Template talk:Vietnamese name

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[edit] Purpose of template

For Vietnamese names, the family names are not important, and they are usually referred to by their given names, so this template regarding the family name and how it's transliterated is not useful. I will revert it back to its previous version. DHN 20:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[Begin copy-paste from user talk:]
I think your changing of the template {{Vietnamese name}} rendered it useless. Like East Asian practice, the family name is given first, but unlike East Asian practice, the given name is the primary form of address. Vietnamese is written with the Latin alphabet, so there's no need to "transliterate" it. The purpose of the template was to explain to a Western reader why the person in the article is not referred to by their family name but by their given name, and discourage them from attempting to "fix" it (The Ngo Dinh Diem and Vo Nguyen Giap articles had that problem many times before the template was put up). A template that focuses exclusively on the family name is misleading, if not plain wrong for Vietnamese names. DHN 20:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely following you.

1. The template's language was when I got there (and now is again) ungrammatical/illogical.
2. It is equally helpful to readers to tell them that a V. name more correctly spelled with diacritics is often transliterated without them, and what the correct form really is, as to tell them that it is customary to use the given name when referring to someone.
3. I suspect you may not know what is quite meant by "transliterate" and "Latin alphabet". The uniquely diacritically-marked characters used in Vietnamese when written properly are emphatically not letters in the Latin Alphabet, or even in any of the ISO character sets for European more broadly. They are modifications of them, yes, but that's beside the point. Much of Cyrillic is also a modification of the Latin alphabet, but that doesn't make them Latin alphabet characters.

I think all of this begs a question: It is questionable that following Vietnamese preference/custom for using given names instead of family names is appropriate at all in an English-language encyclopedia. It is customary, very broadly, in Russia to call people named Dmitri by the name Dima; it is more than a nickname, but a custom strongly embedded into daily language. I don't think that Russian biography articles should use this custom, though. Just a similar (to me) example.

However, I really do not at all want to argue with you about this. If you think that the articles should use the Vietnamese custom, and that articles need to be templated in such as way to prevent reversal of it, I really don't have anything against that other than not entirely agreeing with it. I do feel strongly that the Vietnamese name templates must also serve the same function as the Chinese, Japanese and Korean ones. Given how few articles there are that would be affected, the change would be trivial. I think it could be done in about 5 minutes. Including fixing the grammar, here's my take, please let me know what you think:

This is a Vietnamese name; the family name is {{{1}}}, but is sometimes transliterated as {{{2}}}. According to Vietnamese custom, this person properly should be referred to by the given name {{{3}}}.

Plus a merge of the documentation, of course. If you prefer "personal name" instead of "given name", no objection from me.

I think this would satisfy both our needs, and I'll happily update all the articles myself unless you want to do it.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

PS: I'm sorry that my edits messed up your system. The wording of the original template wasn't very clear, and it's usage as you intended it seemed mistaken, but I know see clearly what you were getting at. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this is an acceptable compromise. I don't have time to implement the changes right now so if you can please change it. Thanks. DHN 21:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll probably do that tonight, then. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW: I have no problem with putting Vietnamese names in Western order, but that's not the practice. Even in formal situations, Vietnamese people are referred to by their given name (the prime minister of Vietnam is uniformly referred to as Mr. Dung, not Mr. Nguyen), part of the reason is because of this. Thanks. DHN 21:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Noted, but I don't want to monkey in any way with the ordering of the names in the articles, just explain which the family name is (mostly for use with regard to sports biographies and such; lists of players in tournaments will be alphabetized by family name, whatever order it appears in and whatever local custom might be in the nation of the player's origin).  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

In case there was any misunderstanding, I wasn't trying to impose a non-English way of referring to people in an English-language article, it's already the case in English (for example, see [1]). My purpose in creating the template was merely to explain why it was so. That's why the template was not included in articles about people whose names are already Westernized, such as Hong Tran, Van Tran, or Van Tuong Nguyen. DHN 21:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Works for me! And I wouldn't use it on those articles in the new version, either. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the template should be included for Vietnamese who have their names in Westernized order, or who have a non-Vietnamese given name. This is done for the Chinese name entries. Making the second part of the template optional (i.e. not including a given name) will solve this. Does anyone know how to alter the template to do this? Badagnani 21:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see there's a template 2 now. That will work just as well. Good work, you guys. Badagnani 22:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I think between the two of them we've got it covered. NB: I don't actually very often see the Chinese name, etc., templates used on articles in which the family name doesn't appear first. But it's not a big deal to me either way. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[End copy-paste from user talk.]

[edit] Pronouns missing/confusing

Without the pronouns "his/her," this text is confusing: "the family name is {{{1}}}, but is usually referred to as {{{2}}} according to Vietnamese tradition". It makes it sound as if THE FAMILY NAME is usually referred to as (2), rather than s/he. Badagnani 21:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This confusion was due to various different edits, and their partial reversion. New version will resolve this issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 03:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Exceptions

This template should not be applied to Ho Chi Minh, since he is universally referred to by the name "Ho", which is a family name. DHN 05:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)