Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (manuscripts)

message: Copied from: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Middle_Ages/General/Jan_2005-April_2007#Proposal_for_convention_for_manuscript_names
The recent listing of British Library, Add. MS 5111.  7th century Gospel Book fragment on VfD has shown a need for a Wikipedia naming convention for manuscripts.  This would only be needed for manuscripts that do not have "common" names (e.g. Book of Kells).  My initial thought was that institutional shelf numbers often act as names for manuscripts, and so could be used in much the same way that a binomial name is used for organisms.  In the first article I created for a manuscript without a name (Durham Cathedral Library A. II. 10. Gospel Book Fragment) I added the descriptive phrase "Gospel Book Fragment" almost as an afterthought.  I have followed this convention ever since.  However, after the MS 5111 article was listed on VfD,  Warofdreams changed the name of the article to 7th century Gospel Book fragment (British Library, Add. MS 5111) saying the new name " is more user-friendly. It describes the object first, then gives the catalogue number to disambiguate it from other 7th century Gospel Book fragments." Interestingly, I received a copy today via Interlibrary Loan of Kurt Weitzmann's, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination which names this manuscript as "The London Canon Tables".  So I have changed the name of the article…again.  However the issue of naming unnamed manuscripts remains.  WarofDreams' system has the advantage of making the article title read much as it would in a textbook.  One possible drawback is that for some manuscripts the title could be misleading; for example an article entitled Simeon Metaphrastes' Lives of Saints. (British Library, Add. MS 11870 might cause a reader to conclude that the only copy of Simeon is MS 11870, which may or may not be true. I think, however, that that problem can be worked around. All of that said, I would like to propose the following:
*If a manuscript has an English name, the manuscript's article should be under that name. (See below for exception) 
*Manuscript names in other languages should be translated into English, unless the manuscript is widely known in English scholarship under a name in another language. (e.g. Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Vergilius Vaticanus)
*If a manuscript has multiple names, the most common should be used (e.g. Book of Kells).  If it cannot be determined which name is most common, the name used by the owner of the manuscript should be used. (e.g. Lichfield Gospels).
*If there is no English name and one can be constructed that will unambiguously refer to the manuscript, then that name may be used.  This is most useful for manuscripts that are the only one of its type within a particular collection. A name can be constructed by combining the name of the city or town, institution, or collection with the type of manuscript (e.g. Ranworth Antiphoner)
*If none of the above apply an article name should be constructed using the following formula:
**Manuscript Description (City, Institution,  Shelf Number)
*** Only the information that is necessary to identify the manuscript should be used within the parentheses.  In practice this would mean that the name of the city could often be left out. Dsmdgold 10:17, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
*This looks like an excellent convention.  I entirely agree that the last form should be used only if there is no accepted name and no unambiguously constructable name. Warofdreams 11:38, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal for convention for manuscript names 

message: Over the past several months there has been contentious debate over aspects of WP:Article Titles policy.  That contentiousness has led to efforts to improve the overall effectiveness of the policy and associated processes.  An RFC entitled: Wikipedia talk:Article titles/RFC-Article title decision practice has been initiated to assess the communities’ understanding of our title decision making policy.  As a project that has created or influenced subject specific naming conventions, participants in this project are encouraged to review and participate in the RFC.--Mike Cline (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC – WP title decision practice 

message: Moving here from NC page (recently added paragraph):
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*Italics This can be fiddly. The basic principles are that the names of creative works are italicised, those of objects are not.  Manuscripts are all objects; very often their contents are or include works.  From WP:VAMOS: "Objects such as excavated artifacts or illuminated manuscripts usually known by a name combining a previous or current owner, location, or place of discovery, followed by the type of object, should normally be treated as proper names for the object, and all words capitalized, but not italicised, as these are names not titles".  In some cases, especially where the work survives in a single MS copy, the MS name may need italicizing, but usually it does not.  In particular the whole names of illuminated manuscripts very rarely need italicizing, though where part of the title is the name of a work this is italicized.
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My thoughts:
#unhelpful: doesn't explain why the article title of Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry Orgelbüchlein is italicised.
#the explanations at WP:VAMOS may be a bit vague and somewhat confusing: the proposed rephrasing/expansion of that guidance for the manuscripts guideline adds more layers of vagueness and confusion.
--Francis Schonken (talk) 15:38, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Just seen this, after adding a short (freshly worded) point on this. The editor's apparent confusion re Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry Orgelbüchlein shows exactly why this is necessary. Johnbod (talk) 14:23, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italics