Talk:Aud the Deep-Minded

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[edit] Naming the article

Thanks a bunch for your help on Auður "djúpúðga" Ketilsdóttir. Rather than bog down the Iceland article, I thought I'd ask you some questions here about a future article on her. Right now I've written a brief statement about her at Aud, which was originally a one-line stub for a mythological use, but which I've expanded into a disambiguation page for the three uses I know. Anyway, here are two more questions:

1. Is "Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir" Old Norse (which, if I understand correctly, was the language in use by the Vikings), or is it in a modern language?
2. You used the above link in your response, but I suspect that wouldn't be an optimum title for an en:Wikipedia article. I can think of several useful English, Latinate transliterations, and non-English titles based on your input:
   • Aud the Deep-Minded
   • Aud Ketilsdottir (Ketilsdatter, etc.)
   • Aud Djupaudga
   • Auður djúpúðga
   • Auður Ketilsdóttir

   I infer from the long-form name you provided that the language used does not capitalize nicknames, whereas English does. I also assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that it doesn't use quote marks around nicknames, but that you did this to emphasize it was a nickname. Regardless, an en:Wikipedia article typically strives for easy keyboard entry, making the use of Auður and djúpúðga problematic, although I've seen rare articles use such Unicode characters in their titles. Ketilsdóttir isn't too hard, since many English keyboards can produce some extended Latin characters without too much trouble (in MS Windows, at least). I'm personally leaning toward Aud the Deep-Minded, as it's how I've seen her most often mentioned in my English references; the others can be made redirects. What are your thoughts on a reasonable title for an en:Wikipedia article? — Jeff Q (talk) 00:04, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir" is modern Icelandic and probably counts as her full name in the modern understanding, I believe a persons full name is the propper wikipedia article name. However there should maybe be redirecting articles on "Audur djupudga", "Audur djupudga Ketilsdottir", "Audur Ketilsdottir" etc... --Sindri 00:14, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I prefer proper names, too, but would a modern Icelandic version be her proper name, since it didn't exist when she did? Do you know what her name was originally? If we have to use a modernized version, some would argue that it makes more sense to use an Anglicized version for an English encyclopedia (just as it would be modern Icelandic for an Icelandic one, or transliterated or translated Cyrillic for a Russian one). These questions aside, my two biggest concerns about the Icelandic version are getting people to type that ð (not to mention two ús and an ó), and how en:Wikipedia readers are likely to think to look her up. (All variations would be in the article, of course.) I was reading the Naming conventions of Iceland article while you were responding here (having found it at Björk, whose song "Oceania" I just can't get out of my head!), but it didn't seem to cover names for encyclopedia articles, where it's important to disambiguate people over hundreds of generations. Your suggestion would seem to be a unique description of her (although Auður djúpúðga is probably sufficient), but at the cost of a lot of ALT-key typing for English readers. If she had a "surname", it would be easier to follow usual en:Wikipedia convention, but without it, her historically well-known nickname seems more appropriate, at least to me. — Jeff Q (talk) 00:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Egill Skallagrímsson and Snorri Sturluson both have articles with the modern Icelandic spelling titles. In fact old norse was not spelled with a roman alphabet but runes, but modern Icelandic is pretty close to old norse so it's probably the next best thing. It actually seems to me in many cases such as in the articles about Norwegian kings what is listed as old Norse is in fact modern Icelandic. --Sindri 03:37, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Of course, neither Egill nor Snorri have that darned crossed-D, and Auður's got two of 'em! Oh, well. Do you really think all three names should be used? Many have argued that full names are needlessly cumbersome unless they're how someone is best known (e.g., John Kenneth Galbraith). I hadn't seen any references to "Aud the Deep-Minded Ketilsdottir" (or the transliterated or Icelandic equivalents). Would Auður Ketilsdóttir be sufficiently unique? Would Auður djúpúðga be sufficient? Should we capitalize "Djúpúðga", based on en:Wikipedia's proper-noun capitalization policy? After all this article-naming contemplation, I think actually writing the article will be anticlimactic. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 04:13, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you should go ahead and write the article. There are at least tree women named Auður Ketilsdóttir living today. Only one person has ever been called djúpúðga. If you fear the ð just create another article using d and redirect to the main article. --Sindri 11:10, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't be surprised if you think I'm being silly about the article title, but take a look at Talk:Joshua A. Norton (and the Edit History of its article) for an example of how heated naming issues of famous people can get. Despite the section header titles, nearly every comment on that lengthy page is about what to call him, when it doesn't devolve into personal attacks against opposing editors. Auður's case is somewhat different, as her names were all given to her, not assumed by her, but the arguments about most-common, best-known, most-appropriate, etc. naming are similar, and they didn't even involve the sensitive Unicode character issue. — Jeff Q (talk) 13:36, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't really expect the name you give the article to stick, but the end result will be similar to the Joshua Norton article. Now Emperor Norton, Norton 1, Norton I of the United States, Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States, Joshua Norton, Norton I and Joshua Abraham Norton all link to the same article, so something good has actually come from the whole dispute since those are all different names/titles for the same person. You, I and others interested in Auður djúpúðga will probably move the article around creating similar links. Aud Deep-Minded, Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir, Auður djúpúðga, Auður Ketilsdóttir etc... all identify the same person and should link to the article about her. --Sindri 15:50, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for putting your money where our mouths are, Sindri, and just creating the article anyway. I guess I was a bit gun-shy after some of the absurd battles I've participated in, especially as I'm no expert on Norse history. Kudos for being bold! — Jeff Q (talk) 20:01, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Icelandic characters

The recomended practice is to put special characters directly into the text, html character entities are intended as a fallback if that's imposible. There are buttons below the edit textarea to enter special characters directly. See help on special characters for more info. --Sindri 10:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That same page currently says that eth (ð) is in the unsafe characters set, which presumably should be entered using the entity references instead. On the other hand, "ð" does show up in Preview, so it would seem to be safe to enter in ISO-8859-1-based en:Wikipedia. That's one of the problems of the Wiki systems — nothing prevents articles from being self-contradicting, other than time and attention from its contributors. (I find the statement "128-159 are used in ISO-8859-1, but not ISO 8859-1" particularly amusing.) Those of us who don't deal with non-ASCII characters on a regular basis find this stuff hard enough to follow without the internal lack of consistency. Oh, well. ☺ — Jeff Q (talk) 19:28, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Þ, þ, Ð and ð are part of the ISO-8859-1 character set and if a browser can render ð to ð it should also render the character itself correctly. Am I correct? (Do you see ð and ð as the same character?)--Sindri 11:17, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As far as I can tell with my Opera 7.23 and Firefox 1.0.1 browsers, there's no problem, which leads me to believe Meta's "unsafe characters" text is out-of-date. — Jeff Q (talk) 21:29, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sagas in which she is mentioned

She is mentioned in all these sagas, right? I am sure of Njal's Saga, Laxdaela saga and Grettis Saga.

dino 04:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)