Template talk:Surname/Archive 1

auto-categorization
The problem with this template is that it automatically categories the article in the general Surnames category, which is annoying when the surname is from a specific country/culture. This template needs to be altered so it doesn't automatically do this or an alternate template created that doesn't auto-categorizes (or this one shoudl have an option to categorize elsewhere). ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ 08:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Surprisingly, this very function has been included in this template about three weeks ago already but it didn't make much sense:
 * In this old version, Category:Surnames would only be excluded if the nocat parameter was not-empty, eg.,  or  , but not.
 * I've updated it to the best of my template programming abilities so that Category:Surnames will be excluded if you use "nocat" as a second(!) parameter that is otherwise empty:
 * If someone can update it so that "nocat" is also recognized when it is the first parameter (well, noone will have the surname "nocat", I guess), that would be even better. – sgeureka t•c 12:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it will work like you want it to now. --Eliyak T · C 23:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If someone can update it so that "nocat" is also recognized when it is the first parameter (well, noone will have the surname "nocat", I guess), that would be even better. – sgeureka t•c 12:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it will work like you want it to now. --Eliyak T · C 23:42, 11 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but the directions are unclear. Will "nocat=German surnames" but the page in the German surnames category? If so, that's kind of odd since the parameter is called "nocat", not "cat"... ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ 04:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * No, if you want to have and Category:German surnames but not Category:Surnames, you would have to write both  and  . "Nocat" in this case means that Category:Surnames doesn't get auto-included with  .– sgeureka t•c 07:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * A better coding would have the "nocat" parameter renamed to "cat" and, if "cat=no", no cat; else, if something like "cat=German surnames", then that's the cat. Pretty obvious, eh? ∞ΣɛÞ² (τ 13:18, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Eliyak. :-) It does indeed work now as both and/or  . – sgeureka t•c 09:10, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Why does the template reiterate the name?
Why isn't a simple 'This page or section lists people with the same surname' sufficient? I might be missing something but it seems unnecessary to mention '...with the surname Xyz'. It also makes it necessary to pass a parameter for 'xyz (disambiguation)' pages, or when there multiple variants of the same name on a page. -- Fullstop (talk) 22:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Personally, I do not think reiterating the surname (or given name in the case of Template:Given name) is a bad thing as a matter of style.
 * The reason why there is an optional name parameter at all, though, relates to sorting in Category:Surnames; it allows for one to sort on 'Smith' and not 'Smith (surname)', so that the proper order is maintained versus 'Smithers' or 'Smithson' (for example). It is true that the parameter could be added and the result hidden, but exposing the result is a visual cue of whether or not a parameter is needed for proper sorting (advantage for editors).  However, that same visual cue could be argued for in the case of any category; so the need for a visual cue is not there - it is functionally dispensable. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * ah, right. Makes sense. Thanks. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Icon
I've been bold and added the disambiguation icon from disambig, since these pages act like disambiguation pages and no internal links should point there. -- Ddxc (talk) 16:02, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think that is such a good idea, but I won't revert you. Surname pages have many similarities with disambiguation pages, granted, but they encourage etymology information, similar spellings and other stuff that has no real place on dab pages. I'd rather this template not give the impression that surname pages are in any way related with the dab MOS. – sgeureka t•c 17:58, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I have replaced the dab icon with the WP Anthroponymy icon. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 13:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The WP Anthroponymy icon seems to make most sense to me too. It clearly identifies surname (and given name) articles as distinct from disambiguation pages.  This distinction is very important as editors often mistakenly impose WP:MOSDAB guidelines on surname and given name articles.  Plus, it's a great-looking icon! Neelix (talk) 19:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

"None" option in surname-value field
User:Fullstop recently added a 'none' option available in order to accommodate a surname page addressing several variants of a surname. I will be reverting that change momentarily. I do think that Fullstop has a point that needs to be addressed; however, I do not think that 'none' is the right approach. I would suggest one of three approaches --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:45, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * do not change the code, but change the value: For instance, indicate that best practice for use is to establish the name-value pair as "surname=surname" if the article addresses one and only one spelling of the surname. For cases where there is a main surname and variants, establish the name-value pair as "smith=surname and variants".  In practice, the format for Smith (surname) would then be  .  There would be the open question of what are divergent variants (Smithers) and what are trivial variants (Smyth) and what are convergent variants (Smit; originating from Dutch - same meaning, different language).
 * change the code: introduce an optional parameter 'VARIANTS', that if present would alter the presenation. For example, implementation at Smith (surname) might be  ... lots of options.
 * introduce a new template: such as which would display the desired text to address a page containing main and variants.


 * Whatever you choose to do... using parameter=value keys is never wrong :), and unnamed parameters ( etc) always run into a wall eventually (as already seen with the 'nocat' thing). -- Fullstop (talk) 01:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Param cat=
Following this confusion, I've folded nationality=, language=, nocat= into a comprehensive cat=, e.g. cat=  or cat=none. The old nocat still exists but is no longer documented. -- Fullstop (talk) 03:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, don't you think it's easier to say  rather stating the whole category name: "I-ta-lian sur-names"? 16@r (talk) 20:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * No, actually I don't. But that is probably because I'm not lazy. But notwithstanding that
 * a) the effort taken to write the above comment exceeds the efforts to add the word " surnames" and that
 * b) the full name is going to be easier for the next editor to figure out what you meant,
 * c) not all categories are "xyz surnames" (even this template's documentation has an example),
 * if you really, Really, REALLY have trouble typing 8 letters, then change
 * to
 * Think about it for a week month year before you do. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Think about it for a week month year before you do. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Think about it for a week month year before you do. -- Fullstop (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Category needed
Hallo, While working on WikiProject Stub sorting I came across Renyi, which had been given a stub tag by the AlaiBot. I queried with the bot owner why this was, as it had a surname tag (I was assuming then that this counted as one of the family of dab tags, as the page has exactly a dab format). Alai pointed out that the page had no categories. I see that the "surname" tag has a "nocat" parameter. Shouldn't the "surname" tag always give the article a category, so that people don't waste time trying to stub-sort it or allocate a category? Otherwise it's just going to get tagged as a stub again every month. PamD (talk) 13:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Discussion relating to this template
The discussion at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 27 has some discussion related to this template. Carcharoth (talk) 14:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Wording of instruction
Bold change, after glancing at the instructions on two occasions and refusing to be distracted by enumerating the possible meanings of "link". This time, i put my finger on it. A link is: I think Manual of Style (links) (lk'd by the accompanying tl) needs a 10-second tutorial on recognizing whether to modify target or piping (for first-time editors who believe "anyone can edit WP"), but that's a matter for another talk page. In place of
 * 1) at the highest level (i.e., for a non-editor), simply the ability to move by clicking (getting from one page to a specific other one, or within a page, from one spot to a specific other one). A link always has two properties, which IIRC are called
 * 2) ID (usually a URL), and
 * 3) anchor, while the markup for WP internal lks has
 * 4) a target part and
 * 5) an optional appearance part.
 * If an internal link for a specific person referred you to this page, you may wish to add the given name(s) to that link.

i'm putting
 * If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to their surname.

The total wording of the displayed tag is about 25% longer, but i think that's needed, to be clear without assuming that the distinction between target and piping will be understood.

Necessary?
The text this template creates is unnecessary. It's an extremely rare occurrence that an article will only have the last name of a person and will require correcting.-- brew crewer  (yada, yada) 22:30, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Placement of templates on disambiguation pages
I'm trying to initiate some discussion regarding placement of this template on disambiguation pages at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). older ≠ wiser 13:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

temporary maintenance categories
— Preceding unsigned comment added by William Allen Simpson (talk • contribs)


 * (Code moved to Template:Surname/sandbox.)

Hi, could you please give some background/explanation to your request rather than just pasting the code you want applied? Cheers, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:55, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

See the denied request at Requests for page protection. Cydebot doesn't seem capable of finding and removing the old parameter categories after the Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 6, now red-linked. To do that, I'm adding temporary maintenance categories to collect those with nocat, cat=, language=, and nationality=; and then remove/replace by hand. (This should have been obvious from examination of the code diff.) After that, the parameters can be removed. This should take a week or so by hand. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 09:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 09:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Many thanks to Good Olfactory!


 * No problem. Probably easier for me to help here since I'm fairly conversant with the process that's going on in relation to this. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:02, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Nota Bene: The nocat parameter is only checked for parameter 1. This was done deliberately for script programming reasons. After all those are handled, Cat Scan will be used to detect those in parameter 2, and a different script will be used. Patience. --William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've restored the full protection to the template because William Allen Simpson has told me he's completed the edits he wanted to perform. I'm not sure that full protection is really necessary for this template, but I'm essentially just putting things back to how they were before. Another admin can reduce the protection if wanted and I won't object. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It does affect 18,000+ pages, so that's probably why they protected it in the past.

Parameters deleted
Sorry for revert of recent possibly useful edit, but it deleted the usage of parameter "cat" which I was strongly advised to use quite recently.

If you have serious reasons to remove it, please edit all articles which use "surname|cat=" and insert the corresponding categories. - Altenmann >t 14:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:09, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You were misinformed. (Strongly advised by whom?) They were all removed over a period of several weeks: first by bot (after CfD) changing them to a uniform Surnames, and then by (my) hand checking each and every one of them for references. The documentation was properly updated. The only ones that were recreated are by you – and only one or two of them have the required references. Fixed again!

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:22, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This state of affairs really sucks! I'd made the edit (that was reverted) with the need to wait for a couple of days for the changes to propagate, especially after the recent heavy lag (due to the recent ZFS problems with the servers). Now, I've come back after the required wait to discover that it had improperly been reverted by somebody that didn't bother to read the documentation (or the Talk here) first. Then, somebody else (me) has do the work to fix all the leftover problems. Then, wait another couple of days.... Why in heck do you think that your time is so much more valuable than mine?


 * Sorry, I obviously misunderstood something. I thought that nocat was deprecated but cat was left, so I started using it. I understand that surnames category was a mess, and you've been doing huge job, oftern underappreciated. Next time I will consult with you about this topic. - Altenmann >t 05:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:18, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, nocat was deprecated in favor of cat=none in 2007. Now, cat= has been removed, and the older behavior restored, as Surnames includes all the names again. Thus, the documentation requires the "by language" category following this template, as there can be several categories. Also, the usual CfD bots aren't much good at finding and replacing the cat= parameter without programming; it took a lot of work to remove them all.


 * Hm, here comes the "next time". Some time ago you advised me to remove the category from template LithuanianSurname and use it directly in surname articles. I remarked that I saw quite a few templates (navboxes, infoboxes) which do include categories. You didn't respond with an explanation (or a link to a discussion) that categories are not good in templates. Was it discussed somewhere? - Altenmann >t 05:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been discussed often over the years. For example, the recent TfD and deletion review on a massive multi-category (40+ parameter) category description template.
 * Templates sometimes have a specific category related to the template usage. But the language origin surname categories aren't related to the surname template itself, so one size doesn't fit all.
 * When a category is renamed, it's best to have it visible in the page for editors (and the CfD bots).
 * Moreover, it's not possible to have a different category than Lithuanian. In many cases, Lithuanian isn't the language origin of the surname, particularly those from the Republic period, where they are often related to Polish names of towns.
 * LithuanianSurname seems to be best for a header, without automatically adding the "per language" category.


 * Your last statement is a good point, and I will remove the category from the template. However here is the problem. Lithuanian-language surnames are quite distinct and recognizable, and preserved in this form in translations. However, as you point out, many of them indeed are not derived from Lithuanian words. The question is: do we really need to split a hair here and distinguish "Surnames of Lithuanian-language origin" and "Surnames of Lithuanian-language form"? - Altenmann >t 16:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That's the kind of problem we've had with many translated/transliterated names. Russian names are cyrillic, and they get mangled many ways during transliteration. Likewise with various Balkan names. Gaelic names are often "anglicised" (usually in the historically recent 1700-1800's), but that doesn't make it an "English-language origin".


 * There was a suggestion for "Anglicised" subcategories of Gaelic and Celtic names, but so far there really aren't enough of them to bother. The solution adopted at Wiktionary is subcategories like "Category:English surnames from Scottish Gaelic."

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Would that work for Lithuanian? (More specifically, "Category:Lithuanian-language surnames from Polish.") Wiktionary Category:Lithuanian surnames only has 1 entry.

Combinations
The problem is that historically it is difficult to figure out which exactly Slavic (or other non-Lithuanian) language was the origin. After more thought I suggest a reasonable combination would be category:Lithuanian-language surnames with sub-category:Surnames of Lithuanian-language origin. What do you think? By the way, what is your opinion about the category I introduced, Category:Given names of Greek language origin? I created it because I am thinking of merging various minuscule articles about given names, such as Helen, Elena, Helena, .... I did it, e.g., for Peter (first name)/Piotr/Pyotr. - Altenmann >t 17:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * As to the first, Category:Lithuanian-language surnames means "Surnames of Lithuanian-language origin", so that's not a good subcategory. Better place to talk about this is Category talk:Surnames.


 * As to the second, I'm generally supportive of combination names pages, where one predominates and all have exactly the same origin, especially for transliteration issues. As long as all the others are redirects, and all the redirects have the proper R from surname template.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:05, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As to given names, this is definitely not the place to discuss. But instead of "Given names of", I'd really prefer to see a system parallel to "Bazian surnames". Yet another mass nomination ahead.

Articles only
Someone has added that this template should be on articles (as opposed to disambiguation pages?). Is that correct? Was that discussed? This seems quintissentially a disambiguation template (and is so categorized). Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:08, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you referring to the change between the time that I finished, and the re-protection of the page? Just searches for links from article (main) space:

If an [ internal link] ...


 * Similar to disambig:

If an [ internal link] ...


 * So that should be OK.


 * Or are you referring to the main other test? Only puts article (main) space pages into the category.


 * That's been there for awhile, but I added the standard warning for "other" pages (that is, Talk, Wikipedia, and this Template). Disambiguation pages are in article space.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:50, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * So that should be OK, too.


 * For clarity, I'd prefer it say article space or main space, rather than "articles" as the dab project seems to attach a great significance to the fact that dab pages are "pages" and not "articles". May I make that change to clarify that's what's meant? On another point, if surname tagged pages are truly articles (i.e., meant to convey information to a reader) and not dab pages (meant only to point to the place where the reader may get information but theoretically conveying none) - they would be subject to the WP:V, WP:RS, etc. requirements of articles (and since nearly all of them are unreferenced, they should be so tagged). But that's for another day. :-)  Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps "article (main) namespace" with link. Various folks over at WP:WPDAB have gone off the deep end ("... everything looks like a nail"). Surname tagged pages are truly articles, and subject to all requirements of articles.... There are many others of these "set of" (called setindex these days) classes of articles, that also are disambiguating.

Change

This template should only be used in articles.

to

This template should only be used in article (main) namespace.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I'd go one step further and suggest: This template should only be used in the article (main namespace

&mdash; Deontalk 14:36, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Done - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 15:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks...Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the intervening suggestion was careless in typing – and in fixing the mistake, administrator making the change botched the closing parenthesis and dropped the full stop. The result is poor grammar and punctuation:

This template should only be used in the article (main namespace)

Change

in the article (main namespace)

to

in the article (main) namespace.

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 11:33, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Done. -- Menti  fisto  14:24, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Are surname pages disambig pages or not?
According to this template, they are, and should therefore follow MOS:DP; but according to that MOS, surname pages are specifically excluded. If they don't need to follow MOS:DP, then specific guidance elsewhere on styling surname pages would be useful; if this guidance exists, I don't know where. Propaniac (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have revised categorization of the template so that it no longer is considered a disambiguation template. Surname pages do not distinguish between articles with potentially identical titles, which is the core of dab page functionality.  See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy for one place where matter has been discussed (albeit briefly). --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 13:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Right, surname pages are not disambig pages as far as I understand.
 * But on a related note: There is now a discussion about how the disambig, set index and name boxes should categorise pages. See the discussion over at Template talk:Dmbox.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Regardless whether you consider surname pages as a kind of disambiguation page, it is important that guidance on how to handle disambig pages should apply, for example WP:DABPEOPLE and WP:DABREDLINK. Coastside (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

Accessibility support
For WP:ACCESSIBILITY to visually impaired readers, images that are purely decorative should not have links (see WP:ALT ). Please implement this by adding " " to the obvious place in the decorative image as I did to the sandbox. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 16:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. --- RockMFR 00:40, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

More than one surname
Can somebody give this template the option to include more than one name? For example, articles that contain MacXXX and McXXX names? Or very similar spellings. This template doesn't stack too well, since there it leaves a huge gap. For example McQueen (surname). See the big gap? Might as well have the two names in the same template. Whoops, there was no need for me to try and stack them, since we can add multiple names within the template!--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 07:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit request, 3 January 2014
Could someone please bypass the piped redirect on the word "link" from Linking to Manual of Style/Linking? Thanks! — OwenBlacker (Talk) 16:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Adjusted your edit request template to ping an administrator for this... Technical 13 (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: see WP:NOTBROKEN. There are an awful lot of redirects being bypassed these days, usually without demonstrating that there is any advantage to doing so. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:10, 3 January 2014 (UTC)