Talk:Princess Alexandra of Greece

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[edit] Female name reuse

We're in a massive foulup here due to the re-use of female names in the Greek branch of the Oldenburg/Glucksburgs (there are two Olgas and three Alexandras); e.g. the article for Prince Michael of Greece contains one of each, and when they were linked, they both linked to the wrong person.

More recently, fervent and incautious editing and renaming by two editors whom I won't name, and a tie-in to the massive dust-up going on over Russian consorts, has exacerbated the problem. E.g. Alexandra Georgievna currently redirects to Princess Alexandra of Greece, which redirects to Alexandra of Greece, and that is not the Alexandra who married into the Russian Royal family!

Given the confusion, I am going to turn Princess Alexandra of Greece into a disambiguation page, both for unwary users of Wikipedia who try and look up "Princess Alexandra of Greece" (not realizing there are three), and also to catch lazy editors who just link to Princess Alexandra of Greece without bothering to check to make sure their link goes to the right place.

The remaining question is, what do we name the articles for these three separate women? Not sure what the right solution is, I'm trying to research Wikipedia policy on this at the moment. Alexandra I was married to a Russian Grand Duke, and Alexandra II was the consort to the King of Yugoslavia, so the applicable set of policies is wonderfully complicated. Noel (talk) 02:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, quite, certain people have made a bit of a ball's up of it. Anyway, I think the Queen of Yugoslavia would probably have the header of Alexandra of Greece seeing as it's normal practice to drop the 'princess' and leave their territorial designation when they marry a monarch (or sovereign Grand Duke). I get too confused over this new Russian consorts naming thing, but the other Alexandra would probably be Grand Duchess Alexandra (+/- Georgievna) of Russia seeing as she married the son of a Alexander II. Perhaps someone who's dealing with the Russian naming convs. could comment? Craigy (talk) 01:40, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

We will be in serious shit bung if we name her as Grand Duchess Alexandra of Russia as there have been approximately TEN women with a stake in that name (see Alexandra Romanov). It is yet somewhat unclear in naming conventions, should a consort of a non-reigning royal revert to HER pre-marital name or leave at her consort name. However, the only practical disambiguation we could have between half a dozen Grand duchess consort Alexandras IS to use their pre-marital territorial designations. (Tell me please a better way - I am listaning. Though I doubt anything better exists.) 217.140.193.123 05:02, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe, by analogy with things like Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, she ought to be Princess Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Russia - or do Grand Dukes get handled differently from ordinary dukes? Arck! Noel (talk) 13:33, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Argh. I've been reading Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) - and even more imporantly, Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) - until my brains are leaking out my ears. Things are worse than I thought, because it seems that there's a move afoot to change the policy that produced Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. Not that it may matter, anyway; now that I read up on Grand Dukes, that's a rank that's equivalent to Prince. So my proposed "Princess Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Russia" doesn't really make any sense (alas, because it would been perfect for disambiguation). Alas, as pointed out, since there are many women named Grand Duchess Alexandra of Russia, we can't use that. Hmm, need to ponder this a bit. The current choice, Alexandra Yurievna, is completely worthless; doing a Google search for pages in English turns up zero pages that call her that. A search for "Princess Alexandra of Greece"+1870 (adding the year of her birth to disambiguate among the three of them) turns up 50 pages that use that, so I'm leaning towards some form of that as the way to go. I need to go back and re-study Wikipedia_talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) again, and see if I can figure out what people wanted to do about titles of non-reigning (but royal) wives. Noel (talk) 02:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

No, such as "Princess Alexandra, Grand duchess of Russia" should not be created here. Im my understanding, one main reason why NC is not giving an answer is because NC has not taken a definite position to deceased wives of non-reigning royals - all the energy and battle has usually been of deceased consorts of monarchs, who by real standing are more prominent than some minor royals. There is not yet a clear-cut rule anywhere, should a consort of nn-reigning be under her pre-marital name or under her consort name. Anyone's choice - but predictably a fight will erupt if the result is unnatural or certain people's pet royals get changed. In my opinion, the reason why "Alexandra Yurievna" produces no proper hits is a result of her being actually very unimportant person. After all, she died when 21 years old and never was anything else than a member of two royal families. Her presence here is mostly due to her son's, daughter's, father's and mother's prominence - they deserve their articles. Of course some works of reference have contained her name Alexandra Yurievna - such as Almanach de Gotha and some corresponding ones. In late 1800's. But that is not necessarily something to get a flourishing multitude of today's websites to mention her. Thus, no wonder to gain scarce google hits. When I put the Queen of Yugoslavia in her proper location here, I was -anticipating these problems- wary of creating anything very new to this other one, the non-prominent girl. I put her to the origonal "Princess Alexandra of Greece" in order to avoid presumably just these sorts of problems. However, if asked what could be acceptable locations, which follow the spirit of current NC, I say: Alexandra Yurievna, Grand Duchess of Russia (or Grand Duchess Alexandra Yurievna of Russia), in case of consort name beng accepted for these cases, and Princess Alexandra Yurievna of Greece (if pre-marital name is desired) - I would also accept the shorter Alexandra Yurievna of Greece. Arrigo 21:01, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Your contention that the reason why "Alexandra Yurievna" produces no proper hits is a result of her being actually very unimportant person is demonstrably incorrect (although I agree with you that she is not very important). There are plenty of examples of mention of her as "Princess Alexandra of Greece" - type 'Princess Alexandra of Greece" 1870' into Google and you'll find a number of pages (and when you look at them you can see that they are indeed about this person). So it's not due to her unimportance that there are no instances of "Alexandra Yurievna" - if so, there wouldn't be any pages for her under any name.

Still, I don't know what to do, and as you pointed out elsewhere, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) is thin on advice as to how to name the wives of non-reigning royalty. All we can do are look at examples, like Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. As far as I can gather from these examples, the standard way to do it is to say "X, Y of Z", where "Y of Z" is her husband's title. But "Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Russia" doesn't work because there are so many. However, I notice that Grand Duchess Alexandra of Russia lists her as Alexandra Yurievna of Greece - apparently using the "of Greece" both to help people figure out who she is, and to help disambiguate her. So, using that precedent/example, I wonder if Alexandra of Greece, Grand Duchess of Russia would be OK? That is in basically the same format as lots of other non-sovereign royal women, but with the added "of Greece" to disambiguate her.

The only potential problem is that it sounds a little bit like our name for deceased queen consorts "X of Y", but there's no potential for confusion, because it clearly says she was a GDoR through marriage. (I would also be OK with Princess Alexandra of Greece, Grand Duchess of Russia, by analogy with Princess Alice above, but a) that's rather long, and b) it's not clear that she was ever referred to as "Princess" once she became a Grand Duchess.) Noel (talk) 00:06, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I checked pages the google gives. All or almost all are genealogy lists - and we know that genealogists have a habit of using the maiden name, even against contemporary use. Genealogies are artificial in that respect. I would like to know her name forms in contemporary newspapers, and perhaps AdG and Hofkalender deserves a checking. If we do not put a VfD die to unencyclopedic worth, and put relevant infopieces in her relatives' articles. She was rather unimportant, and there seems to be no achievements of hers, only her as a part of genealogy. Again, no wonder that the google hits such (=genealogies and amateur genealogies). I am still in the opinion that google gives distorted view to how she was known. And therefore I do not accept the above allegation that my contention is demonstrably incorrect. And, an additoonal factor may be the diverse transliterations of the patronymic. Somewhere there forms "Yuriyevna" and "Yuryievna" and whatever. I would not support too long or too complex heading, such as Alexandra of Greece, Grand Duchess of Russia - and those feel to be against the spirit of NC where a combination of maiden and marital names/titles seem to be abhorred. Arrigo 00:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Nope; no web pages at all, in any language, with "Alexandra Yuriyevna" or "Alexandra Yuryievna" in them.

As to the length of the name, you actually said (above) that you'd be OK with her at "Alexandra Yurievna, Grand Duchess of Russia" - which is exactly the same length as "Alexandra of Greece, Grand Duchess of Russia"!

I agree it's a little complex, and I'm not happy about that, but by the time you add together her name ("Alexandra") and her married title ("Grand Duchess of Russia") - which I think you have to agree is the Wikipedia standard for wives of titled nobility (see examples above) - you've got a mouthful already. And since "Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Russia" is ambiguous, we have to add something to disambiguate it.

Given that she is much better known in English as "Alexandra of Greece" than as "Alexandra Yurievna", I think "of Greece" is a far superior option for that disambiguation (please see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)). However, if you have another suggestion, I would be glad to consider it.

In any event, having an article on a person at "X Y", where X is a first name, and Y is a patronymic, is completely unreasonable anyway - it would be like having the article on Hans Christian Andersen at "Hans Christian".

There are also several other people with the first-name/patronymic "Alexandra Yurievna":

• "Princess Alexandra Yurievna Galiztine" (1946-2003)
• "Alexandra Yurievna Levitskaya", Deputy Minister of Health and Social Development in the Russian Government

at least one of whom is worthy of a Wikipedia article. So, really, Alexandra Yurievna ought to be a disambiguation page anyway. Which puts us back to how to disambiguate "Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Russia" (her correct name in English). Noel (talk) 22:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Naming system for consorts of non-reigning royals

Actually, one of the policy things we would more or less need, for all sorts of other situations too, is whether consorts of non-reigning royals revert to their pre-marital title or remain at their consort title+name. When the same question re consorts of monarchs has been solved already by historians generations ago in favor of pre-marital name, the chief reason was disambiguation, as a line of monarchs usually marry not from the same source. Thus, though certain female first names, such as Mary, Catherine, Elisabeth etc are common, a pre-marital territorial designation helps to disambiguate women from each other (as consorts do not have ordinals) so that the text would not have such distinct personages as Queen Mary of France, Queen Mary of France, Queen Mary of France, Queen Mary of France and Queen Mary of France in one book of history of, say, dressing habits of queens of France. Now, with minor royals, as there were usually plenty of princes of a country living simulteneously (as opposed to monarchs, which usually reigned one at a time) and consequently a corresponding number of their wives, it just could be that multiplication means that those women have identical names as often with pre-marital as with married, so the original reason is much weaker to be decisive here. Of course, it would on one hand be advisable to keep the same principle (pre-marital) with wives of princes as is with wives of monarchs - they after all were sisters-in-law and equal treatment is a virtue... but on the other hand, such could accumulate identically-named women. This basic choice should first be decided, in a way that not too many of us feel dissatisfied. Otherwise, much work may be made in vain, and also there could be idiosyncratic results that appear ugly because of inconsistency. What should we do to have a decision of that? Arrigo 12:44, 16 August 2005 (UTC)