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. The first sentence of the article should contain the full legal name (or other formal equivalent), along with other basic biographical information. For example, the article on Jimmy Carter begins

“ James Earl Carter, Jr. was President of the United States from 1977 to 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, in both cases, 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. Transliteration should be performed first in accordance with the expressed desire of the subject of the article, and secondly following the guidelines at CZ:Romanization where a guideline for the appropriate language exists.

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.

Until a guideline for Chinese is developed at CZ:Romanization/Chinese, 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 generally follow the system for names and titles that the Royalty and Nobility Work Group at Wikipedia have developed, except to expand its use beyond western Europe. This guideline applies to people who have held offices which are normally hereditary, even if their specific tenure was not the result of hereditary succession.

In general:

  • Monarchs of nations: "{Monarch's first name and ordinal}, {Title} of {Country}". {title} should be omitted where it is "King" or "Queen". Family names should only be used where necessary to distinguish between two monarchs with the same name, ordinal and country.
  • 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:

However, where a person is much better known by some other usage, the article should live at that name; thus Charlemagne and Cardinal Richelieu.

People who have held elected or appointed offices, even life-term offices, should not have their title in their article name, nor should bishops or archbishops of the various Christian churches which have that office. Thus Ronald Reagan, not President Ronald Reagan.

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)
"Jimmy Carter" makes sense and is indeed used formally see his Library , so the article mentions his formal name only in passing. Richard Jensen 10:40, 11 March 2008 (CDT)
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. ...said Aleta Curry on 15 Feb 2008 (talk) (Please sign your talk page posts by simply adding four tildes, ~~~~.)
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. ...said Aleta Curry on 15 Feb 2008 (talk) (Please sign your talk page posts by simply adding four tildes, ~~~~.)

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)
Yes, Ro, I agree that looks good. Jimmy Carter begins James Earl Carter &c.
Anthony, re bullet no. 6 above, 'royalty', is this spelt out somewhere? I didn't understand, for example, about Emperors of Japan.
Aleta Curry 18:19, 3 March 2008 (CST)
Ah - that's a very good question. I don't have a strong preference either way; I'm willing to rewrite the proposal either to clarify or remove the Emperors of Japan and Cardinals issue. There's also the possibility coming up that Wikipedia will change King/Queen to require including that title; I'm indifferent there, too, but if we adopt the older practice, we should link to a specific version of the WP policy, rather than the current, or copy it over here. I'll think about wording; please let me know (you and other interested parties) if you have opinions regarding those specific issues. Anthony Argyriou 19:02, 3 March 2008 (CST)
Possibly to answer a different question regarding the Emperors of Japan, see [1]. Anthony Argyriou 16:28, 4 March 2008 (CST)
Hirohito is a really bad example to use for the Japanese Emperor rule, as can be seen by the constant battles over the 'correct' name for his article on Wikipedia. The problem is that the rule proposed here directly contradicts the 'name they are best known by' opening principle. Almost nobody outside Japanese specialists knows him as the Showa Emperor (or Emperor Showa - another source of argument). So let's pick someone non-controversial, like Meiji, OK? J. Noel Chiappa 19:51, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

There is now a proposal regarding Romanization of names from non-latin-alphabet languages; if that proposal is adopted, I will change some of the above to mention the guideline/policy, and possibly cut some of the discussion regarding those issues in this proposal. Anthony Argyriou 16:28, 4 March 2008 (CST)

name sorting

Should I include instructions on using the abc= section of the metadata to properly alphabetize by family name? Something like this:

In the metadata template of every article created with subpages is an entry for alphabetization, abc =. This item should be filled with the family name of the article subject first, thus abc = Sanger, Larry or abc = Garcia Marquez, Gabriel (note that Spanish family names usually include two names). In languages where the family name is traditionally first, such as Chinese, the same order should be used, thus abc = Mao Zedong to ensure that Mao is alphabetized near Karl Marx, not near Grigory Zinoviev. Diacritics should not be used in the abc = entry.

Anthony Argyriou 16:39, 4 March 2008 (CST)

A plaintive note

This is probably too late to have much influence, but... I've always been unhappy with Wikipedia's 'best known by' rule, and had hoped we could avoid the same mistake here. It just seems to be nothing but a source of never-ending disputes (see, for example, Hirohito, which goes on to this day, with an annual, or semi-annual, flare-up), as to what the 'best known' and/or most proper name is.

Given that a redirect from X, with the article at Y, works just as well as the other way round (and if you need proof of that, look at the rule on diacritical marks - what vanishingly small percentage of people do you think will actually type the name with those diacriticals - so clearly having articles at the 'less commonly looked up name' is perfectly fine, at least in those cases), it seems to me it makes no sense at all to do anything other than 'article at full, formal name', with redirects from more informal variants.

I mean, there is absolutely no upside (as shown by the rule on diacriticals), and a huge downside (constant arguments). What, precisely, are the advantages we gain that are worth the waste of time and energy in those disputes? J. Noel Chiappa 19:51, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I hope to hear more discussion regarding your suggestion. I'm much more interested in there being a standard than I am in the particulars of the standard I've offered. There are some ideas I don't want to become the standard, but using full formal name is not one of those.
However, I do have a question for you: what do we do where the "full formal name" is not known or difficult to ascertain? What, for example, was Queen Victoria's full name? Alexandrina Victoria Hanover, or just Alexandrina Victoria? Should we really list Juan Carlos I as Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias? Do Sukarno and Suharto really only have one name? Is it Pope Benedict XVI, Benedictus, or Joseph Alois Ratzinger? For that matter, Hirohito is an interesting case - it cuold be argued that his formal name became Emperor Shōwa upon his death.
So - I'm not opposed to your idea, but there are some details which should be worked out if we are to adopt it; I also think there should be some consensus among those participating in this discussion if we are to make that change. Anthony Argyriou 22:05, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

You make a number of good points. First, I completely agree with you that the most important thing is to have a system which we all follow.

I also cheerfully concede that I may just be having 'grass is greener' thing going, seeing very clearly (through painful experience) the problems with the WP policy (which the current proposal basically emulates), and not seeing as clearly any problems with the suggested replacement. Indeed, there may always be some problems, no matter what system is in use. My idea is just to try and have a system which is less based on judgement (which 'best known as' will always inevitably have), and hopefully therefore produces a lot fewer long debates - which do nothing except waste time and energy, and upset people.

The specific cases you mention don't really bother me too much; Queen Victoria and King Juan Carlos I are not an issue for me because I'm fine with the system for royalty; for Popes, I can go with either birth names or accession names, whichever people prefer. And it would definitely kill the Hirohito problem; he'd be at Emperor Showa, just like all the other dead Japanese emperors.

It's certainly true that even in the West, a person's 'full formal name' can be variable, e.g. for people who legally change their name, etc. But we can have fairly simple policy solutions for many of these; e.g. for the "legally change their name" case, we always use their name at death, or the current name (for people who are still alive).

However, your examples do point out that I didn't phrase my concept well - I guess what I'm saying is not so much 'use their full formal name' (which can, as you point out, be problematic) as much as I'm saying that I don't like the 'best known as' standard because it is somewhat less mechanical - and therefore open to debate. So I'm fine with the royalty/pope naming systems precisely because they are deterministic (that's the jargon word I was looking for). So maybe a better name for my preference is 'formal' rather than 'full'.

Finally, some sort of formal names are more serious, and given that CZ wants to be (and be seen as) serious and professional, I think William Jefferson Clinton is more serious and professional than Bill Clinton.

So maybe my proposal is best described concisely as 'deterministic and formal'. And yes, of course, we need to get everyone to consider this and let us know what they think before proposing such a change. (I'll post something on the forum, to highlight it.) J. Noel Chiappa 08:44, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Noel makes some good points. CZ's goal is accuracy not formality. CZ did not name him "Bill Clinton" -- that is HIS choice and we reflect that. Richard Jensen 10:32, 11 March 2008 (CDT)
I agree with Richard that Noel makes some good points. I would definitely argue for the use of regnal names for the popes, considering that information about their baptismal names is spotty until around the turn of the first millennium, but beyond that, using deterministic, formal names seems like a good idea.
But beyond royalty and the popes, I don't know what to do about Suharto or Hirohito either, although this may be a puzzle to me mainly because of my ignorance of Indonesian and Japanese politics. Another argument would be that the "best known as" name frequently has a political subtext, and using the formal version of someone's name would be more neutral and better here, too. Brian P. Long 11:19, 11 March 2008 (CDT)
I don't object to very prominent mention of Bill Clinton's usual 'handle' being "Bill Clinton" (e.g. "William Jefferson Clinton (born xxx), usually known as Bill Clinton"), nor do I object to having a redirect from that. I'm merely concerned with a simple, deterministic system for the naming of articles.
Hirohito's not a problem under my scheme (see above). As to Suharto, I know there are cultures where people have only one name, and I think he's from one, so as long as that's his real name, that's where we'd have him. J. Noel Chiappa 11:15, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Stop the presses

I just wrote an article called Kingston Trio for today's write-a-thon, about the v. famous folk group of the late 50s and early 60s. (Hey, they had *4* albums in the Top 10 at one point, something that Garth Brook finally matched 40 years later!) Anyway, in the old days, except for when their name led off the sentence, they were called "the Kingston Trio". When one of them, John Stewart, died a few weeks ago, the New York Times called them that. *However*, at some point, the Trio evidently trademarked their name, or whatever you call it, and it was done as "The Kingston Trio", with a capital T on "the" at all times. I had a *bitter* fight at WP for a couple of weeks about this. I dug out all of my old albums, some of them nearly 50 years old, and found liner note after liner note that said stuff like, "When the Kingston Trio are on the road, they etc. etc." Now, however, except mebbe for me and the NYT, they seem to be The Kingston Trio. What are they going to be for CZ? It seems to me the height of foolishness for me to write a sentence (and I very nearly did) like, "At the height of their success, The Kington Trio were more popular than the Weavers, who had preceded them, or the New Christy Minstrals, who followed them." What say, gang? Hayford Peirce 15:46, 5 March 2008 (CST)

So that's why it wasn't there when I looked. All the pages, without any content, have been made by me, under Kingston Trio, as you had them. But you're talking about the text. I had the same problem at WP, with the same unsatisfactory solution. As we need to be able to link articles like this: the Kingston Trio, I think posterity will ignore anyone's insistence on a capital The. There was once a pop group called The The - but we can leave that to the still unborn... Ro Thorpe 16:05, 5 March 2008 (CST)
I've just made redirects for The Kingston Trio, The K-Trio, and K-Trio. Okie, so you're saying: Ignore what The Kingston Trio Institute and Official Home Page or Whatever call themselves, and just call them the Kingston Trio, the way the New York Times does? That's the way *I* want to do it, but I wanted to make sure that it fell within CZ policy. As this question come up concerning the Beetles or the Beach Boys or whoever? ...said Hayford Peirce (talk) (Please sign your talk page posts by simply adding four tildes, ~~~~.)
I agree--The The and e. e. cummings aside perhaps, names of people and groups should follow similar capitalization guidelines. --Larry Sanger 16:27, 5 March 2008 (CST)
I've checked the Beatles & they are thus. And, although my Penguin copy of his poems has 'e. e. cummings' on the spine, it seems he preferred plain ole 'E.E.' Ro Thorpe 16:31, 5 March 2008 (CST)
I've got a similar problem with the Kennel Club. So are they Kennel Club, the Kennel Club, or The Kennel Club? Would you believe, I've even written to the Kennel Club and not gotten a straight answer? Aleta Curry 19:35, 5 March 2008 (CST)
I've got a cousin named Michael Peirce who got so tired of people spelling his name Pierce that he simply gave up correcting them.... Hayford Peirce 20:36, 5 March 2008 (CST)

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