Talk:Gaius Trebonius

Requested move 18 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: close as moved per request. Favonian (talk) 14:54, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Trebonius → Gaius Trebonius – full name should be used; there are other Romans with this name Avis11 (talk) 15:32, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). — Nnadigoodluck 🇳🇬 16:02, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 16:48, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose (edit: See below? Maybe neutral.).  These other people don't appear to have Wikipedia articles, though, so no need for pre-emptive disambiguation.  Checking one of the sources at random, it refers to this figure as simply "Trebonius" in running text, not as Gaius Trebonius.  SnowFire (talk) 17:16, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * There are several, actually: Appius Annius Trebonius Gallus (consul suffectus), Gaius Trebonius Proculus Mettius Modestus, and Appius Annius Trebonius Gallus (consul 108). A consensus of editors has established that these non-canonical individuals in Roman history should generally be identified by their full names. Avis11 (talk) 18:57, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You are misinterpreting my objection. Yes, I searched these people up before I made my comment, and no, they don't matter unless they are referred to as simply "Trebonius" in running text, which none of these other Romans appear to be.  People known by a mononym should not be moved unless there's another mononymous person competing for the slot; the existence of people who simply have that name somewhere in their name isn't necessarily relevant.  In other words, if someone else mononomously referred to as "Homer" becomes super-famous, maybe we can move the Homer article, but we don't need to move it because Homer Simpson exists.  So what I mean is "those other people (known solely as Trebonius) don't appear to have Wikipedia articles."  In the same way, there's no need to move the monomonous Livia just because a bunch of members of her line also had Livia somewhere in their names.
 * As for your linked discussion, I think the people there got it wrong. Pre-emptive disambiguation has been proposed before and generally rejected across Wikipedia.  We should only spell out the full names if that's what the sources do consistently.  SnowFire (talk) 19:29, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Livia probably ranks higher in notability than Trebonius in Roman history and the former's page is the primary topic of sorts. In any other case, omitting parts of the name is arbitrary and of no reason. The sources here variously identify him as "Gaius Trebonius", "C. Trebonius" or "Trebonius"; the latter, shorter form is used repeatedly after the subject is introduced, which is the common sense thing to do with any other person. There's no reason why this particular individual's wikipedia page should have as its title a trimmed version of his name, rather than, by default, the full name. Avis11 (talk) 20:56, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Your argument would probably work better in the case of the more famous Marcus Junius Brutus; there is a better case for renaming that page to "Brutus" than there is for calling this page "Trebonius". Avis11 (talk) 20:58, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support. Articles about Romans should generally be found under the tria nomina (or duo nomina in this case), unless they belong to the most famous group of Romans, who are familiarly known by a single name. This Trebonius is not so famous that readers outside of classics will have heard of him, and there are a number of other notable Trebonii throughout Roman history.  This principle isn't the result of the recent discussion at Naming conventions (ancient Romans); it's been part of the guideline for many years.  The recent discussion was about precluding the use of WP:CONCISE to override this practice.  Using "Gaius Trebonius" is no more "pre-emptive disambiguation" than "Richard Nixon", "Ronald Reagan", "Winston Churchill", or "Benjamin Disraeli" are pre-emptively disambiguated—each of these has been deemed primary for their surnames, and yet are still listed with two names; and just like works about Gaius Trebonius, articles about these persons will much more often refer to them by surname alone, so the fact that a source identifies him as "Gaius Trebonius", and thereafter just "Trebonius", is not a persuasive argument for keeping the article at "Trebonius".  P Aculeius (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Support  as per P Aculeius. The convention is to use the full name for relatively obscure people like Trebonius. See WP:ROMANS. T8612  (talk) 22:59, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: ideally links to Roman nomina (with rare exceptions) should redirect to the articles about their respective gentes, which should list all of the notable members and distinguish them well enough to avoid confusion. When this discussion began, there was no article on the Trebonia gens, but there is now.  The contents of this article should be moved to "Gaius Trebonius", and this title redirected to "Trebonia gens"—provided that most current links to "Trebonius" are modified accordingly, so that they lead to the correct target.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:39, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment / reply to above: I'm not familiar with this particular historical figure, hence checking random sources.  At risk of sounding too procedural-ist, I'm contesting the stated reasons for the move - that the "full name" name is always correct and that other people with "Trebonius" in their names are relevant.  If this figure is really known as "Gaius Trebonius" usually and was only shortened to Trebonius in running conversation, then fine, but move the article because that's the common name for him.  The fact that the Trebonia gens article didn't exist until recently makes me suspicious that's really the primary topic for "Trebonius", but even if the family is the primary topic, if Trebonius-the-consul was generally known as just Trebonius, that would imply we'd use alternative disambiguation like Trebonius (consul).  Basically, don't jam extra names on an article title unless they are genuinely used.  I'm willing to make my vote neutral if the sources truly support the "Gaius" being used more often than a footnote, though.  SnowFire (talk) 21:14, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * . Using the full name as a rule of thumb is a guideline at WP:ROMANS. He isn't conspicuous enough to merit a reduced name, like Julius Caesar. That was really all there is to it. Sorry if I didn't make this clear in the beginning. Avis11 (talk) 01:46, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your impression of Roman names is. No portion of a typical Roman nomenclature such as Gaius Trebonius is a "footnote" that is generally ignored, the way middle names often are in English; and no decent secondary source will omit a Roman's praenomen, if it's definitely known, from an article title.  It's true that praenomina weren't as useful for distinguishing among individuals as personal names are today, but it wasn't that long ago that a small group of names such as "John", "William", "Robert", "Henry", and a few others made up a huge chunk of all men's names in English.  We still don't omit them from article titles just because the surname is more distinctive, or because someone is primary for them.
 * With respect to the suggestion that "Trebonius (consul)" should be preferred to the subject's full name, I'm sure that if you review Wikipedia's article titling policies, you'll recall that natural disambiguation is preferred to parenthetical disambiguation; otherwise instead of "Richard Nixon" or "Winston Churchill" we'd have "Nixon (president)" or "Churchill (prime minister)". Both of which, I add, would be more distinctive than the present titles, since there have been multiple notable persons of each name—but since both are primary for their names, there's little risk of confusion, and additional disambiguation is employed only for homonymous persons.  In the case of Romans, the tria nomina (or in this case, duo nomina) are often sufficient to distinguish individuals who might be expected to have articles written about them; we normally rely on parenthetical disambiguation only when the subject's name along is insufficient.  P Aculeius (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per nom and per excellent arguments by P Aculeius. BD2412  T 18:41, 30 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.