Talk:Masjid al-Haram/Archive 19

Requested move 8 August 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: Moved. From the evidence provided in the discussion, the Arabic form is the most common name in English language sources. It should be pointed out that WP:RECOGNIZABILITY is not a competition; it says a good article title is recognisable, not that the most recognisable title is the best title. From ngrams and Google Trends searches combined, I personally am satisfied that the COMMONNAME is, indeed, Masjid al-Haram (give or take transliteration quirks). Also, for what it's worth? Just because this is the English Wikipedia does not mean the English translation is the best; for example, nobody calls the most famous street in Paris "Avenue of the Elysian Fields". Sceptre (talk) 22:06, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Great Mosque of Mecca → Masjid al-Haram – These are the multiple reasons why I think the name should be reverted to Masjid al-Haram or similar: A. The Al-Masjid an-Nabawi article: The aforementioned article concerning the Prophet’s Mosque uses the Arabic name for its title, as do most other articles about mosques on Wikipedia. B. Google Ngram Viewer and the popularity of Al-Masjid Al-Haram and other forms Wikipedia recommends using Google Books Ngram Viewer to support move claims per WP:RM. Given this, Ngram Viewer shows that the name Masjid al-Haram is more than 3.5x more prevalent in usage than both Great Mosque of Mecca and Grand Mosque of Mecca individually, and around 2x more popular than both combined. In addition, Google Trends shows that the names Masjid al-Haram, Masjid Al Haram and Al Masjid Al Haram, combined, are 13x more popular in searches on Google than Great Mosque of Mecca and Grand Mosque of Mecca combined, on average. C. Concerning the previous name change I believe the previous name change was made hastily and inconsiderably. The main concern of the person suggesting the previous name change was a violation of WP:CONCISENESS, however, I believe that the current name violates WP:PRECISION, WP:CONSISTENCY and WP:CONCISENESS, and, albeit to a much smaller degree, WP:RECOGNIZABILITY. AccordingClass (talk) 20:04, 8 August 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Steel1943  (talk) 21:40, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose - I'm afraid the asserted reasons A, B, and C may be inappropriately employed here.
 * Regarding A: I'm not sure how linking a single Wikipedia article about Al-Masjid an-Nabawi is grounds for the later claim of "most other articles about mosques on Wikipedia", but if one were to use WP:CONSISTENT, which looks at "the pattern of similar articles", then Category:Mosques in Saudi Arabia would demonstrate that, for mosques specifically in Saudi Arabia, of the approximately 28 that have articles on Wikipedia, only 4 articles have a name containing "Masjid" while 23 have a name containing "Mosque", making a name containing "Mosque" - in fact - the more consistent one by far.
 * Regarding B: The Ngram link is invalid as the evidence does not match the proposed title. The proposed title is "Al-Masjid al-Haram", but the Ngram link uses "Masjid al-Haram", which is a different form without the "Al-" article. This issue has been debated ad nauseum in multiple previous RM discussions as well - the evidence must match the proposed title. To wit, if the search had been performed correctly and included "Al-", one would find that either "Great Mosque of Mecca" or "Grand Mosque of Mecca" are used more often than "Al-Masjid al-Haram". Also, Google Trends is invalid here because its statistics is based upon all language searches, whereas WP:COMMONNAME requires "reliable English-language sources" - apart from the language issue, note that searches are not sources, let alone reliable sources. The current title is hence more in keeping with WP:COMMONNAME and WP:RECOGNIZABILITY as it uses a form known to be far more familiar to English speakers.
 * Regarding C: The previous name change was not hastily done; in fact, RMs for this article have been debated nothing short of extensively, to a fault - 90% of this talk page discuss nothing constructive other than proposed name changes to various forms, and this debate crops up almost every two years. It seems like it was finally due this year, and so it has returned. In addition, the proposal claims violations of WP:PRECISION, WP:CONCISE, and WP:CONSISTENT, but it has not been demonstrated how the current title violates any of the three.
 * In sum, the previous consensus was clear and continues to hold: the current form of name is far more common in English-language sources, and - contrary to the proposal - is supported by WP:COMMONNAME, WP:RECOGNIZABILITY, and WP:CONSISTENT. There is also no evidence given that WP:PRECISION or WP:CONCISE is at issue.  Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 09:28, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Reply: I see this as a violation of WP:CONSISTENCY as applicable to the three holiest sites of Islam, i.e., the Masjid an-Nabawi, the Masjid al-Haram and the Masjid al-Aqsa. The articles concerning these two mosques use their original names, and as such, I believe this article should do so too. I do not support Al-Masjid al-Haram alone, I am supporting "Al-Masjid al-Haram or similar". This includes both Al-Masjid al-Haram and Masjid al-Haram. As such, even if Masjid al-Haram is selected as the new article, that's perfectly fine with me. In my opinion, the title violates WP:RECOGNIZABILITY and WP:CONCISENESS in the name of WP:PRECISION as anyone even vaguely introduced to the idea would be able to identify the mosque with the name "Masjid al-Haram". I still believe the previous consensus was reached hastily and inconsiderably as the pre-proposal evidence the person brought to suggest names was, verbatim, "Evidence is provided in Ngram results and in search results (in these cases from books)...", responding to which I have brought forth similar evidence. AccordingClass (talk) 10:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per nom, as explained in reply to User:Epistulae ad Familiares --AccordingClass (talk) 11:07, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Support "Masjid al-Haram" : I find all the arguments presented by User:AccordingClass to be valid. I would like to add that outside Wikipedia I’ve only rarely seen the name "Great Mosque of Mecca" being used. Idell  (talk) 11:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC); edited 21:11, 26 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Support In fact Wikipedia might be only notable website which calls this mosque like that contrary to traditional and media sources. Sachin.cba (talk) 07:14, 14 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Interesting case. I'm inclined to believe that even English sources do favour the proposed title. But on the other hand, the current title would be recognisable to every English speaker, while the proposed title (which I assume is Arabic) would be meaningless to many if not most English speakers. Having it at the current title clearly improves Wikipedia in my opinion. Andrewa (talk) 00:52, 16 August 2020 (UTC)


 * oppose per Epistulae ad Familiares, Andrewa. They already mentioned what I was going to say. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:48, 18 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose per above reasoning. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:30, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: Since sources of all languages prefer the original title, how do you think will the English name be recognisable (not the same as understandable) to English speakers? And wouldn’t you say that places generally have names in all sorts of languages. How is it fair to translate their name to English? And we’re not even translating it in this case, as I said above, I haven’t seen the name "Great Mosque of Mecca" being used anywhere off Wikipedia. Idell  (talk) 04:59, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The common name in most reliable English-language sources is the current one, even if the Ngram picks up lots of mentions of the Arabic name in scholarly sources. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:00, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support "Masjid al-Haram" seems to be the more common name (3,115,000 results on Google web search) as opposed to "Great Mosque of Mecca" (511,000). I think the proposal should be (slightly) modified to "Masjid al-Haram" instead of the more proper "al-Masjid al-Haram" (798,000 hits on Google) because it appears far more common. I know the BBC also uses "Masjid al-Haram" frequently if not most frequently, and other major English-language news sites, such as AP and CNN, will use "Masjid al-Haram", or at least reference it in addition to "Great Mosque" or "Grand Mosque". Al Ameer (talk) 14:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 20:38, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose This is the English Wikipedia for english readers and is already the "English" common name. The title "Al-Masjid al-Haram" is Arabic but in latin script because we're typing with latin script keyboards. Al-Masjid al-Haram is common name only to Arabic speakers. The rm initiator is basically moving the english common name to what the pronunciation of what the official Arabic title would sound like. Jerm (talk) 22:40, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Reply: No, in fact, most, if not all Muslim speakers refer to the mosque as "al-Masjid al-Haram," "Masjid al-Haram," or similar. This is also the reason Google Trends shows these two names to be far more common than the one the article holds now. I tried to use that as evidence, but a user pointed out that it encompasses searches from all languages. --AccordingClass (talk) 10:24, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Support Claims that "Great Mosque of Mecca" is the common name in English remain unsubstantiated. While this usage may have been common a century ago, times change, and Masjid al-Haram is quite obviously more common in 2020. — Preceding unsigned comment added by M Imtiaz (talk • contribs)

Maher Al-Mu'aiqly
His name is written wrong and it is hance a red link. Should be changed to Maher Al-Mu'aiqly or perhaps redirected? --Zenica87 (talk) 10:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)