Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 July 8

= July 8 =

Spanish 'last name, first name' order - for bibliography
Can someone familiar with Spanish naming conventions help me put the following names into the "last name, first name" order: e.g. Smith, John. With some of them, I'm unsure where the middle names end and the last name begins.


 * M.ª Milagros Macías López,


 * Ana M.ª Niveau-de-Villedary y Mariñas,


 * Natalia López Sánchez

Thanks, 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 20:31, 8 July 2022 (UTC)




 * Given name(s) || + || surname
 * M.ª Milagros || + || Macías López
 * Ana M.ª || + || Niveau-de-Villedary y Mariñas
 * Natalia || + || López Sánchez
 * }
 * --Lambiam 06:52, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Where "M.ª" is an abbreviation for the first name "María". Mathglot (talk) 03:14, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Natalia || + || López Sánchez
 * }
 * --Lambiam 06:52, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Where "M.ª" is an abbreviation for the first name "María". Mathglot (talk) 03:14, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Singular nouns in plural form
There are a few cases where a plural noun takes an indefinite article (a or an), as if it were singular.

The one that comes readily to mind is Penelope Keith referring to "a zoological gardens" in that very funny short radio play by Brian Sibley, "And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree" (1977), about her lover bringing her, day by day, literally all of the gifts specified in "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

Another I've just come across is "a diaries", in Simon Callow's memoir Love is Where it Falls, about his friendship with Peggy Ramsay. It may be a typo, I suppose. The context is that he was sorting through Peggy's books after her death:
 * Digging further, I discovered ... two exercise books ... filled with writing in Peggy's imperious hand. At first they seemed to be a diaries, but on examination proved to be commonplace books ...".

What's this exception called? Other examples? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * This seems to happen a lot with Latin/Greek-origin words with unusual (for English) plural forms: a phenomena, a criteria, a bacteria.  Also a dice, which is not exactly the same pattern.  But that doesn't seem to match your cases, which have regularly formed English plurals. --Trovatore (talk) 23:40, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Surely you're not suggesting that "a phenomena" or "a criteria" are acceptable? I can grudgingly accept "a bacteria". But not "a vertebrae" or "an alumni". --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:45, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There's a reason I used !xt. --Trovatore (talk) 03:39, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Isn't the 'correct' form "a die", with "dice" being an oddly spelled plural? I guess "a series" is correct, however. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:43, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Again, I put it in red for a reason, not just for decoration. --Trovatore (talk) 16:07, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * That makes two of us who don't understand what that reason may be. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * If you follow the link to !xt you'll see it explained (admittedly not right at the top) that it's to be used for examples of text that are to be discouraged. It's sort of a MOS thing; I repurposed it here slightly, to indicate what I consider bad grammar rather than specifically something to avoid in Wikipedia.  The linguist's formulation might be, with the star.  I likewise repurpose xtg to indicate the use–mention distinction in cases where quotes or italics seem not quite right or too overloaded. --Trovatore (talk) 20:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd already read that but failed to pick up that point. If I may say so, it's a somewhat abstruse way of marking a text as undesirable. I think the point would be lost on most readers. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:24, 9 July 2022 (UTC)


 * You'll find plenty of examples of a scissors. For the books in Peggy's hand, of which there are two, I suppose that the text should have read, "At first they seemed to be diaries, but ...". While I can easily imagine that the late Miss Cynthia Bracegirdle, in her agitated state of mind, misspoke, might it be possible that the article in the passage, rendered in a transcript as "I swear there's more mooing, cooing, honking, clucking and calling here than in the zoological gardens", was misheard? --Lambiam 06:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're correct about dear Cynthia. I'd always heard it as "a", but here at 11:51 it's undoubtedly "the", if slightly muddled. But this site flogging diaries used "a diaries" no less than 9 times. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Diaries is never acceptable as a singular noun. This was not written by a human. It's possible to create machine-generated pages for the purpose of getting as many pages out there as possible, substituting in different product names in order to generate affiliate or advertising clicks. See for example, their article about Top Best Warm Affordable Coat Women. Or maybe you're more interested in the 10 Best Seat Cushion For Truck? They don't bother with editorial to patch it up after, because there are too many of them. I count 48,000 pages like these. Bot. Mathglot (talk) 03:31, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
 * What a useful review site. I immediately ordered a warm affordable coat woman. My old affordable coat woman was getting a bit cold. And what useful advice. "" I wish they had told me this earlier. --Lambiam 08:52, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess that puts that one to bed. There's no name for a plural noun taking an indefinite article, because no such phenomenon exists - "a scissors" being the obvious exception, but that still refers to a single (if not singular) object. Thanks, all. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:40, 10 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Also, I'd guess "a series" would qualify. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 02:12, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the trick there is that "a series" refers to one series, while "five series" refers to multiple series. Like the identical singular and plural forms of "sheep", it's a homograph/homonym - they're spelt the same and pronounced the same, but mean different things. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  02:21, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, "series" is both singular and plural. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:34, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
 * All Latin nouns of the fifth declension have the same form for the plural nominative as for the singular. Nouns formed with the suffix -iēs all belong to this class. When English borrows such words as countable nouns, it uses the nominative forms and thus retains this peculiarity, also observed in colluvies, congeries and species. --Lambiam 09:22, 12 July 2022 (UTC)