Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)/Archive 7

Earlier discussion in Talk:Naming Conventions (Names and titles) Archive 5

Let me try to disentagle some issues here.....

I think much of the heat is that we are dealing with the minor issues of the naming conventions and missing the big problems.....

The current naming convention is ....

In general, use the most common form of the name used in English and disambiguate the names of monarchs of modern countries in the format {Monarch's first name and ordinal} of {Country} (example: Edward I of England).

The first problem here with East Asian monarchs is what exactly is meant by "first name." The literal interpretation is the first personal name. The trouble here is that East Asian monarchs had personal names, but in all but rare situations, no one knows or uses them. For example, the first emperor Qin Shi Huang was named Yin Zheng. Last name Yin. First name Zheng. A classicist might recognize the name Yin Zheng, but there is no one who would recognize the name Zheng, and Zheng I would make no sense to anyone. Since the personal names are not well known then if there is another emperor named Zheng (and I have no idea if there is or isn't), the literal convention would be Zheng II of China which absolutely *no one* (not even people who have doctoral degrees in Chinese history would recognize).

And to take another example, most people would recognize Cao Cao. But if you call him Cao, no one (including people with doctoral degrees in Chinese history) would have any idea what you are referring to.

Now you might say that the naming conventions exclude China. But the wording is far from clear. What exactly is a "monarch of modern country." Does that mean the monarch of a nation that currently exists as a modern country? Does that mean the monarch of a nation that is currently a monarchy? Does that mean a modern monarch, excluding monarchs of a country when it wasn't modern?

It's not clear what it means, and it's also not clear why this rule exists. After all, if we take this rule then kings of Prussia ought not to be labelled "of Prussia"

Now in the case of emperors Akihito of Japan and Hirohito of Japan, there is less of a problem because they do have first names that everyone reconized.

Akihito of Japan

1) First there is the question of redundancy and whether contextual information should be included. However this is actually a minor issue, and the fact that the arguments have focused on the this issue suggests that people don't understand what the big issues are.

2) One of the problems is that Akihito is his personal name. He was born with the name Akihito, if he gets deposed, he will still be Akihito.  If he didn't become emperor, he would still be Akihito. Members of the Japanese royal family don't have surnames, but this lack of surname has nothing to do with whether he would be emperor or not.  So in 1987, the article would be named Akihito, because he is a non-monarch.  In 1989, he becomes Emperor and then the article title is "Akihito of Japan".  This strikes me as a bit odd.

But Akihito is an easy case..... Lets take a look at his great-grandfather. Taking the naming conventions literally we would have

Mutsuhito of Japan

The problem here is that very few people (including I would guess most Japanese) would have any idea who you are talking about. Akihito and Hirohito are best known by their personal names, but all other Japanese emperors aren't. However if you use the name that almost everyone does use

Meiji

Then a light comes on. You mean the Meiji Restoration, the Meiji era. Ahhh!!! So what about

Meiji of Japan

Two problems

1) That's not what the convention says. Convention says to use the first name and Meiji was not the emperors first name.  His first name was Mutsuhito which no one uses and few people (including Japanese) would even recognize.

2) The bigger problem is that the name is wrong. Meiji was *not* the emperor's name and Meiji is not the name of a person at all.  Meiji is the name of a calendar period.  It so happens that some emperors are best known by their calendar periods, and some are not.  It gets more complex in that many emperors had multiple calendar periods, and it's possible (although I can't think of a case off hand) for a calendar period to extend across imperial reigns.

The proper academic term is

the Meiji emperor (note the small e and the *the* in front.

My personal preference would be to put the Meiji emperor under

Meiji emperor

Now one could argue for

Meiji emperor of Japan

The problem I have with this is that it gets much too easily confused with

Meiji, Emperor of Japan

Which is wrong since Meiji wasn't an emperor of Japan. Meiji wasn't an emperor at all. In fact, Meiji isn't even a human being. Mutsuhito was the emperor of Japan who ruled during the Meiji era and hence he is most commonly known in English and Japanese as the Meiji emperor.

So what is the problem here......

The first is that the current rules are just totally bad for most monarchies in East Asia and I suspect in other areas. If you follow the rules literally you come up with names that *no one* uses or would recognize. When I mean no one, I mean *no one* not Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, not high school students or experts in the field.

So even to get semi-recognizible names, the rules have to be amended. As they stand right now, they are *totally broken* for most east Asian monarches. Ironically, Hirohito and Akihito aren't the main problems. The naming conventions result in acceptable names for them, and I think that one problem in claiming support of Japanese historians was that the issue wasn't fully explained the problem to them. The problem is less with Hirohito and Akihito. The big problem is that every Japanese emperor other than Hirohito and Akihito, the current naming conventions result in total gibberish. This is also a problem with Chinese emperors. I know that it will also be a problem with Vietnamese and Malyasian monarchs. Curiously the current naming conventions work just great with Kings of Thailand.

The second is that the rules are ambiguious. It's not clear what "monarch of a modern state" is. Also this interacts in a curious way with the issue of Japanese emperors. Hirohito and Akihito for whom the naming conventions more or less work are leaders of recognizibly modern states. The problem is that for all of the other emperors (besides Taisho and Meiji) where not leaders of modern states.

The third is that the issues that people have been arguing about are in fact rather minor and secondary issues in the grand scheme of things. I think people are ignoring the big issues because of lack of understanding of East Asian naming conventions. For example, a lot of the arguments that have been posted fall apart when one realizes (and most Westerners do not) that Hirohito and Akihito are special exceptions as far as naming goes or that the naming conventions for Qing emperors are *completely* different from the naming conventions of Han emperors, and that these differences exist for a reason.

But you still (*sigh*) aren't answering the question of how on an english language world-wide sourcebook non-Asian people will be able to know where a monarch is from?


 * I would presume that they would read the article on the person. I still don't quite understand why where a person is from is such vital information that it has to be put in the title or this will help people find information.  If I know the name, I can read the article.  If I don't know the name, then why is this an issue.  I'm still not understanding.

--Roadrunner

And, yes, many people do know about the Asian nomenclature but you have not come up with a solution of where. And no, don't be so outrageous as to presume that the historians consulted don't know the full story. Some of them are Japanese historians, based in Japan but teaching abroad on academic leave. They know full well the story but they too say that Meiji emperor is useless in a world wide english language sourcebook, because it presumes the reader will possess the background information to recognise who and where. 90%+ of wiki users will not have a clue. If you add in other Asian monarchs with no stating of where; they could from anywhere from Outer Mongolia to the moon for all they know. No-one is saying you have to claim a state identity where they don't exist. But some indication of where is vital, it you are not going to have hundreds of monarchs listed who could be from anywhere, associated with any dynasty, location, etc.


 * The context information is going to come from the fact that the articles don't exist in isolation but are going to be crosslinked with every other article. It would help immensely if you illustrated a situation where adding location information in the title is going to help the user.  I can't think of one.  If the user ever saw "Meiji emperor" with no context, then this may be a problem, but presumably

the user is going to see "Meiji emperor" when he or she is looking at the article on the Meiji emperor or in a list of Japanese emperors or in a list of monarchs of the 19th century.


 * I still do not understand the point you are trying to make, and judging from the other posts on this list, I'm not the only one. -- Roadrunner

Because the Japanese will know is irrelevant. For billions worldwide, The Queen means only one person, Queen Elizabeth II. But wiki can't make that presumption, because millions of potential users don't understand that meetings. For millions (perhaps a majority on wiki right now), the President means the US president. But wiki cannot say that, because millions would not understand. The Pope for millions means John Paul II. But for millions of others, it could mean a coptic pope or rival antipopes. For most people the world over, Ireland means the Republic of Ireland. But wiki cannot say that because for others, it could mean Northern Ireland. And billions use England to describe the island of Britain or the United Kingdom, but wiki cannot use that meaning because it is factually wrong. So even if it is the most common name by a mile, it still cannot be used that way.

It simply isn't good enough to say 'but that is what they are called'. Wiki has to use terminology that someone in Capetown can understand, someone in Dublin can understand, someone in Rio can understand, someone in Canberra can under, just as someone in Tokyo. Unless there is some indication of the crucial question where, simply saying Meiji emperor is worse than useless to millions and millions and millions of people. ''What is the problem with saying [Meiji emperor (Japan)]. It is not claiming he was emperor of Japan, but giving some idea as to where on the planet he came from?''


 * Because it includes information that is not necessary to uniquely identify the subject of the article and goes against the wikipedia principle that article titles exist for disambiguation and not description.

Right now, what we have on wiki is an embarrassing incoherent utter mess, and that isn't counting the fiasco of all the treble and quadruple redirects Taku created and won't fix or take any responsibility for. Please come up with some idea for how monarchs who are not identified by kingdom can be contextualised. We can't use surnames. We can't use kingdoms. We can't use the nomenclature used elsewhere. What can we use?


 * Hyperlinks

Putting nothing on is as pointless and entering a reference to someone simply as Fred and expecting that or course everyone will be instantly able to know that is Fred from 14 High Street in Bournemouth. Peers sign their title as their name.


 * In Europe. Not in China or Japan.  I think a huge part of the problem is that you look at the name Meiji emperor and assume that Meiji is the name of a person and emperor is the title of the person.  You are looking at the name Meiji emperor as if they were the names of European royalty and assuming that it is shorthand for Meiji, Emperor of Japan.  I've been trying to explain to you that this isn't the case, and I'm still not certain that I'm getting through. -- Roadrunner

Imagine the chaos if we just had a page called Kilbranden and presumed thath everyone on the planet would know that actually is the Viscount Kilbranden of Leixlip in the Republic of Ireland. There is no other 'Kilbranden'; in fact there is not even one - I made it up. But the issue isn't simply disambigulation. 90% of names on wiki are unambiguous because they use name and surname. But with monarchs, you can't.


 * You can't with European monarchs. You can with Chinese ones.


 * Something that is extrenely frustrating is that you still have the assumption that imperial names in East Asia basically work the same as imperial names in Europe, and they do not. Chinese and Vietnamese emperors have surnames.  Chinese practice for most emperors is to use the name of the dynasty as a surname.  Japanese practice is different.

So you have, in what you suggest, a name and a title.


 * Sigh..... You would if you were dealing with European monarchs, but you aren't.  The thing that I'm not sure that you still comprehend is that "Meiji emperor" is *not* a name and a title.  Meiji is not a name of a person.  emperor is not a title which is why it is used in lower case.

It doesn't matter if there is only one such person worldwide. If you are talking about a monarch, you are talking about a monarchy.


 * And when you are talking about the Chinese and Japanese monarchies you are talking about institutions which are fundamentally different from European ones. Some of the differences in nomenclature result from the fact that Chinese imperial political theory regarded the Chinese emperor as something much more closely related to a republican head of state than a European monarch or head of state.  This is why Chinese emperors had surnames and quite ordinary personal names, and European monarchs did not.


 * The Chinese huang-ti and the Japanese tenno were named emperor because these were the most convenient terms that Europeans could find. The problem with this terminologies is that it presumes that these institutions were analogous to European institutions where they were not.  The Japanese have done a good job of "fitting" the institution of the emperor into something like the European constitutional monarch, but if you go before 1850 for most of the history of the Japanese emperor court, the Japanese emperor was *far* more analogous to the office of Pope than it was to any European monarch.

And people may want to read about another monarch from there, but all you are offering is a list of monarchs with no indication to the user as to which ones belong to which lists, unless they keep jumping back and forth between lists. We don't expect everyone else to keep relying on an index to make head or tail of information. Why should we demand it of anyone else, why demand in of people trying to follow Asian monarchies?


 * You are again making an assumption based on European practice that is not warranted and that is that there is a single list of Chinese emperors and a single list of Japanese emperors. In fact it was common for there to be three or four Chinese emperors simultaneously.  In fact that concept of an illegitmate emperor really makes no sense in Chinese imperial theory, and the naming conventions reflect this.

The argument of 'but it is accurate' is irrelevant. If we went for absolute accuracy, we would refer to King Henry VIII of England, Ireland and France (his claimed titles). Or James II/VII of England, Scotland, Ireland and France. We don't do that. We use one umabigious title with his most widely identified state.


 * And in the Chinese and Japanese political context, there were no states in the European sense.

We all know the problem, you don't have to keep telling us. But what solution is there that can work worldwide? That is the problem people seem unwilling to answer.


 * I'm trying to. One of the first things to do is to lay out exactly why the current naming conventions produce gibberish in non-European contexts.

STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:32 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

You type too much Jay. ;) - &#35918&#30505sv PS: And RR, all the rest of you morons need to sign your sig after each entry.

I know :) Sv. It comes from writing 500,000 words in two books. I am so used to typing I kinda keep doing it. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:45 Mar 14, 2003 (UTC)

JTD, Taku and I have cleaned up nearly all of the double and triple redirects relating to Emperor of Japan. While you were, ahem, complaining we got the job done. "Some whine, some dine, and others foot the bill." I don't know what that means but it sounds cute :-) --Uncle Ed

JT said:
 * "But you still (*sigh*) aren't answering the question of how on an english language world-wide sourcebook non-Asian people will be able to know where a monarch is from"
 * How about: RTFA (Read The Fricken Article) - just like anything else here. The extent of our hand-holding stops at titling articles based on common usage, properly defining subjects and providing context for terms by introducing them the first time they appear in articles (Thus any emperor should be introduced as such the first time they are mentioned/linked to in any article).

Our poor 13 year old sees the word "muon" and doesn't know what it is. So the 13 year old does one of two thing: 1) reads the sentence in which the word occurs in order to extract the context from the sentence, or 2) he clicks on muon and reads the first line of that article.

Also check out my response to you on the mailing list here. In short, nobody uses the "of country" convention for Asia monarchs and there is no reason to disambiguate unique terms. mav

The Japanese imperial court does. Japanese diplomats do. Japanese linguistic experts say to. So does the Japanese foreign ministry. The press releases issued in english by the Emperor does. If it is good enough for the Emperor of Japan, the Japanese government and Japanese diplomats, why is it not good enough for Wikipedia? or is wikiworld a form of linguistic disneyword? STÓD/ÉÍRE


 * You are confusing titles with names. The webpage of the current US President calls him President George W. Bush yet our article on him is at George W. Bush. I'm sure other world leaders past and present are the same. Also in my email I reference above I list what other encyclopedias do. That is our model. And not a single one of them use your proposed format. Britannica in fact could not find "Hirohito of Japan" and every reference to this person I've seen in reference publications like Wikipedia have been simply at "Hirohito". I just checked dict.org - they haven't heard of "Hirohito of Japan" either. But they have heard of "Hirohito. --mav


 * Just reiterating my support for simple titles (e.g., Hirohito). No need for me to write at greater length&#8212;Mav has expressed my view perfectly. Tannin 04:51 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)


 * I'm tired of this back and forth. We obviously are not going to convince each other. I call for a vote so that we can be done with this. --mav 05:43 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

As I have had to say at least twenty times (Jeez, how many more times???), monarchical titles differ from republican heads of state because the latter are individuals who for a short period of times, four years, five years, seven years, eight years, fourteen years, depending on term length and how many terms, hold an office. An article deals with a republican leader who will have held numerous posts. George Bush was a president, a governor, etc. Paddy Hillery was a president, an EEC Commissioner, a Minister for External Affairs, a Minister for Labour, a Minister for Industry and Commerce, a Minister for Education, a TD, a county coroner, a medical doctor. A monarch will almost certainly never have held other posts or another career and when they inherit the throne, they will hold it almost always for life. Queen Elizabeth was queen, heir preparing to be queen. . . em. . . that's it. Hirohito was emperor and crown prince. Peter Hollingsworth is Australian governor-general, an Archbishop, a bishop, a clergyman, etc. So monarchs are written by virtue of a lifelong title. Non monarchs are written about personally because all their careers are shortlived and transcient, not lifelong in any one post. STÓD/ÉÍRE 18:27 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)


 * Please stop quarrelling, lads. You know you want the same things - you're only disagreeing about how to get there. LOL. Deb 11:17 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)


 * What about dictators? Hasn't Castro been in power for nearly 50 years now and will be dying as President - that is way longer than most monarchs. Again, I call for a vote so that we can be done with this. --mav

I propose we use whatever is most commonly used to name that person. For example, Henry St John, Viscount Bolinbroke appears to comply with the current standards, however, it is not what the average editor will user to refer to this person in a link. Susan Mason

Oh great, the usual notorious behaviour from Lir/Vera/Susan/Dietary. Find an agreed rule and decide that because Adam doesn't like it, he wants to change everything. The answer is NO, ADAM. This was all agreed by a consensus ages ago. Of course we don't know if you took part, of if you did what 'name' you were using then! Stop trying to screw up agreed rules. The last whinge was over how names should be used on lists. You tried to screw the lists on the Second World War by creating a ludicrous Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, vandalised 172's work on imperialism, caused bitter rows on idolitary. Maybe it is about time Adam's family of fictional contributors were all collectively banned. STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:59 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

Before you suggest banning someone, I suggest you look at your own conduct that continuously violates Mr. Wales' dictum. If you like, I have a large list of some of your sayings. Should I post them for all to read? God bless and may you live a long and happy life at Wikipedia. User:Black Widow

Good old DW, always hovering with a gripe!!! STÓD/ÉÍRE 22:16 Apr 11, 2003 (UTC)

I don't even want to talk to you jtdirl. You are rude. Susan Mason


 * I'm intrigued that, in your previous comment, you said you had started the list of World War II people. I thought that was started by Dietary Fiber??? Deb 16:13 Apr 12, 2003 (UTC)

Archived 15.04.03