Talk:Monastery of the Holy Apostles

Wrong title
Hi, and sorry to bother you again. I can't find my notes on how to rename an article and real life is catching up on me. This is clearly the wrong title. The Patriarchy it belongs to knows it best, and it's the [Holy] Monastery of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum, or for our purposes, the Church of... I don't think we should refocus on the monastery, it's an Orthodox habit of creating monasteries around long-existing churches whenever the finances allow it, the church is what most people care about and there isn't much of a monastery there, anyway. It's so conspicuous in the landscape that it deserves more attention here too. So, would you mind renaming the page Church of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum? I can't figure out if "in Cap." is part of the official name, it might well be, and it doesn't really matter, the other option is putting Cap. in brackets after the name and that's quite likely wrong, and certainly less elegant. Thanks!Arminden (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2016 (UTC)


 * There is already a Church of the Holy Apostles somewhere else, so we can't use that name. On the same grounds that you mentioned, I'll remove it to Monastery of the Holy Apostles. Zerotalk 10:01, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't know what is the main principle on WP: if a very common name happens to be vacant, you grab it and use it, or do you try to add a qualifying term? It's far better like this already, but there are so many monasteries "of the Holy Apostles". Why not add "in Capernaum"? It's the original place of the apostles, which makes me think the Patriarchy used it as part of the name, and for a good reason. That would also allow to use "church": Church of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum. Up to you. I'm off into the real world, cheers! Arminden (talk) 19:01, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I see there's a disamb. page already. Even more so: Church of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum, the mother of them all! :-) This is the only place outside Jerusalem where the NT has all 12 coming together, and here they've spent the longest time learning from JC. If that's not an argument, I don't know what is...Arminden (talk) 19:04, 4 September 2016 (UTC)


 * The complete phrase "Church of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum" gets only two google-hits, neither of which clearly indicates that "in Capernaum" is part of the name rather than just an indication of where this church is. On the other hand "Monastery of the Holy Apostles in Capernaum" gets lots of hits.  So I see quite some evidence that this place is better known as a monastery than as a church. Zerotalk 22:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Easy to explain: nobody uses the official name, but we can hardly use the one everybody knows it by. That's Greek Orthodox Church in Capernaum - sometimes with either comma, brackets or "at" instead of "in". Now Google for THAT! :-) Thousands of hits for EACH of those versions, not just the few hundreds as for the official name. Even if you play around with "red-domed" + "Capernaum" variations you get several more 100 hits. That's how it's known to those who aren't Christian Orthodox. Use the names getting the most hits & replace "church" with "monastery" and you'll get - nothing ("Greek Orthodox Monastery in Capernaum" masquerades as having 1700 hits, but go to the second page and that turns to... 17). Nobody cares much about the monastery, but the red church is visible for miles from every angle. But we need to go by the book, don't we? So "Greek Orthodox Church in Capernaum" & Co. wins by a huge margin. Arminden (talk) 05:30, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Ooops... Did the same, went to next pages, with "my" version, and most hits also disappeared into thin air. Same though for the current name. Fake hits. I still know what I'm talking about, but Google doesn't help much. The other argument remains valid though: w/o "Capernaum", it's just taking advantage that nobody else had the cheekiness of attempting to not qualify the name, which is legion in the East (the disamb. page only gives a fraction of churches going by the name). I also understood why some came up with numbers ("twelve", "seven", "five"): lots of the Orthodox ones are dedicated to just Peter & Paul, 'cause the Orthodox want to stress that St Peter was no more important than St Paul, Catholics to take note. Arminden (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2016 (UTC)