Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Retroactive nomenclature


 * 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 delete. General consensus is that this, while an interesting topic, has not been discussed enough to be notable, seems to be both OR and an essay. Eddie891 Talk Work 12:59, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Retroactive nomenclature

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Not verifiably notable. This essay has been unsourced since its creation in 2006 by an editor who has not edited since 2011, and has been tagged as unsourced since 2007. I came across it while stub-sorting because another editor had labelled it recently as a Stub, which it certainly isn't.

While the phenomenon discussed undoubtedly exists, there is no evidence that it has been recognised as a named entity, or given this name (which does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, while terms such as "retroactive continuity" and "retroactive inhibition" are included). Google search seems only to produce mirrors of this article, including a couple of YouTube videos of the article being read out by computer, and the option to buy a 92-page paperback book of the article for $67.53 from Australian Amazon, but no other use of the term. This suggests that the term has no notability, or indeed existence beyond Wikipedia. The talk page shows a couple of grumbles about the article from 2010 and 2011, but no-one seems to have suggested deleting it until now. Although there is no inter-wiki link in the left sidebar, Wikidata shows that there is a Spanish wikipedia article ... created by apparently the same editor, in April 2009 - one of his only 10 edits on that Wikipedia, 2006-2009.

Some of the content, if sourced, might fit into Anachronism, but that article has no mention of this phenomenon (on a quick scan for "nomenclature" or "name").

It's slightly sad to see an interesting article disappear, but there seem no grounds on which this article ought to be appearing in our encyclopedia. I suggest that the time has come to delete it. Pam D  15:32, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  Pam  D  15:32, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete. The strongest argument for deletion is OR, which this article certainly is, given the available Ghits.  Google Ngram comes up with zero occurrences.  That's sufficient grounds for a deletion.  Also the article is also completely unsourced as you might expect, a dictdef at best (if the term even existed outside of wikipedia), non-notable, its examples are a mess, and -- that seems like enough said.  --Lockley (talk) 22:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment The topic of the article itself seems encyclopedic, maybe it is simply the title that is problematic? I feel like I have come across discussion on this when reading about how people tend to refer to Roman emperors and other historic figures.★Trekker (talk) 17:54, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment This is a bit tricky. As the nominator notes, the phenomenon definitely exists (the example that immediately springs to mind for me is Octavius/Octavian/Augustus) and I agree with the comment above in that I think it is most likely notable, even if this term might not be used. The lack of use of this specific term of course makes it difficult to search for sources. Of course, WP:Notability depends on the existence of sources and not whether they are actually cited in the article per WP:NEXIST, and I'm inclined to give this article the benefit of the doubt in this regard (because I too feel like I have come across discussion on this, though I cannot recall exactly when or where). I don't think this qualifies under WP:DELREASON as a neologism, because the article is about the concept as opposed to the term. It might however qualify under WP:DELREASON (Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed). Even then, I am tempted to go with an WP:IAR keep, because I honestly think that the existence of this article improves Wikipedia (even in its current, unsourced state). It might be appropriate to change the title, but I have no suggestion as to what the new title should be in that case. TompaDompa (talk) 19:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A Google search did actually turn up a few uses of the term that are not from mirrors of this article. These uses are not all necessarily from WP:RELIABLE sources (such as this forum thread where somebody says Back in my day, we called it "hard rock." Hair metal is a retroactive nomenclature. We didn't call it hair metal then, but it sure is called that now.), but I would like to draw your attention to this source, which says We can look back on past actions of others and interpret what they did as an act of self-improvement, but if the concept of self-improvement did not exist yet, can what they did accurately be characterized as self-improvement? (Bochner, 1994) Nevertheless, this type of retroactive nomenclature says something about the attitudes that have prevailed since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. I also found not one, but two uses of the term "retroactive nomenclature" to mean retronym. TompaDompa (talk) 19:54, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Stifle (talk) 15:54, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * After some further searching, I found this source which discusses at some length the use of the name Augustus to describe Rome's first emperor before he was called that, including Virgil's use of the name in relation to the Battle of Actium (4 years before he was called that) and Horace's use of the name in relation to the Battle of Philippi (15 years before he was called that). TompaDompa (talk) 00:14, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes this is a common thing with the Roman imperial people, they're often known best by a single name but had many during their life (and a lot of the time some of their names were also the exact names of at least one of their relatives, which leads to a heap of confusion, hence why historians tend to stick with their best known name even if its anachronistic).★Trekker (talk) 00:19, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   11:01, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Sadly, while I initially agreed with TompaDompa comments above - that while this appears to be a concept that does exists, there are examples of it.....and the sort of thing there should be a page on. However I tend to now agree with other editors, the problems is, there isn't actual published discussion of the concept, and this article tends to be synthesis of different examples, with no overall commentary on the concept published.  Deathlibrarian (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This is an essay with valid sources for each individual cited case, but no source which covers the topic in a general way. While the phenomenon certainly exists, no source has been presented that support its WP:notability, and the non-prevalence of the term "retroactive nomenclature" already has been shown. So it is genuine OR. Changing the page title won't change this, only reliable sources could do so. –Austronesier (talk) 13:19, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, regretfully. I agree that this stuff is a) interesting and b) descriptive of a real phenomenon, as demonstrated by multiple examples. However, as long as there is no outside treatment of the topic under a unified term, we can't go ahead and collect these examples and assign a name to them. There's some overlap with retronym and maybe some of the material could be treated there, but again that would require someone (not us) explicitly and verifiably making that connection. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:03, 10 September 2020 (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.