Talk:Charlotte Montagu Douglas Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch

For wives of peers who are largely known as such,
can I suggest that we eschew surnames entirely, and only use the title? So, in this case Charlotte, Duchess of Buccleuch. Middle names used as necessary to disambiguate. These women were never known as "Firstname Husband'sunusedsurname", so there's no real added value in including that name. john k 06:28, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The same argument could be used about their husbands. This Duchess's husband, for instance, was the eldest son of the Earl of Dalkeith from birth and was known for his entire life by courtesy and substantive peerages. He was never known as "Walter Montagu-Douglas-Scott", and yet that would be the start of the title of any article we create about him. Thus I'm strongly inclined to use surnames in all cases for consistency's sake. Proteus (Talk) 18:49, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but peers in own right are different. In the main part, their surnames don't (generally) change over the course of their lives. Using the surname for a peer tells you what family he was in. Using the married surname for a peeress seems vaguely perverse - it doesn't tell you any information, and obscures her maiden name. However, I would say that we definitely need some clear standard on peeresses - many are located at articles under their maiden name, with no title, which is clearly wrong. We also have some titled as I suggest. So we thus have Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson-Gower (for the Duchess of Argyll), Charlotte Montagu-Douglas-Scott, Duchess of Buccleuch. I would imagine we probably have some at Firstname Maidenname, Peerage title, although I've not seen any. Perhaps we should move the discussion to the naming conventions page. john k 19:34, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)