Talk:Zanabazar square script

Renaming
I suggest renaming this page to Zanabazar Square script, the name used by Unicode and the academic community. Any thoughts on this? Glennznl (talk) 21:37, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you might have an opinion on this.Glennznl (talk) 09:52, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I dislike the current name, as it's too generic to be useful. (It's a direct translation of the Mongolian, and in the original context it's adequate, as 'Mongolian' is understood, but that doesn't work when it's translated.) So I support a move in general.

As for the proposed name, do we have anything other than Pandey's claim that it's the usual name in academia? He was all over the place with the naming in his proposal, which suggests he might not know what he's talking about. And Unicode itself, of course, is not a RS for anything except Unicode. Pandey's only cited source for the name is written in Mongolian, which tells us little about international use. It's not used in his Russian-language sources that I can see.

I'm not opposed, just not convinced. If we need to add 'Zanabazar' to dab 'square script' from Phagspa, then why not just call it 'Zanabazar script'? After all, we don't bother to call the other 'Phagspa square script'. But if we do retain 'square' (I suppose we might need it to dab Soyombo script), I see no reason to capitalize it. It's just a descriptive phrase. — kwami (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Looking through GBooks, it would seem that the common name in English is the translation 'horizontal square', which I assume we agree is not optimal, or various descriptive phrases, suggesting that 'horizontal script' is not established as the name. Daniels & Bright unfortunately don't mention it or Soyombo. If there is no established name in English or internationally, I suppose we might as well follow Unicode, apart from capitalization.

So at this point I'd think our choices might be something like 'horizontal Mongolian square script' and 'Zanabazar square script'. 'Mongolian' is correct, in that it was used in Mongolia, even though it's not restricted to the Mongolian language, just as the Tamil and Thai scripts are not restricted to the Tamil and Thai languages (also used e.g. for Sanskrit). Or we could be agnostic and just call it "Zanabazar's square script". — kwami (talk) 19:47, 20 July 2020 (UTC)


 * The website http://www.worldswritingsystems.org/ also uses Zanabazar Square, and it seems to have some good institutions behind it: http://www.worldswritingsystems.org/project.html
 * The name Zanabazar script is unsatisfactory because Zanabazar also created the Soyombo script. Horizontal Mongolian square script wouldn't be much better than the current name of the article, still quite generic and now also getting quite long. My preference goes to Zanabazar square script, which follows other sources, has some uniqueness to it and also carries a descriptive adjective which already gives you an idea of what the letters will look like. Glennznl (talk) 20:42, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Your sources are just Pandey again, and he's no expert on the script. But your choice seems the best available. Why don't you go ahead and move it. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 20 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm the one who originally moved it from "Zanabazar Square alphabet" to "Horizontal square script". As my follow-up edit summary states, I though the old title (and the now current one) to be "unicodisms". I don't see a real problem with the generic "Horizontal square script". It is used and there really isn't any other script that it is used for. Compare Clear Script. —Srnec (talk) 23:02, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Finding more information
I'm not an expert, but it'd be helpful if somebody read through the Mongolian-language research by Byambaa and added the material to the page: