CZ:Proposals/Naming Conventions for Biographies

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This proposal has been assigned on an ad hoc basis to the person or persons named just below, and is now in the Ad hoc proposals queue

This proposal will be approvable, with one caveat, by the contributors to this page, when the driver deems it ready to call for approval. If there is a controversy, and you contribute to this page, then you have a "vote." The caveat is that the final proposal must be posted to cz-editcouncil by an editor (feel free to send it to me when you're ready --LMS), so that the Council has a chance to review it and opt to vote on it (not likely). --Larry Sanger (Proposals Manager pro tempore)

Complete explanation

The text below is intended to stand as a guideline for naming articles about people. The general rule I propose is that an article about a person ought to live at the name at which the person is best-known to educated English-speaking people, with redirects from all common alternates. This will mean some inconsistency measured against other possible rules, but I believe will create the most easy-to-use compendium of knowledge.

How to name articles about people

In general, an article about a person ought to live at the name at which the person is best-known to educated English-speaking people, with redirects from all common alternates. (added)The first sentence of the article should contain both the name used in the article title, and the full legal name (or other formal equivalent), along with other basic biographical information. For example, the article on Jimmy Carter begins

“ Jimmy Carter (formally James Earl Carter, Jr.) was president of the United States, 1977-1981. ”

People from English-speaking countries

Use the full first name and last name, unless the person is well-known by some other form. If a person commonly is given a middle initial to distinguish them from another person with the same first and last name, use the middle initial. If the person commonly is addressed by or discussed by a nickname, use that. Where more than one form is common, there should be redirects from the others. Thus, some U.S. presidents:

However, some people "part their name on the left", or are known by a stage name, or a single name. In general, the form the person uses in writing is the form which should be used for the article title, with some redirects. For example:

People from other Latin-alphabet-using countries

In general, the same rules apply, though care should be taken to get the correct surname when doing default sorts and choosing disambiguation. For example, a former president of Colombia is Julio César Turbay Ayala. His last name is Turbay Ayala, and should be alphabetised under "T", not "A". It may be useful, in such cases, to create a redirect from Julio César Turbay

Note: This is likely more controversial than most of what else I'm proposing
Names of people who have diacritical marks in their name should be listed using the diacritical marks, with a redirect from the unaccented version, plus any other redirects which would be appropriate. So, to use a more famous Colombian example, Gabriel García Márquez, with a redirect from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and remember to list him as Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, not Marquez, Gabriel Garcia). The exception to this is for people who have been much discussed in the English-language press using a spelling without diacritics, thus Hermann Goering rather than Hermann Göring, but Kurt Gödel not Kurt Goedel, because the best-known work about the mathematician spells his name with the umlaut. (Of course, the other choice ought to exist as a redirect.)

People from countries which do not use the Latin alphabet

In general, the rules for English-speaking countries still apply, except for the issue of transliteration. For languages with fairly standard transliteration, such as most of those using the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, this shouldn't be problematic; except to point out that transliterations should be into English, not German or French: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, not Tschaikowski or Tchaïkovski. Particular care should be taken with transliterations from Greek, as Ancient Greek was not, according to the scholars, pronounced as Modern Greek is. Thus Eleftherios Venizelos, not Eleutherios Venizelos (nor Benizelos), but Euripides, not Evripidis.

Chinese names should be transliterated in the way most familiar to literate people in the English-speaking world. For people from the Republic of China, or major figures of Nationalist China or the Chinese Empire, that is likely to be the Wade-Giles method. For people from the People's Republic, that is likely to be the Pinyin method. For both, the family name should stay in front. So Mao Zedong (with redirect from Mao Tse-Tung), but Sun Yat-Sen. However, Confucius, not Kǒng Fūzǐ or K'ung-fu-tzu. (As always, redirects should exist from both of those, and from Kong Fuzi and Kung Fu Tzu.)

People whose culture has family name first

Except where such people have come to be known in the English-speaking world with their names re-ordered to the English standard, the name should be written out in the way which it appears in their culture. Thus Mao Zedong, not Zedong Mao. Redirects need not exist unless there is some substantial literature which has the names in English order.

People with titles of nobility or royalty

Here, I propose to follow the system for names and titles that the Royalty and Nobility Work Group at Wikipedia have developed.

In general:

  • Monarchs of nations: "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". {title} should be omitted where it is "King" or "Queen".
  • Patriarchs and Popes: "Patriarch/Pope {papal name} {ordinal if more than one} of {episcopal see}". When the episcopal see is Rome, it should be omitted.
  • Hereditary nobility: "{Commonly used name}, {ordinal (if appropriate)} {title} (of) {place}".

A couple of possible exceptions:

Reasoning

This proposal is offered because some standard is necessary. The most important part of the proposal is that whatever the actual article title, there should be redirects from the common alternatives which people might use.

The basic idea is that, as stated in the introduction, an article about a person ought to live at the name at which the person is best-known to educated English-speaking people. People consult an encyclopedia to find out information like Madonna's full name, or that Sun Yat-sen is known as Sūn Zhōngshān in Pinyin transliterations; they shouldn't need to remember that Madonna's family name is Ciccone, or the current transliteration of the name of the father of modern China to read his biography.

That said, there are some standard conventions in English, and in other languages, and those should largely be respected.

Implementation

The proposed conventions, as modified through discussion, will be placed onto CZ:Naming Conventions/People, with a link and brief summary on CZ:Naming Conventions.

Discussion

A discussion section, to which anyone may contribute.

Stage names that are no longer desired

A recondite point: We all know that Roy Rogers was Leonard Sly (redirect needed) and that Cary Grant was Archibald Leach or some such (redirect needed); they will, of course, be listed as Rogers and Grant as the names of the articles. What, however, about those such as Linda Lovelace? There was a bitter, on-going argument about this for *years* at WP. Common-sense people such as myself argued that since this was the name she was known by, this should be the name of the article. A very vocal (and tireless) minority, however, insisted that since, years after her brief notoriety, she repudiated her past career, as well as her nom de theatre, and insisted that she be called Lucie Whatever Her Real Name Was. It was eventually settled that the article be called Linda Loveland, but only after an enormous amount of emotion had been spent on the subject. There are, I suppose, *other* instances like this that will crop up; the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the fine old AFL-NFL quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs (he played in the second Stoopid Bowl) Len or Lenny Dawson. He tried to insist that his name was Leonard, but I doubt if anyone except his wife ever called him that.... As I said, a minor point, but eventually, I imagine, it will crop up. Hayford Peirce 17:15, 14 February 2008 (CST)

In a case like Linda Lovelace, I'd say that unless the article spends more space discussing her life outside the career in which she used the stage name, that the article should be titled after the stage name. If she'd gone on to do something significant in a later career, then it might be worth using her real (or newly-assumed) name for the article. If, for example, Shirley Temple had been a stage name, then it would be arguable over whether her article should be under the stage name, or the name used in her political career. As for nicknames and diminuitives, like Len Dawson, or Jimmy Carter, that's harder. I do remember that in 1976, he was Jimmy Carter on the ballot, but in 2000 he was James Earl Carter, Jr. I'm not sure how I'd choose to name those articles. Anthony Argyriou 18:31, 14 February 2008 (CST)
The English DJ Pete Murray changed his name to Peter towards the end of his career, insisted on it, but WP has him at 'Pete', rightly, I think, though it has 'Peter' to begin the article. And it must be Jimmy Carter, surely? Ro Thorpe 18:52, 14 February 2008 (CST)
Ooh, good one! I find Linda Lovelace an interesting case, as the issue seems to be, really, whether or not the poor woman deserved a chance at living as a non-harlot. Or at self-empowerment, depending on whether you bought her story or not.
She was actually pretty hypocritical about it. She argued bitterly for many years that she should be called Lucie Whatever. But whenever an opportunity came along for a new autobiography or bit role or personal appearance or whatever that would bring in a little cash, guess what? she suddenly rebecame Linda Lovelace....Hayford Peirce 19:47, 14 February 2008 (CST)
In Wikipedia terms, Linda Boreman whatever wasn't very notable, while Linda Lovelace was. I suspect an article about Linda Boreman which didn't include her career as Linda Lovelace may be maintainable (which is our standard), but there won't be much there.
Shirley Temple is, in fact, arguable, Anthony. When I was little I thought Shirley Temple and Shirley Temple Black were two different persons. Shirley Temple was the little kid in the movies, and Shirley Temple Black was some other person in my child's mind. (I also wondered if she were, indeed black and that was a well, what would you call it--political irony or something?) The ambassador, as I later realised she was, was never referred to as just Shirley Temple in the professional/diplomatic circles my parents frequented, nor in the papers.
And, if you really want an argument, you can always deal with Cat Stevens.
Aleta Curry 18:56, 14 February 2008 (CST)
Better examples, now that I think of them, are Pancho Gonzales and Pancho Segura, the great old tennis players, both of whom already have articles here. In these P.C. days, no one in the world would *dream* of calling anyone Pancho, particularly a big, dark, mean, dangerous guy like Gonzales, hehe. I believe that when I did the original articles on both these guys at WP someone briefly tried to change the Pancho Gonzales article's name to Ricardo Gonzalez or Richard Gonzales, or whatever the hell he was actually named. He himself didn't know if he was Gonzales or Gonzalez. Anyway, I doubt if we'll ever have to worry about an article these days about, say, a great young Mexican golfer named (called) Pedro Lopez or some such.... Hayford Peirce 19:44, 14 February 2008 (CST)
Ha! Well, I thought it was silly at the time, but I guess Tiger Woods did us a favour when he changed his name legally.
Women are of course always going to pose problems (don't even start with the wise cracks). Miss Helen Brown later Mrs Charles MacArthur was only known to her husband, to her good friends her children and I daresay their teachers, everyone else knew her as Helen Hayes.

Looking at all this commentary, it's clear that my proposal won't end all disputes about how to name biographical articles, but it should limit them to the more difficult cases.One option this proposal will not allow, however, is Sanger, Larry as a title. Anthony Argyriou 12:58, 15 February 2008 (CST)

Hi Anthony, looks interesting, but the summary on CZ:Proposals/New needs to be more detailed. It doesn't make any definite proposal at all, at present. Could you add one, please? --Larry Sanger 19:11, 14 February 2008 (CST)

Hopefully I've taken care of that. It's rather hard to summarize this detailed a proposal. Anthony Argyriou 12:58, 15 February 2008 (CST)

An addition

I've added the sentence "The first sentence of the article should contain both the name used in the article title, and the full legal name (or other formal equivalent), along with other basic biographical information." to the beginning of the proposal. It's not, strictly speaking, policy regaring the article title, but it is important to either accept or explicitly reject. Anthony Argyriou 13:09, 15 February 2008 (CST)

Final review?

The discussion above seems to show a general consensus supporting this proposal. There are a few specific points I want to make sure people are aware of and in agreement with. (If there is significant disagreement, the proposal can be changed to match the consensus.) These are:

  1. Use the name which the person is best-known to educated English-speaking people, not necessarily their formal name.
  2. There should be redirects from all common alternative names, including formal/legal name when that is not the article title.
  3. Names of people who have diacritical marks in their name should be listed using the diacritical marks, with a redirect from the unaccented version.
  4. Ancient Greek and modern Greek are transliterated differently.
  5. Wade-Giles and Pinyin transliterations are appropriate in their particular spheres.
  6. For titles of nobility and royalty, we essentially use the Wikipedia system.
  7. For other titled individuals, we do not use their title in the article title.

If anyone has objections to any of these, please speak up now; I'll be trying to move this along soon. Anthony Argyriou 12:09, 3 March 2008 (CST)

It looks fine to me. As I think a number of us have noted in the above discussions, there are *always* going to be exceptions to various rules -- in those cases there is generally a commonsensical solution; if not, editors and authors will just have to discuss the different proposals and come to an ad hoc decision. Hayford Peirce 13:59, 3 March 2008 (CST)
So Shirley Temple & Cat Stevens are the names of those articles, with redirects from Ms Black & Mr Islam? Fine. Ro Thorpe 16:02, 3 March 2008 (CST)
Oh, and Jimmy Carter has 'formally James Earl..' which strikes me as verbose: better to begin the article with the formal name, as an interesting contrast, in such cases, no? Ro Thorpe 16:11, 3 March 2008 (CST)

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