Talk:St. Michael's Catholic Church (Cedar Hill, Tennessee)

Naming article

Congratulations on your DYK!

After this article comes off the front page as a DYK, it should be moved under a new name.

• Articles on buildings, and on churches most specifically, should not have the location name in brackets as a disambiguation.
• Disambiguations are placed in brackets for the purpose of making clear which of two or more subjects of the same name are meant e.g. Joe Bloggs (politician), Joe Bloggs (author), Joe Bloggs (boxer).
• In the case of a building and most particularly a church, cathedral or state building, the location is part of its identity. In all probability this church is generally spoken of as "St Michaels, Cedar Hill" and/or "Cedar Hill Catholic Church"

The article should be renamed "St. Michael's Catholic Church, Cedar Hill". Don't use the "Tennessee" in the naming unless a Google search turns up another "St. Michael's, Cedar Hill" at some other location, which is unlikely.

Amandajm (talk) 01:06, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion about what the church's name ought to be. The Wikipedia article title uses the name by which this church is identified in the various published sources that describe it, which is St. Michael's Catholic Church. The place name is added in parentheses for disambiguation from other churches named St. Michael's Catholic Church. In the United States, the state name is normally part of the place name. Your ideas about what the church's name ought to be are not a sound basis for renaming the article. --Orlady (talk) 04:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Orlady, as soon as you walk out of Cedar Hill, "St Michael's Catholic Church" could be anywhere from World's End to Woop Woop. Churches are all, always, identified by their location, as soon as you walk out of the immediate parish. Only a handful of churches in the world go without a place name: St Peter's Basilica, St Paul's Cathedral, Hagia Sophia. Every other church in the world, regardless of how great and famous they may be, uses its location as part of its name. And none of them put their location in brackets.

Wikipedia has set up an inappropriate naming convention. You cannot argue that it is correct on the grounds of what Wikipedia may do, on US sites. It is clearly wrong. It needs fixing. Amandajm (talk) 04:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

As I already told you at your talk page, WP:STICK. It would be well if you would begin heeding it instead of persisting. Nyttend (talk) 04:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

If you think this church has been using the wrong name for the last 171 years, and should be calling itself "Cedar Hill Catholic Church" instead of "St. Michael's", you need to take the matter up with the parish and/or the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nashville. Neither Wikipedia nor Nyttend nor you nor I has any authority to tell the church what its name should be. Sources such as [1], [2], the National Register of Historic Places, and [3] all use the name that is used in this article. Obviously, nobody associated with this church would consider the name "St. Michael's Catholic Church" to refer uniquely to their church, but the need for contextual information is one reason why Wikipedia article titles like this one include the location for disambiguation. --Orlady (talk) 05:08, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Response 1: Sure, Nyttend. Your examples of cathedrals that are known by their saint's names only applies locally. "St. Joseph Cathedral" only pertains to the one in Columbus if you happen to live in Ohio. As soon as you are in Louisiana, or Buffalo or Hartford you need to state that you are referring to "St Joseph's Cathedral, Columbus". It's website doesn't need to call itself "St. Joseph's Cathedral, Columbus" because it states that it is Mother Church for the Diocese of Columbus. In other words, it is insolubly linked to its location. Every cathedral is the cathedral of a place.

Like a cathedral, every single parish church on the earth is the church of a place. That accounts for most of the world's churches.

Abbeys are also linked to their location, as well as to their monastic order.

The other type of churches are chapels (though they may be called by a different name). Chapels are linked to a family, a corporate body, or an institution, such as a college or regiment. A chapel may take its name from that body, rather than from the location because the boundary is not a geographic one. (c.f. a parish church serves those within its geographic boundary, a regimental chapel theoretically serves every member of its regiment even if they are overseas on duty. This is why people who have attended a college or been in a regiment may choose to marry at their associated chapel, although it is not their local church).

2

No, Orlady, please don't misunderstand the point that I am making. I am certainly not suggesting that the church should change its name. Almost every church that has a saint's name uses that saint's name as its immediate local identifier. But the name "St Michael's Catholic Church", doesn't identify it outside the immediate vicinity. In a rural region, the church may be known as "St Michael's over a wide region.

In a large city, their might be several churches of the same name. There might be ten St Mary's, ten St Peter's and just as many St Joseph's. So every St Mary's is known by its locality- St Mary's, Bridge Street; St Mary's, Woollerton; St Mary's, Church Grove; St Mary's, Peakton; St Mary's, George's Row. People who don't live close may not know the saint's name at all and just refer to Woollerton Catholic Church. The church belongs to the location, whether it uses the name of the location as part of its official name or not.

In the case of St Michael's, because it is a old church, within its region, it would not originally have needed to use the parish name as part of its "official" name. But that does not mean that it isn't integrated with the geographic location. Beyond the boundaries of its parish, ita main identifier is as the church of the parish to which it belongs.

Do you understand about parishes and diocese, and how they relate to their churches? A diocese is like the parish of a cathedral (but takes in all the church parishes) and the bishop of the diocese is like the parish priest of the entire diocese, a shepherd to thousands of members of the flock, including all the priests.

So because the geographic region is so important in both these cases, the name of the parish or diocese should not be put in brackets as a disambiguation. It is clear that whoever set up this convention on Wikipedia did not understand the explanations that I have written here.

Anyway, for these reasons putting the location of churches in brackets is not appropriate.

Amandajm (talk) 05:49, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I believe I do understand you, Amandajm. You are saying that the common names of churches always include the context of the church location, and therefore that the name of this church (which is used in the article title and text) is wrong. I am saying that the name of the church is "St. Michael's Catholic Church" because that is the reality, as reported in the sources used as a basis for this article. If you believe the church should have a name consistent with the patterns you are familiar with in the United Kingdom, you do need to take that up with the parish or the diocese -- because Wikipedia cannot invent new names.

Additionally, it happens that this particular church is not actually in Cedar Hill, Tennessee -- it is a few miles south of the Cedar Hill city limits. Apparently when it was built it was attached to a no-longer-extant unincorporated rural community called Turnersville, and some modern sources indicate that is in the crossroads community of Flewellyn. Our article uses Cedar Hill as the disambiguating location because that is the place name given on both the parish website and the National Register listing; the church apparently is in the area served by the Cedar Hill post office. If this church were to be named according to the patterns often encountered in the UK, it probably would be something like "St-Michael's-Catholic-Church-on-the-hill-at-Flewellyn", but this isn't in the UK and that isn't its name. Also note that it is vital to include the state name of "Tennessee" as a disambiguating element due to WP:USPLACE and existence of several Cedar Hills in the U.S. --Orlady (talk) 19:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Orlady, No.

• I am not saying that the common name of the church always include the context of the church location
• No, I am not indicating that the "church should change its name" to be consistent with patterns of some other country. That assumption is just plain stupid, and indicates that you haven't read what I have written

What are the points that I am making? I will try again!

• Most Catholic and Anglican churches in the world have a saint's name. It is part of their official name: e.g "St Mary's Anglican Church", "St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church" or "The Cathedral of Saint Michael and All Angel's". These are the official names. The location is not part of the official name. The location is hardly ever part of the official name, regardless of where you may be in the world.
• In their own town they are called "St Mary's", "St Joseph's" and "Saint Mike's".
• But when you are in another city or another state, it is pointless to refer to "St Mary's Church" or "St Joseph's Church". When you are not a local, then the name of the place becomes its distinguisher. In the context of the world.
• Even in the context of the United States "St Joseph's Cathedral" is meaningless. My search found four St Joseph's Cathedral immediately. So, although the location is not part of a church's official name, it is the only way to identify it positively.
• The United States is not different to any other country in this- the name of the town is used to identify which St Mary's, which St Joseph's, which St Michael's.
• The close association of every single parish church with its location (parish) means that people often refer to a church by location, particularly if they don't remember the saints name (the official name).

• This has got nothing to do with what the church's official name is
• This only has to do with a poor naming convention on Wikipedia.
• The naming convention fails to acknowledge that "location" is part of a building's identity, regardless of whether it is part of the official name.
• Let me repeat, since you have both missed the point: "This is a problem with Wikipedia , not a problem with the church's name."
• Every building is identified, to a greater or lesser extent by location.
• Convention, across the world, puts the location of a building after a comma. (Not in brackets) That is the way that it is done, everywhere in the world, except on US Wikipedia.
• When I Google-search "St Michael's Catholic Church (Cedar Hill)" I get references to "St Michael's Church, Cedar Hill", or "St Michael's Church, Church Lane, Cedar Hill, Tennessee". Nowhere on the internet is it written "St Michael's Church (Cedar Hill)" except on Wikipedia.
• There are many historically and architecturally significant buildings that have no name, just an address. By the present system employed (on Wikipedia) for US buildings, a building would be listed as 23 Dobson Road (Smithton), instead of 23 Dobson Road, Smithton. Common sense makes it clear that one of these is appropriate and the other is not.
• At some point early on, someone on Wikipedia set up a bad naming convention that doesn't comply with the way things are done in the real world. These brackets around place names don't occur in other encyclopedias and shouldn't occur here either.

Bearing in mind your comment about places called Cedar Hill, the article should be named St. Michael's Catholic Church, Cedar Hill, Tennessee with commas but no brackets. It is simply ridiculous that someone looking on Wikipedia needs to put brackets in, in order to find the church. How would anyone know that they are supposed to use brackets, when it is only done on Wikipedia?

NOTE: the church's official name is separated from its location by a comma. This is sufficient, even in the United States, and even in the register of historic buildings.

Amandajm (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

For the final time, you're making tons of assertions that fail to match up with what others think, and ceaselessly making arguments that assume that everyone else is wrong. Nyttend (talk) 02:00, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not quite like that. Someone on Wikipedia established a naming convention that is not in use in the real world, US, UK or anywhere else. Perhaps it was you, [[User:Nyttend|Nyttend]. You won't find churches' locations in brackets anywhere except on Wikipedia. The simply go after a comma.

You didn't write this article so why did you jump in so fast? Was it you who set up this whole bracketty thing? If it was, then you ought to be the person who fixes it, right across Wikipedia. Amandajm (talk) 10:51, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I responded on your talk page, Amandajm: diff --Orlady (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)