Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)/Archive 2

message: 'Someone' has gone and used the wrongtitle tag on Abraham, Mao Zedong, and Al-Khwarizmi - apparently in the view that the proper titles should be used are in their native language. This person apparently hasnt heard of the WP:UE policy, and doesnt understand the true consistent use of wrongtitle to emphasize either a minor technical difficulty particular to the entire world wide web, or else the cultural dignity embodied the diacritic. -SV|t 22:31, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking at the histories of those pages, I see that this "someone" is you. If you haven't heard of the WP:UE policy, simply read that page. It clearly states "Only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form." So why exactly did you add those templates? If you think that the rules for titles should be changed, simply bring them up on this talk page rather than adding them to articles where they don't belong under the current guidelines. See WP:POINT. — Ливай | ☺ 23:10, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesnt work that way. One has to make a point in order for a point to be made. -SV|t 23:48, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Points can be made with words. There are plenty of places to do so here that you can use to draw attention to your point rather than putting out-of-place things on popular articles. If you feel particular articles are holding the template that should not, don't hesitate to bring it up on the articles' talk pages. If you feel that the template itself is flawed, say so on the template talk page. If you feel this is a larger consistency issue that affects the Wikipedia more broadly, there's always the Village Pump. If you don't state explicitly what you think the problem is, nobody is going to do anything about it. I asked you why you put the templates up and you did not tell me the point you are trying to make with them; I'm still not sure what exactly your point is, and I doubt I'm alone. On Wikipedia, actions don't always speak louder than words, especially when your actions are just going to be undone by the other editors anyways. — Ливай | ☺ 01:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrongtitle excess 

message: I am trying to follow this policy, but I don't really know if I am doing so correctly.  I work a lot with European works of music, and the titles are renamed and moved all the time.  Everyone is trying to help.  Consider Puccini's most famous opera.  According to Title your pages using the English name, if one exists, it should be called "The Bohemian Girl" -- this is the original title given by the composer for the first English edition. According to If you are talking about a person, country, town, movie or book, use the most commonly used English version of the name for the article (as you would find it in other encyclopedias), this would be "La bohème" (by the encyclopedia rule, (the Italian title)),  but "La Bohème" or "La Boheme" by the commonly used rule.  Opera is a rather specialized subject.  When titling pages, does commonly used refer to the general public or to people educated in the field? I don't want to move this page; it has been through enough (Regretably, some of it was my doing.) I just want a better understanding of how to follow this rule when titling new pages. --DrG 13:26, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)
:You raise some good points there. In my opinion we should lean towards the more academic usage where there is a choice. This is what we're currently proposing at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Old_Norse/Old_Icelandic/Old_English). To me academic usage has connotations of academic accuracy (which we probably want). In your Bohemian problem I would probably prefer "La bohème". - Haukurth 17:31, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Existence versus common.

message: Taken from Talk:Fucking Åmål Revision as of 19:55, 7 December 2001 . Here are some dated thoughts by Jimbo Wales:
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I would guess that the reason we don't write Pokemon in Katakana is that the vast majority of our readers wouldn't have any clue how to pronounce it. That's not the case with Å -- it's still an "A", after all.
I suppose it's worth mentioning that these letters do actually exist in English anyway, in a few cases where we've ripped a word steaming from the chest cavity of another European language. I grant you that they're rare -- Noël is the only common one I can think of -- but they do exist. -- Paul Drye
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I disagree very strongly.  We should not include Katakana in the text of any articles, except perhaps an article on Katakana.  Katakana is completely unreadable to people who have not studied Japanese.  Browsers don't consistently render any versions of it of which I'm aware, either.
In this particular case, the Amal "a with ring" was written in some way that actually broke the link (at least on this machine, my home pink iMac using Netscape 4.7 or something like that).
I suppose it could be a matter of some controversy as to whether Noel (see, I don't even know how to type 'e with two dots') exists in English.  English is a mongrel language, without even the pretense of central authority as found with, for example, French.  English is as English does.  My perspective is that if I don't see it on my keyboard, and if I didn't sing it in the alphabet song, it's 'fancy' and therefore should be avoided.
Try searching on the net for Gödel -- it's not a good thing.  Try either Godel or Goedel, both common Anglicizations, and you're good to go.
 --Jimbo Wales
:This loops back to another discussion I was in a few days ago. If one's concern is getting a hit from a search engine, don't avoid variant spellings. It's not a case of Godel or Gödel, it's a case of Godel and Gödel. Designate one as the name you're going to use in the article, but be liberal about listing useful variants. It helps both machine searches, and reassures the reader that he's on the right page even if he approached it with an unusual spelling in mind. Hence the title of this article being non-accented English, and the first sentence giving us rings and the "translated non-controversial" title. We've got all the bases covered. -- Paul Drye
::I find this argument completely and overwhelmingly compelling, and I withdraw all objections to placing as many variants as deemed necessary within articles, so long as they are renderable by most browsers. --Jimbo Wales
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Yes, titles must not use characters that are not legal in URLs, and that precludes any non-7bit-ASCII.  But we're talking about the body text of the article here.  Whether or not one chooses to use diacritical marks in standard English borrowings (in words like coördinate, naïve, résumé, etc.) is a separate issue.  I generally leave them out; CMS is non-committal.  But when the word in question is not a borrowed one, but actually a foreign one used as such, I think it's important to get it correct in the body of the article at least in the initial sentence.  If it requires non-ISO characters, then the Anglicization used for the title can also be used for the rest of the article.  This has been discussed in a lot of diverse places; we should probably have a policy article that consolidates them.  --LDC
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But Amal is not being used as a foreign word is it?  No more so than, for example, Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister of Japan.  Shall we write Osama Bin Laden in Arabic?  Amal is a name, like those.
Even foreign words used as foreign words need to be fully Anglicized, I think.  Perestroika.  Glasnost.  Writing those in Russian characters would render the article unusable to English speakers.
Obviously, my examples don't fully address the issue.  The important distinction between Japanese and Arabic names and Swedish names is that Swedish names are 'borrowable' in the sense that I can at least still read it.
Also, see above, where I agree completely with Paul Drye's reasoning, and so withdraw all these objections.
--Jimbo Wales
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Also, p.s., take a look at Junichiro Koizumi.  Someone has placed something fancy after his name, which I assume would render it in perfect Japanese.  Perhaps this will draw Japanese speakers to wikipedia, I don't know, but that would be a good thing.  But in my browser, all I see is some question marks.  :-(  That doesn't strike me as a good thing.
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Food for thought Philip Baird Shearer 18:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Even foreign words used as foreign words need to be fully Anglicized - Jimbo Wales 

message: Only use the native spelling as an article title if it is more commonly used in English than the anglicized form. and If there is no commonly used English name, use an accepted transliteration of the name in the original language. What exactly is "native spelling" or "original language". Which language is cosidered "native" in multilingual environments ? What about disputed (or occupied) territories, rivers that flow through multiple countries/language zones etc. ? --Lysy (talk) 13:50, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: River is a very good example! w:nl:Rijn , w:de:Rhein , w:fr:Rhin . In English we find a fourth spelling Rhine --Patio 10:49, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And, accordingly, Rhine is the name for the river in English, hence the correct name for the article.  Any territorial or riparian disputes belong in the body of the article, not the title.  Robert A West 19:27, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Native spelling