles about them if they have changed names at some point in their lives? Are some of these articles doing it wrong, or is there no general policy about which way to do it? 99.192.71.6 ( talk) 18:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
There is mention of possible change to WP:HONORIFIC at Talk:Louis Martin (blessed). In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I can't find a relevant policy or guideline about what we should include in descriptions of people in phrases in which they are characterised (such as "singer-songwriter Bob Dylan", "playwright Harold Pinter" etc). I am assuming that common sense would require that we only characterise people by what is notable about them. We would not say "singer-songwriter, novelist and painter Bob Dylan", even though Dylan has written a novel ( sort-of) and painted. Is there a guideline for Lede sections in biographies, in which a person is introduced ("Joe Shmoli was an Italian acrobat and linguist....")? I'm also interested in any guidelines regarding characterisations of persons in other articles in which they are mentioned. ("Gina Shmoli was the daughter of acrobat and linguist, Joe..."). If this has been formalised on a policy/guideline page somewhere, I can't find it. Paul B ( talk) 20:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
There is no advice on when to use religious titles - e.g. Rev., Rabbi, etc. Are these deemed to be "Professional titles", covered by
WP:CREDENTIAL, so should not be used?
If so, I think this needs to be made far more specific, as the current vague wording hardly supports the removal of such titles. If not then when should such titles be used?
Arjayay (
talk) 16:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The MOS makes clear that in the article about the subject (e.g. Elton John) the first use includes the honorific ("Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947)..."). What is not clear is usage in other articles. While checking a few articles seems to confirm that we do not use the title in those articles (e.g. John's newest album The Union is "... a collaboration album by singer-songwriters Elton John and Leon Russell..."), is this the case? (This is being discussed at Talk:Little_Dorrit#Honorific_titles.) - SummerPhD ( talk) 15:36, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I have undone the close of this RfC andhave asked for an uninvolved admin to evaluate the consensus and close the RfC. See my comments near the bottom of the "Threaded discussion" section. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Previous result text was:
Should royal titles used by pretenders to the thrones of abolished monarchies and their families be clearly distinguished in all WP articles and templates from the titles of members of royal families of currently existing monarchies?
Smeat75 (
talk) 21:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
To clarify - when I say "royal titles" I mean what royalty specialists call "Styles and titles", I did not want to make the statement too long. There are thousands of WP articles and templates that do not make a clear, or any, distinction between royal titles held by current monarchs and their families and those of families whose titles were abolished by the governments of their countries, often many years ago. To use Germany as an example, although this applies to numerous other ex-monarchies also, in 1919 all German titles of royalty were abolished by law - "Encyclopedia of Politics, Volume 2 "In Germany, titles of royalty existed from early Medieval times until they were abolished when the region became a republic in 1918 ." Also see [6] [7] Note that these reliable sources do not say "the titles were abolished in a legal sense but they still exist because people still use them" or anything like that, no, they state that the government of Germany abolished them and that must be the starting point of this discussion, we do not argue with WP:RS on wikipedia. Now look,as an example of one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of articles about members of deposed royal families, at Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, who is the person who would be the Emperor of Germany today had the German monarchy not been abolished. You will see a section "Titles and styles" [8] which lists such things as his "title and style" from 1994-present has been "His Imperial and Royal Highness The Prince of Prussia". The infobox on this person says his predecessor was Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia and his heir apparent is Prince Carl Friedrich of Prussia. Underneath that infobox is a navbox titled "Prussian Royal Family" with a long list of persons who are given as, for instance, "HI&RH Prince Carl Friedrich". In my opinion, all of this could very easily confuse and mislead readers. All of these titles have been abolished for nearly a hundred years, they are sometimes used on ceremonial occasions or just to be "polite" , the neutral, technical word for these titles that the "monarchist's handbook" the Almanach de Gotha uses is "Titles of pretence", a very revealing and truthful term, the subject of this article is the Pretender to the throne of Germany and members of his family use "Titles of pretence", they are all pretending by the use of those honorifics "HRH" etc that they are the holders of titles that in reality were abolished many years ago.(And the Manual of Style says "In general, styles and honorifics should not be included in front of the name, but may be discussed in the article" [9])In my opinion every article and template where these abolished titles are listed or referred to should very clearly and unmistakably distinguish between these and titles held by members of currently reigning royal families, or we are misleading the readers. I have tried to amend the templates such as the one in this article, removing the honorific prefixes and changing the name from "Prussian royal family" to "House of Hohenzollern" but leaving the rest of it the same but I get reverted so would like comments from the wider community, I hope this discussion will be participated in by a wide section of WP editors and not only the royalty buffs who are undoubtedly going to turn up here, could I ask the latter please to try to limit use of jargon and historical precedent etc likely to be incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with these matters? Thank you Smeat75 ( talk) 15:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Here's another example of navboxes in these articles about families of deposed monarchs that give inaccurate or misleading information, this one directly contrary to guidelines in WP:NCROY "Former or deposed monarchs should be referred to by their previous monarchical title.... Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha not Simeon II of Bulgaria HM The Tsar"" and yet when you look at that very article, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, you see a navbox named "Bulgarian Royal Family" which says he is HM (that stands for "His Majesty") the Tsar" and he is married to Her Majesty the Tsaritsa. WP:NCROY is guidelines for article titles, not information in articles, but it still seems wrong to me to say he is HM the Tsar in that navbox, which is used in a number of articles, not just this one. Smeat75 ( talk) 01:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
There hasn't been a Hawaiian royal family since the overthrow in 1893. So, how is it that Quentin Kawānanakoa is supposedly referred to by "the Hawaiian people" as "prince". I don't even see an actual source for this claim. The navbox refers to him as "royalty" (as an occupation?) but the title of prince in Hawaii was a designation that was granted and not passed on to a child. Even his mother was born after the overthrow, Abigail Kapiolani Kawānanakoa is being referred to as Princess directly as a title to her name and she was born twenty years after the overthrow. Not to mention that her father was only an heir to the lapsed throne and that "Queen" Liliuokalani was the last such monarch before the monarchy was abolished and lived until 1917. As far as I know only David Kawānanakoa was ever granted the title of Prince (of this particular line and the article states it clearly) and style of His Royal Highness in 1883 by King Kalākaua. I do believe it is time the MOS here made some clarification as our current guidelines allowed this for far too long.-- Mark Miller ( talk) 06:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Some further comments on my part in response to replies above:
Can Smeat75 just close this RfC willy-nilly? It seems a third party should do that. Also, I am trying to find where this supposed "compromise" was agreed to to add text to every single article about a member of a former royal family regarding their titles being non-legal. I thought we qualified those as "by pretense" and indicated also where they are official. I think this should be re-opened.
Seven Letters 00:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Improper Close? I have a problem with this closing. While it is true that Smeat75 can close his own RfC, usually this is done with a neutral comment such as "withdrawn".
In this case Smeat75 wrote the following summary:
Besides the obvious problem of not having an unbiased outside closer determines consensus despite this being exactly the sort of RfC (with canvassing) where the unbiased outside closer is supposed to determine whether the canvassing changed the result, it couldn't help noticing that exactly one other person agreed to this alleged compromise.
Now I see that Smeat75 has posted "Are you refusing to accept the compromise reached at MOS talk?" [18] [19] to the talk page of an editor who disagrees with him.
Because of these issues, I am undoing the close and asking for an uninvolved admin to evaluate the consensus and close the RfC. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
German royal and noble titles were all abolished in 1919."In 1919 royalty and nobility were mandated to lose their privileges in Germany, hereditary titles were to be legally borne thereafter only as part of the surname, according to Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution." Nevertheless there are thousands of articles and templates here on English WP that assign the living members of these families "styles and titles" that have not existed since then and lots of templates for ex-royal families that prefix their names with "HRH" or "HSH" and so on, this is simply false information. I have started trying to remove these false use of abolished titles and honorifics, but would welcome clarification here that individuals who do not possess legal titles should not be referred to as such. Thanks Smeat75 ( talk) 19:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In my view this is a WP:NPOV and WP:IRS issue first and WP:HONORIFIC second, but anyway, please see comment on opposition to MOS:SAINTS and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (clergy). Cheers. In ictu oculi ( talk) 03:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
OK, I started off by making a silly title but this is serious. Tons of RfC's and angry commentary can testify to that. In the discussion, I summed up the problem as follows:
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. |
In many bios of dead persons the history is written in past tense, but the writings are described in the present tense. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin#Theology ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Aristotle.27s_scientific_method The MOS only allows past tense for bios of dead persons. I suggest one of these two options: 1. specifying in the MOS: "Writings and theories of dead persons can be described in the present tense." 2. "Writings and theories of dead persons must also be discussed in the past tense." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markewilliams ( talk • contribs) 02:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Somebody pointed out to me that this MOS requires the nationality to be put in the lede? Really? How dumb can you get? It is just silly to put the nationality of a person in the lede when that person's nationality is plainly obvious from the context. That's like saying that Elizabeth II is a (insert nationality here; I'm sure she has a lot of them) is Queen of Canada, Australia, etc., or that Barack Obama is an American politician. In many respects that MOSBIO you cited is just ridiculous. Sorry I am waxing indignant, but that is the way I feel. I have written scores of articles about Notable Americans, and in none of them have I chosen to name their nationalities when it is just obvious that they are Americans. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 05:20, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
There are many more countries that follow Patronymic#Ethiopia naming convention, specially in East Africa. These need to be included in this section. Some examples of affected articles: Meles Zenawi, Fuad Ibrahim, Tekle Hawaryat, Tewodros II of Ethiopia, Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi, Isaias Afewerki, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and many many more through out the region: in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan. There is are too many articles to correct. I have tried my best to correct them. But it is nearly impossible when all news articles refer to people by their fathers or grandfathers name.
According to this MOS, even though titles of articles will refer to people by their most commonly cited name, in subsequent mentions, the given name is used if the name is patronymic. If no objections, I will be adding these countries to the list of Country-specific usage. አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh) ( talk) 01:51, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
I think this recent addition is confusing and should be removed:
Use the present tense when summarizing or quoting written works or other artistic creations:
- In his book, Bob begins his argument with an anecdote ...
If there is a shift in the time frame within the world of the text, you may need to change tense. Write as if the actions of the work exist in an eternal present:
- At this point in John's story, Jack becomes afraid as he considers what he has done and what it will mean for his future.
"Summarizing or quoting written works" is not the subject of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies. -- Michael Bednarek ( talk) 02:23, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
It's definitely not always going to be appropriate to use the past tense when referencing written works. Context is very important, and I think the wording used should be thought about carefully. Consider:
When to use past and when to use present is not very easy to succinctly describe, I think. Perhaps the guidance would be better if it were worded to permit use of the present tense in some cases, rather than require it.
Formerip ( talk) 15:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
This wording is contained in WP:OPENPARA, but it doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. Surely everyone who is notable is "notable mainly for past events"?
I would assume that the guidance should say something like "...people whose notability is substantially in the past and who have fallen into obscurity". But there's an alternative view that it just means "...people who first became famous a long time ago...".
This has come up at Talk:Gérard_Depardieu#In_resp._to_all_the_above:_We_have_a_guideline_for_lead_and_natonality, but I don't think the outcome for that article depends very much on this particular issue, so you don't need to worry too much about the detail of the specific case.
Any thoughts? Formerip ( talk) 21:09, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, well here is the current wording:
To me this is gobbledygook. Nationality being related to citizenship is fine. But nationality being related to being a national is a tautology and being a permanent resident ( WP:CRYSTAL) clearly does not give nationality (e.g. Piers Morgan is British, not American). Everything from "notable mainly for past events" is useless for the reason I mentioned above (it applies in all cases), and surely it cannot be intended that a person's nationality at the time of becoming notable should be fixed in amber (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger can be described as "Austrian and American", even though he was only Austrian at the time he first became famous).
I think what the wording is trying to say it that nationalities held, for example, during childhood or old age, which constitute biographical detail only, should not be mentioned in the lead.
So, I've tried to render all that into something that makes sense:
Formerip ( talk) 01:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Though it's not called for here, many DMY intros have birthplace & deathplace with the dates. Therefore, which is correct?
1- (18 January 1859, Montreal – 25 January 1959, Quebec City) or
2- (18 January 1859 in Montreal – 25 January 1959 in Quebec City).
GoodDay (
talk) 06:18, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
3- (18 January 1850 – 25 January 1959)
GoodDay (
talk) 06:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
We have an article on this - Hadrat. The spelling 'Hazrath' is also used in our articles, eg [1], sometimes even in the article's title, eg in this truly dreadful article: Hazrat Sayed Mehboob Ali Shah Chishti Nizami. I came across this at a recent edit here. Dougweller ( talk) 13:57, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
We seem to need help with religious titles and honorifics. I please request that we discuss, achieve a consensus and write down guidelines. Please see the talk page of the article Gandhi for more details, regarding a proposed move to Mahatma Gandhi. Here is an excerpt from that conversation:
[Cross-posted from MoS talk page, not sure which place is appropriate.] 98.234.105.147 ( talk) 04:31, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
I do not seem to be able to explain to User:Cotillards that there is no reason for biographical article, such as Prince Vincent of Denmark, to explain what the subject's middle name (or any first name, for that matter) means. The article about Donald Trump, for example, does not say that "Donald" means "ruler of the world" (hmmm) and that "John" means "God is gracious". That is nothing but trivia. Am I the one who is wrong here? Surtsicna ( talk) 23:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there any guideline on the use of HM and HRH in royal family templates, specifically? I edited some out (HM The King ==> The King); my edit, summarised MOS:HONORIFIC, was reverted with the airy comment "I believe that only applies to the text". (See history of Template:Greek Royal Family). Pol098 ( talk) 23:00, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
The section headed "Occupation Titles" appears to be a misnomer as the examples given in it relate solely to inherited royal titles and styles ('king', 'emperor') and elected offices ('president', 'prime minister'). Here's the wording as it currently appears:
When used to describe the occupation, apply lower case; such as: (De Gaulle was a French president; Louis XVI was a French king; Three prime ministers attended the conference).
When used as part of a person's title, begin such words with a capital letter (President Obama, not president Obama). Standard or commonly used names of an office are treated as proper nouns (The British Prime Minister is David Cameron; Hirohito was Emperor of Japan; Louis XVI was King of France). Royal styles are capitalized (Her Majesty; His Highness); exceptions may apply for particular offices.
The definition of 'occupation' in the Oxford English Dictionary in this sense is:
b. A particular action or course of action in which a person is engaged, esp. habitually; a particular job or profession; a particular pursuit or activity.
I won't list here all the examples of historical usage given in the OED for copyright reasons (a subscription is required to the online OED), but none of them, nor the definition itself, suggests that inherited royal positions or elected offices are considered 'occupations'.
I would suggest moving the guidelines in this section which relate to inherited royal titles to the section in the Manual of Style on honorifics, and that the current section either be retitled 'Titles Related to Elected Office', or incorporated into another existing section of the Manual of Style if an appropriate section already exists. NinaGreen ( talk) 19:30, 2 March 2013 (UTC)
Should the lead maybe include a note that this guideline applies only for real people, not for fictional characters (which are imho to be treated as plot devices)? I'm asking since there are many articles about fictional characters where editors are trying to create a fictional biography by following the advice set out in this guideline. -- 89.0.241.3 ( talk) 07:08, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
Why are editors forbidden to include the honorary suffixes, such as university degrees, of individuals above their picture in the textbox at the right of the article page? The guidelines in this manual unfortunately evade this issue as every other instructional page does on Wikipedia. As John Stuart Mill described in On Liberty, if the reasons are not repeated, the rule, in this case, loses most of its moral and psychological force. Wikipedia administrators, it is up to you to provide a well-detailed and straightforward answer; otherwise, nonconformity will result. -- RandomKelvin ( talk) 01:43, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
This is in reference to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Names section.
My question/concern is over the use of "nicknames" vs. just simply shortened names. For example, the article Dizzy Dean begins "Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean". This is obvious nickname that is completely different from his actually first name and "SHOULD'" be included and of course is because its not obvious to decipher from his birth name. Another example would be Bill Clinton which begins "William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton". Although Bill is a common nickname of William, it SHOULD be included because it may not be obvious that the two names are the same because Bill is not an obvious shortened name for William because "Bill" is not included in the word "William". I'm sure there are other examples, but I will leave it at that for now.
In my opinion, biographies about people whose shortened "common name" name is obviously part of the birth name SHOULD NOT be included in the first line. Its overkill if you ask me. Examples are plenty on Wikipedia. A few are Tom Hanks, "Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks", Steve Jobs "Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs", Josh Hartnett "Joshua Daniel "Josh" Hartnett". These shortened names SHOULD NOT be included in the lead because they are obviously just shortened names of the longer birth name and are already included in the birth name, i.e. "Josh"ua, "Steve"n, "T"h"om"as. Most people will get the connection without actually saying it. Anyone who doesn't get the connection is probably living deep in a rain forrest somewhere and probably isn't using a computer anyway.
Either way, a bit of direction should be included in the appropriate section, since there appears to be no discernible guideline on this at all.-- JOJ Hutton 14:13, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Looks like we need to add some more clarifying language to OPENPARA. We are getting a lot of insistence on adding incidental and late-acquired citizenships to the lead sentences of living people. For most living people, we should have a single nationality: the one that they held at the time they first became notable. That has always been the intent of OPENPARA, but it's never been worded clearly enough for some editors to "get it". Many editors insist on "claiming" a subject for their own nationality for incidental reasons, understandably ticking off the nationals of the county with which the subject actually does identify, and precipitating edit wars in the process.
We should make it clearer that we should not include countries which the subject happened to be accidentally born in (example Nicole Kidman who identifies as Australian and not "Australian-Amercan"), or citizenships acquired well after the subject became notable (example Charlize Theron, who despite recently acquiring American citizenship still self-identifies as South African and should not be described with the completely inaccurate phrase "South African-born American", which makes it sound like she was an American incidentally born in South Africa).
Hyphenated nationalities and the bastard expression Country-born Othercountry both give completely incorrect impressions of the actual nationality of the subject and should be strictly avoided. We need to make this explicit. In the rare cases of true dual citizenship at the time of achieving notability, the word "and" should be placed between the two nationalities to avoid these false impressions of the superiority of one nationality over the other. An example might be Cary Grant, but I personally think he achieved notability before being naturalized and so should be described as English. OPENPARA says nothing about adding a nationality under which the subject became even more notable, just when they first achieved notability. Yworo ( talk) 04:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
I'll be proposing some rewording and some clarifying guidance soon. Hang on, I'm pretty busy. Yworo ( talk) 16:29, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
Here are some points that we need to include in the revision:
Now, how to reword what we've got to integrate this will take some more work. Yworo ( talk) 16:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
For changed names, it's suggested that the person should be referred to using their name at the time of the mention. While this generally makes sense, it seems a tad disrespectful in the case of someone whose original name never was appropriate for them, specifically transsexuals who have changed their name as part of changing their social, legal and biological sex for all intents and purposes, to bring it inline with their neurological sex.
Indeed, for identity, it's suggested that the person should be referred to using their latest expressed gender self-identification. This seems rather sensible, and I think it might be helpful to clarify whether this should be retroactive or not.
I realise that mentioning such a person's original, inappropriate name is a statement of fact, and may even be relevant to their biography, but I think it's not too helpful to insist upon using their old name on the various other pages that talk about projects they've been involved in before their transition. I think it's safe to say that the person who participated in those projects was the person they actually were, not the person they had to pretend to be at the time.
For example, it seems safe to say that Lynn Conway revolutionised CPU design, or that Lana Wachowski co-created The Matrix (at the very most saying that she was credited as her old name, not that she was her old name). While I understand that reading about Wachowski herself would necessarily entail dealing with her painful past, it would be nice if reading up on tangential works such as the Ghost in the Shell film didn't bring it up.
Would it be possible to have a discussion as to whether the policy on changed names could be amended with such a clause? While it may seem unimportant to most people, I think it would make a welcomed difference to the people affected.
If it's any help, Tobi Hill-Meyer's article Language, Reality, and my Trans Girlhood makes a good argument for this type of phrasing, while Robert Sapolsky has given an interesting lecture on the validity of transsexualism, amongst other things.
Thank you for your time, everyone!
Zoeb ( talk) 17:10, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
The widespread custom for biographical articles of people of a nationality where the native script is not a Latin alphabet is to give the native script in brackets. There seems, however, to be no guideline in policy about when this is appropriate, or how it should be presented. Should it be for anyone with a Fooian name (although they might be third or fourth generation emigrants), or only those born in Fooland, or only those raised in a Foo-speaking milieu, or only those whose notability was achieved in Fooland? Should the transliteration be bracketed, or comma separated? Should there be a link to the language, or to the alphabet, or an article on Fooian naming conventions, or no link at all.
Anyone care to propose a policy? (Or direct me to something I've missed) Kevin McE ( talk) 19:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
I think the person needs to belong to the culture. I'd say the litmus-test is whether the orthography can be called "authentic". This would not be the case, for example, for Muhammad Ali or Tom Selleck, but it would be for Omar Sharif and Yoko Ono. Formerip ( talk) 21:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
The above seem to work fine. I would say add "if possible give the original non Latin-alphabet name in brackets, and again if possible with prounciation)" that's as far as we can go with certainty. The non Latin name for a language like Malayalam for example may be beyond the sourcing abilities of many editors. In ictu oculi ( talk) 17:31, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we should include a brief mention of how to refer to holders of office. I recntly encountered someone who wanted the term "Senator [surname]" throughout an article, rather than just the individual's surname. When I quoted this policy I was told that Senator wasn't an honorific title, so this rule didn't apply. Any thoughts? Paul MacDermott ( talk) 13:14, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
Are any of these birthplace positions wrong for stubs?
In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay I see MOSBIO now says:
Birth and death places should be mentioned in the body if known, and in the lead if they are relevant to the person's notability; they should not be mentioned within the opening brackets.
I see the bold was
added by Giant Snowman being bold. Well it is bold. And annoying. The cleanest format for stubs is that followed by the rest of wp internationally and by encyclopedias
[2]. This is biography style.
See
af:Camille Saint-Saëns,
be:Каміль Сен-Санс,
be-x-old:Каміль Сэн-Санс,
bg:Камий Сен-Санс,
bs:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ca:Camille Saint-Saëns,
cs:Camille Saint-Saëns,
cy:Camille Saint-Saëns,
da:Camille Saint-Saëns,
de:Camille Saint-Saëns,
el:Καμίγ Σαιν-Σανς,
Camille Saint-Saëns,
eo:Camille Saint-Saëns,
es:Camille Saint-Saëns,
et:Camille Saint-Saëns,
eu:Camille Saint-Saëns,
fa:کامی سن-سائن,
fi:Camille Saint-Saëns,
gl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
he:קאמי סן-סנס,
hr:Camille Saint-Saëns,
hu:Camille Saint-Saëns,
hy:Քամիլ Սեն-Սանս,
id:Camille Saint-Saëns,
it:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ja:カミーユ・サン=サーンス,
ka:კამილ სენ-სანსი,
ko:카미유 생상스,
la:Camillus Saint-Saëns,
lt:Camille Saint-Saëns,
lv:Kamijs Sensānss,
nl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
nn:Camille Saint-Saëns,
no:Camille Saint-Saëns,
oc:Camille Saint-Saëns,
pl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
pt:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ro:Camille Saint-Saëns,
ru:Сен-Санс, Камиль,
simple:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sk:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sl:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sr:Камиј Сен-Санс,
sv:Camille Saint-Saëns,
sw:Camille Saint-Saëns,
th:กามีย์ แซ็ง-ซ็องส์,
tr:Camille Saint-Saëns,
uk:Каміль Сен-Санс,
vi:Camille Saint-Saëns,
zh:卡米爾·聖桑.
In ictu oculi (
talk) 02:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Common practice across English Wikipedia, appears to be date & place. GoodDay ( talk) 12:49, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Here is a data set: Category:Stub-Class_Composers_articles. I think there is a fair amount of variation. Anyone like to do some stats? Klein zach 15:35, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I added the bold part of the quote above merely to clarify what was already said, not to try and change the MOS. The existing "Birth and death places should be mentioned in the body if known, and in the lead if they are relevant to the person's notability" indicates (to me at least) that they should not be included in the opening brackets. Good Day, your arguments of "common practice" mean nothing on Wikipedia - it is, after all, common practice to vandalise articles, create articles on your friends etc. Personally I don't use it and don't like it, and I have never seen a featured article which includes the POB/POD in the opening brackets. That probably tells us all we need to know about this. Giant Snowman 17:43, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
It's quite pathetic, when this much fuss is caused by 2 gnome edits. I don't wanna fight In ictu oculi on this minor topic & therefore I'll get out of his way. GoodDay ( talk) 18:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not taking the time to read all the dispute above, but I really prefer to keep things simple, viz.: Joe Blow (1932-1955) was a . . . " This serves to differentiate Blow from all the other Blows with different birth and death dates. GeorgeLouis ( talk) 06:45, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
My two bits worth – the proper place for stating a biographical subject's place of birth and place of death is in the article's infobox and in the main body text of the article. (The places of birth and death should also be included in the completed persondata template for searchability.) I can vouch that this is the majority practice in the overwhelming majority of American biographies, which include tens of thousands of articles, and this standard formatting has been widely enforced by various WikiProjects in my four years on Wikipedia.
Individual editors can and will continue to resist the Wikipedia-wide standard practice of not including POB and POD in the birth date parenthetical in the lead sentence, but I suspect in this case the practice is at least partly a function of another non-standard practice that has been the subject of ongoing controversy for several years: the refusal to include infoboxes in musician biographies. It's not an accident that Infobox person includes fields for both POB and POD. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 12:07, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm just gonna keep puttering along, as I have been. Adding dashes where required, rearranging PoB, PoD where required, etc etc. I use the Random button to seek out such articles. GoodDay ( talk) 03:14, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Dirtlawyer1, forgive me we're not familiar with each other so I just dropped by your User page to see in what area you create articles and your User page lists many sport bios such as, first entry,
Buster Bishop, former Gators men's golf coach. Two comments to add to Michael Bednarek's (a) (b) above. (c) with sport bios the POB and POD are often not remotely significant. Buster Bishop was born, lived, died in Florida. Not particularly interesting. (d) Buster Bishop has POB and POD in an infobox. That is something generic to sports bios, even the tiniest stub has an infobox, it seems.
To randomize a non-sports bio I picked
Gábor Fodor (completely at random, I just picked a common East European first name and surname without knowing what I'd get) and got a chemist and a politician.
I'm impressed with the results. Though that's probably not typical, to benchmark I'll just input "Gábor hungarian footballer", ... and they are about 3/5 with POB in brackets, 2/5 without. Anyway, the point being that bios which are really encyclopaedically notable - chemists, politicians, etc. tend to have interesting relevant places of birth/death, and tend to display them in standard print encyclopaedia format. I have no objection at all to sports bios having a html playerinfo style, standard infoboxes and so on. But I do object to a rule banning everything other than sports bio-infobox style from the encyclopaedia and making 100% of chemists, poets, composers and politicians fit some non-print supported player database style. Why should I as an editor of medieval composer bios have to follow football infobox style - when there hasn't been an RfC to make this a rule? That's my question to you as a colleague. [To make a further comment, I see many of the MOS issues as distractions from WP:IRS, the main priority for time and talk]. Cheers. In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:51, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
Any discussion about making changes to this MoS, should be held here & not between 2 editors on their talkpages. GoodDay ( talk) 14:36, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
Where are the guidelines for adding this information to BLPs, and what sources are considered reliable? BollyJeff | talk 01:16, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I hoped to find some advice here on this topic. Evelyn Hooker got her PhD under her maiden name, then married, divorced, and married again. She took the names of her husbands. How should the prose refer to her as it is describing these phases of her life? -- ke4roh ( talk) 16:41, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
The proposed Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic) has been quiet for a year now, but discussions such as Talk:A._C._Bhaktivedanta_Swami_Prabhupada#Honorifics seem to reflect a yen for honorifics on the part of some editors. I'm thinking it's about time to stir the pot on NCIN and see if it is ready to serve up an RFC. Comments at the relevant talkpage from editors here would be welcome. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:15, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
(This may well have been clarified elsewhere, in which case please signpost me onwards). If a biog article has an infobox which contains dates of birth and death, does this mean that the dates of birth and death should be removed from the opening sentence? I think that this would be incorrect, and that the dates should appear both in the opening sentence AND in the infobox, but am perplexed by an editor who consistently removes the dates in the opening sentence if they are included in an infobox, on the grounds that the dates don't need to be given twice. I'd be grateful for views, before I get into a battle over it. Jsmith1000 ( talk) 12:14, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
This topic is currently under discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Exact birth and death dates in the lede. Feel free to add your voice there. — sroc ( talk) 23:33, 6 June 2013 (UTC)
I have a "gut feel" objection to describing people as "Joe Blow, former plumber from Anyville" particularly when Joe is dead. This happens a lot with former office-holders or athletes - "John Doe, former Olympic swimmer and former mayor of Anyville". It is particularly prevalent in lists of people.
I think the use of "former" needs to be explicitly deprecated in such contexts. If the person's notability stems from them having won a medal at the Olympics they should be simply described as "John Doe, Olympic swimmer, gold meddalist and world record holder." The fact that the record has been broken umpteen times in the 56 years since he set it, is irrelevant so describing him as a former record holder is incorrect - unless the record itself is the subject, then naming former holders as such is correct. Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 08:49, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
The question is should we attach the Mahatma (meaning ′the great soul′) before Gandhi or should the article title be his real name → Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or just Gandhi? For full disclosure, in a previous discussion (discussion can be found here) it was moved from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Mahatma Gandhi. (here is the latest → move request) Mr T (Talk?) (New thread?) 08:12, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
I made this revert and now I am starting to wonder about it. Basically, the editor had replaced a general term in a BLP ("director of governance studies") with an instition-specific title ("Douglas Dillon chair in governance studies"), and I removed it on the grounds that the institution-specific title (which I assume is based on some institution-internal award) is not particularly meaningful for most readers. But since then I've noticed that WP:CREDENTIAL does not have a specific guideline regarding the use of these sorts of titles. I also noticed that some articles do use these titles, if the titles are notable enough that they have their own articles: Noam Chomsky and Stephen Hawking (the latter of which is an example in WP:CREDENTIAL) are both like this. I haven't done a comprehensive survey, but I also found some pages that list institution-specific titles that don't have their own articles (e.g. Howard Lasnik and Barbara Partee). Should there be an explicit guideline regarding these cases? rʨanaɢ ( talk) 13:56, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
I added another country specific exception - for India - for subsequent use. This was done in order to accommodate names like Bhagat Singh, which should not be subsequently referred to as Singh, but always as Bhagat Singh, in line with the conventions in everyday life and in scholarly references, as referrenced in the Bhagat Singh talk pages. Khaydock ( talk) 19:19, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
Hi, an editor dropped a question off at the Help Desk. They wanted to know Wikipedia's stance on the use of "the late" to describe a deceased person, because it could be perceived an honorific. Does anybody know what the stance is about this, and can we please add a summary of the prevailing attitude (whatever it is) to MOS:BIO#Honorifics, as it seems useful to be there. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb ( talk) 19:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
LeadSongDog come howl! 22:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
Just to put this in context, the original questioner said "The use of the word "late" (i.e. dead) is particularly common in articles about people and places in the Indian subcontinent, where it is a form of honorific prefix." I don't know whether this is correct or not, but it would still be helpful to have some guidance about when to use the term.-- Shantavira| feed me 07:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
Is the subject's birth length and weight relevant biographical information? Is it relevant when the subject is not a baby? Surtsicna ( talk) 20:59, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
The MOS guideline on dates of birth could be (and has been) interpreted by some to be in conflict with WP policy on biographies of living persons, specifically the policy on listing exact dates of birth found at WP:DOB. While ignoring rules is an important part of WP, it is widely accepted that policies trump guidelines; most editors would say that this is particularly true in the case of BLPs.
May I suggest adding to #2 under the opening paragraph section wording to effect of:
"In the case of biographies of living persons, consider the policy on dates of birth before including the exact birth date."
Any thoughts? - Wine Guy ~Talk 15:36, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
So, I edited the page to give Petrarch's correct nationality/citizenship in accordance with WP:OPENPARA, which reads in part: "In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen, national or permanent resident, or if notable mainly for past events, the country where the person was a citizen, national or permanent resident when the person became notable". Petrarch was born in, became notable in, and lived in until his death, the independent city-state of Arezzo. He was an Aretine throughout his life. My edit was, however, reverted by User:Rjensen with the comment "Petrarch helped invent the Italian language -- "Italian" does not mean citizenship (which did not exist) but culture".
I don't see anything in the guidance here which says that people should be attributed a nationality based on the language they are reputed to have helped to invent, nor that "culture" should replace citizenship in specific cases; the assertion that citizenship did not exist is one which I find highly dubious given the considerable importance attached to citizenship in Trecento Italy (see for example the citizenship of the Serenissima obtained de intus in 1334 by Iacopo Dondi), but that's one for the mediaeval scholars to deal with. I suggest that nationality or citizenship is based on the national entity of which the subject is a member or citizen. I further suggest that Petrarch is thus not a very good example here, as few will know what an Aretine is; and that these guidelines urgently need some careful thought and attention. Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 22:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Despite the useful remarks above, this has now gone a while without further comment. Perhaps it doesn't matter? I'm not clear if there is consensus here to replace the present wording of the Petrarch example with the wording from the current version of the article, which, following an edit that I made there, gives his nationality/citizenship as Aretine. I suggest that we do that, and remove the word "modern-day" from the guideline as there is no reason to restrict it to modern examples. I'm no classical scholar, but I note that Xenophon is described here as "Greek", while Alcibiades is considered "Athenian"; is there any reason for such a discrepancy? Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 10:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
In an article like Dance Moms, the line between whether the dancers and mothers should be considered as "characters" or not. The issue is that in the article about the show, many of the subjects are only refereed to by first name only or by first and last once and then just first thereafter. If this was an article about the person, then we would be using only the last name throughout the rest of the article after the lead. However, if we treat them as characters in a work such as a movie, play, TV show, then we generally find it ok to use first names only to refer to them. For example, in Death of a Salesman we refer to Willy Loman (the character) as Willy. However, the actor that played him originally has his own article and there we use "Cobb." In the article for the play, we use Lee J. Cobb.
I am in the camp at the moment of thinking that we should treat them as we do any Living person (the show does present itself as "reality" even though parts of it, if not much of it is scripted). So, should the references to the individuals in the Dance Moms article be changed from first name only after the initial full name mention, to last name only after the first full name mention? The other problem being that, on the show they are referred to the majority of the time by only their first names. Thoughts? - Aaron Booth ( talk) 03:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
Recently I have been involved in a discussion about whether it is appropriate to use the terms 'Dr' and 'PhD' as an academic credential and postnomial respectively in an article about a research scientist. I had referred to WP:CREDENTIAL to point out that we invariably do not put 'Dr' and 'PhD' in articles (or in infoboxes). I was then told that this practice does exist in some articles and I did a search to check this out. The results of the search produced a fair number of examples. I'm not sure those articles should have that style (I will list them somewhere at some point) and I think those articles may have been written by people who were unaware of the preferred style. From a brief glance, I think some of the articles are borderline notable, and are examples of people using the credentials more the way you would in a CV, rather than in an encyclopedia article. Am I right in saying that 'Dr' and 'PhD' should be removed from those articles, or is there a reason to allow that style? Carcharoth ( talk) 23:10, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
The examples given were contradictory, confusing, and just plain wrong. Sammy Davis, Jr. uses the comma. And who exactly is "George Welton III"? There is no such article. This subject was last broached in a 20112 archive, where someone suggested using the comma and linking. I don't know offhand of a good example that doesn't use the comma.
And sometimes the suffix isn't used in the article title, even though there is evidence the person used it; for instance, Fulton Lewis was actually Fulton Lewis, Jr. (This sticks in my mind because of a 1960s Laugh-In joke where someone calls Sammy Davis Jr. "Fulton Lewis Jr.".
Another example is the radio and voice actor Alan Reed. This was a stage name he invented, until he had a son Alan Reed Jr., after which he used Alan Reed Sr. professionally. He was known and billed that way as the voice of Fred Flintstone, until his death.
Are there any policies or recomendations (consensus) about this, or is it pretty much catch-as-catch can? Can someone help, please? JustinTime55 ( talk) 21:45, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
There is some debate who? on how to handle first and subsequent mentions of proper names in non-biographical articles (specifically, film articles, and more specifically, actors' names in film plots). WP:LASTNAME does not necessarily offer general guidance on this, if the scope is inferred to be biographical articles only. What is the preferred style? Is there a more clear guideline elsewhere? If not, can this one be made more clear on the matter? Thanks! -- Fru1tbat ( talk) 13:08, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
Is it appropriate to use "X was a prominent Y" in the lead section of an article?-- Mycomp ( talk) 00:51, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
(Specifically Naveen Jain ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views))
I'm assuming that biographies should be structured chronologically, with exceptions of highlighting highly notable events in the person's life. Am I missing something? Is this included in a guideline or essay somewhere? -- Ronz ( talk) 16:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Should templates in Category:Royal and noble family templates use the article titles or the honorifics? Fram ( talk) 14:10, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
The above is the required neutral statement of the RfC subject, the below is my reason for starting this and my position on this: according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biographies#Honorific prefixes, "In general, styles and honorifics should not be included in front of the name". There is no reason why these links to other articles should be in the honorific format instead of the normal article title format. I tried to change this on Template:British Royal Family and Template:Belgian Royal Family, but got reverted. A discussion at Template talk:British Royal Family#Removal of HM/HRH followed. Note also problems like the "Prince Harry" / "Prince Henry" discussion [5], where the template doesn't follow the article title.
For consistency, neutrality, and clarity, I propose that these templates should always use the article titles and nothing but the article titles, dropping all honorifics and all variations of titles and names. Fram ( talk) 14:18, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
Can we please keep the templates formal. Can we please restore the royal style infobo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.211.194.136 ( talk) 23:19, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
The manual currently says:
For second generation immigrants, I think the suggested style is fine but for first-generation immigrants, including those naturalised, I think this suggestion is too simplistic and gives too much emphasis to the host country. I agree that the description should not be too cumbersome as in 'born of X parents in country Y then moved to Z where he was naturalised'; detailed descriptions of this nature should be reserved for the body of the article.
This is a hotly disputed subject in many articles and I suggest that this is the place to have a cool and rational discussion of the subject, away from national feelings. To that end, I suggest that in this discussion we try to avoid discussing real examples directly but only refer to country X or fictional countries like ' Rubovia', 'Borsovia' and 'Humperstein' for example.
My suggestion is that, for first-generation immigrants, we adopt the general description 'Rubovian-Borsovian' where the nationalities are in chronological order; details to be worked out here. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 09:10, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be some agreement that nationality at the time of notability is not the only important thing. On the other hand the current style has the advantage of simplicity. Country of birth can be important but so can nationality of parents, and nationality for most of their life. This can get complicated which is why I am suggesting say 'Rubovian-Borsovian-Humperstein' rather than 'Rubovian born Humperstienian who lived most of his life in Borsovia'. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 18:24, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
It is indeed a good idea to try to have a consensual and precise wordings of the guideline on this issue. It typically can generate many endlessly repetitive discussions on some articles. I do not know if it would receive support, but my personal proposition would be to ban ANY reference to nationality/country/ethnicity in the opening section: can't we just say that Einstein was a scientist without having to mention his possible nationalities/religion/etc? That could go a long way in preventing the "I want to claim this famous guy for my country/ethnicity/etc." attitude. Interested readers could then make their own opinions when reading the body of the article. There would probably still be some battle about the wording of the body, but that would hopefully be a bit less passionate, as there would be room to expand on each issue. That would also emphasize the "universal" role of scientists and artists. Of course the problem is that about every current Wikipedia biography go against this, so this would take effort and might not be very consensual. Also, there might be a need to make an exception for professions such as politician. Tokidokix ( talk) 12:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
This can range from none, through the simple W-Y-Y-Z, to a condensed description as in 'X-born of Y parents, Z educated W'.
This is a much harder question, the question of ethnicity being the hardest of all. It is tempting to stick to the current concept of not mentioning ethnicity at all but it might be considered that this discriminates against displaced groups who may have no nationality other than that of their host nation. This is likely to be a very contentious topic, which may be the reason that the current guidance is not to mention ethnicity.
We also need to decide how we give weight to: nationality of parents, birth, residency, education, and possibly other factors. This will not be easy but it is undoubtedly the subject of many disputes and, in my opinion, it is best discussed here, away from national feelings and loyalties. Martin Hogbin ( talk) 08:46, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps we should begin by defining " nationality". Is it citizenship, ethnicity, sense of national identity? What of the case when an independent sovereign state does not exist (e.g., Kurds, Basques, Jews prior to the establishment of Israel, Poles between 1795 and 1918) but the individual's national identity is nevertheless important—perhaps most important? Nihil novi ( talk) 20:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Given the diversity of potentially applicable concepts of "nationality", it may not universally be the case that "one size fits all", and we may just have to settle for treating individual biographees on a case-by-case basis. Nihil novi ( talk) 21:05, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
If a person is most commonly known as, say, "John Smith" but that article title is already in use and not available for an article about the person, is it better to use the person's middle initial "John Q. Smith" or a parenthetical "John Smith (author)" for the article title? By my thinking, the middle initial is substandard in that the two-part name is more common than the three-part name, and the parenthetical is substandard because it is not the person's name at all; e.g., the parenthetical looks funny in categories. 216.66.5.53 ( talk) 18:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
Under the section Names the sub-section Changed names tells editors to use "the name they were using at the time of the mention", but only when "a person is named in an article in which they are not the subject". I don't see where there is any instruction about what to do with a biography article where the person named is the subject. Many articles use name-at-the-time, so Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is referred to in his own article as "Alcindor" for descriptions of his life before the name change and "Abdul-Jabbar" for after. But John Wayne, who was born "Marion Morrison" and even credited in his first film as "Duke Morrison" is referred to as "Wayne" even when writing about his early years (eg; "As a teen, Wayne worked in an ice cream shop...."). With married names, Margaret Thatcher is referred to as "Roberts" (her birth name) for her life before marriage and "Thatcher" after, but Demi Moore is referred to as "Moore" throughout, even when describing meeting here future first husband ("Moore met musician Freddy Moore at the Los Angeles nightclub The Troubadour.") Cat Stevens is referred to as "Georgiou" (his birth name) for his pre-recording life, but hockey player Mike Danton is "Dantin" throughout, even though his birth name is "Jeffereson" and he was drafted into the NHL as "Mike Jefferson" (which the 2000 NHL Entry Draft page correctly reports).
So my question is: Is there any general style policy about what name to use for people in biography articles about them if they have changed names at some point in their lives? Are some of these articles doing it wrong, or is there no general policy about which way to do it? 99.192.71.6 ( talk) 18:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
There is mention of possible change to WP:HONORIFIC at Talk:Louis Martin (blessed). In ictu oculi ( talk) 02:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi, I can't find a relevant policy or guideline about what we should include in descriptions of people in phrases in which they are characterised (such as "singer-songwriter Bob Dylan", "playwright Harold Pinter" etc). I am assuming that common sense would require that we only characterise people by what is notable about them. We would not say "singer-songwriter, novelist and painter Bob Dylan", even though Dylan has written a novel ( sort-of) and painted. Is there a guideline for Lede sections in biographies, in which a person is introduced ("Joe Shmoli was an Italian acrobat and linguist....")? I'm also interested in any guidelines regarding characterisations of persons in other articles in which they are mentioned. ("Gina Shmoli was the daughter of acrobat and linguist, Joe..."). If this has been formalised on a policy/guideline page somewhere, I can't find it. Paul B ( talk) 20:45, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
There is no advice on when to use religious titles - e.g. Rev., Rabbi, etc. Are these deemed to be "Professional titles", covered by
WP:CREDENTIAL, so should not be used?
If so, I think this needs to be made far more specific, as the current vague wording hardly supports the removal of such titles. If not then when should such titles be used?
Arjayay (
talk) 16:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The MOS makes clear that in the article about the subject (e.g. Elton John) the first use includes the honorific ("Sir Elton Hercules John CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947)..."). What is not clear is usage in other articles. While checking a few articles seems to confirm that we do not use the title in those articles (e.g. John's newest album The Union is "... a collaboration album by singer-songwriters Elton John and Leon Russell..."), is this the case? (This is being discussed at Talk:Little_Dorrit#Honorific_titles.) - SummerPhD ( talk) 15:36, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I have undone the close of this RfC andhave asked for an uninvolved admin to evaluate the consensus and close the RfC. See my comments near the bottom of the "Threaded discussion" section. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Previous result text was:
Should royal titles used by pretenders to the thrones of abolished monarchies and their families be clearly distinguished in all WP articles and templates from the titles of members of royal families of currently existing monarchies?
Smeat75 (
talk) 21:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
To clarify - when I say "royal titles" I mean what royalty specialists call "Styles and titles", I did not want to make the statement too long. There are thousands of WP articles and templates that do not make a clear, or any, distinction between royal titles held by current monarchs and their families and those of families whose titles were abolished by the governments of their countries, often many years ago. To use Germany as an example, although this applies to numerous other ex-monarchies also, in 1919 all German titles of royalty were abolished by law - "Encyclopedia of Politics, Volume 2 "In Germany, titles of royalty existed from early Medieval times until they were abolished when the region became a republic in 1918 ." Also see [6] [7] Note that these reliable sources do not say "the titles were abolished in a legal sense but they still exist because people still use them" or anything like that, no, they state that the government of Germany abolished them and that must be the starting point of this discussion, we do not argue with WP:RS on wikipedia. Now look,as an example of one of hundreds, possibly thousands, of articles about members of deposed royal families, at Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, who is the person who would be the Emperor of Germany today had the German monarchy not been abolished. You will see a section "Titles and styles" [8] which lists such things as his "title and style" from 1994-present has been "His Imperial and Royal Highness The Prince of Prussia". The infobox on this person says his predecessor was Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia and his heir apparent is Prince Carl Friedrich of Prussia. Underneath that infobox is a navbox titled "Prussian Royal Family" with a long list of persons who are given as, for instance, "HI&RH Prince Carl Friedrich". In my opinion, all of this could very easily confuse and mislead readers. All of these titles have been abolished for nearly a hundred years, they are sometimes used on ceremonial occasions or just to be "polite" , the neutral, technical word for these titles that the "monarchist's handbook" the Almanach de Gotha uses is "Titles of pretence", a very revealing and truthful term, the subject of this article is the Pretender to the throne of Germany and members of his family use "Titles of pretence", they are all pretending by the use of those honorifics "HRH" etc that they are the holders of titles that in reality were abolished many years ago.(And the Manual of Style says "In general, styles and honorifics should not be included in front of the name, but may be discussed in the article" [9])In my opinion every article and template where these abolished titles are listed or referred to should very clearly and unmistakably distinguish between these and titles held by members of currently reigning royal families, or we are misleading the readers. I have tried to amend the templates such as the one in this article, removing the honorific prefixes and changing the name from "Prussian royal family" to "House of Hohenzollern" but leaving the rest of it the same but I get reverted so would like comments from the wider community, I hope this discussion will be participated in by a wide section of WP editors and not only the royalty buffs who are undoubtedly going to turn up here, could I ask the latter please to try to limit use of jargon and historical precedent etc likely to be incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with these matters? Thank you Smeat75 ( talk) 15:51, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Here's another example of navboxes in these articles about families of deposed monarchs that give inaccurate or misleading information, this one directly contrary to guidelines in WP:NCROY "Former or deposed monarchs should be referred to by their previous monarchical title.... Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha not Simeon II of Bulgaria HM The Tsar"" and yet when you look at that very article, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, you see a navbox named "Bulgarian Royal Family" which says he is HM (that stands for "His Majesty") the Tsar" and he is married to Her Majesty the Tsaritsa. WP:NCROY is guidelines for article titles, not information in articles, but it still seems wrong to me to say he is HM the Tsar in that navbox, which is used in a number of articles, not just this one. Smeat75 ( talk) 01:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
There hasn't been a Hawaiian royal family since the overthrow in 1893. So, how is it that Quentin Kawānanakoa is supposedly referred to by "the Hawaiian people" as "prince". I don't even see an actual source for this claim. The navbox refers to him as "royalty" (as an occupation?) but the title of prince in Hawaii was a designation that was granted and not passed on to a child. Even his mother was born after the overthrow, Abigail Kapiolani Kawānanakoa is being referred to as Princess directly as a title to her name and she was born twenty years after the overthrow. Not to mention that her father was only an heir to the lapsed throne and that "Queen" Liliuokalani was the last such monarch before the monarchy was abolished and lived until 1917. As far as I know only David Kawānanakoa was ever granted the title of Prince (of this particular line and the article states it clearly) and style of His Royal Highness in 1883 by King Kalākaua. I do believe it is time the MOS here made some clarification as our current guidelines allowed this for far too long.-- Mark Miller ( talk) 06:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Some further comments on my part in response to replies above:
Can Smeat75 just close this RfC willy-nilly? It seems a third party should do that. Also, I am trying to find where this supposed "compromise" was agreed to to add text to every single article about a member of a former royal family regarding their titles being non-legal. I thought we qualified those as "by pretense" and indicated also where they are official. I think this should be re-opened.
Seven Letters 00:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Improper Close? I have a problem with this closing. While it is true that Smeat75 can close his own RfC, usually this is done with a neutral comment such as "withdrawn".
In this case Smeat75 wrote the following summary:
Besides the obvious problem of not having an unbiased outside closer determines consensus despite this being exactly the sort of RfC (with canvassing) where the unbiased outside closer is supposed to determine whether the canvassing changed the result, it couldn't help noticing that exactly one other person agreed to this alleged compromise.
Now I see that Smeat75 has posted "Are you refusing to accept the compromise reached at MOS talk?" [18] [19] to the talk page of an editor who disagrees with him.
Because of these issues, I am undoing the close and asking for an uninvolved admin to evaluate the consensus and close the RfC. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 15:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
German royal and noble titles were all abolished in 1919."In 1919 royalty and nobility were mandated to lose their privileges in Germany, hereditary titles were to be legally borne thereafter only as part of the surname, according to Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution." Nevertheless there are thousands of articles and templates here on English WP that assign the living members of these families "styles and titles" that have not existed since then and lots of templates for ex-royal families that prefix their names with "HRH" or "HSH" and so on, this is simply false information. I have started trying to remove these false use of abolished titles and honorifics, but would welcome clarification here that individuals who do not possess legal titles should not be referred to as such. Thanks Smeat75 ( talk) 19:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In my view this is a WP:NPOV and WP:IRS issue first and WP:HONORIFIC second, but anyway, please see comment on opposition to MOS:SAINTS and Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (clergy). Cheers. In ictu oculi ( talk) 03:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
OK, I started off by making a silly title but this is serious. Tons of RfC's and angry commentary can testify to that. In the discussion, I summed up the problem as follows: