Talk:Tübinger Stift

Tübinger Stift, Tübinger Stift, Tübingen Stift, Tübingen Stift, or Tübingen Foundation?
A quick review suggests that this institution is generally either referred to as the "Tübingen Stift" (no italics) or "Tübinger Stift" (with italics) in the English-language secondary literature. The full translation "Tübingen Foundation" also has some currency, but seems less common. The stylistic variant of "Tübingen Stift" is also present. (Firm statistics are difficult to generate due to the bleeding of German-language texts into the English-language Google search.) Thus I ask the question if this article should be moved to "Tübingen Stift" or remain as "Tübinger Stift." If the consensus is to retain "Tübinger Stift" over "Tübingen Stift," I would argue that both words should be placed in italics given the retention of the German case ending in "Tübinger Stift." Gamonetus (talk) 18:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Tübinger Stift is the accurate, historical name of the institution and should remain so. Translating German names into English or offsetting them in italics is silly. The names, like street names or brand-names, should remain in their original form, especially in encyclopedic or quasi-encyclopedic entries.  There seems to be a considerable problem on wikipedia of inaccuracies being introduced due to translation errors by Anglophiles who are attempting to anglicize everything.  English translations are perhaps appropriate in an explanation of the origin of the German, or indeed a name in any other language, but not as a replacement for the name of the thing.  It would be like moving an article about Coke-Cola to "Cocaine-cola health elixir"...that may be what the name "means" but it is called Coke-Cola. Smf77 (talk) 06:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Tübinger Stift is the common historical name in German. Its official name of course is "Evangelisches Stift Tübingen." As I noted above most English-language publications have opted to drop the German case ending when discussing the institution and often place "Stift" or "Tübinger Stift" in italics. I am merely pointing out publication convention for scholarly works on German intellectual history which hardly makes me a raging Anglophile. It is not "silly" to follow standard publication convention terms or titles introduced from foreign languages. I find the general tone of your discourse uncivil and not befitting wikipedia. Gamonetus (talk) 13:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Despite being, on the whole, one of the "Anglicizers" Smf77 deplores, I think I have to defend the current title as an appropriate English name without italics. I have no difficulty finding English reference to "Tübinger Stift" in well-edited publications. I also found a case or two of "Tübinger Stift," which throws a wrench into Gamonteus' theory inasmuch as it implies that it's Stift that more can't be naturalized into English.  Although, with further searching, I did find good examples of "Tübinger Stift," still, without a much more decisive and compelling case based on WP:COMMONNAME, I would not support renaming or the use of Italic title for this article. I think that the split evidence shows that, while some English writers and publishers feel the name is foreign, it has long been naturalized in the usage of many others (I note that the Modern Language Review [CUP] of 1918 is one of the cases of English "Tübinger Stift" I found, so the usage is not only found in careful publications but in venerable ones). Wareh (talk) 18:47, 7 May 2011 (UTC)