Talk:Johnathan Taylor

message: === Dubious as to given name ===
   My search for sources reflects my familiarity with the name "Jonathon" and my surprise at "Johnathon", plus my awareness that idiosyncratic spellings of highly standardized names are not rare: the question is not whether he spells his given name wrong (hardly likely) but whether our colleague, in having an H in the first syllable, was mistaken about what spelling reflects his primary usage. My G-test prefers only the second H, 2:1, vs. Hs in both the first and final syllables. That doesn't prove he uses only the second (let alone that he always spells it the same way!), but we surely need a reliable source. The existing source could be right about everything else, and err due to faith-based proof-editing. (I mean the "i do know how to spell" kind, not the "it has only one H in my bible" kind. Funny story ... i just did an edit, in another article, removing an H in the middle syllable: "Jonhathon"!)--Jerzy•t 02:47, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, using Google to search within WP, the ratio independent of surname is apparently close to 1000 to 1, instead of 2:1 for his surname. Does that mean we're more careful at correcting sloppy misspellings than many transcribers of names, or that we need to be more careful than we are about respecting error-free (tho non-standard) spellings of personal names? E.g., JT's G-ratio may reflect his or his parents' personal choice. One important question is whether the "...ohn..." given-name spelling correlates, at least on the Web, with surnames of the Johnathons: if 1000:1 reflects greater accuracy on our part, then that vast difference should be insensitive to surname; if we "correct" most occurrences of "Johnathon" because we misattribute many intentionally variant (or traditionally) variant spellings (which both should be followed by us) to  transcribers' typos and guesswork, we surely homogenize away some family-traditional spelling correlations, and maybe even some rarer correlations that reflect individual's intentional (or accidental but consistent) variant spellings, which our articles should strive to accurately reflect. --Jerzy•t 20:23, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: My search for sources reflects my familiarity with the name "Jonathon" and my surprise at "Johnathon", plus my awareness that idiosyncratic spellings of highly standardized names are not rare: the question is not whether he spells his given name wrong (hardly likely) but whether our colleague, in having an H in the first syllable, was mistaken about what spelling reflects his primary usage. My G-test prefers only the second H, 2:1, vs. Hs in both the first and final syllables. That doesn't prove he uses only the second (let alone that he always spells it the same way!), but we surely need a reliable source. The existing source could be right about everything else, and err due to faith-based proof-editing. (I mean the "i do know how to spell" kind, not the "it has only one H in my bible" kind. Funny story ... i just did an edit, in another article, removing an H in the middle syllable: "Jonhathon"!)--Jerzy•t 02:47, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, using Google to search within WP, the ratio independent of surname is apparently close to 1000 to 1, instead of 2:1 for his surname. Does that mean we're more careful at correcting sloppy misspellings than many transcribers of names, or that we need to be more careful than we are about respecting error-free (tho non-standard) spellings of personal names? E.g., JT's G-ratio may reflect his or his parents' personal choice. One important question is whether the "...ohn..." given-name spelling correlates, at least on the Web, with surnames of the Johnathons: if 1000:1 reflects greater accuracy on our part, then that vast difference should be insensitive to surname; if we "correct" most occurrences of "Johnathon" because we misattribute many intentionally variant (or traditionally) variant spellings (which both should be followed by us) to  transcribers' typos and guesswork, we surely homogenize away some family-traditional spelling correlations, and maybe even some rarer correlations that reflect individual's intentional (or accidental but consistent) variant spellings, which our articles should strive to accurately reflect. --Jerzy•t 20:23, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious as to given name