Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese)

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[edit] Diacritical Marks

The main Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) page says that diacritical marks should not be used unless it is familiar with English readers. The whole idea behind transliteration is that an English-keyboard user need not be required to figure out how to type out the Vietnamese diacritical marks. Yellowtailshark 02:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The "Đ" is not pronounced like an English "D" in either northern or southern Vietnam. This creates a problem for words with this letter. For cities with well known romanizations like Saigon and Hanoi, we'd probably want to use our normal WP rule, like we do for Milan or Rome--just use the English version, without diacritics. But for names, it seems that using diacritics is good. Badagnani 03:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article Title

I looked at a few government sites that use áo dài and ao dai. The US Embassy in Canberra, Australia uses ao dai. So does the HCMC People's Committee for its English-language pages. The site uses áo dài for its Vietnamese languages sections. It seems to me that diacritical omission will become used on official sources. Yellowtailshark 05:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The official website of the government of Vietnam is recently writing names with diacritics in its English section. DHN 05:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

In the case of Cả River when I googled for it, the only reference was the Wikipedia article itself (hah! go figure). Ca River is mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica as well as this paper from the National University of Laos. Yellowtailshark (talk) 04:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proper Nouns

[edit] Names

I wonder how useful these templates would be? Template:Vietnamese name and Template:Vietnamese name2 Yellowtailshark 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I think these are very useful, firstly because most people would not know that it is the custom to use given names in the ensuing text, and because many of those who are not Asian specialists but who run categorizing and standardizing campaigns will need to know these things, so as to not list someone alphabetically by their given name, or to make other sorts of category/template/standards related mistakes. LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Family-name, middle-name, given-name order? Or given-name, middle-name, family-name order? It seems for Vietnamese within Vietnam, the family-name is given first. But for those outside of Vietnam, you will also see the given-name first. Perhaps we should stick with the name order that the person is most commonly referred to as. Yellowtailshark 03:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Locations

I see that words of cities are spelled joined, and sometimes not (e.g. Hà Nội → Hanoi; but Đà Nặng → sometimes Danang, sometimes Da Nang). Any thoughts on this? Yellowtailshark 03:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I am deeply interested, but not very knowledgeable or experienced in Vietnamese history, so I don't presume to speak from knowledge of what the scholarly standards may be. But on Wikipedia, I believe that we should try as much as possible to place things in the format most recognizable to the average English speaker. Our average reader is likely to have heard of Hanoi and Tonkin and Saigon, and so these places should be represented in the spelling most common in English; other places like Can Tho and Hai Phong I at least have not heard of, and so perhaps these (and the multitude of more obscure places) should be represented however is most proper in Vietnamese. Since Vietnamese is written in Roman letters (with diacritics, but not in Chinese characters or another writing system), I would imagine there ought to be standards within the Vietnamese language as to this issue, no? LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps what might help is to use the spelling from the city's official website. In regards to Danang, they consistently use it without the space. Yellowtailshark 02:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monarchs

Sometimes I see King An Dương Vương used, even though vương means "king". Would this be redundant? Should it just be King An Duong?

The standard on Wikipedia is to not include titles in article titles. The article should thus be listed at An Duong or An Duong Vuong but not at King... anything. As for how he is referred to later in the article, I'd vote for king only because it's a term widely understood and recognized in English, and because it is widely accepted as the term used to refer to these rulers. There are plenty of other terms (shogun, Opperhoofd, Shah) which do not easily translate to a single term like "king", and those I think can certainly be used as is. However, the more obscure a term is, the more necessary it is to translate or explain it briefly in parens whenever used. In other words, if we are going to start articles with "So-and-so was a vuong of Annam in X year", then there really needs to be a "(King)" right after vuong. LordAmeth 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Although Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) says not to use titles, it also mentions that it does not apply to East Asian monarchs. According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Names of emperors, "Emperor" is an integral part of the name. However, Vua (Emperor) Bao Dai doesn't have any sort of honorific titles in the article name. Then again, Bao Dai isn't the real name, but an imperial title for the era of reign. Likewise, it seems Vương (King) is an integral part of the imperial title. Which would suggest that we translate An Dương Vương as the An Duong King or King of An Duong (his real name was Thục Phán). An Duong, it seems, was a toponym. Yellowtailshark 18:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see. And, of course, now that you mention it, I should have realized that all the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean monarchs do have the title included. Sorry. LordAmeth 22:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese and Pinyin Transliterations

I do a lot of work on the Chinese/Vietnamese prehistory and ancient history articles. Because the two modern societies share quite a bit in common in terms of their ancient pasts, I use the Template:CJKV to standardize transliterations. One issue is, however, which name to use, Zhao Tuo or Trieu Da for the main article title? Yellowtailshark 03:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Vietnamese person -> Vietnamese name. Chinese person -> Chinese name. Zhao Tuo was Chinese. DHN 03:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)