Talk:Seals in the Sinosphere

Not True
"Most people in China possess a personal name seal." This is not true.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Minbaili (talk • contribs) 06:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Seal (emblem) topic
Is there a reason why this article is a different subject from Seal (emblem)? It appears to be the same, just with regional examples. Also, the Japanese and Korean sections are unreferenced. A merge may be worth discussing? Widefox (talk) 22:09, 7 May 2011 (UTC)


 * East Asian and Vietnamese seals have a completely different culture to them than seals in other regions of the world, both in style and production and the way they were used. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of similarities with the ways seals were used elsewhere, but in a lot of ways they are distinctive enough to warrant a separate article. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:47, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Filipino usage?
There seems to be an ongoing edit war between several users about the following text:


 * === Filipino usage ===

The Philippines also had a sealing culture prior to Spanish colonization. However, when the Spaniards succeeded in colonizing the islands, they abolished the practice and burned all documents they captured from the natives while forcibly establishing a Roman Catholic-based rule. Records on Philippine seals were forgotten until ancient seals made of ivory were found in an archaeological site in Butuan in the 1970s. The seal, now known as the Butuan Ivory Seal, has been declared a National Cultural Treasure and is in the collection of the National Museum of the Philippines. The seal is inscribed with the word "Butwan" in a native suyat script. The discovery of the seal proved that pre-colonial Filipinos, at least in coastal areas, used seals on paper. Before the discovery of the seal, it was thought that ancient Filipinos only used bamboo, metal, bark, and leaves for writing. The presence of paper documents in the classical era of the Philippines is also backed by research by H. Otley Beyer, father of Philippine anthropology, finding that Spanish friars 'boasted' about burning ancient Philippine documents with suyat inscriptions, one of the reasons why very few ancient documents from the Philippines survive. Nowadays, younger generations are trying to revive the use of seals, notably in signing pieces of art such as drawings, paintings, calligraphy, and literary works.

I don't really see how this type of seal is in any way related to the East Asian and Vietnamese seals otherwise discussed in the article, these Pre-Hispanic seals seem to come from a completely unrelated tradition and would probably have to be their own article and not a section here, especially not one which makes it seem on equal footing with Vietnam (which fully copied the Chinese system). The "native suyat script" mentioned in the above text also doesn't seem to be relevant to Chinese seal script as used in East Asian and Vietnamese sigillography, my guess is that the person / people that added just saw "Southeast Asian" and thought that any native seal culture from the region fitted in not knowing that the Vietnamese tradition is identical to the Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Etc. traditions. Singapore, which is a Sinosphere country, is a lot more fitting for inclusion than the Philippines. Likewise, Overseas Chinese in the Philippines and Nusantara also use the Chinese seal types, but none of these are related to the forgotten seals of the Philippines. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:43, 12 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Going over that section again, it might be better to move it to the regular "Seal (emblem)" article. --Donald Trung (talk) 12:49, 12 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Apparently it was copied from another article where it was removed for being "disputable content", looking at the sources I can't see any claim that these seals were somehow related to the seals of East Asia and Vietnam, in fact the beginning paragraph "Like Mongolia, Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea, the Philippines also had a sealing culture prior to Spanish era. However, when the Spaniards succeeded in colonizing the islands, they abolished the practice and burned all documents they captured from the natives while forcefully establishing a Roman Catholic-based rule. Records on Philippine seals were forgotten until in the 1970s when actual ancient seals made of ivory were found in an archaeological site in Butuan." is sourced to the Filipiknow website but this website makes absolutely no mention of Mongolian, Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese seals at all (as usual the POV-pusher didn't mention Vietnam). And literally none of the claims about the Spanish destroying records are mentioned in the source either. My guess is that after this section was deleted in 2020 from that article it was placed here where the same people who were fighting the misinformation there tried to preserve it here. This is also another reason why one should always double check the sources and not just blindly believe that a source actually verifies what is written there, nor should supposed "vandal fighters" simply undo edits by IP users without even leaving an edit summary.


 * The removal of this section was 100% (one-hundred percent) justified from the main article. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:56, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

(Mis)using geography to exclude Vietnam from the Sinosphere.
I've noticed an odd trend when working with these articles and that is that geography is misused to try to exclude Vietnam from any topics related to the Sinosphere. In this version of this article one can clearly see that the seal culture of Vietnam which is identical with that of China, Japan, and Korea is regarded as "less important" in Vietnam and Vietnamese history. In fact, for years the Philippines was placed above Vietnam and had detailed information about a completely unrelated seal culture while dismissing their usage in Vietnam. The way the article is currently written also suggests that when the French arrived these seals just disappeared and that Vietnam's current seal culture is somehow different from that in the People's Republic of China. None of which are true, currently the traditional seal is still used as a personal seal in Vietnam in exactly the same way as it is being used in Mainland China, likewise the claim "" also fully applies to Vietnam, though government seals typically use the emblem of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam while companies use their name,. This doesn't just apply here, it also applies elsewhere as Vietnam is often excluded from "East Asian" topics because Vietnam is "Not East Asian".

This often leads to many articles about topics which are identical in Vietnamese culture to those found in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cultures to be excluded, see examples, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I think that more editors in the future will try to remove Vietnam being mentioned from this article in the future because the name "East Asia" might imply something other than the Sinosphere. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:44, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 3 July 2024

 * 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. General consensus to move to Seals in the Sinosphere. (closed by non-admin page mover) Safari Scribe Edits! Talk! 23:09, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Seal (East Asia) → Seal (Sinosphere) – See the talk post just above this: Talk:Seal (East Asia) "East Asia" is exclusivist to Vietnam, which is generally considered in "Southeast Asia". 211.43.120.242 (talk) 08:43, 3 July 2024 (UTC) — Relisting. Bensci54 (talk) 16:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Vietnam, WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology, and WikiProject China have been notified of this discussion. Remsense  诉  08:47, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I think a rename is likely proper, but I'm not sure what to. Is there a preferred term in recent academia anyone knows about? Remsense  诉  08:48, 3 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment I think it should be moved to a title of the form "Seals in [East Asia/the Sinosphere/etc.]", because the topic of this article is not a distinct sense of the word from Seal (emblem), but rather a WP:SPINOFF of Seal (emblem). (Incidentally, while pinnipeds do exist in the Sinosphere, I think the emblem is a primary topic within the context of the Sinosphere so we don't need to specify what type of seal we are talking about.) -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:11, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I don't know why I hadn't explicitly mentioned this. Remsense  诉  18:22, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree that a title like "Seals in the Sinosphere" is a better solution. --Wengier (talk) 17:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)


 * This is the proposer of the move; explicitly proposing tentative title of "Seals in the Sinosphere" until more suggestions are made. No other stronger contenders comes to mind for me, based on my experience with the literature. 211.36.142.234 (talk) 10:50, 5 July 2024 (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.
 * Comment while the proposed title is better, the nominator is incorrect in the reasoning. "East Asia" can include Vietnam. Some definitions include part or all of Southeast Asia in the term, and may also include Mongolia and the Russian Far East. So it isn't incorrect to say East Asia may include Vietnam. -- 65.92.247.96 (talk) 08:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * "Seals in the Sinosphere" is acceptable to me -- 65.92.247.96 (talk) 08:14, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
 * My wording was fine I think; I said "generally". Enough people exclude Viet from East Asia for it to be an issue for me 211.43.120.242 (talk) 00:45, 13 July 2024 (UTC)