Talk:Kali (painter)

Name
A lot of sources I am seeing (Polish, at least), seem to refer to her as "Hanna Kali Weynerowska". Perhaps we should move her article under that name? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:03, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think it obviously should be her WP:NATURAL name. — Smuckola(talk) 16:20, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The issue I had with using the "natural" name is that in English at least it seems to be "Hanka Kali Weynerowska" but that version of her name was not used much, I found most everything in English had the name Kali but the rest was very inconsistent. "Hanna Kali Weynerowski" was pretty common too. Jooojay (talk) 21:19, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I should have added "but I expect the original editor of this article is most likely aware of that idea and had attempted research on the subject coz of reasons." ;)  So Jooojay, you're saying that your attempt to ascertain the WP:NATURAL kinda failed?  We don't know what would be on her birth certificate, if any?  Because that would seem to be a reasonable exception, unless possibly some hairsplitting research pops up.  Of which I have done none.  On a personal tangent, I'll say thanks for actually talking about it; I've authored several articles where people's first contribution was to just unilaterally rename it with no explanation but "common name". — Smuckola(talk) 23:13, 13 March 2015 (UTC)


 * - I was thinking her name(s) might be one of those situations in which it's a transliteration issue when translated from Polish to English? And maybe over the years people were sloppy about the spelling, since in that time period in the USA it was common to misspell legal names (but this is all without any official reference)? I don't speak Polish, so I don't really know the exact issue here with name, so perhaps Piotrus is a better resource on making this decision if they speak Polish? I am open to changing it on the article if you think it makes sense and leaving alternative names/spellings within the article text. When you Google the different versions of her name Hanna Kali Weynerowska & Hanna Kali Weynerowski seemed to be the most popular spellings in English news. Jooojay (talk) 05:26, 14 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Few comments. Hanka is a diminutive of Hanna. Gordziałkowska / Gordziałkowski is correctly spelled in Polish with an ł, but such diacritics were often not recorded on US legal documents back then, and many people chose to omit them as well. So it's possible her legal name changed. It's unclear whether she used it or just her husband surname anyway. And then there's the i/a ending, Gordziałkowska/Gordziałkowski Weynerowska/Weynerowski. A is used for females, I for males, but some females chose I ending. Oh, and while I don't think that Kali is her legal name, it seems quite a few sources use it without "", thus treating it as an informal second name. Heck, we have sources which refer to her as Hanna Kali or Kali Gordzialkowska. I mean, it's a total and complete mess. Fortunately, we can create all redirects we want (which for her may be close to a 20!). Overall, I chose Hanna over informal Hanka, Weynerowska (female version of her post-marriage name, Ockham's razor it's the most logical solution for the period she was creating most of her works), and the Kali in the middle (what's our naming policy take on Kali vs "Kali"?) and source it to one of the most authorative sources - the museum page. So my preferred choice would be "Hanna Kali Weynerowska" or "Hanna "Kali" Weynerowska", the latter being the most correct. And redirect everything else we can think of here. I'll also ping User:Nihil novi, who often has some insightful comments about nuances of Polish language in similar cases? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  02:22, 15 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Piotrus has it right.
 * "Hanna" is a variant of "Anna". "Hanka" is a diminutive, or nickname ("Annie"), of "Hanna".
 * Polish family names with the adjectival ending -ski end in -i for males, -a for females. This distinction is generally lost on English-speakers, who do not distinguish between male and female bearers of the same family name.
 * By custom, a Pole who has used a nom de guerre—in this case, Kali—will often attach it to his actual family name, which in this case is Gordziałkowska (her birth surname) or Weynerowska (her married surname). The family name of Polish Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz was "Rydz"; he adopted the nom de guerre "Śmigły", and was variously known as "Edward Śmigły–Rydz" or "Edward Rydz–Śmigły".
 * Our artist may have chosen "Kali" as her nom de guerre from any of a number of sources. One, not mentioned on the "Kali" disambiguation page, is an African black boy in Henryk Sienkiewicz's 1911 novel In Desert and Jungle (W pustyni i w puszczy).
 * As to whether to call our artist by her maiden or married name: many professional women, especially feminists, like to use their maiden names, either alone or combined in some way with their married names.  Our artist seems to have used her birth family name and married name interchangeably.
 * If this artist was commonly known as "Kali", and since she signed her paintings Kali (many artists adopt or are otherwise known by mononyms, e.g., Tintoretto, Erté), I would retitle the article from "Kali (fine artist)" to "Kali (artist)".
 * Nihil novi (talk) 10:42, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Better yet, if she did not work in other media, e.g., sculpture, only in painting, I would move the article to "Kali (painter)".
 * Congratulations on the article's appearance today on "Did you know?" Nihil novi (talk) 20:12, 22 March 2015 (UTC)