Talk:Dahomey Amazons

message: Hello, 
I believe that the following passage must be removed from the article since there is no substantial evidence suggesting that "Much of the conflict in that place and period was conducted for the purpose of obtaining slaves from other tribes in order to sell to American and European slave traders." On the contrary, it seems that it was mostly conducted to obtain captives who would be sacrificed at the Great Customs and Annual Customs and "to make Dahomey always larger" (Dahomey Kings devise) as pointed out by the author of the following francophone article: http://www.angelfire.com/az/univers/Dahomey.html
Sandro Capochichi
:I just reverted myself; I first reverted another instance of you removing this disputed passage, but then I thought I'd rather let it go and try discussing here. I think both versions have some truth to it. Of course the Europeans were not the only destabilizing factor in the region. Either way, whatever we are going to write about this, it will have to be sourced, and that is why I support leaving the statement out for now. — mark ✎ 08:46, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Disputed passage

message: I delisted this article from GA becuase it does not cite any of it's sources. If the further reading section is references, the article still needs to have some inline citations. Chuck(척뉴넘) 06:24, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: With the citations being added, does this article meet the criteria to become a GA again? --Andrea.Kinnel (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this article still needs some improvement (expansion, reorganization, double-checking citation accuracy, etc) before it meets the criteria. I'm hoping to work on it once I have some extra time. Would you be interested in collaborating on this, ? I don't know how much experience you have with GA projects, but I've brought a few articles up to GA status before, and I'd be happy to work with you. Alanna the Brave (talk) 23:02, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delisted from GA 

message: Toward the end of the article, under "customs," a sentence reads, "Captives were often decapitated."  Does this mean that the Amazons, when captured, were decapitated, or that the Amazons decapitated their prisoners?  More likely the latter, but clarification would be nice.
The victims the amazons captured were decapitated. Sometimes, instead of decapitation, the amazons removed the genitals of their victims. Both instances of mutilation were done as war trophies (the way ancient egyptians removed genitals of their enemies to keep count of inflicted casualties).Scott Free (talk) 14:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  clarification needed 

message: We know that they were called Amazons by Westerners, but what was the group's original name? --- Noclevername (talk) 14:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahosi ("our mothers")
Scott Free (talk) 18:26, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Correction...Ahosi is a generic term for queen among the Fon (the people of Dahomey).  The name of the actual warriors was Mino (which does mean "Our Mothers").  Sorry about that. So, Mino was the word for Amazons and Ahosi was the word for queens.  The term Gbeto was used for early amazon units, but they were used strictly to hunt elephants for the king.Scott Free (talk) 19:08, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Name

message: I moved this good faith edit from the article to the Talk page as I question whether it significantly contributes to the article, which is focused on the Dahomey Amazons, and not so much on King Gezo:
:"The April 20, 1859 edition of the Macon Messenger Marriages and Obituaries From the Macon Messenger; Willard R. Rocker 1988 carried a short obituary notice for King Gezo stating, " The Richmond Dispatch says: His majesty, the King of Dahomey, the great negro seller of Africa, has departed this life. He was in the habit of ransacking all the neighboring African kingdoms, for the purpose of making captives, whom he sold to the slavers. At his funeral obsequies, his loving subjects manifested their sorrow by sacrificing eight hundred negroes to his memory. He is succeeded by his son, King Gezo II."
Can we discuss whether this should be returned to the article? Geoff Who, me?  00:36, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obituary from 1859 regarding King Gezo - Moved from article here 

message: This is ridiculous. One cannot cite Alpern who specifically wrote Mino as the name for Amazons meaning 'our mothers' and write nonmiton instead while keeping the Alpern citation as a reference. Several other books also cite Mino as the name for amazons. The only source for Nonmiton is this anonymous contributor here on wikipedia. Unlike nonmiton, Mino may not be used in contemporary Fon to mean 'our mothers', but that is not the point. The word may have been Mino and could have been subject to folk etymology interpreting it as mi 'we' and no 'mother'. Alternatively, it could originally have meant 'our mothers', but this phrase would have been lost in contemporary Fon. In support of the former proposal, the construction mino with  mi = we and no = mother / owner is paralleled by the similar Fon construction mi 'we' + to 'father' = (male) community leader. The point is that the word recorded for Amazons was mino, not nonmiton. The contemporary Fon speaker who edits this article without sources has no knowledge of the historical Fon language. The worst part of this is that mainstream media are now using the word n’nonmiton to refer to the Amazons based on this baseless claim. Wikipedia at its worst, unfortunately. 
81.194.30.203 (talk) 12:36, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mino vs Nonmiton

message: I would like to add information about the different regiments in the women's army. 
The women's army consisted of a number of regiments: huntresses, riflewomen, reapers, archers, and gunners. https://en.unesco.org/womeninafrica/women-soldiers-dahomey/pedagogical-unit/4
Cindychristy1231 (talk) 20:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regiments 

message: See French Wikipedia which uses the form Minon
And also https://mobile.twitter.com/SenaseK/status/1236142252260569088
--AliceBzh (talk) 08:32, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nasalisation of on in the Fon language 

message: There is one particular passage that stood out to me because it was added in so recently.
"In 1864, Captain Sir Richard F. Burton documented over two thousand tribeswomen serving as warriors and reported how two-thirds of them were maidens with passions and love between each other. He also mentioned “a corps of prostitutes” kept for the Amazons’ use. Several years earlier, in 1850, English naval officer Frederick Forbes wrote down his own observations: “The Amazons are not supposed to marry, and, by their own statement, they have changed their sex. ‘We are men,’ they say, ‘not women.’ All dress alike, diet alike, and male and female emulate each other: what the males do, the Amazons will endeavour to surpass.” [8]"
The block of text has one source that points to one website whose sources only refer to itself and the author's/group's own publications instead of a wider range of sources, and appears to be applying one specific observation onto another specific observation in this case, and both the source and book referenced in the source are under a bit of scrutiny. The block of text itself almost just matches what is on the website word-for-word. Do we have some other sources to back this big block of text up? Actual links to professional papers, first-hand or second-hand sources for these observations and reports? Or perhaps this whole block should be sent for proper review? 2600:1700:C021:42E0:A510:9C2D:14BD:9809 (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed it primarily because it was plagiarism from the link. The link itself does not appear to be a reliable source, but it also looked like it may have been from a book. Google Books showed that book title but only had a brief mention of the topic on page 75. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 14:16, 13 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  additional support, or professional review? 

message: An IP address added this information which the author clearly states that the story for that information is "possibly apocryphal" as there is doubt about the authenticty of that source. (Kwesi Yema (talk) 22:27, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverted edits by IP address 

message: @Canuckft Leaving a comment on a two year old discussion does not mean that you automatically get consensus to move the page. First of all the term Dahomey Amazons should be retained since its more commonly used, see WP:COMMONNAME, aside from that Wikipedia is WP:NOTCENSORED.--~~~~ Catlemur (talk) 00:00, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I reverted the move and advised the editor to follow WP:RM. Others can do that too, if they think there will be a consensus for change. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 00:48, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Per WP:COMMONNAME it is Dahomey Amazons, and yes, WP:NOTCENSORED.XavierItzm (talk) 09:03, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Consensus for Move