Wikipedia:Burials
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This is a suggestion to implement a style change with regard to how the burials of human remains are referenced in biographical articles and others. This suggestion is made because of the apparently common imprecision in the language Wikipedia currently uses to refer to burials. References to human burials are commonly written in the form:
- "[Person] is interred at [cemetery name]."
The above language is imprecise, simply because people (individual human beings) are not "interred" upon biological death. However, human bodies which once belonged to them are "interred." The current inaccurate language is colloquial, and not encyclopedic, and thus the proper language to use on Wikipedia should be:
- "[Person]'s body is interred at [cemetery name]."
There are two relevant dimensions to the concept and they are fundamentally similar in this context. The third entry below, simply representing the current form (for description usage) is not encyclopedic, and therefore not as relevant:
- The secular view is that when a person dies, their body is no longer physically functional; in other words, they are no longer a working "machine."
- The religious view is that when a person's body dies, that person is no longer in that body, they are elsewhere; whatever that elsewhere may be. (Note that in religious contexts, the very term "death" has a fundamentally different meaning than found in scientific, secular, and colloquial usage).
- In colloquial usage, personal tact may have bearing on the language used: A body may be referred to as the person even when dealing with a body, because referring to the deceased person's "body" rather than the person themselves might appear insensitive.
The above concepts indicate the dominance of the view that a body is not a person, and that it is the bodies, not the persons, that are buried. The current Wikipedia form is a colloquialism that implies a view that is not supported in either secular or religious language, and as such Wikipedia needs to use clearer language instead.