Talk:Harold Pratt House

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Done. Consensus that it's the commonname, and no strong argument to override that naming guideline. DMacks (talk) 07:52, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Harold I. Pratt House → Harold Pratt House

• “Harold Pratt House” (no middle initial) is the common name, hence should be the title, as per WP:COMMONNAME. Contested as per below. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
• Typo. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:06, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
• Harold I. Pratt House

Discussion copied in

• Copied from commons:User talk:Nbarth —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:05, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

• hi Nbarth,

  well thank you for asking. I had to reverse the move you did on Wikipedia though, because the person's article is under "Harold I. Pratt", so logically the house has to follow his name. Would the person's article be under "Harold Pratt" then I would be fine with "Harold Pratt House". The middle initial seems to be widely used for persons in New York and their houses, so I would say it would be best to keep it there. Gryffindor (talk) 01:55, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

• Hi Gryffindor,

  I agree that the person’s name is listed with the middle initial, as it is necessary for disambiguation of personal names. However, the house is generally not referred to with the middle initial.

  While the desire for consistency and lack of ambiguity are both important, policy (as per Wikipedia:Article titles) is:

  “Articles are normally titled using the most common English-language name of the subject of the article.”

  For example, it’s “Bill Clinton”, not “William Jefferson Clinton”, and, more relevant to our purposes, it’s “Bohr model” (of atom), not “Niels Bohr model”, even though it is named after Niels Bohr.

  In this case, the common name omits the middle initial – the house’s website itself omits the initial, and there are 20,000 Google hits for “Harold Pratt House”, but only 200 for “Harold I. Pratt House”, mostly Wikimedia ones.

  On this basis, I conclude that the “most common English-language name” of the house is “Harold Pratt House” and that Wikipedia policy is for it to be listed under that name.

  Wikimedia commons does not have settled naming policy (Commons:Naming categories), so naming there is debatable, though following ’pedia seems sensible.

  Does this reasoning sound reasonable and in line with policy to you?

  —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 03:23, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

• I appreciate that you are holding a discussion about it. But the literature I am reading here holds middle initials for houses, which was commonly used already back then. If the name of the person was simply "Harold Pratt" I would be fine with "Harold Pratt House", but there is a middle initial for good reason, in order to differentiate between people sharing the same first and last name. Otherwise the naming of the houses would also be inconsistent, some having a middle initital and some not? The homepage does not have the middle initial for marketing reasons, it's easier that way to remember. But I think it really is better to stick to the set, academic format, regardless what modern homepages or Google hits say. Gryffindor (talk) 15:53, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

• Hi Gryffindor,

  Thanks for explaining your reasoning, and I appreciate your work and contribution on these pages; just interested in some rectification of names.

  If Wikipedia followed formal, academic naming for article titles, then yes, the middle initial would be appropriate.

  But it does not.

  As per WP:COMMONNAME, Wikipedia titles are

  “the most common English-language name of the subject of the article”

  In this case the common name, informal as it may be, is without middle initial; modern pages and Google hits are relevant and guiding as they establish what is the common name, and policy demands that the common name must be used.

  I understand that this is not your preferred title, but the policy seems clear to me.

  If we still disagree, I suggest we list this at Requested moves#Contested requests, where experienced administrators may decide it.

  —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 17:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Continued discussion

• Common name is without the middle initial (as per WP:COMMONNAME); the house’s own homepage has no middle initial, Google books returns 2,780 results w/o middle initial, and only 9 with middle initial, and there is no disambiguation necessary (unlike for personal name). Seems clear-cut case to me, but contested (and indeed reverted) by Gryffindor. See Talk:Harold I. Pratt House#Requested move for discussion. —Nils von Barth (nbarth) (talk) 00:13, 11 July 2010 (UTC) (Copied from an uncontroversial-type move request: Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:30, 11 July 2010 (UTC))
• Support The website clearly uses Harold Pratt House. Just because we have to disambiguate for the person, does not mean that we have to do so for the building. If we had chosen a different form of disambiguation for the person, such as Harold Pratt (philanthropist), nobody would have dreamt of calling the building Harold Pratt (philanthropist) House. Skinsmoke (talk) 06:23, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.