Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics/Etymology/Archive 1

I just did a bit of spring-cleaning on the Project Page. I made a User Template for the Project; I eliminated links to "New Articles" which were over 1 year old; I eliminated a reference to a category page which didn't exist (i.e. loanwords); and I eliminated a link to a page which was said to be FA-class content but which had subsequently ceased to be FA class (i.e. etymologies of Ohio counties). Calypygian (talk) 03:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Etymology
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Macedonia (terminology) FAR
Macedonia (terminology) has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

Suggested project
I'd like to propose working on some sort of standardized title for articles dealing with the etymology of a word or term. Currently, one will find scattered across Wikipedia several etymological articles with varying titles, making browsing somewhat confusing. Here are some examples: While I imagine some of these articles would be better off being merged with their subject, certain word histories that contain enough information to justify their own encyclopedia article should (in my opinion), have some sort of common titling protocol. Any thoughts on the matter? Oh, and if this is a topic better addressed somewhere else (or that has already been addressed on another page), please direct me there. Steamroller Assault (talk) 22:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Origin of the name x, i.e. Origin of the name California
 * Name of x, i.e. Name of Argentina
 * x (word), i.e. Jazz (word)
 * Etymology of x, i.e. Etymology of ham radio
 * History of the word x, i.e. History of the word 'fuck'
 * Etymology of the name of x, i.e. Etymology of the name of Julius Caesar
 * ...and many others.

I favor Etymology of 'x', e.g. Etymology of 'Argentina'. It's simple, precise, unambiguous, and I think appropriate to most of these articles. Quantumelfmage (talk) 07:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Move Etymology to Wiktionary
It's always seemed odd to me that etymology sections occur in Wikipedia instead of in Wiktionary. Isn't the etymology more closely related to the word rather than the encyclopedic content? Books on etymology are always considered 'dictionaries' of etymology, so doesn't it make sense for this content to be treated under Wiktionary?

Does anyone know if there has been discussion of this? I haven't seen any, but I think it would improve overall Wikimedia organization. Quantumelfmage (talk) 06:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I suppose you are right. Etymologies certainly belong in Wiktionary, and having them here too is a bit redundant. We'd need to place wiktionary templates in our articles much more consistently, though (and probably at the top of pages so that they can be found easily). There should also be a broader discussion, I think, than just on WP Etymology. This is not a very active project, I'm afraid. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
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Thanks. — Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:07, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Suggested article for etymology attention
I find this section on toadstool interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kostmo (talk • contribs) 22:16, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Conceptual forms
"Etymology" generally refers to the word, but in reality words represent concepts, and where etymologies jump languages and cultures, the tracing of such etymologies is well understood to be a conceptual endeavor, not just a linguistic one. It may help people if they better understood this more abstact modality of writing etymologies, and in turn this would help them improve their contributions. -Stevertigo 01:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Featured article review
nominated Macedonia (terminology) for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

FAR Names of the Greeks
nominated Names of the Greeks for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Regards, &mdash; Mattisse (Talk) 16:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

-logy at AfD, feedback requested
Please comment at Articles for deletion/-logy, regarding the AfD of -logy. We could use some feedback on the "encyclopedic potential" of articles like this, and whether it is appropriate information for Wiktionary at all, otherwise the nominator intends to delete much of Category:Suffixes (eg old afd for -ismWikipedia:Articles for deletion/-holism). More context at this Talk:-logy thread. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 16:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * -logy, -ism, Wiktionary:Category:English suffixes; there huge numbers of affixes in the wiktionary; that's the kind of dictionaries do, and do very well. The Wikipedia has never even got out of the gate on this kind of thing. WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary is a core policy.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Lists of loanwords
I wonder if one of you could help with this debate? Most of the terms in Category:Italian loanwords appear to be musical terms, many of which are hardly common currency in English. There is also some debate as to what exactly a loan word actually is. Is exit a Latin loanword? Is music (from Fr. musique) a loanword even though it has been changed orthographically? Which words aren't loanwords in English? Help appreciated! --Jubilee♫ clipman 17:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
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Etymology articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Etymology articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

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For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 22:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Etymologies not related to article subject
Hi, I reverted your edits considering etymologies, per WikiProject Etymology. A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 12:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * What? I don't see how Wikiproject Etymology somehow allows additions of etymology sections completely irrelevant to the topic of the article. Could you please explain? --Yair rand (talk) 21:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry but I don't understand... how can etymology of the article title be irrelevant to the topic of the article?? A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 21:58, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The article title itself is irrelevant to the topic of the article. The article title is the English word that represents the topic of the article. On Wiktionary, pages deal with words, and thus give etymologies, pronunciation, etc. on those pages. On Wikipedia, articles deal with the actual concepts/things that the word represents. This distinction is pretty important. (On Wiktionary, my home project, the distinction is really important :). ) Furthermore, the etymology sections specifically dealt with the English word, ignoring all the other thousands of words in other languages that equally represent the concept, which is basically giving an English-speaking point of view. I know you've spent quite a lot of time on these etymologies, but they are really out of the scope of the articles and the project at large. Most of them should be simply deleted, and those that aren't redundant to Wiktionary's content should be transwikied. --Yair rand (talk) 22:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, WikiProject Etymology states: The scope of this project includes articles about etymology itself and related topics (e.g. etymology, loanword), articles about the origins of particular words (e.g. List of U.S. state name etymologies, names of the Greeks), and etymology sections within articles on other topics (e.g. Ginkgo biloba#Etymology)... A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 22:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Etymology is not policy. Certain articles may have a name or a word as their subject, or have information related to the name that is distinctly notable, and information about the words themselves could be in the article. Most articles are not about names or words. Leaving aside for a second the issue of whether information about words of languages that represent the relevant topic are closely related enough and notable to be included, I don't see how etymologies can be in articles. Assuming that the etymologies wouldn't put forward an Anglo-centric viewpoint by excluding any information related to non-English words that represent the subject of the article, the etymology simply wouldn't fit. After a few dozen languages, the section would be larger than the entire rest of the article, and would have to be split off into something like "Etymology of (subject)", which clearly isn't something that is needed on Wikipedia for every single word. In addition, there is no real benefit of duplicating massive amounts of Wiktionary content for every word that has an article on a project which doesn't have a lexicographic focus. Do you disagree with any of these points individually? Perhaps the issue should be taken to the Village Pump? --Yair rand (talk) 23:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I think better to take it to WikiProject Etymology talk-page and see the opinion of project's members. A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 07:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

To summarize my points in the above collapsed discussion: Since the "Etymology" sections of many articles are largely unrelated to the actual topic of the article, and the sections will virtually always be either from an English-speaking point of view or far larger than the rest of the article, and the information is clearly out of scope of both the article and the project at large (being clearly Wiktionary's domain), I suggest that etymology sections in articles where the etymology of the English word representing the topic is not particularly significant to the subject itself should be removed, or, where the information is not redundant to Wiktionary's content, transwikied. (Examples of articles with irrelevant etymology sections: Acoustics, Oyster, Lexicology.) (This is not including articles that are actually about things that actually have etymologies themselves, such as articles about names or words.) Thoughts? --Yair rand (talk) 06:24, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I generally agree with Yair rand, although I might not go as far as he would. By policy, Wikipedia articles are about things, not generally about the words that describe them. The subject of the article oyster is the sea creature, not the word oyster. Except in rare cases, etymology will be at best of peripheral relevance to a Wikipedia article. (There are rare cases where articles are actually about a word rather than a thing. I'm not talking about those.) I don't object to including etymology if it is interesting or sheds some light on the history of the subject, but in most cases readers looking for etymological information should be consulting Wiktionary instead. Etymology should rarely appear in the introduction and almost never in the first sentence of an article.--Srleffler (talk) 04:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Macedonian: I don't think the project page's mention of "etymology sections within articles on other topics" should be taken to imply that all or even most articles should have an etymology section. Rather, it means that when articles do have such a section, it falls within the scope of this project. --Srleffler (talk) 04:47, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

"Etymology" sections are often unfortunately so titled, and would be better of with a title of "Name" or "Terminology". Etymology is only one aspect of clarifying the terminology of the article topic.

Now there are articles which clearly do not need an etymology section. For example, Geography of Asia clearly needs to explain neither the term "Geography" nor the term "Asia". This is because it is a WP:SS sub-article of Asia. It is the job of the article Asia to explain the term "Asia", which will obviously include a brief treatment of its etymology. Similarly, the Robert Taylor article doesn't need an etymological explanation of either "Robert" or "Taylor". But of course the Robert (name) and Taylor (surname) crucially need such an explanation. WP:UCS please.

To give my opinion on A Macedonian's reverts:
 * I agree with this revert. The acoustics article should briefly explain the origin of the word.
 * I only partially agree with this edit. The Lexicology article does not need to explain Greek terms such as λέξις, λόγος or λέγω. This is over the top. The explanation of the term lexicology is that it is an English word coined in the 19th century (there was no Ancient Greek *λεξικολογία), from the English term lexicon and the English -logy suffix. The end. The Greek roots of these components can safely be delegated to Wiktionary. Explaining how -λογία arises from λέγω is irrelevant for the purposes of the article. This is what I mean when I say WP:UCS.

The only article on Wikipedia that needs to go into the etymology of -logy is -logy. All others can just link there, or to wikt:-logy. --dab (𒁳) 10:40, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * If I understand correct we should then give the etymon of the English word without necessary (even if it's interesting and definitely harmless) trace where this etymon comes from. Do we have a consensus on that? A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 12:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would think that a very brief etymology of the word might be helpful in certain articles where it might help the reader understand the subject's history and thus worthy of inclusion, but I don't see how it can be given in an article without violating NPOV and giving an English-speaking point of view. By explaining the origin of the word "acoustics" while ignoring its translations, the article is no longer simply explaining the concept in English, it is explaining English itself, in an article not related to it. Though in articles such as Oyster, Box, Bottle, Cyan, Logic, Navy, and Pharmacy, even if it weren't an NPOV issue, the etymology does not seem helpful. --Yair rand (talk) 14:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * We have consensus that when it is appropriate to give any etymology at all, it is generally only appropriate to give the first step: the immediate source of the English word. We do not have consensus that it is always (or even often) appropriate to even do that.--Srleffler (talk) 03:39, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Books Ngram Viewer
I added a request at Village pump (technical) to bring in the Books Ngram Viewer dataset to Wikipedia and to create a template to make use of it. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the feasibility of this, but the Ngram Viewer seems like a great resource for etymology nonetheless, particularly in tracing when a specific word or term came into being. Inverse Hypercube  01:16, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Advice on term?
Is this project active? I wonder if we can have some advice? The etymology section of Burlesque is currently contradictory. I wonder if someone can help sort it out? -- Klein zach  03:35, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Citation templates now support more identifiers
Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as citation, cite journal, cite web...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place id (or worse http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use 0123.4567, likewise for id and http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 &rarr; 0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Please review seriousness v. proposed deletion as parody of new article Names of small numbers at Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers
Etymology WikiProject members, this is being discussed at:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Names of small numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Names_of_small_numbers#Names_of_small_numbers

Please also consider what additional sections from binary and other numbering systems and from educationally, historically, linguistically and epistemologically significant concepts and works, including fractions and parts of wholes other than simple number-base exponential systems, including terms from currencies, agriculture, art media, and pre-modern English language names of small portions should be made to this topic as a kept article, especially subtopics which may not be generally known by Wikipedian editors in other particular fields. Etymology for some SI and Metric terms is included in their respective articles to which this one is linked; please consider what portions and extents of etymological information from those sources and what other sources are appropriate to add to this article as well.

Thank you. Pandelver (talk) 04:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Template:Etymology
I'm afraid that I was unaware of this WikiProject until today, but I have been involved with etymologies on Wikipedia for several months now. In particular, myself and others coded Template:Etymology in order to make in-line etymologies of a consistent style. For example, the code,, yields, Example. Of course a real etymology would give a fuller description of the origin and progression of a word, including date of first use, etc. However, as was noted in our discussion and by others, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and fuller etymologies would be better placed at Wiktionary.com and simply linked to from WP article pages. Since writing the template I have (mostly) deployed it only where etymologies already exist, but present style issues. I'm a designer, not a linguist. Also, I seem to be the only person using the template! Perhaps the members of this WikiProject might wish to make greater use of it. :) Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

"Friends of" organization at AfD
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Friends of organization. Lots of etymology in the "Friends of" organization article, can it be saved?

Charles Boycott, Featured article candidate
Hi, I have nominated Charles Boycott, an article possibly of interest to members of this project for featured article. Feel free to comment on the article at Featured article candidates/Charles Boycott/archive1. Thanks, Quasi  human  &#124;  Talk  20:14, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Proposal of WikiProject Applied Linguistics
Hi everyone, I have made a proposal over at the WikiProject Council to start WikiProject Applied Linguistics. I would be grateful to hear your thoughts about how this project might fit into the larger scheme of WikiProjects at Wikipedia. The proposal page can be found at WikiProject Council/Proposals/WikiProject Applied Linguistics. Thanks for your time. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 04:43, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see the thread below for the updated version of this proposal. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 10:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Linguistics proposal: your comments are requested
I have created a proposal that the smaller daughter WikiProjects of WikiProject Linguistics be converted into task forces. This would mean that this WikiProject would be converted to WikiProject Linguistics/Etymology Task Force. Your feedback on this matter would be much appreciated. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics. Regards —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 10:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)