Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Polish rulers)/Archive 02

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archives

Contents

Proposals

Proposal 1

Use Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) without any significant modifications, return to the naming scheme from early 2005.

List

Add a list of rulers as they would look under that proposal.

Discussion

Proposal 2

Polish first name, roman numeral if any, royal second name/nickname in English (if translatable at all, Poniatowski is not, being a normal surname). No 'of Poland' or 'King of Poland' needed unless there is a disambig issue.

List

Current version at List of Polish monarchs.

Discussion

See discussion that led to this proposal, and its recent criticism at Talk:List of Polish monarchs/Archive 01. Feel free to continue it here.

Short rationale and summary:

  • Polish first names (without diactrics) are more often than not the most popular. To have consistency, we have decided to use Polish names for all, with the exception of Alexander (being so close to Aleksander). See talk pages linked at Talk:List_of_Polish_monarchs/Archive_01#Early_Piasta and below for specific proof.
  • Roman numerals are useful.
Yes. I'm not sure I understand the system currently in place. Scholarly texts contradict each other in numbering, Wladyslaw II, is also Wladyslaw IV in one book,, and Wladyslaw V in another. I don't know why this is happening. - Calgacus 17:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Although I am not certain of it, I think it may be a result of a monarch reigning in two or more countries under the same name, when there were different rulers with that name in that country. I am not sure which Władysław you refer to atm, but it is likely there were more Władysław's in Poland than in Lithuania, thus he may be II of Lithuania, IV of Poland (yet one more reason to discard the 'of country' extension). An alternative explanation is that the numbering got distorted during the Fragmentation Period, when there were no (or few) kings but mostly 'high dukes of a province' and such.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, Jogaila is the Wladyslaw I'm talking about. I invite you to post a list which is genuinely a compromise so that we can get on with this as soon as possible. - Calgacus 19:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see other proposals first, because at this time I am aware only of my new proposal (the current version) and the go-back-to-the-old-version proposal (which can be viewed by going to an archived version of the list... page). With the exception of Jogaila, I am not entirely sure if 'the opposition' to my proposal is united on some key points, or if they have their own variants. If you have your own, please list it as Proposal 3. In a few days, when we see what the alternatives are (if any), we can discuss them and see if new compromises can be worked out.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Translate nicknames into English, since it is English wiki. Don't translate surnames for obvious reasons.
Nicknames are not usually (as far as I am aware at least), not part of the titles. E.g. William the Conqueror is William I of England, Richard the Lionheart is Richard I of England, Philip Augustus is Philip II of France, Malcolm Canmore is Malcolm III of Scotland, Ivan the Terrible is Ivan IV of Russia, etc. - Calgacus 17:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Yet they are popular. It is open for debate whether it was a good decision, but based on one of the NC guidelines (names should benefit the reader) we decided that nicknames are more 'memorable'/'interesting', will allow readers to differentiate between rulers more easily (Mieszko III the Old is easier to differentiate from Mieszko IV Tanglefoot than if you know them just as Mieszko III of Poland and Mieszko IV of Poland).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
No-one ever refers to William the Conqueror as William I of England, yet that is his wikipedia title. It's equally rare to call Ivan the Terrible Ivan IV, or Philip Augustus Philip II. Nicknames are more memorable for all rulers who have them; nicknaming isn't confined to Polish rulers; after all, we are only talking about the article titles, not the way they will be referred to in the article. - Calgacus 19:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
My analysis of usage of Polish rulers' names done a few months ago has shown that indeed some sources outside Wiki use such constructions, but they are few and more often than not it's a 'free-for-all' and dozens of variants of the names exist. I'd support revamping the entire naming conventions to something else (preferably based on my proposal 1), but perhaps it would be better to see if we can raeach a compromise on Polish rulers before trying to reform the entire royalty on Wiki.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
  • 'of Poland' forgets Lithuania, both as a Grand Duchy and later as part of the Commonwealth, therefore 'of Lithuania and Poland' may be better. Some rulers (Władysław II Jagiełło) have not been the rulers of both parts for the same part. Some kings (Wacław III/Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, Ludwik Węgierski/Louis I of Hungary, Henryk Walezy/Henry III of France, Zygmunt III Waza/Sigismund of Sweden) were actually kings/rulers of other entities, thus their full name would either be very long or should not contain Poland at all because their reign in Poland was short. It has been decided that whatever rules are worked out they should not be applicable for those who are mostly 'foreign' (Wacław, Ludwik, Henry, etc.) and that the best solution is to drop this extenstion.
This is a headache, I'll admit. I don't think there are any guidelines for ranking various kingdoms, but I am in favor of working out some system that does include the relevant kingdom name. - Calgacus 17:52, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
It sounds nice in theory, but I have given up on seeing a workable system that is not confusing (list all countries and years of reign?) and not too long (X of France (1555-1566), of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1566-1777)), but if anybody has a proposal, do suprise me :) In the end, I think that the 'of country' is better described in the text, just as other longish and confusing things (family, titles, coats of arms, etc.).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:38, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Not years of reign, that wouldn't be in the title; and for earlier kings, more often than not, reign lengths are not even certain. For rulers pertaining to the Polish-Lithuania, maybe it'd be better to name them "of Poland-Lithuania" or something related; I don't know. You know these things better than I do, so I suggest you post a new list of article titles in accordance with your experience, and other editors will be in a better position to make suggestions. - Calgacus 19:33, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
My preference is not to have 'of country' at all, as I can't see any good solution here, but as there were others who liked them and are pretty familiar with the period (Halibutt??) perhaps they will be willing to do something about it.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:58, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
The naming conventions IIRC said : use the country with which the ruler is most associated to, and made redirects. in case of Poland-Lithuania, it's unfortunately polonocentric view, since Western historians tended to look at the commonwealth history view our eyes (just as they saw later polish history through German or Russian eyes). Szopen 10:21, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Proposal 3

Malcolm Barber's High Medieval List

This is the list, as written, in Malcolm Barber's book The Two Cities: Medieval Europe, 1050-1320, a standard text for current undergraduate students in the English-speaking world studying the High Middle Ages of Europe:

List (developing)

Discussion

I suggest we follow him. I.e. Casimir, and Henry, but not Ladislaus (etc). - Calgacus 17:46, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Barber's list is incomplete — e.g., no Mieszko IV Tanglefoot. logologist|Talk 15:46, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I do not know why he omitted him; he probably had a reason. But anyways, I'm suggesting we should follow him only in regards to the spellings. - Calgacus 15:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I've drawn up a draft list. Please check for omissions or mistakes, and comment on the numbering. And don't ask me where Augustus I is. - Calgacus 16:32, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

My comments/questions below.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:54, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

  1. Strong oppose to Michael I. As he was one of the few kings from the ranks of Polish nobility, his name should be Polish: Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, just as other members of his family are named Michał Wiśniowiecki (disambig).
    • IMHO irrelevant argument. Compare, for instance, Hirohito is from Japan, yet the page is not at The Shōwa Emperor: the issue is what people would generally call him in English, not what the page name should be according to nationalistic sentiments. Similarly, Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, and not Friedrich I, Holy Roman Emperor. --Francis Schonken 08:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
      • It has nothing to do with nationalistic sentiments only the fact that Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki was a normal man elected a king. Just like presidents or PMs are being elected today. Wiki has no article about George W. of America only George W. Bush.--SylwiaS | talk 15:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Hi Sylwia, looks like you're missing quite a few points there:
          1. Wikipedia's naming conventions guidelines don't distinguish between "normal" and "abnormal" men; they do distinguish between people that have no royal or noble title (wikipedia:naming conventions (people), e.g. George W. Bush), and people thath have such title (wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles), e.g. George I of Great Britain, Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr,...) - This Michael had Rex Poloniae as "official title", in English: King of Poland, so "monarch", "royal", and further, "nobility", so it's the "names and titles" guideline that normally applies.
          2. Being a monarch or not has nothing to do with being elected or not: most Holy Roman Emperors were elected, does not make them less "monarchical".
          3. The first names of monarchs are usually translated in English, like Friedrich → Frederick (see, e.g. Frederick II of Prussia), Jean → John (e.g. John, Duke of Burgundy), etc...
          So, if you don't mind, I think the article on Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki should probably be at Michael of Poland or something like that (Michael I of Poland if there is a second) for the English wikipedia. - Francis Schonken
Totally agree with the "Of Poland part"; how this fits with Poland-Lithuania I can't say yet. "of Poland-Lithuania"?- Calgacus 19:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi Francis, thanks for the rules, I read them. But I still think it’s a different case. Firstly, the elected Holy Roman Emperors were of some dynasties anyway (like our king Henry III of France who was elected too), not just normal noble men. Secondly, the rules say several times:

  • Most general rule overall: use the most common form of the name used in English if none of the rules below cover a specific problem.
  • No family or middle names, except where English speakers normally use them.
  • Exeptions: (4.) If a person is overwhelmingly best known by a cognomen, or by a name that doesn't fit the guidelines above, revert to the base rule: use the most common English name. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, etc...".

Many Polish kings were just called Zygmunt, August etc even if they were elected, but with those who were normal people chosen kings it was different, they were called rather by their surnames than Christian names i.e. king Wiśniowiecki or king Sobieski, and this is how their names are known in English today. So here are some google hits (English only):

  • Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki 381 [1]
  • Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki 635 [2]
  • Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki 762 [3]
  • Michael of Poland 98 [4]
  • Michal of Poland 4 [5]
-> Personally I'd favour Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki then, if that's the name that in English is normally used in reference to him --Francis Schonken 22:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • John III Sobieski 9,460 [6]
  • Jan III Sobieski 19,400 [7]
  • John III of Poland 1,150 [8]
  • Jan III of Poland 54 [9]
-> Personally I'd favour Jan III Sobieski then, if that's the name that in English is normally used in reference to him --Francis Schonken 22:35, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

We may call Michał Michael, I don’t see a problem with that, but he should go by his real name that is normally used in reference to him, not Michael of Poland.--SylwiaS | talk 19:51, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Actually I don't see problems even with having Sobieski as John III Sobieski, since it's easily translated into English. But with typically Polish names that don't have English counterparts only Latin, I would keep the Polish form. Like Władysław, Kazimierz, Stanisław, Zbigniew etc. There are usually several Latin counterparts and none is good. So why translate it into Latin at all? Esp. that some of the names are meaningful, like Władysław = the who praises power.--SylwiaS | talk 19:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  1. Stanislaw I - where did we lose his surname, Leszczyński?
  2. Stanislaw II - as above, but Poniatowski?
  3. What about using Polish diactrics where appopriate (Stanisław vs. Stanislaw)?
  4. The Vasas are ordered incorrectly (!) in the list; also, why has John II Casimir no 'Vasa' surname?
  5. Sigismund vs Zygmunt: pros, cons.
  6. Casimir vs Kazimierz: pros, cons.
  7. John vs Jan: pros, cons.
  8. Augustus vs August (one of those I really care little about...)

Vote

I would suggest a vote sooner or later, but perhaps now it is too early, especially as proposal 3 or others may be suggested?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)


Władysław II, IV, V, and kings' nicknames

The case with numbers seems quite simple, although I really wonder what scholar might have messed it up like that. Władysław V is evidently a result of including in the count the first three Władysławs from the Piast dynasty. The historian who made him Władysław IV must have excluded one of them. Maybe Władysław II the Exile?

And here we come to nicknames. If we avoid them in titles, how are we going to differentiate the first three Władysławs from the second three? Also, what about cases like Władysław III of Varna, who would be Władysław III of Poland but Władysław I of Hungary? I'm not saying it's impossible. I just don't know if there are any rules that apply to such situations.--SylwiaS | talk 05:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

The Ptolemies and Seleucids all have their nicknames as well as their numbers; this is how they actually were disambiguated. This is (perhaps fortunately) out of the reach of the Naming Convention on monarchs, but it may offer a useful parallel. Septentrionalis 22:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Wladislaw II of Poland

I started the Wladislaw II of Poland disambiguation page. Also made Władysław II a redirect to that new disambiguation page. - don't know whether this might be (small) steps towards the disentanglement of this complex issue. --Francis Schonken 14:23, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Also did some rearrangements to the Ladislaus Jagiello disambiguation page, and the redirects to that page. --Francis Schonken 15:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
That's definetly a good step. There are probably dozens of redirects that should be done for every king - just see the examples I did when counting names popularity for early Polish rulers (see their talk pages).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Jogaila

I know I'm entering a minefield now. In fact it was the insolvable discussion about this person's page name that set off the re-opening of this guideline page. So, don't shoot me for having a go at this.

What would you think about:

Wladyslaw II/V of Poland, Jogaila of Lithuania

as a page name?

Please try not to kick off a vote on this yet, this rather needs pro's and con's about the idea (so the same wikipedian can list several "pro's" and "con's"):

Pro's

  • Unambiguous.
  • Draws attention to the different name in Poland and Lithuania.
  • Draws attention to the dual numbering system of Polish Ladisla(u)s/Wladyslaw/Vladislav/... non-Piast monarchs, where "V" is the least ambiguous, while "II" is the most used.
  • ...

Con's

  • Unusual page name format (though we have Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary, but that one didn't change name when acquiring a second realm)
  • Doesn't contain "Jagiello", which triggers far more hits at google than "Jogaila" (though not all of the "Jagiello"s refer to this monarch, Jogaila is less ambiguous)
  • Not anything near to a "most common name" (but this is in line with wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles), that proposes a general exception to common names for all monarchs & nobility)
  • will never occur in running prose; will always be masked or redirect.
  • ...

Contributors to this pros-and-cons list (inviting not to sign individual comments in the pros-and-cons list above - please start a new pros-and-cons list if you have a better proposal for the page name of that monarch):

Jogaila (other stuff, for those who don't understand "working by arguments")
If we don't object long titles I would rather propose Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, Jogaila of Lithuania. I agree that it would make more people happy. But we cannot leave Jagiełło out because it's the most popular name. Many people don't even know he was Jogaila or Władysław, but they know he was Jagiełło. Also, the name explains why the whole dynasty is Jagiellon. In a way all Jagiello hits refer to this monarch because all his descendants were named after him. Władysław II - yes, Władysław V - no. There is a valid reason why Władysław I the Elbow-high is counted as the first one. He united Poland and established its position as a kingdom. Also, there are two more Władysławs after Jagiełło. There's no reason to mess with their numbers now. Anyway, if we can have the longer title I think it should be fine.--SylwiaS | talk 17:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Władysław II Jagiełło

moved from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)

I think this name may actually be usual usage in English. I would propose making the article title Władysław II Jagiełło of Lithuania and Poland, both for historical order and to avoid any appearance of slighting Lithuania. [I would also accept the more common order 22:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)] I don't think there's any risk of confusion with Władysław II the Exile; if necessary there is always the option of using the English form (and yes, it is the English form, as well as the Latin) Ladislaus. Septentrionalis 17:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Poland was a kingdom, Lithuania merely a grand duchy, so Poland should come first. Is it slighting Spain to have Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor? But the Polish monarch articles are currently on their own bizarre plane of article naming, which needs to be cleared up. john k 18:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

This should be addressed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Polish rulers), I believe. Olessi 18:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict, @Pmanderson/Septentrionalis:)? I still prefer Wladyslaw II/V of Poland, Jogaila of Lithuania, as it is on this page above for more than a month. Your argumentation does not appear convincing to me. This monarch was never "Władysław" in Lithuania; the ordinal "II" only applies to Poland, and then still with ambiguity: "V" is equally used; he was never "Jagiełło of Lithuania" ("Jagiełło" is Polish, in Lithuania his name was "Jogaila", this is never transcribed as Jagiełło in English).
Your proposal sounds something like William I the Conqueror of Normandy and England to me: in Normandy he was William "II" (and that's then still without mixing in a frog-leaped translation like you did in the Jogaila/Jagiełło proposal).
Further, I'd suggest not to create on this talk page a third place for discussing the page name for this monarch, there is already:
New impetus to the discussions in these places welcome!
Note also that it is possible to edit the table of proposals pictured below, just click the edit link... this changes the proposal on several pages simultaneously: the table is presently included in:
feel free to contribute (don't forget to update the "rationale" explanation if you change/add proposals to the table).
Anyway, Olessi suggested the shifting of the discussion to another page in fewer words: I support! --Francis Schonken 19:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
I will move this conversation (as a whole) to NC(Polish rulers) as you both suggest. I see no reason for Francis to retype his answer. Septentrionalis 22:40, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Table proposal

I'd propose to make a table in the following format, which (if we all agree) could replace the table presently at the project page:

Good idea. I'll also add the Monarchs tag below so that it would be easier for everyone to see all the monarchs in chronological order. Since the first two in the table are elected kings, maybe we'd focus on the elected kings in general for start?--SylwiaS | talk 17:05, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
This proposal was rejected by the community. It is inactive but retained for historical interest. If you want to revive discussion on this subject, try using the talk page or start a discussion at the village pump.

Table

In office
as ruler
of Poland
(for some
approx.)
Polish name
(from pl:wikipedia)
Page name at en:Wikipedia Remarks
Monarchs
... ... ... ...
1386-1434 Władysław II Jagiełło Wladyslaw II/V of Poland, Jogaila of Lithuania Compromise, since Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) has no special provisions when a ruler changes name when acquiring a second realm (this ruler was in office in Lithuania since 1377, he didn't receive his Christian name Wladyslaw until conversion to catholicism when acquiring the Polish throne);
Double numbering ("II" and "V") while both are used when referring to this Polish ruler: "II" is more common (but overlaps with another Polish ruler, see Wladislaw II of Poland dab page); "V" is less ambiguous, and is also often used.
"Jagiello" (the Polish version of Jogaila) is not used in the wikipedia page name while overlapping with another Wladyslaw II Jagiello, see Ladislaus Jagiello dab page.
... ... ... ...
1573-1574 Henryk III Walezy Henry III of France per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), better known as ruler of France
1575-1587
(most of the
reign together
with her husband
Stefan Batory)
Anna Jagiellonka Anna of Poland per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), "Anne/Anna Jagiellon(ka)" overlaps with at least two other women (that, btw, also both can be called "Anna of Poland", see Anna of Poland) - because of the unavoidable confusion whatever way it is turned, the "names and titles" guideline is applied very strict in this case, while considered least confusing in Wikipedia context
1576-1586 Stefan Batory Stefan Batory per most used in English; note that there is some ambiguity with his father, a namesake in common English spelling, but presently at the Hungarian spelling of the name, István Báthory
1587-1632 Zygmunt III Waza Sigismund III of Poland per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles), best known as ruler of Poland, although (for some years) also ruler of Sweden. Compare Henry III of France above: it's not because this ruler is better known in France than in Poland, that his name would suddenly be written in French (not "Henri III de France", and even less "Henri III (de) Valois"). So also for this Sigismund the spelling most common in English is used, applying the names & titles guideline:
  • First name: "Zygmunt" (Polish) or "Sigismund" (Swedish, but also most common in English, compare Sigismund of Burgundy, in French this name would be "Sigismond")? → Sigismund
  • "Waza" or "Wasa" or "Vasa" (as in: House of Vasa) or "of Poland"? → only of Poland is free of Polish/Swedish ethnic tension, and is not all that unusual in English.

Note that the ordinal "III" also only applies to of Poland (in Swedish there is usually no ordinal)

... ... ... ...
1669-1673 Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki per most used in English
1674-1696 Jan III Sobieski Jan III Sobieski per most used in English
... ... ... ...
Presidents
... ... ... ...
2005-... Lech Kaczyński Lech Kaczynski English spelling of name according to the English pages on The official website of the City of Warsaw (PS, the same website spells Lech Kaczyński on its pages in Polish [10])
... ... ... ...

I'd suggest, once we decide on a name, to link the relevant section(s) of our discussion from the table, and the article's talk page.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:24, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The old list 
moved from project page 09:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Polish name(s) of the ruler (comma separated) English alternatives of the name (comma separated) Wikipedia page name Recommended redirects
Kazimierz III Wielki Casimir the Great,Casimir III the Great
Wladyslaw I Herman Wladislaw I Herman,
Boleslaw I Chrobry Boleslav I,Boleslav I Chobry,Boleslaus I the Mighty,Boleslaw I the Brave
Kazimierz I Odnowiciel Casimir I,Casimir I the Restorer
Boleslaw II Smialy Boleslaw II,Boleslaus the Brave,Boleslav II the Bold
Wladyslaw Ladislaus
Zbigniew Zbigniev
Boleslaw III Krzywousty Boleslaw Wrymouth
Wladyslaw Wygnaniec Ladislaus the Exile
Boleslaw IV Kedzierzawy Boleslaw IV,Boleslav IV
Mieszko III Stary Mieszko III the Old
Kazimierz II Sprawiedliwy Casimir II,Casimir II the Just
Leszek Bialy Leszek II
Wladyslaw Laskonogi
Mieszko Platonogi
Henryk I Brodaty Henry I the Bearded, Henry the Bearded
Henryk II Pobozny Henry II the Pious, Henry II Pious
Boleslaw V Wstydliwy
Leszek Czarny Leszek the Black
Henryk IV Probus Henry IV the Righteous
Przemysl II
Waclaw II and III Wenceslas II
Wladyslaw I Lokietek Vladislav Lokietek, Ladislaus I
Ludwik Wegierski Louis I of Anjou,Louis of Hungary
Jadwiga Hedwig
Wladyslaw II Jagiello Jagiello, Jogaila, Ladislaus II
Wladyslaw III Warnenczyk Wladislaw III,
Kazimierz IV Jagiellonczyk Casimir IV,
Jan Olbracht Johann I Albrecht,John Albert
Aleksander Alexander,Alexander Jagiellonian
Zygmunt I Stary Sigismund I,Sigismund I the Old
Zygmunt II August Sigismund II August
Henryk Walezy Henry of Valois,Henri de Valois
Stefan Batory Stephan Bathory
Zygmunt III Waza Sigismund III Vasa
Wladyslaw IV Waza Wladislaw IV Vasa,Ladislas IV
Jan Kazimierz John II Casimir,John II Casimir
Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki Michael Wisniowiecki,Michael I Wisniowiecki
Jan III Sobieski John III Sobieski
August II Mocny Augustus II the Strong
Stanislaw Leszczynski Stanislas Leszczynski
August III Augustus III
Stanislaw August Poniatowski Stanislas II August Poniatowski

Michael after all?

I did some search (see his talk page) and it appears that Michael may be a better choice after all. Comments?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we made the google hits test also (see discussion below proposition 3). There still remains the question about Wiśniowiecki vs. Wisniowiecki, since the name without diacritics will always give more google hits, but then we give rather correct names on Wiki, since Wiki contrary to many other sites has the ability.--SylwiaS | talk 17:51, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Something I'd like to get rid of

Presently there is a redirect page named Guidelines for the spelling of names of Polish rulers. This is the list of main namespace pages that contain links to this page:

  1. Piast dynasty
  2. House of Vasa
  3. Jagiellon dynasty
  4. Dukes of Silesia
  5. Dukes of Greater Poland

I don't know if there's an exact rule at WP:CSD, but I'd like Guidelines for the spelling of names of Polish rulers to be speedy deleted, and all links to such page removed from the 5 pages mentioned above.

Reason: Wikipedia is not normative, there should be no guideline that says that Henry III of France should be spelled Henryk III Walezy in the main namespace of English wikipedia.

Anyone having a problem with this proposed speedy deletion & removal of links (I think this is also a step in making the page naming of Polish rulers a bit less tense)? --Francis Schonken 17:25, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind, but then I didn't know that such a redirect exist at all. Maybe Piotr knows why it was made in the first place?--SylwiaS | talk 17:47, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I posted an information about it on Polish board [11]. If no one objects in let's say a week, you'll have a clear case.--SylwiaS | talk 22:07, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Anna Jagiellon

Ok, I made google test for Anna Jagiellon. English only minus Wikipedia:

  • Anna Jagiellon 46 [12]
  • Anna Jagiellonka 386 [13]
  • Anne Jagiellon 5 [14]
  • Anna Jagiellońska 7 [15]
  • Anna of Poland 234 [16]
  • Anne of Poland 43 [17]
  • Anna Jagiellonka of Poland 2 [18]

It seems that Anna Jagiellonka gets the biggest number of hits.--SylwiaS | talk 17:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Did you check for possible overlap with this person (which is a different Anna Jagiellonka): pl:Anna Jagiellonka (księżna pomorska)?
Good point! I didn't. Any idea how to differentiate them?--SylwiaS | talk 17:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

English, unlike Polish, doesn't differentiate surnames by sex. (In English-language countries, women of Polish origin typically are obliged to use surname forms, e.g. -ski, that in Poland apply only to men.) How do we handle that in a case like Jagiellonka's? "Jagiellon" (an Anglicization, missing the Polish gender ending) is sex-neutral. logologist|Talk 19:37, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't even know whether "Jagiellon" qualifies as a surname - In English, it is the name of a dynasty (see Jagiellon Dynasty), derived from Jogailas name, where Jogaila is not a surname, just the name of monarch from Lithuania (like his father's name was Algirdas, that was no "surname" either, Algirdas apparently even didn't have a surname). --Francis Schonken 19:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Not exactly. Women born in Poland who emigrate i.e. to US still have their names in female gender. Women born abroad to fathers named with -ski ending have their names in the male gender. But there are also cases when men are born to single women and then their names end with -ska. So I don't think English sticks to the male form, only simply English speakers have no idea that those are different forms of the same name. As to Jagiello, well, we should remember that the rules of giving names in Lithuania before Christianity must have been different than later. Also, the first rulers of Poland have no surnames or no Christian names. It's difficult to categorise their names as one or another. It was different with Jagiello who became renowned as a Polish king and changed his name through baptism.--SylwiaS | talk 20:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I used "surname" for sake of simplicity. Whether it's called that or "cognomen" or "epithet," the principle is the same (adjectival endings, which vary according to whether the object is male, female or neuter). In fact, Polish surnames — like those of other countries — generally developed essentially from epithets, commonly describing such things as a person's occupation, place of origin, name of parent.
And Sylvia is right: it sometimes happens that a male of Polish descent born abroad will have the female adjectival ending on his surname — which, if he visits the old country, can occasion no end of amusement among the natives. logologist|Talk 22:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Anyway, I found 4 (possible) Anna Jagiellon: I try to give an overview:
...maybe about time we start thinking of a disambig page here too... --Francis Schonken 19:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Sure, a disambig page would be helpful. Still, I have no idea how to best google the Queen of the Polish Lithuanian-Commonwealth. Actually, any of them could have any of the names in English. Well, maybe the name Jagiellonka would indicate rather a daughter of a Jagiellon than a wife of one.--SylwiaS | talk 20:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
That doesn't help much, then there are still three:
See also the boilerplate text of pl:Anna Jagiellonka, all three are called "Anna Jagiellonka" in Polish --Francis Schonken 20:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Oh my, it's almost weekend. We should all go for vodka and drink to all the Anna Jagiellonkas who gave us a headache even so many centuries after their death. Seriously though. How about waiting with that a bit. Maybe someone else will have a better idea how to best google test them. I'll ask Piotr who has a long experience with our kings and queens how he's doing that. Maybe in the meantime we might move to another crowned head. Thanks for your willingness to help us in that. As you see it's not so easy and we couldn't even agree among ourselves on the best forms in English. I wonder if it's a good time to invite other descendants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that is Lithuanians, Belorussians and Ukrainians, or we should wait until we have the final propositions?--SylwiaS | talk 21:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
It's hard to get perfect results in such a case. Other then 'manualy' veryfind each reference, search with some keyword specific to our Anna would be best. Years (birth, death) are usually the best choice for getting a representative sample (assuming that the same percentage of each Anna's online have their birth-death date given).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 03:48, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I checked the two most common. English only, plus 1523, minus Wikipedia, minus Stettin:

  • Anna Jagiellonka 62 all except 3 refer to our queen [19]
  • Anna of Poland 25 but only 4 refer to our queen (majority of them are genealogy sites) [20]--SylwiaS | talk 05:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
So, thus far you showed that 59 out of 386 "Anna Jagiellonka"s are a reference to the Queen of Poland (if the birthdate of that queen is added in the query). This is about 15% - not really enough to convince me.
Re. the 4 out of 25 Anna's of Poland: it's either 4 out of 18, or 5 out of 25, so about 20%, not really convincing either. The "pomorska" is definitely most popular among the "Anna of Poland"s (about 50%) - but as a princess (in Poland), and a grand-duchess-consort (after marriage in Pomerania) she would not be at "Anna of Poland" in wikipedia, if we follow wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles).
In fact that guideline is made as a somewhat artificial system for royals and nobility, while in most cases it's very difficult to determine "most common name" for these people by google search. For Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki it *exceptionally* worked, for these Annas I think we have to admit it doesn't, and revert to the general rule. --Francis Schonken 11:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Am I correct in assuming that we have only to viable options: Anna Jagiellon and Anna Jagiellonka?--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

No, if google searches don't give a clear, unambiguous result (which is apparently the case here), I recommended to go back to the general rule, which would be Anna of Poland for the queen regnant in this case (if the naming conventions haven't changed since the last time I looked, I'm not the big expert in that department). --Francis Schonken 18:50, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that it seems that English speakers usually use the term Anna of Poland for the Pomeranian princess. I don't say it's correct, but it seems to be common. I made another google test using Stefan Batory (the queen's husband) to eliminate the other Annas.

  • Anna Jagiellonka + Batory/Bathory 88+55=143 hits [21] [22]
  • Anna of Poland + Batory/Bathory 3+7=10 [23] [24]--SylwiaS | talk 19:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Again, the google results for Anna are not by far clear enough to show that "Anna of Poland" is never used for the Polish queen regnant (for more than 50% of the "Anna of Poland"s at google we still have no indication at all), and that "Anna Jagiellonka" is as good as always used for the queen regnant (you're still not even proving 50% is).

So, that's typically a case when one stops the googleing (this Anna is simply not "googlable"), and stops trying to get an exception from the general rule. Even I'm not seeing why we should deviate from the general rule here, while I'm a notable advocate for applying the "exception" rule enclosed in wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles) whenever reasonable. In this case it is IMHO not really reasonable to steer for exception. --Francis Schonken 23:00, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, following the idea mentioned above I created Anna of Poland (disambiguation) --Francis Schonken 11:59, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Untenable exception. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.251.186.14 (talkcontribs).

Stefan Batory

Ok, maybe it will be easier with this one (English only minus Wikipedia):

  • Stefan Batory 63,400 [25]
  • Stephen Batory 259 [26]
  • István Báthory 795 [27]
  • Istvan Bathory 599 [28] in this and the one case above the hits most likely refer to his father
  • Stephan Bathory 601 [29]
  • Stephen Bathory 911 [30]
  • Stephan Batory 379 [31]
  • Stefan Bathory 1150 [32]
  • Stefan Batory of Poland 55 [33]
  • Stefan Bathory of Poland 1 [34]
  • Stefan of Poland 39 [35]
  • Stephan of Poland 53 [36]
  • Stephen of Poland 128 [37]

--SylwiaS | talk 22:24, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a successful Google search! I tried to filter out the ocean liner, the university, and the foundation (but in fact all of these were named after the king), and even then the "Stefan Batory" spelling remains definitely most popular in English. I add to the tentative list above. --Francis Schonken 11:48, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Filling the table I came across István Báthory, Stefan Batory's father (and in fact his namesake). Would it be possible to establish whether "István Báthory" is indeed in English the most common spelling of this name of the father of the Polish king? I mean, it could as well be Stephen Báthory according to the wikipedia article, and I don't have the impression this has been thouroughly researched. There might even be other variants more popular in English? --Francis Schonken 12:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Some time ago I tried to differentiate between Batory and his father, both bearing the same name in Hungarian (Istvan Bathory). Halibutt 16:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Interesting - is there anything you learned out of that, that you might want to share with those reading this page?
Note that name in Hungarian could be "István Báthory" or "Báthory István", but not Istvan Bathory (lacks the Hungarian accents). --Francis Schonken 17:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
No, I only wanted to ask what's wrong with my disambiguation of Stephen Báthory onto István Báthory and Stefan Batory. Halibutt 18:07, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Of Poland

I don't understand why the "of Poland" is not being applied. It doesn't matter if rulers are generally known by their nickname, it's just the standard practice on wikipedia. I haven't heard any reason why Polish rulers are any different, and so I don't see why they should be. - Calgacus 17:18, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, although the "of Poland" would obviously be flattering to us, there are two main reasons why we try to avoid it. First - the monarchs are hardly known by the "X of Poland" names. Second, we think that it might be misleading, because what is Poland today doesn't equal what was called "Poland" then. Very often the whole territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its fiefs were called "Poland" for short. Not necessarily in Poland, where people used, rather, terms like "Rzeczpospolita" ("the Republic"), but abroad. That's why names of some historic events often use only the name "Poland." Like the "Partitions of Poland," while in fact the first partitions referred to the PLC (in Polish they are often called the Partitions of the Rzeczpospolita). So what was called Poland then is today Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine. All four are important, independent countries. Many of the kings are today listed as rulers of all the countries in respective lists. So we think that calling them "of Poland" would be unfair and inaccurate. I don't think it's the same case as with monarchs of Great Britain or the United Kingdom, because those names don't favour England over other countries. Of course, we might try to call them "of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" but it's likely to be opposed by native English speakers. See this attempted move for similar case [38].--SylwiaS | talk 19:11, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Amen. logologist|Talk 19:42, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, Many kings in many parts of Europe ruled territories the borders of which lie in several modern states. The fact that the Kings of the English after 1171 ruled Ireland doesn't stop them being called "of England", nor does the fact that Henry II of England, a Frenchman by birth, language (he needed a translator to speak to native English) and main residence, who ruled more of France than the King of France, and probably had more French speaking subjects than English ones, mean that he isn't called Henry II of England. The fact that the kings of Poland managed to take control of Rus'ian-speaking speaking lands - via Lithuania and by themselves - does not alter his status as "King of Poland"; Poland-Lithuania may be a separate point I'll grant you, but you guys are already dating these kings assuming that Poland and Poland-Lithuania are the same Władysław IV was not the fourth Wladyslaw to rule Poland-Lithuania; moreover, the kings of Poland-Lithuania are consistently called (wrongly or rightly) "of Poland" in the succession boxes. So I don't understand the significance of the point. It doesn't seem very relevant. Anyways, "of Poland" before the Poland-Lithuania union, and "of Poland-Lithuania" afterwards would seem reasonable. - Calgacus 20:03, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, in theory the names kings of Poland are correct, and names kings of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are incorrect, because Poland was a kingdom and Lithuania was a duchy. So even Władysław IV who we call in the article a king of PLC had the official title:
Vladislaus IV by God's grace king of Poland, grand duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia, Masovia, Samogitia, Livonia, and also hereditary king of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals, elected tsar of Russia.
So if we want to look for the most correct title you are right, if we want to look for a title best describing what country they were kings of, I gave you my explanation above. We of course might argue about "The fact that the kings of Poland managed to take control of Rus'ian-speaking speaking lands - via Lithuania and by themselves" because majority of Polish kings didn't rule independently and their power was significantly reduced by laws in favour of szlachta, and szlachta decided who might be a king or not. So it's not about the nationality or ethnicity of the kings but the nationality/ethnicity of those who elected the kings. Anyhow, I think that we would have to organize a much wider discussion on the topic to have Wikipedians decide on what form should be used. That's why I prefer to focus now on finding the most common names, because they are easier to determine, while we will still have to go through the discussion on what is the most proper here (probably a vote) later.--SylwiaS | talk 20:52, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Common names isn't a big deal ... I'm suggesting nicknames oughtn't be part of the title. Highest ranking title is the only title that counts for the naming purposes. Although it's silly to say Grand Duke was lower ranking than King for the high middle ages, in the PLC time, it was meaningful. Let's say we were to take the multiple title problem seriously for other rulers, we'd have to rename Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Here are his titles, as he himself listed them:
Wir Carl der fünfft von Gottes Gnaden Römischer erwehlter Käyser zu allen Zeiten Merher des Reichs, &c.
König in Germanien, zu Castilien, zu Arrogon, zu Legion, beyder Sicilien, zu Jerusalem, zu Hungern, zu Dalmatien, zu Croatien, Navarra, zu Granaten, zu Tolleten, zu Valentz, zu Galitien, Majoricarum, zu Hispalis, Sardiniae, Cordubiae Corsicae, Murciae, Giennis, Algarbien, Algecire, zu Gibraltaris, und der Insulen Canariae, auch der Insulen Indiarum und Terrae Firmae, dess Meers Oceani &c.
Ertz-Hertzog zu Oesterreich,
Hertzog zu Burgund, zu Lottrik, zu Braband, zu Steyr, Kärndten, Crain, Limburg, Lüzemburg, Geldern, Calabrien, Athenarum, Neopatriae, &c.
Grafe zu Flandern, zu Habspurg, zu Tyrol, [zu Görtz], <Parcinon>, zu Arthois und Burgund, Pfaltzgraf zu Hennegau, zu Holland, zu Seeland, zu Pfirdt, zu Kyburg, zu Namur, zu Rosilion, zu Territan, und zu Zutphen,
Landgraff in Elsass, Margraf zu Burggau, zu Oristani, zu Gotziani, und des heyligen Römischen Reichs, Fürst zu Schwaben, zu Cathalonia, Asturia &c.
Herr in Frießlandt, auff der Windischen Marcken, zu Portenau, zu Pisscaia, zu Molin, zu Salins, zu Tripoli und zu Mecheln &c.
Points? These guys have a lot of titles, yet number and name of main title usually occurs in the wiki title. - Calgacus 21:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but it seems that Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor is in the same time his most common name in English. Anyhow, as I said. I don't think that we two may decide here on the final names. We'll have to wait for more voices in the discussion.--SylwiaS | talk 21:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
This point keeps being made, but this isn't actually supposed to matter .. e.g. E.g. William the Conqueror is William I of England, Richard the Lionheart is Richard I of England, Philip Augustus is Philip II of France, Malcolm Canmore is Malcolm III of Scotland, Ivan the Terrible is Ivan IV of Russia, etc. There are some examples that don't use this form, Alexander the Great being one, but these are exceptional cases and shrinking. The "X N of Y" makes a lot of sense, I still haven't heard any applicable reason to avoid use of it. - Calgacus 21:49, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The "of X" is largely a disambiguation device. A search for Philip II will otherwise dredge up Philip II of Macedon, Philip II of France, Philip II of Savoy, Philip II of Taranto, Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, Philip II of Spain and I of Portugal, Philip II of Portugal and III of Spain and a host of others. logologist|Talk 22:08, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
That indeed may or may not be were it originates from, but I know of no other William the Conquerors, Ivan the Terribles or Philip Augustus'. - Calgacus 22:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Using rulers' authentic native names and epithets will greatly reduce the need for the clunky and rather uncommunicative "of X" disambiguations. logologist|Talk 22:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
So does that mean you would rename William I of England Guillaume le Conquérant? The whole process of finding "most common" nicknames in English is rather tiresome, unreliable and the results are more cumbersome than the X N of Y formula, which is simple and consistent. And you're also implying that we have to pour through chronicle records to find out what each ruler's first language was - because what language the natives of the country a man was king of now speak does not mean this was each ruler's first or primary language. - Calgacus 22:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I would, in general, call a ruler as he is presently called by natives of the country that he rules or ruled. William the Conqueror ruled England, not France. logologist|Talk 22:38, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

The "..., Holy Roman Emperor" format is not such a good example: it is not really OK for the "names & titles" naming convention; it's not at all OK for wikipedia:naming conventions (people); it's not a common name; it's not needed for precision for most of these emperors. At this point I don't know what way wikipedia is going to go regarding the "..., Holy Roman Emperor" format: it might be that the "names & titles" naming convention gets ammended, or that that guideline stays as it is, and the "..., Holy Roman Emperor" format is removed from a lot of these articles, while some people might start to become stricter again. So I wouldn't draw that format in as an example here, it might change soon (maybe that's the next thing I throw myself in, to get that cleared out).

Anyway, I would apply the "... of <Country>" format with reasonable prudence: that format is the standard for royals, and you need a good amount of agreement that a name not according to that format is "more common" in the English language. UK people tend to be very fussy about this: it seems very unlikely that William I of England would change anywhere soon to William the Conqueror again (I tried that once, was nearly shot). Even for Frederick I of Prussia I was nearly shot when I tried to change that to Frederick the Great. Now for the dukes of Burgundy I'm not so bleak: the consensus was less pronounced, there was some disturbance of trolls at the time of the WP:RM votes for these (which somehow deformed the picture), so I suppose that at a certain point in time it might be possible to have Philip the Good again, instead of the really unusual Philip III, Duke of Burgundy.

So, for instance, regarding the Jagiellons it's basicly: what the community can agree upon. I really have a sense that for many of the Polish monarchs the "... (<ordinal>) of <Poland>" format is very unusual in English literature, and that distinguishing monarchs by "added name"/"nickname" is much more common: but as said: the evidence needs to be very convincing, it musn't create more ambiguities than the standard format, and there's a very high treshold for some people before getting convinced that the alternate format is really the one that is more frequently used by historians. --Francis Schonken 22:25, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think you really grasped the point I was making with the quote of Charles V's titles. That was related only as a specific response to Silvia S's comment. Anyways, it's not common to refer to William the Conqueror as William I of England, that was never the point. It's just the title name. It's irrelevant how common these are used in English, it's just the standard formula for naming monarchs on wiki. But if everyone wants to make it relevant for Polish monarchs, then this whole process is a waste of time for me. Pouring through websites is a ridiculous method for determining commonest names in English, as many of these sites are trash, or are produced by natives in otherwise English translations. My primary concern was the oddity of the Polish name-list, removing things like diacritics on names like Jogaila. That seems to already have been agreed on. So, I for the moment I'll just watch out for when you guys are finished, and vote for the least absurd option. - Calgacus 22:37, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the time is approaching to propose a revision in Wikipedia conventions for naming rulers, to give priority to the names given to them by their subjects or the latters' descendants? logologist|Talk 22:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

These people typically know the most about their own rulers, including the rationales in naming them. logologist|Talk 23:10, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Re. revision of conventions, I'm probably the last one who attempted that recently, see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)/Archive 8 for the debris. So, no, I don't believe Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) is going to change in that sense anywhere near soon. And I'm reasonably OK with that. The guideline still contains "If a person is overwhelmingly best known by a cognomen, or by a name that doesn't fit the guidelines above, revert to the base rule: use the most common English name. Examples: Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious, Henry the Lion, etc..." - so if the "overwhelmingly best known" can be demonstrated, that's OK to make exception to the general rule. For Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki it can be demonstrated; for Anna of Poland it can't, IMHO - see above. --Francis Schonken 23:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

As logologist pointed above - and I agree with him - the 'of country' was added to avoid disabigs problem, especially when rulers had no single most popular adjective. This is not the case with most Polish kings, so I think that adding 'of country' to an otherwise unique name is simply pointless - it means we have to type in longer names to avoid redirects. And for the reasons stated above I definetly think that adjectives/surnames, where exist, should be used. Around December we have actually determined 'the most popular' for every Polish king, so that part of the job is done. Although if there is an overwhelming demand from Wikipedians to add 'of Poland', we can do this - but are there really those here who think it should be done (for reasons other then 'this is a general rule')? Remember: Wikipedia:Ignore all rules.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:10, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, like I said, I'm for the "of Poland" formula - it's not as if every Polish ruler has a nickname; moreover, it's rather odd to have English nicknames next to Polish forename. However, I seem to be in a minority on this one, so there's no point me going on about it. Are you, Piotrus, going to be the one doing the moving BTW? - Calgacus 20:27, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
As I pointed out before, you're not alone here Calgacus. I would also support the wikipedia conventions with all they have there, of country included. Halibutt 20:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I concur. Olessi 05:38, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, I added Anna to the tentative #Table proposal above. Anyone having a problem with that? See also:

--Francis Schonken 10:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I vote for Anna Jagiellonka (the authentic Polish name) or Anna Jagiellon (slightly modified, gender-neutral English version of the latter). No "of Poland" needed. logologist|Talk 17:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, sure, as if at this point in time anyone was waiting for this to degrade into a vote. --Francis Schonken 10:37, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Good. I'm for Anna Jagiellonka or Anna Jagiellon as well. --Lysytalk 16:01, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Count me in.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm in favour of the "of Poland" description. The Polish monarchs were indeed rulers of not only the lands that constitute the present Polish state. However, Sylwia failed to mention that they held the title of kings of Poland. This was the highest of their titles, the most important and the one that was mentioned if all the other titles were omitted. Similarly, we have an article on George V of the United Kingdom and not on Georgius V of India, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Halibutt 18:04, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I didn't fail to mention that. If you read up you'll see that there is a whole discussion about it. Fors and againsts for the particular options. It's really not that simple. There is also something like the most common name in English. I.e. Jan III Sobieski vs John III of Poland. Also the dilemma: of Poland or of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Why don't you give your proposition? It's really not fun to work on those names.--SylwiaS | talk 16:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
If you read the discussions at various places, you'd probably noticed that I already took part in them :) "of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth" is out of the question since there was no such royal title anytime in the past. I'm all in favour of the previous version of the naming scheme, the one from before the recent changes by Logologist and Francis Schonken, so I see no need to propose the same policy again. It served the community for roughly two years and I believe there's no need to meddle with that, neither by changing the names to their modern Polish equivalents nor by quasi-translation to "English". Halibutt 16:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
I prefer the previous Anglo-Latin names for monarchs (when available) over the Polish versions. It's a lot easier for me to read Casimir or Sigismund than it is Kazimierz or Zygmunt. Olessi 20:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand two things that are going on here (on first glance). Why are some Polish monarchs kept in Polish language when there could be an English language translation? And why is the "of Poland" missing, when clearly the Kingdom of Poland existed? Or if you want to bring in the Lituania part just say "of Poland and Lithuania"? Double monarchs existed throughout, see Franz Joseph I of Austria who was King of Hungary etc etc etc at the same time, but Wikipedia goes with the most common name? Gryffindor 14:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article

The discussion below has been copied from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Using diacritics (or national alphabet) in the name of the article - 07:41, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I came to the problem with national alphabet letters in article name. They are commonly used but I have found no mention about them in naming coventions (WP:NAME). The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people. National alphabet is widely used in wikipedia. Examples are Luís de Camões Auguste and Louis Lumière or Karel Čapek. There are redirects from english spelling (Camoes, Lumiere, Capek).

On the other hand, wikiproject ice hockey WP:HOCKEY states rule for ice hockey players that their names should be written in English spelling. Currently some articles are being moved from Czech spelling to the english spelling (for example Patrik Eliáš to Patrick Elias). I object to this as I do not see genaral consensus and it will only lead to moving back and forth. WP:HOCKEY is not wikipedia policy nor guideline. In addition I do not see any reason why ice hockey players should be treated differently than other people.

There is a mention about using the most recognized name in the naming conventions policy. But this does not help in the case of many ice hockey players. It is very likely that for American and Canadian NHL fans the most recognised versions are Jagr, Hasek or Patrick ELias. But these people also played for the Czech republic in the Olympics and there they are known like Jágr, Hašek or Patrik Eliáš.

I would like to find out what is the current consensus about this. -- Jan Smolik 18:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

The only convention related is to use English name, but it probable does not apply to the names of people - incorrect. "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things" - Wikipedia:Naming :conventions (common names). Raul654 18:54, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I mentioned this in the third article but it does not solve the problem. Americans are familiar with different spelling than Czechs. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, since this is the English Wikipedia, really we should use the name most familiar to English speakers. The policy doesn't say this explicitly, but I believe this is how it's usually interpreted. This is the form that English speakers will recognize most easily. Deco 19:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Well it is wikipedia in English but it is read and edited by people from the whole world. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

There was a straw poll about this with regard to place names: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)/Archive 3#Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks. The proposal was that "whenever the most common English spelling is simply the native spelling with diacritical marks omitted, the native spelling should be used". It was close, but those who supported the proposal had more votes. Since, articles like Yaoundé have remained in place with no uproar. I would support a similar convention with regard to personal names. — BrianSmithson 19:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm the user who initiated the WP:HOCKEY-based renaming with Alf. The project Player Pages Format Talk page has the discussion we had along with my reasoning, pasted below:

OK, team, it's simple. This is en-wiki. We don't have non-English characters on our keyboards, and people likely to come to en-wiki are mostly going to have ISO-EN keyboards, whether they're US, UK, or Aussie (to name a few) it doesn't matter. I set up a page at User:RasputinAXP/DMRwT for double move redirects with twist and started in on the Czech players that need to be reanglicized.

Myself and others interpret the policy just the same as Deco and BrianSmithson do: the familiar form in English is Jaromir Jagr, not Jaromír Jágr; we can't even type that. Attempting to avoid redirects is pretty tough as well. Is there a better way to build consensus regarding this? RasputinAXP talk contribs 19:36, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you misread my statement above. My stance is that if the native spelling of the name varies from the English spelling only in the use of diacritics, use the native spelling. Thus, the article title should be Yaoundé and not Yaounde. Likewise, use Jōchō, not Jocho. Redirection makes any arguments about accessibility moot, and not using the diacritics makes us look lazy or ignorant. — BrianSmithson 16:34, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Tentative overview (no cut-and-paste solutions, however):
  • Article names for names of people: wikipedia:naming conventions (people) - there's nothing specific about diacritics there (just mentioning this guideline because it is a naming conventions guideline, while there are no "hockey" naming conventions mentioned at wikipedia:naming conventions).
  • wikipedia:naming conventions (names and titles) is about royal & noble people: this is guideline, and *explicitly* mentions that wikipedia:naming conventions (common names) does NOT apply for these kind of people. But makes no difference: doesn't mention anything about diacritics.
  • Wikipedia talk:naming conventions (Polish rulers): here we're trying to solve the issue for Polish monarchs (some of which have diacritics in their Polish name): but don't expect to find answers there yet, talks are still going on. Anyway we need to come to a conclusion there too, hopefully soon (but not rushing).
  • Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics), early stages of a guideline proposal, I started this on a "blue monday" about a week ago. No guideline yet: the page contains merely a "scope" definition, and a tentative "rationale" section. What the basic principles of the guideline proposal will become I don't know yet (sort of waiting till after the "Polish rulers" issue gets sorted out I suppose...). But if any of you feel like being able to contribute, ultimately it will answer Jan Smolik's question (but I'd definitely advise not to hold your breath on it yet).
  • Other:
    • Some people articles with and without diacritics are mentioned at wikipedia talk:naming conventions (use English)#Diacritics, South Slavic languages - some of these after undergoing a WP:RM, but note that isolated examples are *not* the same as a guideline... (if I'd know a formulation of a guideline proposal that could be agreeable to the large majority of Wikipedians, I'd have written it down already...)
    • Talking about Lumiere/Lumière: there's a planet with that name: at a certain moment a few months ago it seemed as if the issue was settled to use the name with accent, but I don't know how that ended, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects, Andrewa said she was going to take the issue there. Didn't check whether they have a final conclusion yet.
Well, that's all I know about (unless you also want to involve non-standard characters, then there's still the wikipedia:naming conventions (þ) guideline proposal) --Francis Schonken 19:58, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Note that I do not believe no En article should contain diacritics in its title. There are topics for which most English speakers are used to names containing diacritics, such as El Niño. Then there are topics for which the name without diacritics is widely disseminated throughout the English speaking world, like Celine Dion (most English speakers would be confused or surprised to see the proper "Céline Dion"). (Ironically enough, the articles for these don't support my point very well.) Deco 20:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Sticking diacritics, particularly the Polish Ł is highly annoying, esp. when applied to Polish monarchs. It just gives editors much more work, and unless you're in Poland or know the code, you will be unable to type the name in the article. - Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) Image:UW Logo-secondary.gif 20:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Redirects make the issue of difficulty in visiting or linking to the article immaterial (I know we like to skip redirects, but as long as you watch out for double redirects you're fine). The limitations of our keyboards are not, by themselves, a good reason to exclude any article title. Deco 20:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Deco, I should rephrase what I said. I agree with you that some English articles do require diacritics, like El Niño. Articles like Jaromir Jagr that are lacking diacritics in their English spellings should remain without diacritics because you're only going to find the name printed in any English-speaking paper without diacritics. RasputinAXP talk contribs 21:20, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I checked articles about Czech people and in 90 % of cases (rough guess) they are with diacritics in the name of the article. This includes soccer players playing in England (like Vladimír Šmicer, Petr Čech, Milan Baroš). And no one actualy complains. So this seems to be a consensus. The only exception are extremely short stubs that did not receive much input. Articles with Czech diacritics are readable in English, you only need a redirect becouse of problems with typing. This is an international project written in English. It should not fulfill only needs of native English speakers but of all people of the world. --Jan Smolik 22:33, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Very many names need diacritics to make sense. Petr Cech instead of Petr Čech makes a different impression as a name, does not look half as Czech and is much more likely to be totally mispronounced when you see it. Names with diacritics are also not IMHO such a big problem to use for editors because you can usually go through the redirect in an extra tab and cut and paste the correct title. I also don't see a problem at all in linking through redirects (that's part of what they are there for). Leaving out diacritics only where they are "not particularly useful" would be rather inconsequent. Kusma (討論) 22:48, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
As a matter of fact, "Petr Sykora" and "Jaromir Jagr" are not alternate spellings; they are incorrect ones which are only used for technical reasons. Since all other articles about Czech people use proper Czech diacritics, I don't know of any justification for making an exception in case of hockey players. - Mike Rosoft 01:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Man, I feel like the bottom man in a dogpile. Reviewing Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), there'sWhat word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine? Making the name of the article include diacritics goes against the Use English guideline. The most common input into the search box over here onthe left, for en-wiki, is going to be Jaromir Jagr. Yes, we're supposed to avoid redirects. Yes, in Czech it's not correct. In English, it is correct. I guess I'm done with the discussion. There's no consensus in either direction, but it's going to be pushed back to the diacritic version anyhow. Go ahead and switch them back. I'mnot dead-set against it, but I was trying to follow guidelines. RasputinAXP talk contribs 15:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
There are many names, and even words, in dominant English usage that use diacritics. Whether or not these will ever be typed in a search engine, they're still the proper title. However, if English language media presentations of a topic overwhelmingly omit diacritics, then clearly English speakers would be most familiar with the form without diacritics and it should be used as the title on this Wikipedia. This is just common sense, even if it goes against the ad hoc conventions that have arisen. Deco 18:30, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
Czech names: almost all names with diacritics use it also in the title (and all of them have redirect). Adding missing diacritics is automatic behavior of Czech editors when they spot it. So for all practical purposes the policy is set de-facto (for Cz names) and you can't change it. Pavel Vozenilek 03:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Naming policy (Czech) --Francis Schonken 11:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

and: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (hockey) --Francis Schonken 17:41, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

There are those among us trying to pull the ignorant North American card. I mentioned the following over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey/Player pages format...
Here's the Czech hockey team in English compliments of the Torino Italy Olympic Committee [39] Here they are in Italian: [40], French: [41]. Here are the rosters from the IIHF (INTERNATIONAL Ice Hockey Federation) based in Switzerland: [42].'
Those examples are straight from 2 international organizations (one based in Italy, one in Switzerland). I'm hard pressed to find any english publication that uses diacritics in hockey player names. I don't see why en.wiki should be setting a precedent otherwise. ccwaters 02:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Over at WP:HOCKEY we have/had 3 forces promoting non-English characters in en.wiki hockey articles: native Finns demanding native spellings of Finnish players, native Czechs demanding native spellings of Czech players, and American stalkers of certain Finnish goaltenders. I did a little research and here are my findings:
Here's a Finnish site profiling NHL players. Here's an "incorrectly" spelt Jagr, but the Finnish and German alphabets both happen to have umlauts so here's a "correct" Olaf Kölzig. Who is Aleksei Jashin?
Here's a Czech article about the recent Montreal-Philadelphia game [43] Good luck finding any Finnish players names spelt "correctly"... here's a snippet from the MON-PHI article:
Flyers však do utkání nastoupili značně oslabeni. K zraněným oporám Peteru Forsbergovi, Keithu Primeauovi, Ericu Desjardinsovi a Kimu Johnssonovi totiž po posledním zápase přibyli také Petr Nedvěd a zadák Chris Therrien.
Well...I recognize Petr Nedvěd, he was born in Czechoslovakia. Who did the Flyers have in goal??? Oh its the Finnish guy, "Antero Niitymakiho".
My point? Different languages spell name differently. I found those sites just by searching yahoo in the respective languages. I admit I don't speak either and therefore I couldn't search thoroughly. If someone with backgrounds in either language can demonstrate patterns of Finnish publications acknowledging Czech characters and visa versa than I may change my stance. ccwaters 03:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I support every word Ccwater said, albeit with not as much conviction. There is a reason why we have Wikipedia in different languages, and although there are few instances in the English uses some sort of extra-curricular lettering (i.e. café), most English speaking people do not use those. Croat Canuck 04:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I must make a strong point that seems to be over-looked: this is not the international English language wikipedia. It is the English language wikipedia. It just so happens that the international communty contributes. There is a reason that there are other language sections to wikipedia, and this is one of them. The finnish section of wikipedia should spell names the Finnish way and the English wikipedia should spell names the English way. The vast majority of english publications drop the foreign characters and diacritics. Why? because they aren't part of the English language, hence the term "foreign characters". Masterhatch 04:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree in every particular with Masterhatch. The NHL's own website and publications do not use diacriticals, nor does any other known English-language source. The absurdity of the racist card is breathtaking: in the same fashion as the Finnish and Czech language Wikipedias follow their own national conventions for nomenclature (the name of the country in which I live is called the "United States" on neither ... should I feel insulted?), the English language Wikipedia reflects the conventions of the various English-speaking nations. In none are diacriticals commonly used. I imagine the natives of the Finnish or Czech language Wikipedias would go berserk if some peeved Anglos barge in and demand they change their customary linguistic usages. I see no reason to change the English language to suit in a similar situation. RGTraynor 06:46, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized. I intentionaly wrote the names without diacritics. I accept the fact that foreigners do that because they cannot write those letters properly and use them correctly. There are also technical restrictions. I also accepted fact that my US social security card bears name Jan Smolik instead of Jan Smolík. I do not have problem with this. I even sign my posts Jan Smolik. But Wikipedia does not have technical restrictions. I can even type wierd letters as Æ. And it has plenty of editors who are able to write names with diacritics correctly. The name without diacritics is sufficient for normal information but I still think it is wrong. I think that removing diacritics is a step back. Anyway it is true that I am not able to use diacritics in Finish names. But somebody can fix that for me.
I do not care which version will win. But I just felt there was not a clear consensus for the non-diacritics side and this discussion has proven me to be right. As for the notice of Czechs writing names incorectly. We use Inflection of names so that makes writing even more dificult (my name is Smolík but when you want to say we gave it to Smolík you will use form we gave it Smolíkovi). One last argument for diacritics, before I retire from this discussion as I think I said all I wanted to say. Without diacritics you cannot distinguish some names. For example Czech surnames Čapek and Cápek are both Capek. Anyway we also have language purists in the Czech republic. I am not one of them. --Jan Smolik 19:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized -Fine we'll use the spellings used by the IIHF, IOC, NHLPA, AHL, OHL, WHL, ESPN, TSN, The Hockey News, Sports Illustrated, etc, etc, etc.
This isn't about laziness. Its about using the alphabet afforded to the respective language. We don't refer to Алексей Яшин because the English language doesn't use the Cyrillic alphabet. So why should we subject language A to the version of the Latin alphabet used by language B? Especially when B modifies proper names from languages C & D.
My main beef here is that that the use of such characters in en.wiki is a precedent, and not a common practice. If you think the English hockey world should start spelling Czech names natively, than start a campaign amongst Czech hockey players demanding so. It may work: languages constantly infiltrate and influence each other. Wikipedia should take a passive role in such things, and not be an active forum for them. ccwaters 20:09, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
People like Jagr, Rucinsky or Elias are not only NHL players but also members of Czech team for winter olympics. Therefore I do not see any reason why spelling of their name in NHL publications should be prioritized Great, in which case for Czech Olympic pages, especially on the Czech Wikipedia, spell them as they are done in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, in the NHL-related articles, we'll spell them as per customary English-language usage. RGTraynor 08:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I wish I understood why User:ccwaters has to be rude in his posts on this subject. "Stalkers of Finnish goaltenders" isn't the way I'd describe a Wikipedia contributor. Also, since you asked, Aleksei Jashin is the Finnish translitteration of Alexei Yashin. Russian transliterates differently into Finnish than into English. Of course you must know this, since you have such a habit of lecturing to us on languages. As for diacritics, I object to the idea of dumbing down Wikipedia. There are no technical limitations that stop us from writing Antero Niittymäki instead of Antero Niittymaki. The reason so many hockey publications all over the world don't use Finnish-Scandinavian letters or diacritics is simple laziness, and Wikipedia can do much better. Besides, it isn't accepted translation practice to change the spelling of proper names if they can be easily reproduced and understood, so in my opinion it's simply wrong to do so. Since it seems to be obvious there isn't a consensus on this matter, I think a vote would be in order. Elrith 16:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Alas, a Finnish guy lecturing native English speakers on how they have to write Czech names in English (not to mention the lecturing regarding the laziness) is but a variation on the same theme of rudishness.
So, Elrith, or whomever reads this, if the lecturing is finished, could you maybe devote some attention to the Dvořák/Dvorak problem I mentioned below? I mean, whomever one asks this would not be problematic - but nobody volunteered thus far to get it solved. Am I the only one who experiences this as problematic inconsistency? --Francis Schonken 21:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
So is "Jagr" the Finnish transliteration of "Jágr"??? On that note, the Finnish "Ä" is not an "A" with "funny things" on top (that's an umlaut), its a completely separate letter nonexistent in the English language and is translated to "Æ". "Niittymaki" would be the English transliteration. "Nittymeki" or (more traditionally "Nittymӕki") would be the English transcription.
In the past I've said our friend's contributions were "thorough." I'll leave it at that. There will be nothing else about it from me unless asked. ccwaters 21:02, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
My opinion on the Dvořák/Dvorak issue is that his name is spelled Dvořák, and that's how the articles should be titled, along with redirects from Dvorak. Similarly, the article on Antero Niittymäki should be called just that, with a redirect from Niittymaki. You're right that it is a problematic inconsistency, and it needs to be fixed.
The only reason I may sound like I'm lecturing is that there are several people contributing to these discussions who don't understand the subject at all. Ccwaters's remarks on transliteration are

one example. It isn't customary or even acceptable to transliterate or transcribe Finnish letters into English; the accepted translation practice is to reproduce them, which is perfectly possible, for example, in Wikipedia. Niittymaki or anything else that isn't Niittymäki isn't a technically correct "translation". The reason North American, or for that matter, Finnish, hockey publications write Jagr instead of Jágr is ignorance and/or laziness. Wikipedia can do better that that.

However, since this discussion has, at least to me, established that there is no consensus on Wikipedia on diacritics and national letters, apart from a previous vote on diacritics, I'm going to continue my hockey edits and use Finnish/Scandinavian letters unless the matter is otherwise resolved. Elrith 04:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi Elrith, your new batch of patronising declarations simply doesn't work. Your insights in language (and how language works) seem very limited, resuming all what you don't like about a language to "laziness" and "ignorance".
Seems like we might need an RfC on you, if you continue to oracle like this, especially when your technique seems to consist in calling anyone who doesn't agree with you incompetent.
Re. consensus, I think you would be surprised to see how much things have evolved since the archived poll you speak about. --Francis Schonken 23:14, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
My 2 cents:
1) This should NOT be setteld as a local consensus for hockey players, this is about how we name persons in the english wikipedia. It is wrong to have a local consensus for hockey players only.
2) I have tried to do some findings on how names are represented, it is wrong to say that since these names are spelled like this normally they should be spelled like this, many wrongs does not make it right. So I did a few checks,
If I look at the online version of Encyclopædia Britannica I get a hit on both Björn Borg and Bjorn Borg, but in the article it is spelled with swedish characters, same for Selma Lagerlöf and Dag Hammarskjöld, I could not find any more swedes in EB :-) (I did not check all..)
I also check for as many swedes as I could think of in wikipedia to see how it is done for none hockey swedes, I found the following swedes by looking at list of swedish ... and adding a few more that I could think of, ALL had their articles spelled with the swedish characters (I'm sure you can find a few that is spelled without the swedish characters but the majority for sure seams to be spelled the same way as in their births certificates). So IF you are proposing that we should 'rename' the swedish hockey players I think we must rename all other swedes also. Do we really think that is correct? I can not check this as easily for other countries but I would guess that it is the same.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Björn Borg, Annika Sörenstam, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Selma Lagerlöf, Stellan Skarsgård,Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Håkan Nesser, Bruno K. Öijer, Björn Ranelid, Fredrik Ström, Edith Södergran, Hjalmar Söderberg, Per Wahlöö, Gunnar Ekelöf, Gustaf Fröding, Pär Lagerkvist, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wästberg, Isaac Hirsche Grünewald, Tage Åsén, Gösta Bohman, Göran Persson, Björn von Sydow, Lasse Åberg, Helena Bergström, Victor Sjöström, Gunder Hägg, Sigfrid Edström, Anders Gärderud, Henrik Sjöberg, Patrik Sjöberg, Tore Sjöstrand, Arne Åhman, so there seams to be a consensus for non hockey playing swedes? Stefan 13:33, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I also checked encarta for Björn Borg and Dag Hammarskjöld both have the Swedish characters as the main name of the articles, Selma Lagerlöf is not avaliable unless you pay so I can not check. I'm sure you can find example of the 'wrong' way also, but we can not say that there is consensus in the encyclopedic area of respelling foreign names the 'correct' english way. Stefan 14:16, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
This seems like a very constructive step to me. So I'll do the same as I did for Czech, i.e.:
  1. start Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Swedish) as a proposal, starting off with the content you bring in here.
  2. list that page in Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Conventions under consideration
  3. also list it on wikipedia:current surveys#Discussions
  4. list it in the guideline proposal Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics)#Specifics_according_to_language_of_origin
OK to work from there? --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Works for me :-) Stefan 00:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Tx for finetuning Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Swedish). I also contributed to further finetuning, but add a small note here to clarify what I did: page names in English wikipedia are in English per WP:UE. Making a Swedish name like Björn Borg English, means that the ö ("character" in Swedish language) is turned into an "o" character with a precombined diacritic mark (unicode: U+00F6, which is the same character used to write the last name of Johann Friedrich Böttger – note that böttger ware, named after this person, uses the same ö according to Webster's, and in that dictionary is sorted between "bottery tree" and "bottine"). Of course (in English!) the discussion whether it is a separate character or an "o" with a diacritic is rather futile *except* for alphabetical ordering: for alphabetical ordering in English wikipedia the ö is treated as if it were an o, hence the remark about the "category sort key" I added to the intro of the "Swedish NC" guideline proposal. In other words, you can't expect English wikipedians who try to find something in an alphabetic list to know in advance (a) what is the language or origin of a word, and (b) if any "special rules" for alphabetical ordering are applicable in that language. That would be putting things on their head. "Bö..." will always be sorted in the same way, whatever the language of origin.
What I mean is that "Björn Borg" (in Swedish) is transcribed/translated/transliterated to "Björn Borg" in English, the only (invisible!) difference being that in Swedish ö is a character, and in English ö is a letter o with a diacritic.
Or (still the same in other words): Ö is always treated the same as "O" in alphabetical ordering, whether it's a letter of Ötzi or of Öijer--Francis Schonken 10:56, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

For consistency with the rest of Wikipedia, hockey player articles should use non-English alphabet characters if the native spelling uses a Latin-based alphabet (with the exception of naturalized players like Petr Nedved). Why should Dominik Hasek be treated differently than Jaroslav Hašek? Olessi 20:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

If we are using other encyclopedias as litmus tests, we don't we look at a few hockey players: Dominik Hasek at Encarta Dominik Hasek at Britannica Jaromir Jagr at Encarta Teemu Selanne in Encarta list of top scorers

Last argument: We use the names that these players are overwhelming known as in the English language. We speak of Bobby Orr, not Robert Orr. Scotty Bowman, not William Scott Bowman. Ken Dryden not Kenneth Dryden. Tony Esposito, not Anthony Esposito. Gordie Howe not Gordon Howe... etc etc, etc. The NHL/NHLPA/media call these players by what they request to be called. Vyacheslav Kozlov used to go by Slava Kozlov. Evgeni Nabokov "americanized" himself for a season as "John Nabokov" but changed his mind again.

ccwaters 22:54, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Dvořák

Could someone clean this up:

Article/category name without diacritics 
Category:Compositions by Antonin Dvorak
Category:Operas by Antonin Dvorak
Cello Concerto (Dvorak)
String Quartet No. 11 (Dvorak)
String Quartet No. 12 (Dvorak)
Symphony No. 6 (Dvorak)
Symphony No. 8 (Dvorak)
Symphony No. 9 (Dvorak)
Violin Concerto (Dvorak)
Page name with diacritics 
Antonín Dvořák
List of compositions by Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 7 (Dvořák)

I'd do it myself if I only knew which way the wikipedia community wants it... --Francis Schonken 10:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been bold and renamed the articles to use diacritics in the title, since they already use them in the text. I've also slapped {{categoryredirect}} tags on the two categories: a bot should be along shortly to complete the job. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:54, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Tx!!! - I'll remove Dvořák as an exception from Wikipedia:Naming policy (Czech)#Exceptions --Francis Schonken 15:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

As long as there is no rule in wikipedia preventing us from using the correct names, the diacritics should stay. Which, however, does not mean that I support using Polish names of monarchs who are called with their Latin or English names in English. Halibutt 11:22, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Obviously. With Unicode, there is no more excuse for careless spelling on wikipedia. --Lysytalk 13:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Moving names back to English spelling

In order to reduce forking, I would direct interested parties' attention to the discussion at Talk:List of Polish monarchs. --Elonka 03:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it was pointed earler that a proposed Naming Convention is a much better place to discuss the naming issue then a list page. Oh, and note that your proposed version is only one of many optional English spellings we can use, and the current ones are also used in English publications, so they qualify as English, too.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 04:52, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

There has been this attempt to create a naming system specifically for Polish monarchs (but it is just a proposal and never received consensus), against the system used for other European monarchs. There is also the fact that most Polish monarchs now are located in places which contravene to general naming convention. There is no consensus for permission to use an exception for Polish monarchs, and such permission should be sought from consensus atWikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) where there is the thread Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles)#Need of particular exception/ convention for Polish monarchs. At that spot there are editors who are more or less experienced in overall picture of monarch naming and not only one country. It is deception to advertise any system for naming before a consensus there is convinced of the need for such exception. I hope all of you continue the naming scheme discussion for Polish monarchs there, before continuing or creating policy forks. Shilkanni 13:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)