Talk:Vasily Chapayev

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[edit] Chapaev, not Chapayev

I believe the name should be spelled Chapaev in English and not Chapayev, for it's spelled Чапаев in Russian. Why complicate things unnecessarily? C1010 06:10, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Google says: Chapaev 87.800 vs. Chapayev 16.200. --Obersachse 06:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Colleague, in Wikipedia there are certain rules about transliteration from Russian, see Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian, therefore I reverted your changes. If you feel that your opinion is more correct, please discuss the change of spelling in Talk:Vasily Chapayev and also it may be a good idea to notify Russian editors in Portal:Russia/Russia-related Wikipedia notice board (BTW see also Portal:Russia/New article announcements.) `'mikka 20:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've looked at the link with the rules you supplied and have not seen the rule that supports your reversion. Please advise what rule, specifically, you're referring to. Also, the Google search overwhelmingly supports (4-to-1, see above) that people see Chapaev as the correct English spelling of the name.C1010 21:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Please look more carefully, about rendereing of the Russian letter E. `'mikka 21:09, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As for google, in this case it is a serious doubt whether google reflects "English" spelling, since the vast majority of hits are not from reliable natively english pages. Anyway, like I said, let us discuss this in a wider community. This issue is not between the two of us. `'mikka 21:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying this, I now see where you're coming from. I disagree with the rule somewhat, for, in my view, Chapaev is definitely a better, cleaner, simpler spelling of the name, which is also more close to the original Russian spelling. Also, I restricted the google query to English pages only, the results are: Chapaev - 38,300; Chapayev - 14,500. Let's discuss this in a wider community, as you suggested.--C1010 21:33, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, it is not allowed to mover articles by cut and paste. You have to use the function "move this page". `'mikka 20:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I should have moved it instead of using cut-and-paste. I realized it after the fact. Thanks for the tip. C1010 21:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As a side note, we do have policies and guidelines for a reason. It is not a Wikipedia way to say that if one doesn't like a certain policy it can just be ignored, because there is something that looks better. Romanization guidelines are there because in a vast project which is Wikipedia one would quickly get lost and confused without consistency and standardization; indeed, the amount of unnecessary work a uniform romanization scheme can eliminate and prevent is simply astonishing (and I speak from experience). One should realize that no one single romanization scheme exists that will please every single person. When this is the case, it is best to stick with what works, even if it sometimes is against one's personal tastes (speaking of which, you really got to have better reasons than that or "overwhelming" 4:1 google ratios—see this, too).

The bottom line is that if there is a policy or a guideline one severely dislikes, this should be brought to the policy/guideline discussion page. Ignoring existing conventions is disrupting and unacceptable.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, I hadn't realized there were existing Russian-to-English conventions/standards and, thus, it hadn't been my intention to ignore them. Your argument for consistency is a good one and I agree with you there, though I do strongly dislike the particular rule in question (see my comment above for the reasons). Additionally, there appears to be an existing rule that supports my revision, please see the "Use conventional names" rule, e.g. Gorbachyov→Gorbachev, Kray→Krai, Khrushchyov→Khrushchev, Yuriy→Yuri --C1010 21:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your response, and I do understand your point, C1010. I should, however, note that the existing "conventional names" rule was designed to deal with names for which a certain spelling is more common than romanized spelling by a very, very wide margin. Usually it means that a "conventional" version is the one included in major English dictionaries, or, as it is the case with people's names, a conventional spelling would be the one that's used in the English language media and books on the subject. Google hits are a very poor indicator because they collect mentions from all sources, including those romanized by alternate rules (some of which are poorly suited to serve the needs of Anglophones) and plain incorrect ones.

Case in point: while Britannica does not have an article on Chapayev, he is mentioned in two other articles, and in both of them the spelling is "Chapayev" (the articles are "Russian literature experiments in the 1920s" and "Pelevin, Viktor"). Searching in google books (which is also not perfect, but still more academic than plain google search) produces 644 hits for "Chapayev" and 531 for "Chapaev"; i.e., the usage is almost even. When a name is not really well-known (unlike, say, Gorbachev above), and when several spellings are used at the same rate, it is always better to stick with the version that romanization rules recommend. The reason, again, is consistency and standardization. Hope this helps, and thanks for taking time to discuss this.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 12:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)