Talk:Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move. —Nightstallion (?) 10:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg → Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick … Rationale: We should use English; and this Duke is notable as a general in the Wars of the French Revolution, in which he is invariably called Duke of Brunswick

[edit] Views

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• Support as nom. This is the usage of the New Cambridge Modern History. Septentrionalis 22:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• I don't specifically care where the article is, but I would point out that right now Duke of Brunswick is a redirect to Duchy of Brunswick, and should probably be a disambiguation, with this particular duke mentioned prominently. Whether we use "Karl Wilhelm" or "Charles William", though, "Duke of Brunswick" is probably more appropriate than "Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg", which is downright obscure, even if technically correct. - Jmabel | Talk 00:13, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggest relevant, accurate information not sacrificed; let a redirect take care of "Brunswick" → "Brunswick-Lüneburg". Alternatively, if title changed to "of Brunswick", ensure something along the lines of "(properly the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg)" included near the start of the article. Regards, David Kernow 00:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the alternative, although the NCMH index (only) calls him Brunswick-Bevern. I suspect the situation is complicated enough to warrant a paragraph of its own. Septentrionalis 23:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. AjaxSmack 02:33, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose per results from Google Books [1]. Angus McLellan (Talk) 08:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
• Support Current title is Anglo-German garble. ~ trialsanderrors 09:05, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
• Support. He is usually called with just Braunschweig or Brunswick, and not with any hyphenated postfixes. Perhaps one or two of his three first names would also be droppable, for briefness' sake (full names and titulary are properly in the article, not in article name). Henq 11:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

• What/where is the threshold between translating people's names and retaining them?  (Should Giuseppe Verdi, for instance, become Joseph Verdi or another Joseph Green?)  I'm inclined to oppose as I suspect the majority of people with whom this duke interacted – certainly those not bound to refer to him by title – would have considered and/or used "Karl" and "Wilhelm" as his first names. Thanks, David Kernow 22:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
  • This omits the real question: What is he called in English? Giuseppe Verdi is not called Joseph Green, except as a trick question. The Duke's contemporary, George III, was called that by most of the people His Majesty interacted with; but the German wikipedia is quite right to place him at de:Georg III. (Vereinigtes Königreich). Septentrionalis 22:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Joseph Green, himself, is probably another example. Even if most people who interacted with him called him Yoysef Grinberg in Yiddish, Joseph Green is his English name. Septentrionalis 22:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

(a) I wonder if George III is a(nother) "trick" example, as he became an English monarch; this Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg did not...?

• Also de:Eduard VII. (Vereinigtes Königreich) and Eduard VIII. Septentrionalis 23:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(b) If Joseph Green was more well-known as "Yoysef Grinberg", then perhaps that is a more suitable name for his article...?

(c) I'd hoped a scan of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) might've assisted me, but there appears a mixture of English and non-English renditions of names (including, ironically, Wilhelm). So I'm still uneasy about whether English is the appropriate default as regards foreign people's names; I wonder just how often the "most common form of the name used in English" (ibid.) means "the name in an English translation"... Apologies if I've missed something obvious, David 00:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

• By me, it means looking him up in English works of general reference and seeing what he's called. YMMV. Septentrionalis 23:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Okay; I'd noted your original NCMH reference. I'm not voting as I realise I'm not sufficiently informed. Thanks for your input, David 03:20, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

We should try to keep the two questions here separate: 1) whether the given name should be translated or not, 2) what the correct title is.

1) Translation: there is no generally accepted rule here, except that the names of sufficiently old nobles and rulers are generally translated and the names of current ones generally aren't. Where to draw the line is a difficult question; but in the case of Germany, we are in the lucky situation that there is a date that offers itself: 1918, when monarchy and all titles were abolished. So, for the sake of consistency, I agree that this guy should have his given names translated into English.

2) Title: There is currently a debate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) about the correct titles for the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Before making a decision here, we should wait for the result of that debate. According to our naming conventions for rulers, the common usage goes only so far; e.g., Queen Victoria is certainly almost always called that, and yet our article on her is at Victoria of the United Kingdom. Chl 19:27, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.