Talk:Suharto/Archives/2009/January

Name Spelling
As it was discussed in Talk:Suharto, should we move this page from Suharto to Soeharto?. I've heard names should be exempted from spelling changes. Just like the rest of Indonesians in discussion above, as an Indonesian I think the spelling "Soe" is more often seen compared to the new spelling of "Su". FYI, I found the article using the word "Soeharto" w_tanoto (talk) 20:38, 18 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree. Soeharto's name is spelled with 'oe' in Indonesia as well as by himself (when, when he was still alive) and by his family.

The indonesian wikipedia uses that orthograpie as well http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soeharto as does his 'heritage center' http://soehartocenter.com/ and a google in Indonesian returns 2.4 million hits for Soeharto versus about 400,00 for 'Suharto' (Some of which are from malaysia, where the 'u' spelling is preffered.

I will therefore amend some of the text in the article and propose that the whole article is renamed to 'soeharto'. I find it incomprehensible that somebody would be included with his name being spelled differently than he would do himself. Again, otherwise we might as well change the entry for 'Sarkozy' to 'Sarkozee'. Mtl1969 (talk) 21:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll go ahead and do it. I have enough reason to do this from your research and the other researchs/comments above. Please also mind about Soekarno article. I think it should be changed from Sukarno to Soekarno. Indonesian article of Soekarno also uses "Soekarno" spelling, though official documents from 1947-1948 era uses "Soekarno", but names are exempted from the spelling change.w_tanoto (talk) 19:44, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've put a page move request, because your previous edit in 2007 was apparently reverted (see Soeharto history). w_tanoto (talk) 20:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You should put this to the Indonesia project page before such a move. I will do that now. --Merbabu (talk) 20:17, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd like to remind you that Indonesian usage only matters for the id.wiki. We follow English usage here on the en.wiki. You get 357,000 results for Soeharto compared to 1,320,000 results for Suharto when searching only English-language sites. Also, you get 13,600 results for Suharto and only 4,390 results for Soeharto on Google Scholar. Google Books is much closer, with 2,980 for Suharto and 2,376 for Soeharto. Based on the more accurate results, Suharto is by far the preferred spelling in English, both in common usage and in scholarly works. Parsecboy (talk) 22:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Please not the oggle test - it means nothing. Also this all needs to be at the project page SatuSuro 22:31, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * first, discussion should be in one spot that is as obvious as possible The project page got notification of this discussion and requests comments are made here  which is enough. While I am reasonably satisfied that the most common english usage (with some notable exceptions) is "su", is perhaps the question is whether this gets trumped by the fact that the man himself used "soe". --Merbabu (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The Google results cited above use an entirely incorrect approach. If you compare the Google hit results for ENGLISH language pages only, since this is the English language Wikipedia, the numbers are 183,000 for Soeharto versus 1,010,000 for Suharto. Suharto wins. (Caniago (talk) 00:08, 5 January 2009 (UTC))


 * the question is not really the common use in Indonesian or English, but the official name. As it is said, names are exempted from spelling change, but both forms are acceptable. Now the question is to find out what is stated officially in his "Akta Kelahiran" (Birth Certificate) or "Akta Kematian" (Death Certificate). My mother's surname is also "Soe...." (surnames in most of Indonesians don't change upon marriage, but the person may be recognised as Mrs. (husband's name)). It does not change from soe to su in 1947 era, so the official documents still all uses Soe form. The old form is even used in my cousins' birth certificates and also recent death certificate. Another case: Lolo Soetoro passed his old style name to Maya Soetoro-Ng (born in 60/70 era). That is all I can say regarding this. I will, of course, accept any decision that come out of this discussion. (Notes: I doubt Soeharto has Birth Certificate. He was born in a poor family, and in Dutch colonisation era, and am not sure if the death certificate is made public either) w_tanoto (talk) 21:53, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This is an online encyclopdiea not a truth commission - we already had a common usage with qualifying alternate spelling inside the articles - birth or death certificates are irrelevent. We have one spelling - variant spelling is indicated - it should be left like that otherwise discussion gets back to the word Java - a large mount of time and space that could be used to fix articles (and there are enough with bad spelling that could take many person hours to fix)

cheers SatuSuro 22:17, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * lol. I give up. Javanese and Indonesian names are complicated enough. and yes, the thought of fixing articles and interwiki links related to this article horrified me. My reason to request this: Soeharto is the official name (like the article stated) and consistency (some article begin with "Su" such as Suharto and Sukarno, some with "Soe" such as Soetoro w_tanoto (talk) 23:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don;t know of any other contemporary person whose own way to spell his name is not respected on Wikipedie. Yes, teh common English usage is 'Su', but it is not how the man spelled it himself (nor how his family, or Indonesian society in general spells it). I think that case has been made quite clear. So why the resistance? 'Su' might be more common in English but it is not correct- in my view Wikipedia is there to fight ignorance, not to perpetuate it. Mtl1969 (talk) 06:53, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The use of "Suharto" is not done out of "ignorance", nor is the debate about what is "correct". Numerous expert writers and scholars use "suharto" and this is not done out of "ignorance". (in fact, among my sources it is the most common). No, it's not clear cut case but on balance, "suharto" wins out. More to the point, I agree with SatuSuro that there are better things to be doing and arguing about at wikipedia. --Merbabu (talk) 07:13, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

It and other strange mixes of su and soe - like the word java - have consumed vast amount of talk page space (nothing to do with wikipedia creating or supporting ignorance but in most cases trying to reduce it.) The issue and similar ones for other articles has been coped with so far with making sure the variant spelling is actually mentioned in the article itself. Wikipedia has both disambiguation pages and in text mechanisms to cope with divergent usages - it simply is not worth the time or space to pursue the matter to some ideal or truth - it misses the point of what an online encyclopedia is - to spend time concerned as to which spelling, I would be only too pleased to offer a list of 300 articles with bad english grammar and bad spelling at the Indonesian project page to help anyone in doubt as to whether the indonesian project is in desperate need of copy-editing rather than debating article titles. SatuSuro 07:59, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Naming_conventions_(use_English) explains the policy behind the use of Suharto on the English Wikipedia. (Caniago (talk) 13:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC))