Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (thorn)

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I'm going to post notifications about this new proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) and some other places now. --Francis Schonken 10:11, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Counterargument

I don't think this proposal is a good idea, here is some reasoning.

[edit] Produces idiosyncratic forms

If we transliterate thorn every time it occurs but leave other Icelandic characters alone then we will produce very idiosyncratic forms. Let's take Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir as an example. If we transliterate the thorn but leave the other characters intact we get "Thorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir". This is not a form which really sees any use. Here's a Google search.

  • 429 English pages for "Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -wikipedia
  • 2 English pages for "Thorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -wikipedia
    doubtful result, see below --Francis Schonken 14:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
    This is the search I ran: [1] It yields 2 (or 3) hits when I run it (I'm in London). - Haukur 15:17, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
    Which isn't a search for English pages, hence the low result. --Francis Schonken 15:29, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
    By restricting the search for one language you won't get any more results. I get 2 results and both of them are in English. Now, if you can produce more webpages which contain this idiosyncratic form then please name them. - Haukur 19:39, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

We would end up with a very rare form.

[edit] Can run counter to the most common principle

Even if we were to decide to transliterate all Icelandic characters into ASCII, something which is done reasonably often, we would still often end up with a form which may not be the most commonly used in English.

  • 418 English pages for "Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -"Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir" -wikipedia
  • 99 English pages for "Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir" -"Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -wikipedia

Most people who have any interest at all in someone like Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, the Icelandic minister of education, will already know a few things about Iceland and Icelandic orthography and will be better served with including the 'Þ' in her name.

[edit] Produces ambiguity

Transliterating 'þ' into 'th' can produce ambiguity. For example both 'Þorsteinsson' and 'Thorsteinsson' exist as separate last names in Iceland.

[edit] Is too specific

We may well need a naming convention for Icelandic people - there are e.g. some issues with the use of patronyms/matronyms which might be useful to spell out. We also need more discussion on post-ASCII characters and when to use them. A few words on thorn would be at home in a convention on either topic. But making a separate naming convention on a single character seems like overkill to me.

[edit] Proposal has a misleading example

Of course the article on the Norse god of thunder should be at Thor rather than Þórr. That's because Thor is the commonly used English name. This has little bearing on the use of 'Þ' in general.

[edit] Problems can be solved

Of course some fraction of the people reading the article on Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir will not be familiar with the letter 'þ'. For those people we should provide a transliteration within the article - maybe with the 'foreignchar' template. - Haukur 13:06, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I get 490 English pages for "Thorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -wikipedia
I'm wanting to assume good faith, and that you had a technical glitch or whatever, but your numbers don't seem anywhere near to reliable results.
Further, I get 523 English pages for "Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" -wikipedia, which, with the maybe technical limitations the Google system has, would seem "most common" in a first approach.
Anyway, wouldn't it be better you put together a counter-proposal? I mean, criticism is easy, but maybe better make a proposal either on this talk page, or wherever you like, according to what you think would be most acceptable to the wikipedia community? "We may well need a naming convention for Icelandic people" - what stops you to propose one?
Also, re. "We also need more discussion on post-ASCII characters and when to use them" - I don't know whether we mean the same with "discussion"; anyway "post-ASCII characters" are already discussed several months at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft), for instance user:Curps is involved in this talk. --Francis Schonken 14:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
There's nothing stopping me from proposing a new naming convention for Icelandic people except that I have limited time and resources to spend on Wikipedia and have to prioritize somewhat. I'm currently working more than I should like on project pages and less than I should like on articles. - Haukur 15:15, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
As you please, but with the same amount of energy you put in writing what you wrote on this page, you could've made an alternative guideline proposal too. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Unicode) (draft) is going on for months, without producing anything more than a draft. So I decided to start helping things to move on, with the limited amount of time I have available. --Francis Schonken 15:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
A search for "Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir" will also yield pages where "Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir" occurs which is why those have to be filtered out to get a meaningful result. - Haukur 15:19, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it would be useful to go too much in detail about the finer points of google testing. Anyhow, what I know is that in diacritics discussions google testing is nearly never helpful (google does weird things with diacritics) - the same goes apparently for Þ (I knew also that for eszet it is not possible to use google testing). Anyway, in short: you also filtered out the google results where both Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir and Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir occur, like this webpage: http://womenministers.government.is/ : Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir under the photo; Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir two times in the English text (FYI, on a meeting held in Iceland, on an Icelandic website). Sorry, this kind of google testing (certainly when relying on "filtering out") is not possible for characters like Þ --Francis Schonken 15:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Goggle is not a very precise tool but it's better than nothing and it's enough to reveal that on the Internet — even on English-language pages — the spelling Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir is most common while Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir also sees some use but Thorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir is found almost nowhere. - Haukur 19:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Haukur that this proposal is not a good idea. Stefán Ingi 17:45, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
As do I. Our readers are not stupid. If they don't know the thorn yet, they'll learn. I'm very much against dumbing down an encyclopedia to make it "easier". —Nightstallion (?) 20:01, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
Don't confuse "dumbing down" (removing information to suit the lowest common denominator) with making the encyclopedia more accessible. It's silly to have characters in a page title that a reader can't even recognise, let alone pronounce and/or make sense of. By all means contain the "correct" spelling of a name in the article, but making an article technical and incomprehensible to people who aren't experts in the field is the exact opposite of what WP tries to do in most cases. Stevage 03:49, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Forgive me for saying so, but I fail to understand why having a þ in the title of an article makes it incomprehensible. A reader not familiar with it will wonder what it is, find a transliteration as well as an indication of what part of the world it's associated with in the first sentence, and then no longer be confused. She'd have a much easier time with it than I do with an article like Heine–Borel theorem, of which I don't understand a single word after "in." That's a technical and inaccessible article (and yes we have them and need them on Wikipedia); Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir is just a regular article with a funny-looking letter in the title. Please don't overstate the situation here. Chick Bowen 03:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intelligible to those interested in the subject

I would imagine that most readers who navigate to an article using þ would (i) either be sufficiently familiar with the letter to read it without problems (indeed, to possibly be majorly annoyed by the deterioration of information incurred by an arbitrary transliteration) or (ii) be sufficiently curious to take 10 seconds of their life to learn this letter. Our readers are expected to be curious and wanting to learn things. For example, about Icelandic subjects. Arbor 18:02, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. —Nightstallion (?) 19:54, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Support

I think this is a good proposal. When I first came here from the "Proposals" page, I had never heard of this character. Even after having read everything on the proposal and discussion page, I still find the character confusing. For the average English reader, this character is not recognizable or pronounceable. It's unclear how to alphabetize it, it's difficult to link to, and if someone is browsing a category that has an article title with this character, it could be as incomprehensible as if the title were in Chinese or Arabic or Hebrew. Standard characters that are in common use in English, should be the standard for any English-language Wikipedia article. Elonka 02:49, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I also support this idea; although it probably does need a caveat for Modern Icelandic names, those which do not, or not yet,have names in English. Althing does, though. It should be remembered, however, than to most of the world, thornis as unknown, and as hard to type, as any Chinese or Malay Malayalam character. Septentrionalis 23:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Malay language uses the Roman alphabet in the same configuration as English. Perhaps you mean Jawi?
Chick Bowen 18:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Malayalam script, used in parts of southern India, would fit with Chinese as writing that is not just, like Russian and Arabic (and probably Jawi), incomprehensible, but hopelessly, desperately incomprehensible to most English speakers.
--Jerzy•t 22:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I stongly support this. Indeed I would prefer that All article titles, without exception, be transliterated, and any character not in standard use in English not appear in article titles (except redirects), although they may well be sued in the body of an article. DES (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, DES, define "in standard use in English." Would you include characters with diacritics ('ö', 'é', etc.)? Chick Bowen 22:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually i would prefer that diacritics were not used in article titles, except in thsoe few cases where a word with diacritics is the mostcommonly used form in English, and maybe not even then. As a fall-back, i would prefer that only those diacritics which show up with some frequency in english-language publications be allowed. In any case I would ban all letters from non-roman alphabets, (including letters once used in old english but no longer used in modern englsih, such as Ash and Thorn) from use in article titles. DES (talk) 22:58, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, where would you move Encyclopædia Britannica? - Haukur 23:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
There are always borderline cases, but I would tend to favor Encyclopaedia Britannica, with of coiurse a mention of the ligature in the lead sentance. DES (talk) 23:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

PS: vowels with diacriticals are irrelevant to this guideline. --Francis Schonken 10:03, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

No they are not. You can't just treat a single letter in isolation, if you want to transliterate you have to have some sort of coherent system for handling Icelandic names. - Haukur 11:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Vowels with diacriticals are irrelevant to this guideline. --Francis Schonken 12:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
*sigh* How do you propose the name "Þorlákshöfn" be represented? - Haukur 15:01, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
How would you? Þorlákshöfn? Thorlakshofn appears OK for the title of this English page on an Icelandic website - So I moved Þorlákshöfn to a more common spelling. Would that in any way be a controversial move?--Francis Schonken 15:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it would, as you very well know. Every Icelandic municipality article we have uses diacritics as appropriate - Haukur 15:44, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
...then your way of moving it back would not be less controversial (including the fact that you created five double redirects in the process). There's no guideline currently covering the move you just performed. If you don't have time to write such guideline (as you said above), and if nobody else wrote it, then it doesn't exist. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn), on the other hand, conforms to Wikipedia:Naming conventions, which is official policy (see: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn)#Rationale). If any of you have something convincing to say why Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn) would not conform to official policy, go ahead. But I don't think it a good idea to let Wikipedia be ruled by imaginary guidelines, especially not by imaginary guidelines that scorn *existing* official policy. --Francis Schonken 16:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I've now reverted your changes to the redirects as well.
The facts on the ground are important. What people editing the articles are actually doing is important, not "imaginary". Your interpretation of policy pages (to which you so heavily contribute) is not the alpha and omega :) - Haukur 16:50, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, let's start Wikipedia:Naming conventions (standard letters with diacritics) --Francis Schonken 10:23, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, let's. I am sympathetic with the objection to dealing with letters one by one. But that's not what we are doing. There are diacritics (whether vowels and consonants are similar or distinct.) The debate on Zürich IMO established some principles (that IMO extend to all the many diacritics, including Polish Ł and ł, but let's leave that for that page), leaving a few smaller groups for attention. The ligatures are pretty much of a clear group with similar properties: at least as lower case, æ and œ seem to survive in at least British English, and they also are a recent part of our linguistic heritage. With the French Œ (called in English ethel (or eðel), pronounced with the hard or voiced th of than) and Scandinavian multilingual Æ (English name ash) make a small but pretty coherant group; the only real gray case for this group is ß (German Eszett, often transliterated as "ss"), which started as a clear ligature of S and Z, but is pretty hard to recognize by now. Thorn is pretty clearly neither modern English, a diacritic variation, nor a ligature, and the same goes for Yogh. Ð (upper case Eth or Edh) looks a lot like a diacritic; i put it with thorn and yogh, bcz ð (lower-case Eth) is hard to think of as a diacritic. (There's irony here: a Vietnamese upper-case D-with-stroke character is hard to distinguish from upper-case Eth, but the corresponding lower-case Vietnamese letter does look like a lower-case d-with-stroke.)
--Jerzy•t 22:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong support All article titles should be entirely in the English language alphabet. We shouldn't even have to put up with attempts to write the English language Wikipedia in foreign languages. It is illegitimate interference, and I don't suppose any other language encyclopedia has to put up with it. Nathcer 15:53, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
    It's not, per se, the naïvete of our compadre's diktat, that leaves me blitzkrieged in ennui and angst, even anomie: it's more the chauvinism of seeing one's own local patois as the only one beset with pidginization.
    --Jerzy•t 22:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Support.
    --Jerzy•t 22:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong support. This hasn't been discussed in awhile, so I'm not sure if I've missed the boat, but I totally agree with this. I find it annoying that people feel the need to excessively use foreign characters in the English Wikipedia. Obviously, the thorn should be used on the Icelandic WP, but not the English one. We have a couple special characters like æ, but that is used in regular writing (I saw a number of examples in British English while I was in London). Dbinder (talk) 11:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Convention off track

It seems to me that the way the text is currently is less than ideal for several reasons. First of all, it is proposed that this should be a convention as in this article. As such it should be codifying the current practice but as has been pointed out, all articles on relevant Icelandic localities and as far as I can see, also on relevant Icelandic people, use the Þ in the relevant places. Therefore, writing in a convention that we should not be using Þ seems to be going against convention. I might also note that the English wikipedia is not unique in using the Þ. Check the interwikilinks at Þingvellir, Þjórsá and Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir.

Another problem with this proposal is that it is far too specific. As our page on thorn notes, this letter is only used in writing Old English and Icelandic. I haven't seen any article on an Old English subject use the letter in the title so this proposal seems to only affect articles related to Iceland. As such it would be much more natural to discuss the use of diacritics and ligatures in Icelandic at the same time.

Now, even though the proposal is maybe less than ideal, the discussion has been very good. In particular, there have been raised several points which I think are very good to bear in mind:

  1. We must take care and not go against the common names principle. This applies e.g. to Althing, which is there and not at Alþingi (the modern Icelandic form) or Althingi, but quite properly both of these exist as redirects.
  2. Redirects are easy to make and should be used unsparingly. This is generally the case currently, e.g. Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, Thjorsa and Thingvellir but it certainly wouldn't do harm to emphasise this.
  3. We must think of the indexing. In categories which all or almost all of the entries will be related to Iceland it might be acceptable to have Þ in the index but this is debatable. In general categories I do not think this is acceptable. See e.g. [[Category:Seismic faults]] where Þingvellir is under Þ. The ideal solution would be for a change of software which would sort Þ as Th or even better, give two entries, one at Þ and one at Th. It is very common in indices to have multiple entries when it is reasonable to expect that people might look under many names. This, however, requires a software change so for a more immediate solution, I feel we should reindex the entries manually. By this I mean, edit the Þingvellir entry and make it read [[Category:Seismic faults|Thingvellir]]. I feel that the correct way of doing this would be suggesting it here, see if people like it, implement it, see if people still like it and then write it in a convention. I would be very willing to help in doing this.
    See below for a suggestion of Phil which I think is superior to what I came up with. Stefán Ingi 11:55, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  4. We need to address that readers might be unfamiliar with Þ. Therefore we should always give some version of the title using only the 26 characters and this must feature prominently in the article, i.e. in or before the first sentence. There might not be any single best way of achieving this. See Þingvellir and Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir for examples.

Stefán Ingi 00:14, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

On that categorisation aspect, are you aware that it is quite acceptable to add a category to a REDIRECT? I have done so at Thingvellir, and also added {{R from title without diacritics}} which I commend to you as A Good Thing. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 10:29, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for that info. I was sure I had read somewhere that categories for redirects didn't work but clearly I should have gone and tested it. I also think {{R from title without diacritics}} is very useful. Stefán Ingi 11:55, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

I dislike this proposal very much. Insisting on redirects from other likely spellings is fine, but insisting on an incorrect or inconsistent spelling is absurd. This seems to be an attempt to push the loss of diacritics (etc.) from article titles by the back door, one letter at a time. Þ is no more or less special than ß, and roughly the same arguments apply to both. I can foresee a success here being used to justify similar policies for ß, š, Å, IJ, and all the others. Treating letters individually is absolutely not the way to go. Yes, for some people they're unfamiliar and difficult to type, but that's what redirects are for. Please abandon this proposal. --Stemonitis 12:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Very strong oppose in most cases. I'll try to keep this very brief relative to my potential to write essays on the issue. I assume that arguments about usage in historical names have been made already, so I won't comment about that other than to say that it is my personal preference to use forms closest to native/original spellings for proper nouns (and adjectives). For contemporary names, especially Icelandic ones (are there other large groups of modern names that use thorn?), it is very difficult for me to understand why anyone would want to intentionally misspell a person's name. "Popular usage" should have no factor, since there is such a thing as the "correct" form of names: official documents (legal names), etc., or even a person's preference. Ardric47 09:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
What we're all going for here is to try to implement the policy to use English names. This will necessarily result in something different from the original if the original contains elements that cannot appear in English. The question is which elements are to be construed as ones that cannot appear in English. Is any difference from the original to be considered a misspelling? The reductio ad absurdum of that position would be the argument (which I'm sure I'm not the first to raise) that Mao Zedong should be moved to 毛泽东 and Myanmar to Image:Myanmar long form.png. No one wants to misspell anything, but we are trying to decide where to draw the line between that extreme and what's acceptable. I don't think you've really addressed that question. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 04:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Thorn is considered to be part of the Latin alphabet as far as I know. Ardric47 04:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that the term "Latin alphabet" is somewhat ambiguous: it refers to a variety of European scripts which have a lot of overlap. The Wikipedia article on Latin alphabet currently defines "Latin alphabet" as having 26 letters, although I think this is a bit of an overstatement. Certainly, thorn is a letter of the Icelandic alphabet, which is itself essentially a Latin alphabet. It has the distinction of being one of the few letters in European scripts which is not a modification of one of the original Roman letters. So, I don't think it's accurate to say that thorn is part of the Latin alphabet without qualifying which Latin alphabet is meant. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 23:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
This report considers thorn (or apparently more properly þorn) to be part of "the" Latin alphabet, as does Unicode (the characters are "Latin Capital Letter Thorn" and "Latin Small Letter Thorn"). Ardric47 01:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Using standard English names where such exist is common sense and already policy, and thus no guideline is needed to support it. Using non-existent transliterations where no standard English names exist is controversial and needs discussion, but this not the way to discuss it; eth, for example, needs to be treated differently in Icelandic (typically transliterated to <d>, I believe) and Old English (transliterated to <th>). This policy is therefore a bad idea. The treatment of thorn and similar letters should be decided on a language-by-language basis, not a letter-by-letter basis. — Haeleth Talk 10:03, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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 [2] Here they are in Italian: [3], French: [4]. Here are the rosters from the IIHF (INTERNATIONAL Ice Hockey Federation) based in Switzerland: [5].'
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 [6] 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)

[edit] eth?

Is there any likelihood of the treatment of this topic turning out different from that of the eth (Ð, ð)? If not, why don't we combine them and move this to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (thorn and eth)? - Nat Krause(Talk!) 04:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consensus

From my own read of this page, it looks like there's a consensus to make this a formal guideline. Why has it been labeled as "inactive"? What else needs to happen for it to move forward and get out of "proposed" status? --Elonka 00:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

It is labelled inactive. This might be because it was discussed a bit in January, and the reception was very mixed to say the least and it was not moved up to being a policy or a guideline. Then the discussion sort of died out, maybe once a month somebody said something there were a handful of replies or less. Stefán Ingi 01:03, 12 September 2006 (UTC)