Category talk:Jonah Paffhausen

Archives Categories for discussion (2020-05)

Rename proposal

•  Oppose @Geo Swan: Hi, You wrote: "I don't see any explanation of this directory's weird name". As we can see, such format is used by pl and ru Wikipedia. The reason can be that bishops and popes are traditionally named by their bishop or monastic name only, and the civil surname is perceived rather as an additional disambiguation than as an integral part of the whole bishop name. As we can see, this tradition is common especially in Orthodox churches. As you can see in Category:Orthodox bishops from the United States, Category:Orthodox bishops of Ukraine and also in Sweden, Serbia, Russia, Romania etc. etc., this form of disambiguation is also widely used and standard in Commons (and maybe not only in Commons). --ŠJů (talk) 08:20, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
  • ŠJů I think the key question here is, who is our intended readership? If our readership were confined to the Orthodox Church, I am sure they would be appreciate our deference to their traditions. But this is a world-wide project, and this non-standard name is confusing to everyone else. Geo Swan (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Note: In this particular case Paffhausen is not the name of a bishopric - it is the man's own personal birthname. Geo Swan (talk) 00:25, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

As you can see at Commons as well as outside it, this form is standardly an commonly used for orthodox bishops around the world. We should follow common standards and not to try to invent somthing now. Factually, we accept traditional and commonly used names of monarchs, bishops, popes, and even pseudonyms of musicians or writers, commonly used hypocorisms etc. While monarchs use roman numerals, orthodox bishops use their civil surnames in brackets instead. --ŠJů (talk) 00:48, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geo Swan and ŠJů: renaming started in enwiki: en:Talk:Jonah Paffhausen--Estopedist1 (talk) 09:45, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• @ŠJů: , clarification please. Is your argument above that the category on Jonah Paffhausen should have the jarring and unfamiliar name Category:Jonah (Paffhausen) because two dozen other categories about Orthodox bishops follow this Orthodox convention? Couldn't that be because Orthodox insiders got away with giving a small subsection of commons categories bad names? Are you aware of a commons policy or guideline that supports these names?

I think it is a mistake to characterize this as the "common standard". I pointed out, at en:Talk:Jonah Paffhausen, that the English language wikipedia has an article at "Germany, not Deutschland, even though Deutschland might please readers whose first language is German, who learned English as a second language." Germany is the common name in English.

The common standard for names in Europe, and North and South America, and most countries once colonized by Europeans, is that names follow the convention that a person's name consists of their given name(s), followed by their surname. If you look at our articles on people who were given or inherited a title in the UK peerage, they are generally at their European name, and their title is only used for disambiguation, when they have namesakes, like Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Individuals who are peers, in the UK peerage, whose names don't require disambigation, are supposed to be at their plain old names, not their titles. Geo Swan (talk) 11:25, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• @ŠJů: , your guy is not like a pope. And he is not famous enough to only be known by his first name, like, Cher, Madonna, or Galileo. Articles about monarchs often require those Roman numerals, because they have a lot of namesakes, or for other reasons. Members of the UK Royal family were in the rare position of having to do detective work to figure out if they had a garden-variety surname, and the surnames they use are somewhat arbitrary. We write about monarchs like William the Conqueror who don't have surnames because they predate the invention of surnames.

Most of my work on nobles is from over a decade ago, so our conventions may have changed, but, back then, members of the peerage generally only got names that explicitly mentioned their titles when that was required for disambiguation. My recollection is that this was also the policy for monarchs.

"Hypocorisms" - an endearing nickname - I had to look that up. Jonah is not famous enough to earn an endearing nickname. I don't think I can think of an individual whose article title is an endearing nickname. Geo Swan (talk) 13:15, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

@Geo Swan and ŠJů: CFD in question is closed. Solution per enwiki discussion--Estopedist1 (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2020 (UTC)