Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Indic)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. Thus references or links to this page should not describe it as "policy". |
| Style and formatting |
|---|
| Manual of Style and its subpages |
|
Abbreviations |
| Related policies and guidelines |
| Other advice, including essays and proposals |
| Related to specific cultures |
|
Arabic-related articles |
These conventions are used to write and edit Indic-related articles, as well as consistent naming of Indian people, places, and historical terms.
Contents |
[edit] Policy
In naming Indic-related topics and article titles in the English language Wikipedia, please follow these conventions. The term Indic is used here to refer to names and words that originated in one of the languages of the Indian subcontinent, and that are written in Brahmi derived scripts. For infoboxes, templates, and other style issues, see also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Indic-related articles).
[edit] Scope
This applies to any articles related to Indic subjects, or words derived from languages written in an Indic script. It also applies to most of the religious works of the Indian religions.
[edit] Languages of origin
This convention should be applied to any language spoken in the Indian subcontinent that is written in an Indic script. The major languages are: Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani (when written in Kannada or Devanagari scripts), Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Pali, Punjabi (when written in Gurmukhi script), Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Telugu.
The following languages are of Indic origin, but will usually be written in non-Indic scripts, usually derived from Arabic (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Arabic). This convention will normally apply to them only when transliterating from writings in an Indic script: Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi (western), Sindhi.
Several languages may be written in Indic scripts, but are not themselves Indic languages. Some aspects of this convention may apply to them, but they may have their own conventions. They include Tibetan, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Javanese.
[edit] Subject matter covered
This standard is recommended for use in articles in the following fields;
- Religions originating in South Asia, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism. Articles on Buddhism may follow this convention, or that of other languages, depending on the language of origin.
- Mythology of South Asia.
- Historical articles and historical place names of South Asia, including especially history prior to 1800.
[edit] Modern names and terms
Personal, organisation, and company names in current and recent usage should generally be romanized according to the nameholder's preference, if that can be established. However, this convention may be appropriately applied to them in certain contexts. These include;
- when it is necessary to accurately or unambiguously transliterate from original text, or to indicate original pronunciation,
- when it is necessary to maintain consistency in the article
[edit] Titles and honorifics
Generally, titles and honorifics should not be used either in the article body or when naming an article. However, exceptions may apply to individuals who are widely known by an honorific name or with a title.
Examples are Mahatma Gandhi where Mahatma is an honorific, Sri Chand where 'Sri' is a title, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada where Swami and Prabhupada are honorific, and Chandrasekharendra Saraswati Kanchi Mahaswamigal where Kanchi Mahaswamigal is an honorific.
Redirects should be used for other forms of an individual's name.
[edit] Naming and transliteration
Each Indic article should be named according to its primary transliteration, if this can be clearly established. If a primary transliteration cannot be clearly established, then the article should be labelled with a simplified transliteration.
Informal transliterations should not be used for article titles, unless they can be justified as being the primary transliteration used in English. If a transliteration's status as primary cannot be justified or verified, then it should be corrected and replaced by a simplified transliteration. A redirect should then be left in its place. Redirects should also be created for the more common alternative spelling forms.
Where alternative spellings or informal transliterations are in widespread use, a limited number of the most common ones should be listed at the top of the main article.
If the formal transliteration differs from the article title, it should be included once in the introductory section of the article for reference. The name in the original script may also be included, for further reference. See below for advice on formatting these.
[edit] Primary transliteration
A word has a primary transliteration if at least 75% of all references in wider English usage have the same transliteration. Primary transliterations may sometimes be less accurate than other transliterations.
[edit] Formal transliteration
A formal transliteration preserves all phonetic information in the original script, and should be used where unambiguous transliteration is needed. The preferred formal transliteration is the standardised ISO 15919 transliteration scheme for Indic scripts. This system uses the Latin alphabet (the Roman script) with additional diacritic symbols to represent Indic scripts accurately. For Sanskrit, IAST is preferred, which differs from ISO 15919 only in a very few points.
See this concise table for aid in transliteration.
[edit] Simplified transliteration
A simplified transliteration scheme is used to produce an easy-to-read version of the formal transliteration. The simplified transliteration aims to convert the formal transliteration into a Latin form that complies with Latin phonemic rules. This means that Indic language symbols that have no Latin equivalent are merged with the closest Latin equivalent. The simplified transliteration is also included with the formal transliteration at the transliteration transliteration table .
The formal transliteration can be used for all Wikis written in Latin based scripts. The simplified transliteration however may be suitable only for the English Wikipedia.
[edit] Formatting
Use the {{lang}} tag to mark non-English strings. When giving a term in its native script, provide the ISO 639-2 code (if unavailable, ISO 639-3) to identify the language. Example:
- {{lang|ta|தமிழ்}}, {{lang|hi|हिन्दी}}
- தமிழ், हिन्दी
Giving a term in ISO 15919 transliteration, simply add "-Latn" (the ISO 15924 code for the Latin alphabet) to the language code:
- ''{{lang|ta-Latn|tamiḻ}}, {{lang|hi-Latn|hindī}}''
- tamiḻ, hindī
Use {{IAST}} only for Sanskrit terms:
- {{lang|sa|संस्कृतम्}} ''{{IAST|saṃskṛtam}}''
- संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam
[edit] Preferred format for introducing the article subject
Ideally, when introducing an article that is covered by this policy, IPA pronunciations (with audio pronunciation if possible) and transliterations of the Indic script should be included. The format is:
- Simplified Transliteration ([English IPA text]; Language: Indic Text, ISO Transliteration, [Indic IPA text] [?]) ...
A special {{indic}} template has been made to take care of formatting issues.
Use this format when you have the original script text, transliteration, IPA and audio pronunciation file.
'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | defaultaudio=Audio file.ogg | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text | indicaudio=Audio file.ogg }}) ...
- Example
'''Sikhism''' ({{indic|lang=pa|defaultipa='siːkɪz(ə)m|defaultaudio=Seekism.ogg|indic=ਸਿੱਖੀ|trans=sikkhī|indicipa='sɪk.kʰiː| indicaudio=Sikkhi.ogg}}) is a...- Sikhism (['siːkɪz(ə)m]; Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖੀ, sikkhī, ['sɪk.kʰiː] [?]) is a...
[edit] Without audio
Use this when you have the original script text, transliteration and IPA but do not have the audio pronunciation. This is likely to be the most used format.
'''Simplified Transliteration''' ({{indic | lang=Language code | defaultipa=English IPA text | indic=Indic Text | trans=ISO Transliteration | indicipa=Indic IPA text }}) ...
- Example
'''Mumbai''' ({{indic|lang=mr|defaultipa=mumbəi|indic=मुंबई|trans=mumbaī}}) is a...- Mumbai (IPA: [mumbəi]; Marathi: मुंबई, mumbaī [?]) is a...
[edit] Other versions
If both the English and Indic pronunciation are the same (likely if the Indic word isn't used in English) then ignore the indicipa parameter. If you don't have audio files, you can simply leave those parameters out. For full details of what the template can do, see Template:Indic.
