Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Roman cognomina


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  11:56, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

List of Roman cognomina

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This isn't exact a list of all Roman last names, but still, WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE surely has to apply to such a list. The linked names land on a huge range of articles, from surnames to various people who aren't even Roman; it wouldn't surprise me that some aren't people at all. And citations? Who needs those? Mangoe (talk) 14:53, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete by WP:LISTCRUFT definition 6 list is unlimited and/or unmaintainable not to mention half of the list if not more do not have Wikipedia articles Freetheangels (talk) 15:20, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Easily passes WP:LISTN as there are extensive scholarly studies and analyses such as A Study of the Cognomina of Soldiers in the Roman Legions or A classification of the cognomina appearing in the Corpus inscriptionum latinarum. Some of these are still well-known such as Caesar or Cicero and, while there's a long tail of lesser-known names, our policies WP:ATD, WP:NOTPAPER and WP:PRESERVE indicate that we should keep this. Andrew D. (talk) 16:00, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * There's no way in hell WP:PRESERVE applies here. Every single item on the list needs to be sourced and corrected, or removed. Andrew, it's comments like the above that lead me to believe you auto-!vote in these AFDs without even looking at the articles under discussion. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 08:09, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:PRESERVE states that "as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained...". It seems quite clear that we would want to retain entries such as Caesar and so the policy applies.  Per the edit notice, "arguments citing relevant guidelines will be given more weight than unsupported statements".  My !vote therefore outweighs those which are not based on policies and evidence. Andrew D. (talk) 08:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The wording you quote clearly refers to removal of content within a page, not to page deletion. When citing PRESERVE in order to oppose deletion of articles, you imply that some information will be lost from the encyclopedia as a whole if this page is deleted. Your !vote, which is based on your own misinterpretation (although at this point it's seeming more and more like deliberate misrepresentation) of the policies and guidelines is worth a lot less than it would be if you were more careful.
 * Anyway, at present the vast, vast majority of the content of this page is not useful to readers. I might think differently if either (a) it had some prose discussion of the entries that don't have articles (... all of them? or just 99%?) or (b) it contained blue links to other articles that did. But at present, all the blue links seem to link to unrelated articles. This is a fact that even the page's creator has acknowledged in his "delete" !vote below.
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:01, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Andrew initially cited PRESERVE in conjunction with WP:ATD, which is explicitly part of deletion policy, and which your comments are not only contrary to but do not even demonstrate awareness of it. The principle, and his interpretation of what it means in practice, is the same in both policy sections: per ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." postdlf (talk) 17:00, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Andrew has a nasty habit of citing ATD as though "redirect, don't merge" was an alternative to deletion that was unacceptable as a reason to open an AFD, even though this runs counter to the longstanding community consensus on the matter. (Also, when people open RMs to move mainspace articles and Wikipedia essays into the userspace, those RMs seem to get opposed on the grounds that userfication is more typically associated with XFD than with RM.) In this case, redirecting to Cognomen or Roman naming conventions would be acceptable, but there's no way in hell that the content of this page should be merged into either of those without careful editing. If you or Andrew think that editing could improve the page so it need not be deleted or redirected, then the onus is on you, not Mangoe or even me, to do so; I don't know enough about Roman cognomina to put in the massive effort it would take to fix this page, if that is even possible. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 01:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Pure listcruft. &raquo; Shadowowl  &#124;  talk  17:31, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 17:36, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 17:36, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. We have 53 examples at Category:Ancient Roman cognomina, more than enough to merit a complementary, standalone index of articles per WP:LISTPURP and WP:CLN. So unless that category is somehow invalid (if it is, please demonstrate why), I'm not seeing any complaints here that can't be resolved by cleanup or development, such as by removing entries that don't merit articles. Also, LISTN is plainly satisfied by the existence of cognomen, which shows these are notable as a group. postdlf (talk) 18:32, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Userfy/Draftify until someone goes through the list and adds sources verifying all the content, and removes bad bluelinks that direct to unrelated articles. Virtually every one I clicked on was on (1) a completely unrelated topic, (2) a specific mononymous individual, or (3) an "anglicized" form of a "Greek" name (also unsourced, and I honestly don't know which to trust). The only reason I'm not saying delete is my belief that, in theory, this subject might merit a page, but the article as we have it now is pure crap; again I must draw attention to the painstaking work some of us put into making lists of this kind. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 03:38, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete I guess - it dates from the era of generating massive lists just to see what were red and blue links. I was going to mock it as being just a list of Roman nicknames - but I see we now have hordes of lists at lists of nicknames!  So perhaps the right approach for this is cut it down to cognomina of consuls, or senators, or emperors, or some other famous-Roman category (List of monarchs by nickname seems like a useful model, for instance. Stan (talk) 03:53, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. The rationale given by the nominator, WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE, clearly does not apply here.  This is not A, a summary-only description of works; B, a lyrics database; C, an excessive listing of unexplained statistics; or D, an exhaustive log of software updates.  Nor should it be necessary to reply to the bare assertion that the topic constitutes "listcruft".  There's a reason that WP:ITSCRUFT is a heading under "Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions".  Roman cognomina are discussed in a main article, and are the subject of scholarly treatises, some of which date back over a hundred and twenty years.  A list of them is easily longer than such an article ought to contain, and so a stand-alone list is justified under the criteria for lists.  Does everything in the list merit inclusion?  Probably not, as some of the entries give the appearance of not being cognomina.  In that case, the issue here is sorting out those entries that don't belong; but that's not a basis for deletion of the list.  Should the list consist largely of redlinks?  It's not that seemly, but you could get at least a paragraph out of quite a lot of entries that don't currently have them.  Chase divides his list of cognomina from the earliest volumes of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum into several main and a few minor categories by type, and within each type provides some indication of etymology for individual names; in addition to which there are encyclopedic mentions of some in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology or in the Roman grammarians and antiquarians; and information on the historical usage could potentially be gleaned from a simple list of individuals bearing certain cognomina from historical sources or inscriptions.  Should the redlinks be turned into plain text until entries are written?  Not necessarily, since the existence of redlinks encourages the development of articles where they can be justified, and no policy discourages them.  But again, that's not related to whether the article should be deleted.  The topic is plainly notable; the list is too long to go in a main article on the topic; and the contents can plainly be improved.  There's simply no justification for deleting this list.  P Aculeius (talk) 12:18, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Did you click on any of the links before writing the above? It seems like hardly any of them lead anywhere. As is -- without sources, links to other articles giving details (virtually all of the links appear to be broken), or inline prose descriptions -- the list is completely useless. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 12:46, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You seem confused by the purpose of a redlink. Redlinks are not (usually) "broken links" to articles that no longer exist, but links used to indicate that the creation of an article that doesn't yet exist is desired.  There's no time limit to how long a redlink should exist before it's removed or changed into normal text.  The bluelinks do lead somewhere; usually to persons bearing the cognomen in question, or to a place or object that explains what the surname refers to.  The page does link to "cognomen" at the top, and to "Roman naming conventions" at the bottom, and as those are the main articles for the subject, readers should refer there for explanation of what a cognomen is.  Individual cognomina can certainly be cited to specific sources, but doing so will require some time.  This is not a reason to delete the list.  Nor is the fact that some of the names do not appear to be genuine cognomina; these are reasons to edit and improve the list, not to delete it.  Articles on Wikipedia are not "useless" because they are in need of improvement—even substantial improvement.  Accordingly, while the list needs a lot of work, it's clearly not a candidate for deletion under any policy correctly cited in this discussion.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You misread my comment. The "broken links" I referred to were (clearly, if you look at my initial !vote, especially the diff I provided of my efforts on a similar list) blue links that direct to completely wrong articles. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 01:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't misread it. Links that redirect to articles about people bearing these cognomina aren't "broken".  A "broken" link isn't one that leads somewhere you didn't expect it to when you clicked on it.  It's one that doesn't work at all.  Clicking on a random sampling of bluelinks from the first few letters demonstrated that some of the names were redirected to the most prominent Romans bearing those cognomina, while others were to the objects described by the cognomina.  This isn't the only possible way that these links could go, but it's not inherently wrong, and it doesn't make them "broken".  Besides which, even if some of them lead to completely unrelated articles (for example, a former redlink shares a name with a more-recently created article under the same title), it's still not grounds for deletion.  It's grounds for disambiguation on an individual basis.  P Aculeius (talk) 02:18, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, if you're going to nitpick my supposed use of the phrase "broken link", I should point out that I didn't actually use that phrase; I said virtually all of the links appear to be broken. Referring to accidental Easter-egg links (and the page's creator, who is in favour of deletion, has essentially agreed they are accidental) as "broken" is not wrong, and saying that a page consisting of nothing but said accidental Easter-egg links should be deleted, redirected, userfied or draftified is in line with our policies and guidelines. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 02:52, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * From what I can see, the only limit to the size of the list is that there is a limited supply of documents from which to draw these. I honestly cannot see what use the list is: it comes across as something like "list of American middle names" or something. If there were some information tabulated for each name, which could be included in the list, I could see this, but at the moment the only thing I can see is delinking everything, and then, well, it's just a list of words, and we should not be a dictionary of Roman name-parts. Mangoe (talk) 14:17, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That's not a very good comparison. For one thing, "middle names" are by definition arbitrary, and often arbitrarily coined; neither is the case for Roman cognomina, which were surnames by definition ("surname" is the translation of "cognomen").  They were often, though not always hereditary, and frequently used to distinguish between families.  They were usually derived from regular Latin nouns or adjectives; sometimes ethnonyms or demonyms; never collections of random syllables and not generally bestowed with the sole purpose of giving someone a certain number of names.  Many of the more common ones not only have historical significance, but are the sources for modern personal names.  However, all of that could have been determined simply by reading the main articles on the topic.  More importantly, the fact that information that *could* go in an article isn't there isn't a valid reason to delete the article.  It's a reason to improve the article.  Simply put, this nomination is not justified by any criterion cited in this discussion.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep I think it is definitely worth keeping, as mentioned by others, although it does need some work. -- Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  23:09, 4 September 2018 (UTC)
 * "some" work? Every single item on the list needs to be (a) sourced and rewritten or (b) removed. There's literally nothing on the page worth preserving. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 01:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Working on fix at User:Iazyges/List of Roman cognomina1. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  01:19, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * If you're doing it in your userspace, essentially from scratch (seriously -- hardly any of the mainspace page is intact in your version) then what's the point in !voting "keep" for the mainspace page. You've essentially unilaterally fulfilled my preferred outcome by userfying the page yourself. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 04:54, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Comment I want to expand on what I said earlier. Article fails to meet WP:LISTCRUFT by definition 6 which is "The list is unlimited and/or unmaintainable" I feel like it fails definition 10 because the creator of the list provided no clear criteria for membership of the list and the Wikipedia article that he linked (Roman Cognomen does not provide a clear definition. Freetheangels (talk) 04:20, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The original name dump is certainly of unclear origin, added by an anon in 2002; I just split up and made links. I have a vague memory that there was a source page that would frequently show up in searches for a particular name, dunno if it still exists.  It might even have been somebody that crunched down the contents of the soldiers' cognomina book.  The book does suggest that we're pushing the envelope of noteworthiness by including some of the cognomina - "known from two inscriptions found near Trier" and the like. Stan (talk) 21:04, 5 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep and improve. Satisfies LISTN because Roman cognomina satisfy GNG as a group. It is also necessary to have a list of cognomina for navigational purposes (we generally have pages for surnames, ancient Romans whose names we know are generally notable, and we will need an index). Not indiscriminate at all. The list is limited and maintainable. Any referencing problem is being fixed by User:Lazyges. In view of the two separate versions of this page, I think a history merge will be needed. James500 (talk) 09:32, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. The list is notable and defined. The number of names that could be on the list is not infinite. It can be debated if the article should include all cognomina or only the noteworthy ones, but the list is fine. &mdash; Frayæ (Talk/Spjall) 16:49, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.