Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)/Archive 4

I believe the argument is for consistency with other countries. In Europe, there were loads of rulers with the same or similar names, so there is a lot of need for disambiguation. I'm not sure there is as much need for Japanese rulers (but to be honest, I don't know much about them), but I can see the appeal of consistency. -- Oliver P. 04:49 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Zoe hates me, but I love her (him?).

I defy anyone to name two Emperor Hirohitos. There is no ambiguity! Arthur 05:06 Mar 10,

If you know your facts, yes. But if you are a 13 year old kid with a hazy understanding of the world one hundred miles from Montana, or who never stepped out of London, or barely know outside the borders of South Africa, you may not know the states, nations and heads of state of countries around Japan. Last week someone told me as a matter of fact that Japan became an republic in 1945. Someone wrote on wiki that Australia is a republic. That Italy has a King Victor Emmanuel IV. Do not underestimate the degree to which many people do not know basic facts; it is the golden rule used when compiling encyclopædias. One poll found 18% of Americans could not name their president during the Monica Lewinsky scandal!!! If you are a 13 year old, with only a hazy understanding of where Japan is (remember George W. Bush notoriously did not know where Ireland was on the map until he became president!), how do you know that kid knows there is only one empire in the region, one emperor? How do you know they know that if it is an emperor with a Japanese sounding name, he must be the Japanese emperor? All that is being said is that, to ensure we don't confuse those aren't sure of their facts, like that 13 year old, we state the country in the article title. We do it with monarchs of France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Russia, etc etc etc. What is the problem with doing with Japan what we do with everywhere else? Saying 'well we all know there was only one Hirihito is no good whatsoever if you are some kid with a school project on Japan who knows damn all about Japan, doesn't know if there is one Hirohito or twenty and are relying on wiki to give accurate, easily understood information. And we won't even do him the courtesy of putting the words 'of Japan' after Hirohito or Akihito's name, to enable that kid and others like him to tract down facts they can understand easily, facts as basic as 'who is the Emperor of Japan'. STÓD/ÉÍRE 05:36 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)2003 (UTC)

The problem is that in dealing with the 13 year old in the United States, you don't want to end up looking like an idiot to the Ph.D. in Chinese or Japanese history. I can't speak for Japan, but if you try to apply Western naming conventions to Chinese emperors that makes you look very foolish to anyone who knows anything about Chinese history.

The problem is that East monarchial names have an entirely different set of conventions which reflect an entirely different set of problems and political contexts. First of all, there East Asian monarchs do not have overlapping naming between nations. A Japanese emperor is simply never going to have the same name as a Chinese emperor. Second, there are complex but unambiguious conventions for resolving the same imperial name within a nation. The Chinese convention is listed in wikipedia and it contains about three pages. Third, both the Chinese and Japanese monarchs were considered by their respective political theories to not be the (merely) heads of nation-states, and adding "of China" to a Chinese imperial name would be like adding "of the Vatican" to a popes name. Fo

I see Taku has unilaterally decided to screw up wikipedia without getting full agreement on a major change in naming policy. I took the chance to talk to experts on Japanese history and 18 experts unanimously said in a case like wikipedia, it would be illogical, ridiculous and nonsensical to do what he is doing. It will mean that the information in those articles will be less easily recognised and so less read. According to a Professor of Far Eastern Studies, what taku has done is amateurish (and) no editor of an international publication would allow it. It doesn't say much for Wiki standards that this screw-up was allowed to happen.

I presume now we will have to change all the other pages to conform to Taku's ludicrous idea that you apply local conventions when referring to information on an international title. So the President of Ireland will now be renamed Uachtaráin na hÉireann. The Spanish king's title will be changed to Spanish. The Italian state references will all follow the naming conventions used in Italy, including everything being in Italian. We will exclusively use Russian for all references to the Russian state and its office-holders. After all, that is the principle that Taku had set in stone here. Or is Japan some special case that must exist outside the agreed structures?

BTW, this page had grown to 37k. I spent two days asking people whose browsers could handle it to archive it. Nobody did, which meant that plenty of people who wanted to express their opinions on this farce could do so. So I've had to do it myself, which means that the browser axed a large chunk of the bottom of the page. Maybe next time people will have the politeness to archive pages over 30k. Unless you do so, you in effect silence anyone who wants to contribute and makes a farce on wiki, though not as much of a farce as Taku screwing up of its reputation, contrary to the naming styles applied in english language sourcebook which would not have allowed him to do what he has done, and certainly not without a full discussion and a proper vote on the issue.

First of all, conventions are not mandate. There is no need to wait until we reach the consensus. Every one should be able to edit artciels without consensus. You may find it unfair but it is the way here. Meiji Emperor is not a local name at all. The local name is 明治天皇. If you just look at some history book (needless to say in English!), you should find mostly Meiji Emperor not Emperor of Meiji Japan. -- Taku 00:59 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

And this convention is for the same reason that anyone who talked about the Emperor Kangxi rather than the Kangxi Emperor is going to get points taken off a paper on Chinese history. The name of Emperor was not Kangxi or Meiji. Kangxi and Meiji are the calendar years in which the emperor ruled. Calling that person Emperor Kangxi is like calling something 1965 for the year that they were born. The convention for Chinese emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasty is to call them in effect "the emperor that ruled in the Kangxi period" because this is the least ambiguious method of naming. This exists because the Ming and Qing emperors had the habit of changing their names. -- Roadrunner

Which is detailed information you can convey in the article but most wiki readers won't know that until they find the article and they won't find the article unless the title is in a form they can recognise. And the form they can recognise is one which tells them what country a particular monarch is from. STÓD/ÉÍRE

So you think that Emperor Yuan Shi Zu of China is more useful than Kublai Khan, and that we should refer to Genghis Khan as Emperor Yuan Tai Zu of China. Roadrunner

If you read the naming conventions you'd know that ancient figures with such names are covered differently.

Can you point me to where? And what is "special" about Kublai Khan.

Firstly something as basic naming style is supposed to be done by consensus. If it is just up to someone doing it if they feel it should be that way, then I can always go straight back tonight and rename them, then.

Secondly, you obviously don't know about editing standards.

If a sourcebook is dealing with a local issue to local people, local standards are applied.
If you are dealing with a sourcebook that can contextualise names so that people can understand why they are are structured a certain way, then they may be used that way.
If are dealing with a sourcebook which because of its (i) size, (ii) range of information, (iii) nature of readership is such that detailed explanations for naming conventions cannot be immediately conveyed, you do not use localised standards but an internationally recognisable standard which all readers in all contexts can understand. That is a fundamental rule of editing about which you obviously don't seem to have a clue about. Wiki falls into the third category. Academics, soon of whom are readers of wiki, four of whom are Japanese, whom I checked with today thought what you were proposing to do, illogical', 'illconsidered', 'ignorant of editing standards' and 'guaranteed to ensure that 95% of wikipedia users would be utterly confused by what you have done. On places like Wiki, because it has worldwide readers most of whom can barely find Japan on the map (or Mexico, or Turkey, or Ireland or . . . ) and are looking to start finding information, it is vital that one clearly recognisable standard is used.

Again, I know nothing about Japanese history, but I do know something about Chinese history. I'm not going to intervene in the naming controversial over Japanese emperors, but if someone starts changing Chinese imperial names to "Emperor X of China" I will strongly object. There has been a *huge* amount of work on Chinese dynastic and imperial pages, and overwriting that work is going to meet with very strong objections from me and probably other people who have been doing that effort.

--Roadrunner

No sourcebook hoping to convey information to a mass audience can work if each local state's linguistic nuances are allowed to take priority over a single, internationally comprehendable communicate style. All you have managed to do is break the first rule of editing, title something in a manner than conveys the most information to the most people in most clearly informative manner. That does not mean abandon accuracy. There is no reason why the correct version cannot be included as a redirect or as a subsidary page title because there on that page, you can contextualise the information. But you cannot in the form you are created. All you have insured is that 95% of the people who use wiki will never now read the pages because they won't know what they mean, and the other 5% already know the information for sources whose quality they can rely on. So you have achieved nothing but to damage wikipedia's readability and in effect orphaned the pages, because except for a small minority, most people will not now know what the pages are about. They won't necessarily even though where they are about. Very clever. Are you deliberately trying to discourage people from reading the pages on Japanese emperors? But at least you have established the principle that anyone can rename them withouth needing consensus, so they can all be changed back. STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:50 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Why is it necessary to state the person's nationality within the title? Susan Mason

FCOL Susan, stop pretending you are dumb. You have shown elsewhere you are anything but. Monarchs don't for the most part have surnames. Where they do, they are often obscure, Queen Victoria's surname was Wettin, when she married Albert of Saxe-Coberg. So (except maybe on Planet Susan) you have to say where they are monarch of. Republican heads of state do have surnames and have careers before and after they were head of state, so in that case you can safely use the personal name. That option does not exist with monarchs. STÓD/ÉÍRE

You are talking about Europe. In China, emperors had personal names (which in some rare cases are more commonly known than the

imperial name.) The name of the Kangxi emperor was Aisin Gioro Xuanye. The name of the Tang emperor Taizu was Shi Hu. This is why I strongly object to using European conventions on Chinese emperors. Roadrunner

Which is why the Naming Convention deliberately says you do not have to apply the naming conventions to Chinese emperors. But it says to do so with Japanese emperors, because there was confusion before which is why Zundark changed them in the first place, which is when people began finding them. BTW stop this garbage about European Conventions. Those rules were followed in 80% of monarchies.

And what percentage of monarcies are European? Tannin

Just 80%? Then why is it critical to enforce this convention on 100% of the articles? Sure sounds like kneejerk Eurocentrism to me. You've expended a lot of eloquence on this issue, but haven't convinced anybody, which ought to inject at least a little doubt as to whether you're right. One of the values of Wikipedia is in seeing how people from different cultures approach the same body of factual information, and it takes a quite a lot of chutzpah to continually insist that one's own culture should be the sole basis of organization. I note that you've been most energetic in making sure that Irish information is not presented solely from the British point of view - you should accord others the same consideration you've demanded for the material you care most about. Stan 03:19 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

Can you point me to where the Chinese emperors are excluded. This isn't a rhetorical question. I can't find the page where it says that?

All Chinese names from the emperor down are covered in

In East Asian names, look at common English usage to decide whether the western first-name last-name or the eastern last-name first-name order should be used. As a rule of thumb, Japanese names should usually be given in the western, Chinese names in the eastern order. A redirect from whatever order is not used, is almost always a good idea.

Gasp. I'm going to make one final note because I'm getting frustrated. Jtdrl - I strongly respect your contributions to the European monarch's pages, and I support your effort in standardizing naming conventions and your contributions to political pages. But I would like that you give me the same respect when it comes to Chinese names and nomenclature. I don't want this to sound childish, but I do believe that I know more about issues regarding Chinese imperial names than you do, and I don't really think that you have begun to grasp the nasty issues that are involved here.

This is not a put-down, because no one knows everything.

The section that you cited has *NOTHING TO DO* with the issue at hand. With rare exceptions, Emperors are not referred to by personal names and the issue of last name/first name ordering has nothing to do with the issue at hand. What makes Chinese imperial names difficult is that there are four sets of possible names, the temple name, the personal name, the era name, and the posthumous name. In the case of non-Han dynasty there is a fifth name.

I've copied the convention over to Wikipedia naming conventions: (Chinese). It's different for different dynasties, because in some dynasties emperors would change their temple name, in others they would change their posthumous name. It's also somewhat a mess because there are specific emperors which violate a general rule.

But the net result is that every Chinese emperor has a single unambiguous name that everyone knows. I'm merely suggesting that we use that name as the primary key.

If you violate those conventions then you look silly to anyone who knows anything about Chinese emperors. The stuff I'm talking about is not graduate level history stuff. These are naming conventions that most Chinese learn in junior high school if not earlier.

I do not thing the problem is that I don't understand the Wikipedia naming conventions. I think the problem is that the people who created the Wikipedia naming conventions don't understand enough of the issues about Chinese emperors to realize what a mess using those conventions will create.

Roadrunner

Does anyone object to inserting a line in royal titles that links to Wikipedia: Naming conventions (Chinese) and says explicitly that Chinese emperors follow different naming conventions?

Not at all. But if Chinese emperor don't use the western style Emperor {name} of China, then why only Japanese emeperor need to follow the western style? -- Taku 03:41 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

It is perfectly possible and logical not to have a state designation attached to the Chinese emperor once he the is only one. Because that means if one comes across a far eastern emperor with no state designation, that must be the Chinese emperor. But if the Japanese emperor also has no state designation, that makes it much more difficult to find either. For while the Chinese and Japanese languages are of course different, to western eyes that difference is not always recognised. Two sets of emperors with no designation risk creating a problem for both. Given that Japan still has an emperor and he is regularly described in the media and common discourse as the Emperor of Japan, it is logical to maintain that publicly used designation, leaving the Chinese emperor recognisable by the very fact of no state designation. The point about the naming conventions is that they are intended to create a flexible template that identifies name and state. An exception is fine once it is an exception. Two exceptions, in the one geographic area, which someone not knowledgeable might have trouble distinguishing, simply produces a mess. So it basically boils down to who is to be the exception, a long dead monarchy where putting a state designation would be difficult, or a state with a current emperor who travels the world as the emperor of Japan, is called so in the media, is recognised as such and who was already on wiki as being 'of Japan' with no difficulty until Taku insisted on changing it. STÓD/ÉÍRE 04:03 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

I won't object to the line.

Re Taku's point, I can understand his problem, but

Two long lists of far east emperors without state designations would produce a mess.
The Japanese emperor travels the world as 'Emperor of Japan'. There is a plaque on the wall not one hundred metres from here commemorating a visit he made to a local school on a visit to Dublin. When he was enthroned, President Hillery attended what was described as the installation of the Emperor of Japan. He is in the media as the Emperor of Japan. The media covered the 'Emperor of Japan's cancer.
The Emperor's own New Year's greeting reads:

His Imperial Majesty AKIHITO, the 125th Emperor of Japan

2003 New Year Greeting by His Majesty the Emperor of Japan

We are greeting a new year in the midst of a severe economic situation.

As we look back, exactly fifty years have passed since the New Year right after the Peace Treaty came into effect. Bearing in mind the great efforts the people have made during the past 50 years in building the Japan of today , I hope that we can unite in utmost efforts to pursue a better future.

I can well imagine that there are various hardships and difficulties in the people's life, but I sincerely hope that this new year will be better, even a little, for each and everyone.

The Japanese state website talks about The Emperor of Japan. It states

In the Constitution of Japan, it is stipulated that "the Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people."

Another website: Hirohito, Emperor of Japan (1901-1989)

This is Hirohito, Emperor of Japan during World War II, wearing imperial regalia and a Shinto priest headdress.

So the emperor is widely called the 'Emperor of Japan' worldwide, that is what people understand his title to be, and how he signs his own New Year Message.

Quite clearly, there is no logical reason, why if the title 'Emperor of Japan' is good enough to be used by him, it is not good enough to be used by wikipedia. STÓD/ÉÍRE 04:03 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)

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