Talk:Gong (title)

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"Beginning in the Eastern Zhou..."

No one was translating anything into English under the Eastern Zhou and there are no temporal restrictions on when this gets translated into "duke", which is by far the more common translation at all ages. Gugong Danfu is the Ancient Duke or Duke of Gu, not a lord, which in English typically implies baron or lower in these contexts. Similarly, the common name of Duke Zhou was Duke Zhou. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the Eastern Zhou. — LlywelynII 04:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Beginning in the Eastern Zhou was when the titles of nobility gained the conception of an ordered list of political rankings. Prior to that the only titles of "nobility" (having an overtly political meaning) were 侯 and 男 (the latter of which is barely attested).

Yes, for a long time English language sources confusingly used inappropriate titles from European feudalism drawn from the later 五等爵 to talk about Western Zhou figures, but greater understanding from excavated texts along with the efforts of certain scholars – most notably Li Feng, but also Yuri Pines and Paul Goldin – have begun correcting these misconceptions and using more appropriate terminology.

We're probably stuck with "the Duke of Zhou" for awhile. It will take a long time to undo that damage. But there's no reason to perpetuate the usage of stupid incorrect terms applied backwards in time in a way they were never actually thought of onto Western Zhou figures just because the plurality of early English language sources fell into this trap. Folly Mox (talk) 15:43, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for future article expansion

The following "citations" were listed (presumably copied from the Zhou dynastic titles page) without actually being used anywhere in the article:

Chen Minzhen; et al. (2018), "Where is King Ping? The History and Historiography of the Zhou Dynasty's Eastward Relocation", Asia Major, vol. 31, Academica Sinica, pp. 1–27, JSTOR 26571325.
Falkenhausen, Lothar von (1996), "The Concept of Wen in the Ancient Chinese Ancestral Cult", Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, vol. 18, pp. 1–22, doi:10.2307/495623, JSTOR 495623.
Li Feng (2008), Bureaucracy and the State in Early China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-88447-1.

Kindly restore them only after they're being helpfully used to verify something in the article. — LlywelynII 13:04, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]