Talk:Sorbonne (building)

Disambig removed
I have removed the disambig since this is an artilc discussing the usage of the word "Sorbonne" and isn't disambiguating anything. Discuss if you wish to reinstate the notice.--Commander Keane 05:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Translation in Progress
A translation from the French article of the same name is in process; I will be merging the translation and this article soon. Just a heads up; if you'd like to see how it is progressing see User:Tamarkot/Sorbonne. Thanks! Tamarkot 22:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please note that the French Wikipedia (and the translation you are working on) is confusing the University of Paris and the Sorbonne, which are not the same thing. This article is supposed to explain that and refer the reader to the correct articles for each relevant topic. u p p l a n d 04:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I have refactored this page and moved some stuff to other articles (see the page history). I hope the purpose of this page is clearer now. u p p l a n d 07:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The Name
I understand Sorbonne is pronounced "sore bun." If so, it's a fitting name for a university. A sore bun is all I've gotten out of university education. User: Constantine XIII129.93.17.117 (talk) 03:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If you are referring to your buttocks and you are unlike the old woman in Candide, there are two. So which bun did your university education make sore, the right or the left? 68.113.148.18 (talk) 09:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

May 1968
I attempted to add a short section on Sorbonne as a site in relation to May 1968 and it has been removed. Here is how it read:

MAY 1968

Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre, the administration shut down that university on 2 May 1968. Students at the Sorbonne University in Paris met on 3 May to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at Nanterre. On Monday, 6 May, the national student union, the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (UNEF) — still the largest student union in France today — and the union of university teachers called a march to protest against the police invasion of Sorbonne. More than 20,000 students, teachers and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed, some began to create barricades out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones, forcing the police to retreat for a time. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the crowd again. Hundreds more students were arrested.

Negotiations broke down, and students returned to their campuses after a false report that the government had agreed to reopen them, only to discover the police still occupying the schools.

When the Sorbonne reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous "people's university". In the weeks that followed, approximately 401 popular action committees were set up in Paris and elsewhere to take up grievances against the government and French society, including the Sorbonne Occupation Committee. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.36.227.237 (talk) 23:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

== sentence fragment+ "Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre, the administration that university on 2 May 1968. " 71.163.117.143 (talk) 00:50, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Brand and name
The exact sentence "Despite being a highly valued brand, the Sorbonne universities did not register their names as trademarks until the 1990s. Over the following years, they established partnerships, merging projects and associated institutions with the name Sorbonne, sometimes triggering conflicts over the usage and ownership of the name." appears twice, verbatim. Not sure in which of the two locations it makes the most sense to keep it, but definitely not both. Clément Canonne (talk) 07:50, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

No history of the building?
Have we got info? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Myrnamyers (talk • contribs) 13:38, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 9 November 2022

 * 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. Disambiguation page moved to the base title, pending a possible expansion. (closed by non-admin page mover) Sceptre (talk) 19:43, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorbonne → Sorbonne (building) – The word "Sorbonne" in English since 1970 overwhelmingly refers to the successor schools to the University of Paris, and since 2018 to Sorbonne University (a.k.a "the Sorbonne" or "la Sorbonne"). While the Sorbonne University's name derives from the building, being the original sense of a word does not automatically confer PTOPIC status; cf.  (redirects to Watergate scandal, not Watergate complex). When I Google "Sorbonne", it takes me till the second page to see a single result about the building, the fourth page to see a second one. Every link I've spotchecked in WhatLinksHere intends Sorbonne University or, if in a pre-1970 context, the University of Paris; but never the building. This should be moved to Sorbonne (building) and the redirect should be retargeted to Sorbonne University (or, second choice, Sorbonne (disambiguation) should be moved over the redirect).

I'll note that the article does have one section that's not about the building, § Sorbonne name dispute. Move or no move, that should either be split off into its own article or merged with Sorbonne University Association into something like Successors to the University of Paris, as it is not within this article's stated scope. -- Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 08:11, 9 November 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:11, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Support. Interesting that Sorbonne (building) was moved to Sorbonne a long time ago. Having Sorbonne University probably Sorbonne should be a disambiguation.MrKeefeJohn (talk) 08:44, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Actually, looking at the article history, it does seem that this was originally drafted as something of a broad-concept article on the various meanings of "Sorbonne", until it was boldly reframed as being about the building in 2010, with the rest of the article not really being updated to match. So maybe there's a case for just moving this back in a more direction, without prejudice against a separate article on the building itself.  --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 14:03, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, retarget this redirect to the disambiguation page Move the disambiguation page here. VQuakr (talk) 16:50, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Support, DAB at base name.--Ortizesp (talk) 19:43, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Move Sorbonne (disambiguation) to Sorbonne. Shwcz (talk) 01:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The primary topic of "Sorbonne" is the building.  Yes, people have long also used the name "Sorbonne" as a nickname for the University of Paris, in the same way that "Pentagon" is a nickname for the US Department of the Defense.  What they don't use it is as a name for a four year old university few people are aware of.  Moreover, the Sorbonne University article here is rather deceptively written here, and does not accurately reflect the history of that institution. Definitely do not redirect.  FWIW, French Wikipedia also directs "Sorbonne" to the building. Walrasiad (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Fixable problems with the underlying articles such as POV shouldn't be a factor in a discussion about how to structure them. Consistency with other language Wikis also isn't mentioned in WP:TITLE as near as I can tell. A quick Google search indicates to me that University of Paris is the primary topic when searching "Sorbonne", but it's naturally disambiguated by its more common name. I don't think there is a overwhelmingly common subject that falls under this title but it certainly isn't the building itself, which as the OP notes doesn't come up in the first couple of pages of results. VQuakr (talk) 03:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Reading carefully, the content of this article is actually not about the building. It is really about "Sorbonne" the word, how the name has been used over history, and its recent branding quarrels.  There is nothing here, for instance, referring to its construction or the architectural features of the building.  It is actually a pretty good umbrella article for "Sorbonne" term. Leave it be. Or, if preferred, I'd agree to move it to "The Sorbonne" (like "The Pentagon"), since the building is always referred to with the article "the", and that is not used in any of the modern branding of derivatives. Walrasiad (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Most articles about buildings do not include "the", even though we normally would use a definite article when referring to any specific building. The Pentagon is an exception because it needs to be disambiguated from pentagon. I do not agree that most of the article as it exists is about the word Sorbonne. The existing article may dwell too much on recent organizational disputes, but again fixable problems should not dictate how we structure the articles. The "main" page here should be the disambiguation page, Sorbonne (disambiguation). VQuakr (talk) 05:15, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * This is why I also suggested keeping but reverting the edit that re-scoped this as being about the building. Having this be a proper broad-concept article (maybe beginning something like The word Sorbonne is a metonym for a number of educational institutions associated with the Sorbonne building in the Latin Quarter of Paris.) would make sense to me. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 20:22, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer to retain the lede as building since that is its original meaning, its official meaning and a meaning it has retained. The original "College de Sorbonne" was a building - a residence house for poor students attending the University of Paris who could not afford to rent apartments in Paris. The benefactor Robert de Sorbon erected a student residence, not a school. The schooling itself happened in a variety of locations scattered around the Latin Quarter. The Sorbonne is where (some, not all) students lived. It follows the usual model of colleges in Medieval university towns (e.g. Spanish College in Bologna, the myriad of colleges in Oxford, etc.). The original and only official meaning of "the Sorbonne" is the residence. The term later got informally (and unofficially) stretched in casual parlance when referring to the theology faculty or the university more generally (again like "The Pentagon" informally means Dept of Defense), but this was never official term for anything but the building.  Walrasiad (talk) 10:44, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I feel like it's one or the other. Either this article is about the building, in which case the lede should say it's about the building but also it should be renamed because the building is not the primary topic of the word "Sorbonne" (cf. Watergate); or this article is about the term "Sorbonne", in which case it should stay at this title but the lede should say it's about the term. --  Tamzin  [ cetacean needed ] (she&#124;they&#124;xe) 02:06, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Rescope the article per to go back to being a broad-concept article covering the building as well as a summary of the different entities that have been known as the Sorbonne over the years, and the reasons and disputes that arose from those. "The Sorbonne" is a term people quite often use in the English world to refer to a concept on a par with Oxford or Harvard or whatever, even though there's seemingly quite a lot of confusion over what that means. Having the base name be an article discussing that is preferable to a diambiguation page, which will just leave people confused about whether to go to the UofP page, the 1968-2017 page or the modern page.  &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 12:44, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Relisting comment: There seems to be broad consensus that the building isn't primary, but some further discussion about what belongs at the base title (dab page? broad-concept article? something else?) may be helpful. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:11, 25 November 2022 (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.