Talk:Zoran Žigić

Article name
From the history of the article:
 * 13:25, 13 February 2008 Philip Baird Shearer(moved Talk:Zoran Žigić to Talk:Zoran Zigic: common English spelling)
 * 21:29, 13 February 2008 Nightstallion m (moved Talk:Zoran Zigic to Talk:Zoran Žigić over redirect)

Nightstallion given that all the sources used in this article spell his name "Zigic" (unless it is ZIGIG), why did you move it back? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There are several links, but all of them seem to come from the U.N. so they don't come from independent sources. It seems like they merely document that the UN's spelling isn't always right. Nightstallion's version is a correct translation of the original spelling "Зоран Жигић", which is also present on http://www.kosovo.net/sk/news/haag.htm The other suggested name corresponds to "Зоран Зигиц" but not to "Зоран Жигић" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.89.43.14 (talk) 22:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep. Just because a lot of sources transliterate the name incorrectly doesn't mean the incorrect name is now right; just ask anyone who knows Cyrillic to confirm this transliteration. — Nightstallion 23:58, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Why do you think that the transliteration by the UN is incorrect? As his name is transliterate into English and English does not use funny foreign squiggles like the squiggles over the "Ž" and "ć" how can you state that the UN transliteration is incorrect? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 09:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, no. Transliteration is language independent (as opposed to transcription) -- and the Latin script does indeed use these "funny foreign squiggles", for instance in the subset of Latin script used in Slovenia, Poland, Czechia or other Slavic-speaking countries. — Nightstallion 18:47, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This is an English encyclopaedia not a Slavic one so we should use English spellings. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The English spelling *is* Žigić. Compare Nikola Žigić, same Cyrillic spelling. — Nightstallion 19:48, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is the standard practice. --PaxEquilibrium (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * We are not talking about Nikola Zigic and I do not have the inclination to do a full look at his name but a crude Google search returns about thirteen to one in favour of Nikola Zigic not Nikola Žigić and for the UK (the largest English speaking soccer country) the ratio is about 50 to one in favour of Nikola Zigic with only The Guardian out of the national newspapers using "Nikola Žigić" in five pages but using "Nikola Zigic" in 84, the rest of the nationals and the BBC use "Nikola Zigic".
 * about 3,670 English pages for "Nikola Žigić" -"Nikola Zigic" -wikipedia.
 * about 27,600 English pages for -"Nikola Žigić" "Nikola Zigic" -wikipedia
 * about 1,510 English pages for -"Nikola Žigić" "Nikola Zigic" site:UK
 * about 34 English pages for "Nikola Žigić" -"Nikola Zigic" site:UK
 * --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Nightstallion what is your proof that "the English spelling *is* Žigić"? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Mr. Shearer, I presume that you are not suggesting that we use a different system of transliteration for this particular article name compared to the thousands of others it is related to? If you wish to erase diacritics from Wikipedia please be aware that the same rule is applied to articles about European people from at least 20 different countries; if the country uses a Latin alphabet, this is applied. If the country has used both a Latin alphabet and another alphabet, the Latin one is applied. The latter situation is the case for the Serbian language as it is intimatety related to the Serbocroat language, which is written in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. If you wish to see this naming standard changed, please take up the matter somewhere appropriate, but be aware that in such case, the result would require a mass rename of tens of thousands of articles and hundreds of thousands of wikilinks, all with no apparent benefit. On the contrary, the result would be a situation where it would be a lot harder for Wikipedia's readers to know how these names are pronounced in their original languages, what their inherent entymologies are etc. Not to mention that such practice has previously resulted in a large number of duplicate articles, something which has been almost completely avoided following the introduction of the current naming standard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.89.43.14 (talk) 01:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * See the archives of WP:UE for my opinions on this topic. The naming of one page does not affect the naming of another the guidelines affect this. Pages should be under their common Engish name as using in reliable sources. In this case non of the the reliable sources used as references for this page (UN documents) use "Žigić" --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:35, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I think the issue is first whether or not ZZ has an established English term, and only then do we talk about systems of transliteration. Transliteration is the fail-safe if no extant English term is found. And I think that, per the evidence, "Zoran Zigic" is established and in common use in English. (See below) It doesn't matter if this is an "incorrect" transliteration. If the English community for some bizarre reason decided to transliterate his name "Eoras Eigic", well, than that's what we, as a descriptive encyclopedia, would have to title the article, despite our discomfort at transgressing the rules of transliteration. The found conventions of usage supercede the artificial conventions of transliteration. Evidence in favor of "Zigic"


 * UN press release
 * BBC
 * CNN
 * New York Times
 * Independent
 * New York Review of Books
 * London Times
 * International Criminal Justice: A Critical Analysis of Governments and Procedures. 2007.
 * Global Agenda: Issues before the 57th assembly of the United Nations. 2002.
 * Oxford's Journal of International Criminal Justice 2007.
 * Institute for War and Peace Reporting
 * Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
 * European Foundation
 * Trial Watch

Erudy (talk) 16:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If the only difference between the "established English usage" and the correct transliteration are a couple of diacritics, then the article should be at the title *with* diacritics. — Nightstallion 17:51, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Why? And who says it is the correct transliteration into English? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:10, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Point 1: There is no "transliteration into English"; transliteration is between scripts, not languages (that's transcription), so it's a matter of the transliteration into the Latin script.
 * Point 2: It's a Serbian name. Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and the Latin script, and there is a single official way to transliterate from one to the other; this is not a question of whether this is the correct transliteration, but a question of whether we should transliterate or not.
 * Point 3: Admittedly, the proposal I've mentioned above did not achieve consensus; however, at 57% in favour of using diacritics as I've described above, it's certainly not an uncontroversial move to remove the diacritics in special cases.
 * Therefore, if you really thing we should move this article to Zoran Zigic instead, you should file a RM. Can we agree to that? — Nightstallion 18:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

In regards to the sources using "Zigic", I'll bet that they don't use diacritics for most things. They probably write "Nis" for Niš as well. So it's not a case of most common in English, it's a case of what's readily available on a standard keyboard. Typing diacritics is annoying, and most people don't feel pedantic enough to use them, that is of course, if they knew about the diacritics in the first place. Philip Baird Shearer, did you even know the correct spelling of his name beforehand? If not, you have learned something, which I believe was the original purpose of Wikipedia. Balkan Fever  01:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I know how his name is spelt in all the sources listed on the article page all of them use Zigic as do the majority of books returned by a Google book search. http://books.google.com/books?&q=Zoran+Zigic returns "Books 1 - 10 of 65 on Zoran Zigic." while http://books.google.com/books?&q=Zoran+Žigić returns "Books 1 - 10 of 20 on Zoran Žigić." . All of the first page of 10 books return with Zigic are books, while all of the books returned with Žigić are not books but trail documents published by the ICTY. The first 10 books that return Zoran Zigic are
 * Annotated leading cases of international criminal tribunals - Page 29 by André Klip, Göran Sluiter
 * International Justice Against Impunity: Progress and New Challenges - Page 215 by Yves Beigbeder - Law - 2005 - 238 pages
 * This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia - Page 395 by Thomas Cushman, Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović - History - 1996 - 296 pages
 * Supranational Criminal Prosecution of Sexual Violence: The ICC and the ... - Page 545 by Anne-Marie L. M. de Brouwer - Law - 2005 - 584 pages
 * The UN International Criminal Tribunals: The Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and ... by William A. Schabas - Law - 2006 - 764 pages
 * Elements of War Crimes Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal ... - Page xxxii by Knut Dörmann - Law - 2003 - 580 pages
 * The Contribution of the Rwanda Tribunal to the Development of International Law - Page xxiv by Larissa J. van den Herik - Law - 2005
 * Supranational Criminal Law: A System Sui Generis - Page 64 by Roelof Haveman, Olga Kavran, Julian Nicholls - Law - 2003 - 370 pages
 * War Crimes and Just War - Page 238 by Larry May - History - 2007 - 359 pages
 * A Global Agenda: Issues Before the 57th Assembly of the United Nations - Page 229 by Diana Ayton-Shenker - Political Science - 2002 - 368 pages
 * That the majority of books used "Zigic" suggests that it has little if anything to do with a standard keyboard and everything to do with common English usage in academia. So BalkanFever, have you learnt something about English usage, or are these results not a surprise for you? --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * If you got the impression that my comment was somewhat sarcastic, that was not the intention. I can't say the results are really a surprise, as diacritic usage, if used at all, is in most cases inconsistent. In this case, "Zigic" is the most common term, but I'm sure if you look at every biographical article with diacritics in the title, most of the time no diacritics will beat diacritics in English language sources. Why should we move so many articles on that basis? Diacritics serve the purpose of clarifying what the person's name is. His name is not Zigic (Зигиц). His name is Žigić (Жигић). English language usage cannot change the fact.  Balkan Fever  02:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

I had not followed any of the links because the text on all the pages return with the search is squiggle free. But from a comment on another page using the same search I looked at the text in the links returned and unfortunately some have two squiggles some have none some only on the Ž and some only on the ć. Searching using [ Zoran-Zigic ] returns 51 books while searching using [ Zoran-Zigic  -Zoran-Žigić ] reduced the number of books from 51 to 50. So it seems a Google book search is of little use in this case. :-(

The trouble with diacritics in English, is unless the English speaking person is familiar with the diacritics in use (because they have learnt to read them when learning a foreign language -- typically either Spanish or French for the minority of English speakers who learn a foreign language-- is that words with  diacritics jars, like a spelling mistake, so instead of seeing the information that an passage is conveying one notices the odd looking word, (like a moving object in the corner of the eye). I am sure that if you are familiar with seeing  diacritics it has exactly the same effect in reverse which is why you want to see them, but you should remember that this is an English language Encyclopaedia and it should be optimised for English readers. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, but removing diacritics is hardly optimising when you need to inform the readers. His name, if phonetically rendered using English orthography, is Zhigich, or something of the like. Zigic does not imply the correct way to pronounce his name - Žigić does, to an extent. I myself am actually more used to not seeing diacritics, it is more that I am pedantic, because diacritics serve a purpose of disambiguation in a way.  Balkan Fever  11:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Compromise proposal: Article can read "Zoran Žigić (Serbian:Зоран Жигић, Zigic in English media)" or something to that effect, as with the Hashim Thaçi article.  Balkan Fever  10:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * That sounds fair. — Nightstallion 11:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Better and more precise "Zoran Zigic (Serbian:Зоран Жигић, Zoran Žigić)" --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
 * That I would disagree with -- the question at hand is about precision, and the diacritic-containing version is certainly more precise, while the diacritic-less version appears to be more common in English media. Therefore, a parallel solution to the one used in the Thaçi article seems fair to me. — Nightstallion 12:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

If it was only the "English language [news] media" you might have a case but it is not just that it is also used in other English language publications. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 16:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Google Print and Google Books searchs have revealed differing publications, haven't they? (I refer to the diacritics discussion at the WP:UE talk page.) — Nightstallion 20:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

See above books use several different combinations --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:56, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * So, where do we stand now? Balkanfever and I would propose to use Zoran Žigić and present Zoran Zigic as an anglicised variant, while you would prefer to use Zoran Zigic and present Zoran Žigić as the original Serbian name, right? — Nightstallion 14:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

AFAICT yes. --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 14:33, 21 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, then that's neither consensus for either option, nor does it seem to me that there's an obvious compromise route we could take between the two already compromised stances we're currently taking... :( Any ideas? — Nightstallion 10:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course this article must be spelled Zoran Žigić, because it's simply his name. I can't clearly see what we could add to it. No reason to indicate an alternative English spelling because it's the same one! Diacritics are used in encyclopedias, but (usually) are drop in common newspapers. It's a well known thing, there's no reason to recall it in every article concerned. Švitrigaila (talk) 20:28, 6 March 2008 (UTC)