Humanities desk
< June 9	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 11 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 10

Should tennessine be tanasine?

Today's headline about tennessine got me to read the article, which says that it is named after the "region, not the state" of Tennessee. The link and the disambiguation page fail to enlighten me about what the "region" of Tennessee is, but I'll leave that aside for now, because what I noticed is that Tennessee (of any variety) is actually named after Tanasi, a Cherokee village.

Now Nihonium is proposed to be an element, not "Japanium", because they seem to like original names for naming elements. The Cherokee famously have their own regular syllabary and spelling for their language, and I assume our article Tanasi is named after the regular variant. The site of Tanasi ... well, it's not merely stolen and abandoned, but submerged under a reservoir now; but the nearest thing is a monument run by Cherokee. So if tennessine is named after this region, shouldn't it be spelled tanasine? Wnt (talk) 17:06, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article says that Tanasi is also spelled Tennessee. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they meant the state but just said region to be less political. Nihon or Nippon is the modern name of Japan in Japanese. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[restoring erased portion]

The article says that Tanasi is also spelled Tennessee. Besides that, the element was developed at Oak Ridge, not at Tanasi. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:24, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The English spelling of Tennessee is older than the Cherokee syllabary which uses a non-Latin symbols anyway. Rmhermen (talk) 02:11, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Illegal coup in Kiev" on Portal:Ukraine

The "In the news" section of Portal:Ukraine, which is a featured portal, contains the formulation "2014 - as the result of the illegal coup in Kiev which led to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, people are urging: Do not buy Russian goods! This statement is a pure non sequitur because it implies that the revolution, not the intervention, led to the campaign. Furthermore, the "illegal coup" phrase is not neutral due to the fact that "one man´s terrorist is another man´s freedom fighter". The formulations should definitely be rewritten.--89.173.227.64 (talk) 18:32, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Is there such a thing as a "legal" coup? And, yes, it's confusing as written. You should discuss it on the article talk page. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:36, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't what occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 more similar to a revolution than to a coup, though? Futurist110 (talk) 01:12, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hence the article 2014 Ukrainian revolution, which I have added to the portal. I'd still like to know whether anything interesting has happened since then. The blurb reads like we're still in 2014, but I'm not sure how to re-word it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:16, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to change it, but it won't "take". Where is that sentence actually coming from? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:40, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Your change was succesful [1] and from what I can see, the wording no longer appears. In future, if it doesn't show up where you expect, try purging both the template and the portal (I think the later implies the former but I'm not sure so do both). Nil Einne (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing it now too. It must have retained in my cache for a while. In the bigger picture, though, is there no new news from Ukraine in the last two years? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:49, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See Ukraine Crisis - Latest news and developments and take your pick. Alansplodge (talk) 16:47, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

English legal history - mode of trial

As a follow-up to a couple of questions above - when was the formal selection of the mode of trial by English criminal defendants abolished? After pleading, a ritual exchange used to take place between the prisoner and the clerk of the court - "How wilt thou be tried?" "By God and my country." "God grant thee a good deliverance." By this process, the prisoner selected jury trial rather than trial by ordeal, which had in fact been abolished in 1219; failing to give the formal answer was therefore effectively the same as refusing to plead. Which particular statutory provision abolished this? It appears to have still been in use in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tevildo (talk) 20:19, 10 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This was Criminal Law Act 1827, 7 & 8 Geo. IV, c. 28, see here, which "got rid of all these ancient formalities in treason, felony, or piracy." The relevant text of the statute is the following:

"Whereas trials for criminal offenses in that part of the united kingdom called England are attended with some forms which frequently impede the due administration of justice, and it is therefore expedient to abolish such forms, and also to abolish the benefit of clergy, and to make better provision for the punishment of offenders in certain cases: BE IT THEREFORE ENACTED, that if any person, not have privilege of peerage, being arraigned upon any indictment for treason, felony, or piracy, shall plead thereto a plea of "not guilty," he shall by such plea, without any further form, be deemed to have put himself upon the country for trial; and the court shall, in the usual manner, order a jury for the trial of such person accordingly.

The "ancient mode of pleading" for persons with privilege of peerage was abolished in 1841 (4 & 5 Vict. c. 22) as to felony.

(The 1827 act also created the modern rule that those standing mute would be tried as if they had pleaded not guilty. Peine forte et dure had already been abolished—in 1772, 12 Geo. 3 c. 20 was enacted, creating a rule that a refusal to plead was an automatic guilty plea; the 1827 act flipped this rule.). Neutrality^talk 04:26, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can only get snippet views from that book link, but a couple of notes - the word "offenses" does not seem to appear at all in it, which is not surprising as it is not an English word, and secondly, it doesn't seem to give the text of the act at all - or at least, a search within it for strings from what you have quoted does not give any meaningful result. DuncanHill (talk) 09:37, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(follow up) The text is available to me here, and it uses "offences" as one would expect, not "offenses". It is not helpful to change the spelling of a statute to a foreign form when quoting it. DuncanHill (talk) 09:40, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It was a typo, made when I manually typed out the text of the statute for the benefit of the original poster. (Google Books does not allow copy-and-paste). How very sad that you feel the need to jump in with a rude and unhelpful remark over a trivial typo! Neutrality^talk 17:33, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever. DuncanHill (talk)

Thanks to Neutrality for the reference. Another question, leading on from it - which statute introduced the punishment of hard labour? According to Old Bailey Online, it was "An Act of 1766", but it's not obvious which of the acts listed at List of Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain, 1760–79 that is. Probably not "Elizabeth Taylor's Patent Act", 16 Geo III c. 18. Tevildo (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You are keeping us on our toes by Spoonerising (?) the date; the one you want is the Hard Labour Act 1776, also known as the "Hulks Act" (See Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1660-1914 by Drew D. Gray). It was apparently prompted by those pesky American Colonists, who didn't want any more of our criminals thank you very much and Australia hadn't been invented yet; see Bentham's Prison : A Study of the Panopticon Penitentiary (p. 46) by Janet Semple. Alansplodge (talk) 16:12, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the error, and thanks for the reference. I don't suppose we can track down the actual citation? This book says "16 Geo III c. 43", but, according to the National Archives, that's "An Act for repealing the Eleventh Rule in the Book of Rates, so far as the same relates to making any Allowance upon the Importation of damaged Currants and Raisins", so, prima facie, even less likely than Mrs Taylor's patent act. Unless that _is_ it? Tevildo (talk) 19:27, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Further research indicates that the citation is right, the National Archives are wrong. (Or, at least, their website is). This is the correct page from their site. Tevildo (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]