Talk:Confucius

Adding title "educator"
Confucius was not just a philosopher, but also an educator. Should the beginning sentence be rewritten as "Confucius ... was a Chinese philosopher and educator"? Windywendi (talk) 00:30, 7 September 2023 (UTC)


 * If you can demonstrate that a majority of secondary reliable sources describe him as an "educator", by all means add it. If not, then it is not appropriate addition –  Aza24  (talk)   04:40, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The section under Legacy/Disciples" specifically discusses Confucius' contribution as a teacher/educator. He is arguably the very first teacher to make education accessible for the commoners, which is previously a privilege of the nobles. I am going to pinpoint the sources supporting this statement and add it to the lead section as applicable.  TheIntrospectorsfacts (talk) 21:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think you are understanding what is needed here. Sources that merely describe his work in education are not sufficient for such a label. Plus, the article already says "paragon of Chinese sages"—a sage is someone who teaches, I don't see any need for further labels.
 * Either way, you will need to "demonstrate that a majority of secondary reliable sources describe him as an educator".  Aza24  (talk)   00:38, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I will continue to work on the sources. Meanwhile, I would like to add on that, unlike other sages such as Laozi or Zhuangzi, Confucius not only advocated private teaching for the commoners but also established a legacy of educational theories, methods, and principles through extensive teaching practice, which continue to exert far-reaching influence to this day. TheIntrospectorsfacts (talk) 17:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

First sentence
We have to stop the name garble quickly, before even more alternatives are added. Kong Qiu is terribly irrelevant and we have no reason to believe this was a real name anyways. We should just stick to Kongzi and Confucius—leave the other names for the article text.  Aza24  (talk)   02:46, 16 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Pinging, who added "Kong Qiu" in Special:Diff/1190114053. I just put 孔子 in front of 孔夫子.I agree that 孔丘 doesn't belong in the lead sentence (much less primary position) any more than 仲尼. Our early Chinese biographies have a super frustrating tendency to put people's attributed birth names as the introductory term, even if they were almost never called that. Honestly I don't even see 孔夫子 enough that I would put it in the lead. My preference would be just Kongzi and Confucius, and leave the rest for the infobox and body prose. Folly Mox (talk) 03:00, 16 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I added it per MOS:FULLNAME, the person's full legal name comes first, even if he's almost never called that (see Julius Caesar, whose first name was actually Gaius). If it wasn't actually his name, the article desperately needs to be fixed, it says it was.  As for additional names, I think we should actually relegate Kongzi and Kong Fuzi (which are rarely used in the west) to a footnote and add Zhongni.  I'm not familiar with early Chinese biographies on here, however, what do we usually do? Esszet (talk) 03:25, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * "Kongzi" is actually not that rare in English language subject matter literature anymore, largely due to the inherited conceptual burden "Confucius" packs. I'd be opposed to removing "Kongzi" from the lead, as it's been the common term in the vast majority of published sources for about 24 of the past 25 centuries (and if the article were ever unprotected, unregistered editors would place it in the lead within the first few days anyway).We did have a "names" footnote for part of this year (possibly longer), which I smooshed into the opening sentence in October.What early Chinese biographies typically do is add a subject's birth name which they're never called except in other biographies (which on its own is fair) and then go on to use the birth name throughout the article as if it was what the person was called. They also have a tendency to treat ancestral clan surnames (never used as part of a personal appellation) as a regular surname, which I'm pretty sure nobody except me is bothered by.As to Kong Qiu, I don't think I'm aware of which sources call it out as not a real name. It's certainly attested early. Maybe can speak to that? Folly Mox (talk) 03:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Hmm, then maybe we can keep Kongzi and put Kong Fuzi in a footnote? As for Zhongni, I defer to you guys, how were people referred to in early Chinese biographies? Esszet (talk) 15:30, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That was my idea, keep Kongzi, with Kong Fuzi in a footnote. To be honest, I've never heard Zhongni, and I think we should stick to how modern scholarship refers to him anyways.
 * To that point, the utter irrelevance of Kong Qiu makes me still think it should still be removed entirely. I don't think this is comparable to Caesar, since it is an entirely different name and the details of Confucius's life are so sketchy to begin with. I just assumed it was a posthumous name or something—having it in the first sentence is definitely overkill.  Aza24  (talk)   22:06, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a very fascinating if slightly multifocal article on Confucius's family background, which goes to some length exploring the subject and calls him Kong Qiu throughout without ever questioning that the personal name Qiu was genuine: I keep wanting to use this source for the article and failing to get around to it. At one point (in a not-strong, throwaway addendum to a footnote, p 12 n 35) the author even mentions the frequency of "mountain"-connoting names present in Confucius's ascribed lineage, including of course Qiu (which I realise immediately is not necessarily understandable as a matter of course). This source also contains one of my favourite passages in published academia, (p 36). TWL access yes, btw. Folly Mox (talk) 23:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Kong Qiu belongs in primary position because it was his real name, it was who he really was. Master Kong immediately raises the question of what his personal name was, and Kong Qiu is not completely different from Kongzi (or Fuzi), his family name is still there.  Even if the subject of the article is known by a completely different name, such as El Cid, his real name comes first because it was who he really was, the title of the article (as well as the vast majority of subsequent mentions) use the name he is generally known by. Esszet (talk) 05:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd also like to point out that Chinese Wikipedia uses Kong Qiu in primary position as well. Esszet (talk) 05:56, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * In fairness, the Chinese article begins "Kong Qiu (vital dates), ancestral clan surname Zi, lineage surname Kong, given name Qiu, courtesy name Zhongni, later called Kongzi or Kongfuzi..." I think that's precisely the kind of Aza24 mentions at the top of the thread, and it's a biographical style that en.wp has deliberately not adopted, so that most of the Chinese characters for people's various names and titles are shunted out of the lead sentence and into the infobox.If it's a question of, why not include his (rarely used, as is/was his given name) ancestral clan surname and courtesy name in the lead sentence? Both were real, legitimate names, inherited or given during his lifetime. They are both part of  in certain contexts.If it's a question of encyclopaedic understanding, I don't think any of the three ancestral clan surname, given name, or courtesy name have a real need to be present in the lead sentence (or Kongfuzi, as previously opined).I don't mean to harangue you for a minor detail in wording, but it's dangerous to assume that "who someone really is" can be equated to one particular name, especially across cultural contexts that differ to a great degree. Having said all this, I actually don't feel super strongly about "Kong Qiu". Folly Mox (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, we obviously should avoid that "name garble", which is completely alien from a western perspective. If I had to pick out the single most important aspect of who he was, however, it would obviously be his personal name; even emperors (see here, here, and here) always have it included.  It would be best to include it for the sake of consistency if nothing else.  Finally, and as I said before, it already has his family name, so we might as well include his given name anyway. Esszet (talk) 19:54, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Given the cultural norms of the late Springs and Autumns period, what makes it obvious that the personal name is more important than the other two names not included in the lead?Emperors are correctly introduced by their posthumous name, with their personal names or birth names mentioned second. Why should this article introduce the subject by their personal name instead of the name they were known by for the later part of their life and all subsequent generations ($n ≈ 80$)?I should come clean that one of the names I've stressed as being as important as the personal name (the ancestral clan surname) is not likely evidenced early enough to give credence to, and probably an interpolation coming from the later tradition of Kongzi's descent from a ministerial line of the state of Song (see Eno 2003, linked above). Folly Mox (talk) 13:05, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

According to Courtesy name, he would have called himself Qiu, so yes, it was the most important aspect of who he really was – and Chinese Wikipedia agrees (by the way, that aricle says courtesy names were only used in writing and on formal occasions – is that correct?). Besides, Master Kong is a strange way to start the article – it would be like starting Samuel Johnson with Doctor Johnson. The fact that he has been known as Kongzi for 2500 years is irrelevant – Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar has been known as El Cid, which is completely different from his real name, for almost a thousand years as well, but his real name still comes first – it's who he really was. This is a norm followed almost universally throughout English Wikipedia and beyond. Esszet (talk) 23:41, 20 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced, this all feels like a Westernification. The Chinese personal name of a sage from 2500 years ago is just historical trivia—not emphasized in anyway by secondary scholarship (which is what Wikipedia is chiefly based upon). At the moment it is literally the first two words of this article. I don't see why Master Kong is a strange way to start the article—its the only way he's ever referred to; Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi and Laozi have similar starting methods.
 * I hate to play this card, but the onus is Esszet to prove its inclusion against the long-term status quo. Otherwise, the page should be reverted to an older first sentence variation. At the very bare minimum, the personal name should come after the posthumous name, just like every Chinese Emperor article on WP.  Aza24  (talk)   08:51, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I said above I didn't want to harangue about a minor choice of wording, but being that it's now been used four times in support of an argument, I can't regard as a minor word choice. I do think it's reductive and unverifiable. If we're going to talk about, it wasn't Kong Qiu because the words weren't pronounced like that until centuries later, and it wasn't 孔丘 because the words weren't written like that until centuries later.Right now I'm leaning ^Confucius (孔子, Kongzi, 'Master Kong' [vital dates]) (but with proper formatting and tone mark). I'm ambivalent about appending personal name Kong Qiu (孔丘). I don't really like it, but wouldn't revert it. It implies to me that his courtesy name should come next, which is how we get back to the name garble nobody wants.The other Warring States "Masters Texts" figures reminds me of another point: that they (including Kongzi) were most commonly referred to by their personal names by political or philosophical opponents as a means of disrespect. (Laozi, who never existed, being the obvious exception). Folly Mox (talk) 13:37, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * "Westernification"? Seriously?  It's also the first two words in his Chinese Wikipedia article, so who are we to say it's a problem?  It is not our place to dewesternize Chinese society (if this is the result of western influence at all); it would be condescending and perversely Eurocentric ("This is OUR job").  If it's fine there, it's fine here. And if you are so concerned about westernization, why not include the whole "name garble"?  It would be the most culturally accurate thing to do, right?


 * As for the fact that the writing amd pronunciation of his name has changed over the years, do not get too concerned with adhering to the standards of earlier time periods. Alfred the Great is quite rightly not entitled "Ælfred Micela", nor is it written in the style of an early medieval biography; that would simply be living in the past.  I also looked at the Chinese articles for the other people Aza mentioned, and, leaving aside Laozi, I saw that their personal names all feature prominently in the article (at the top of the infobox and in the first sentence, if not in primary position) - a fact that should leave no doubt as to whether Confucius's personal name should be included in the first sentence here as well.  It may well be historical trivia to an extent, but this is exactly where it belongs: in the first sentence of a biographical article about him.  Courtesy names are not included in the first sentence of their English articles, so that isn't an issue at all; I would still support putting their personal names all in primary position because a) it was who they really were b) it's more consistent with our own practices.  Quite frankly, I don't think Chinese people would care. Esszet (talk) 04:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * , I'm still trying to figure out what you mean by . Do you mean like in legal registers? My brain keeps interpreting it as "how they self-identified", but that can't possibly be it, because it's unverifiable.Although MOS:FIRST doesn't address this specifically, I think in general we need a really good reason to make the introductory term of an article not match the article title. We'd have a significantly stronger case for this if things were reversed: if this article were titled Kong Qiu, we'd probably want to start out with the term Confucius / Kongzi, the common name of the subject in Western / Asian literature over the past few millennia.As it stands, the article is already at the title Confucius. Leading with one of his other names should have firm basis in sourcing or guidance. I'm not an MOS expert, but I'm not aware of guidance anywhere on the project that invokes who someone really was. Do you have a link to any?As to the "Westernification" bit, I would probably have framed this as unfamiliarity with the relative prominence and usage of different kinds of names across a sharp contextual boundary that divides us from a deeply separate culture so long gone even subject matter experts struggle to understand it. Stating that a personal name is so much more important than a courtesy name for an early Chinese figure that the personal name should introduce the article while the courtesy name is relegated to the infobox or a footnote, is flatly a misunderstanding. Folly Mox (talk) 07:53, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity, I checked the revision history of zh:孔子, and found that the introductory term had been changed from 孔子 to 孔丘 in 2014, by a globally locked LTA. Granted, I didn't find an instance of people changing it back in the 1% of edits I sampled from the intervening decade, and this doesn't really have much bearing on the discussion here, but thought I'd report what I found to be an interesting result. Folly Mox (talk) 08:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * As for the MOS, see MOS:FULLNAME. I posted a link to this previously, please read my comments more carefully.  Also keep in mind that Master isn't a name at all, it's a courtesy title, which is why it would be such a strange way to start the article.  When appropriate, he would have self-identified as Qiu – right?  I don't know why you're so hung up on his courtesy name, this is a western encyclopedia written in a western language by predominantly western authors, westernization is inevitable.  Courtesy names are completely alien to us, so we don't include them right away, we put them further down.  A link to Courtesy name is even included so people can understand it better.  It does not need to be at the very top of the article; including his personal name without his courtesy name in the lede would do nothing to hinder people's understanding of the Spring and Autumn period.  For our purposes and from our perspective, it's the best thing to do.  It is not an issue at Mencius, Mozi, or Xunzi, so why would it be an issue here? Finally, keep in mind that this is just a Wikipedia article, such an inane point does not need to be analyzed in so much detail. Esszet (talk) 16:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I did read MOS:FULLNAME when previously linked, which contains no mention of "who someone really was". I'm wondering if how you is a perfect reflection of how I'm feeling or Aza24 might be feeling about your attachment to the subject's personal name.Anyway, I agree with your last sentence above and am tired of this backy-forth and we probably all have more important stuff to work on.So how about this compromise: Confucius (c. 551), personal name Kong Qiu, was...?, , I presume you'll both have objections to this, in opposite directions, but could you both agree to hate it so we can move on? Folly Mox (talk) 17:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That solution seems fine by me. I agree with Esszet that its rather silly to discuss this so much—though immediately slightly fun, as I'm sure you would all secretly admit :)  Aza24  (talk)   06:49, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry,, I somehow missed your last reply, and really, ? Since MOS:FULLNAME says "the article should start with the complete version [of the subject's name] in most cases", I thought it would be abundantluy clear that I was trying to explain the underlying reasoning behind that policy, but if you really want to take it to the level of disingenuous Wikilawyering, see MOS:HON (for Kongzi) and MOS:PSEUDONYM (for Confucius).  No matter which way you slice it, the MOS is squarely on my side, I was trying to make a simple edit to bring the article more closely in line with our policies.  It would say "Kong Qiu, generally known as Confucius...", so there would be no doubt as to which name is generally preferred, and thus far, nobody has made a decent argument as to why a small group of Confucian philosophers should form an exception to a policy that is followed virtually everywhere else (including almost all of the unusual exceptions in the MOS).  I would have let this die, but I did not want to let Wikilawyering go unaddressed.  I have little interest in discussing this further (WP:LAME anyone?), but I did not want to let a clearly bad-faith argument stand. Esszet (talk) 01:50, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Wearily, I think this is the first time I've ever been accused of bad-faith wikilawyering, and the intent thought to be wasn't to me. I guess we really don't understand each other. I'll just state that the MOS guidelines do carve out space for exceptions in their wording, and even the brief bit of MOS:FULLNAME extracted just above says in most cases. Folly Mox (talk) 12:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Good article status revisit
Fellow editors, I'd love to call for some collective efforts to upgrade the article rating and hopefully eventually achieve the good article status, would you kindly provide insights and recommendations. I am currently filling in citation requests as a kick-start. Thanks! TheIntrospectorsfacts (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC)


 * A lot of the sources are just dumb websites instead of academically published sources, and for the books we do cite in this article, a lot of them are pretty old (Dubs and Creel, e.g.).We don't have anything on the evolution of academic opinion on which of the classics he edited, his appearance as a character or voice in early texts postdating him by a few centuries, and present his Shiji biography as if it were unquestionable historical fact.Off the top of my head, those are the big issues here, but I'm sure there are others. I'll try to add some sources to or on this talkpage, and try to incorporate them as I go; prima facie the article doesn't seem like it needs a complete rewrite from the ground up the way Confucianism does. Folly Mox (talk) 21:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * We can continue to improve and update the quality of references to build a solid foundation, then work on the organization, copy-editing, and fact checking along the way. It will be of great help if you can post up good quality academic sources that all editors can refer to. TheIntrospectorsfacts (talk) 18:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My apologies; this is still on my radar and todo list. It's been a difficult week. Folly Mox (talk) 11:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Potential sources
Apologies for the late response. Sourcing for an article with a topic like this one has posed a lot of organisational challenges, and filtering out sources that are more suited to Confucianism or Lunyu than to Confucius, checking for current TWL accessibility against the unavailability of Brill, and just finding appropriate sources amongst the hundreds or thousands that search strings return: it's been a difficulty.So, in the spirit of "something is better than nothing", a disorganised mess of potential sources, which I intend to annotate better.First is Eno 2018, already cited in the article, but could be employed more, and should be read by anyone attempting a rewrite.• Brill

• Brill

• Brill (obvs)

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill

• Brill, although jstor might have it depending on embargo durationAs a courtesy, I have not suggested anything that is neither TWL-accessible nor stored locally in my library. Anyone wanting access to the materials listed above tagged as Brill, Special:EmailUser me to request a copy. Folly Mox (talk) 17:38, 14 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I suppose I might also mention: Folly Mox (talk) 18:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh right maybe these as well: Folly Mox (talk) 19:23, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Csikszentmihalyi's SEP article (revised just this year) is rather elegant at presenting the many identities of Confucius. Two scholars I see missing are Philip J. Ivanhoe (2013) and Roger T. Ames (many, e.g. 1987)  Aza24  (talk)   03:10, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh I've guaranteed missed some top tier sources: this wasn't an investigation into any academic bibliographies, nor even an exploratory search of TWL space. This is what I have in my library, ordered by whenever I renamed the file most recently. Folly Mox (talk) 16:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)