Talk:Xanadu

Comments

Should this be mentioned here: Tralla La? It is Disney comics story by Carl Barks. Later a sequel was made by Don Rosa in which he revealed that Tralla La actually is Xanadu. And the Coleridge poem is a major part of plot in the Rosa story. 85.217.22.47 (talk) 01:00, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should names of films, music pieces etc. be italicized in a disambiguation page? The Style Guide for disambiguation pages says that as wiki links should be left unchanged if possible.

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages moved per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which as noted does not include derivation as a criterion; "ambiguous enough" is not a criteria either, but the usage from George Ho and notes on the definitions from Kauffner are pertinent. I used Xanadu, China as proposed; subsequent correction of that title to Shangdu if needed may be carried out without opinion from this move. -- JHunterJ (talk) 13:51, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Xanadu (disambiguation) → Xanadu
Xanadu → Xanadu, China

– "Xanadu" has a variety of meanings. Per WP:PRIMARYUSAGE, the page "Xanadu" should be for a particular topic "if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term." The city in China is not universally the most obvious intended meaning. Perhaps especially in the Western world, "Xanadu" will most frequently refer to the popular film or its title song. Many readers would not even be aware that "Xanadu" was the name of a city. A Google search shows the top results referring to the film and other various uses; a reference to the city of Xanadu ranks 9th. Accordingly, it should not be assumed that anyone looking for the Wikipedia article "Xanadu" would be looking for, or expect to find, an article about the city. The city is not the primary topic associated with this word. However, as there are diverse meanings, rather than direct "Xanadu" to another primary topic, I propose that "Xanadu" becomes the disambiguation page so that the reader can choose the intended meaning. relisted --Mike Cline (talk) 16:12, 28 February 2013 (UTC) —sroc (talk) 22:45, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. The city is the primary topic in the most important sense of "primary". Srnec (talk) 00:42, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support – the term is ambiguous enough that a primarytopic claim makes no sense. Dicklyon (talk) 01:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The city should be at Shangdu, per WP:MODERNPLACENAME and WP:PINYIN. Xanadu (film) is what comes up first when you google. That's the topic that should be primary. Kauffner (talk) 02:10, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I have to disagree. Xanadu is not a modern place, and it does not exist today. The common name is Xanadu, irrespective of the official status of Hanyu Pinyin. We don't have Chiang Kai-shek located at Jiang Jieshi, or Chow mein at Chaomian. "Xanadu" isn't even a Chinese transliteration - it is a Mongolian word. "上都" is merely a Sinofied rendering of the Mongolian word. We wouldn't rename Ulan Bator to a Hanyu Pinyin name either. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 02:21, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - If "Xanadu" resembles the Mongolian name, that's just coincidence. Purchas wrote the name as "Xandu". Coleridge added another syllable to make scan better in the poetry. Kauffner (talk) 12:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - I don't see how we're calling it a coincidence; Xanadu was a city of the Yuan Dynasty, in other words, of the Mongol Empire, just like how Ulan Bator and Hohhot were cities of the Mongol Empire (hell, even Khanbaliq). Whatever the Mongols decided to name their summer capital, it wouldn't be unimaginable for a similar sounding name to be christened in Chinese. My original point was that the city is based on a Mongol name, and hence using pinyin would not be a good idea; how the romanization of "Xanadu" came about is an entirely different question. The name of the city in Mongolian is šanadu, and for whatever reason, Europeans have written the name as Xanadu, from the original Mongol name. There are cases where we don't use pinyin (e.g. Hohhot), and this is one of them. Being geographically located in modern China doesn't make Xanadu a 100% historically Chinese city. Calling the Yuan Dynasty "Chinese" is in line with PRC historiography, which is not universally recognised globally, and is not NPOV. -- 李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 02:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: The city is the primary topic, others have the namesake based on the original city. A 1977 song, a film, and a fictitious mansion are not the primary topic. If it wasn't for the city (had it not existed), these films/songs/etc would not have been named this way in the first place. --李博杰 | —Talk contribs email 02:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The city is what Xanadu is in English and its culture and I see no indication that it will change. Seeing derived modern uses in films, songs or other items in popular culture as the primary topic is recentism - in time these will fade while the primary topic will remain. Imc (talk) 07:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- The film and song are from 1980. The fact that they are still top hits for "Xanadu" on Google (far outranking the city) more than three decades later refutes that their notoriety is from recentism. —sroc (talk) 23:39, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I checked some references, but I didn't come across anything to support the idea that "Xanadu" is the literal name of a city that once existed, or does exist. Here is Merriam Webster: "XANADU : an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place...locality in Kubla Khan (1798), poem by Samuel T. Coleridge." Here is Britannica: "In April 1260 [Kublai Khan] arrived at his residence of Shangdu (the Xanadu of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem)". Britannica gives the name of the modern city as "Duolun". Encarta says, "beautiful place: a beautiful idyllic place...After the residence of Kublai Khan in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan (1816)". Kauffner (talk) 01:28, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Not all cities are primary; this is no exception. Both the city and film gain a lot of recognition, so let's go over the stats. The city will get over 30,000 views this month (900-1,200 per day), while the film will get over 21,000 this month (600-700 per day). However, I don't find the numbers of the city page reliable. Maybe they include those who want to see the film, and the difference between city and film is not very huge. If the move happens, then the numbers of the city will go down to, hypothetically, 15,000-21,000 next month. --George Ho (talk) 23:31, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Probably they are looking for other entries, like the Broadway musical adaptation or the fictional place from Citizen Kane or the film soundtrack. --George Ho (talk) 23:42, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Support I didn't even know Xanadu was a real place. (Maybe it isn't, per Kauffner.) No primary topic. --BDD (talk) 17:48, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to add that just because the city was the first or original use from which others have been derived does not make it the primary topic. What matters is what people now associate with the name — read the policy at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. As with BDD, I didn't know Xanadu was a real place either. I always associated it with the film and song, and from the above-mentioned Google searches, these are the most prominent topics associated with the word "Xanadu". However, the proposal is not to redirect "Xanadu" to any other article, but to redirect it to the disambiguation page so that people can find the article they're looking for (whether it's the film, the song, the city, or anything else named "Xanadu") more quickly. —sroc (talk) 23:35, 27 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The place is the source for almost all, if not all, the other uses, via the poem, which is about the place. I really don't think any of the other uses trump it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

There's Possible Evidence To Suggest 'Xanadu' Existed Briefly In The Arctic Basin 10,000 Years Ago

I posted the comment below on the site 'The Finnish-Japanese connection':

https://www.yamagata-europe.com/en-gb/blog/the-finnish-japanese-connection

"I found this fascinating site when I googled "Japanese and Scandinavian Gene Connection"... I posted the link on a site called "Ancient DNA sheds light on the mysterious origins of the first Scandinavians"

https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-sheds-light-on-the-mysterious-origins-of-the-first-scandinavians-89703

If you read the posts in the comments section there's possible evidence to suggest that there was a connection in ancient 'Xanadu' when the Gulf Stream extended into the Arctic basin and both sides east and west met in a warm sea of bounty which would have lasted perhaps only a few hundred years... the last Bering Strait Event, when a nutrient rich current breached the Bering Strait due to a rise in sea level, apparently happened 10,000 years ago.."

2A00:23C4:1217:3800:9506:CC10:3387:6976 (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)Alan Lowey[reply]