Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vietnam/Naming convention debate

Diacritics

Main page: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese)

In a nutshell

This is an overview of individual responses given in Summer 2010 on the issue of the use of diacritics in Vietnamese-language articles. It is not intended as a formal proposal, but is intended to indicate the general direction of discussion. Please feel free to edit it for better accuracy and clarity, but please to not modify points of consensus without prior discussion. Lack of support or opposition does not necessarily indicate consensus until discussion has terminated.

For an illustration of what we wish to achieve, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Ireland-related articles).

A nutshell.

Consensus points

Please indicate your support or opposition to each point.

1. When the article refers to a subject (place, person, thing) with an anglicized name (without diacritics) in common use (such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, etc), use the anglicized name.

Support: dragfyre, Septentrionalis, Colonies Chris (but give the diacritc'd version in the lead) Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC) (and per Colonies Chris), Djwilms (give the diactic'd version in the lead), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

2. When the article refers to a subject (place, person, thing) where there is little or no evidence for an anglicized name in common use, use the Vietnamese name.

Support: dragfyre, Colonies Chris, Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC) (when there may have been an anglicized name in the past but there isn't now); Djwilms (use the undiacritised Vietnamese name, and then gloss it), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

• Weak support (it depends on other considerations) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:30, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

3. When the article refers to a person who spells their own name in an anglicized fashion (without diacritics), use the anglicized name.

Support: dragfyre, Septentrionalis (for most cases), Colonies Chris (but also give the name with diacritics if they started life that way), Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC) (give all variants of the name that are encountered), Djwilms (use the undiacritised Vietnamese name, and then gloss it)

Oppose:

Abstain:

4. When the article refers to a person who spells their own name in Vietnamese with diacritics, use the Vietnamese name.

Support: dragfyre, Colonies Chris (except as noted below) Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose: Djwilms (use the undiacritised Vietnamese name, and then gloss it), Septentrionalis (depends what they do in English).

Abstain:

5. Regardless of the evidence for or against an anglicized name, give the Vietnamese name as an initial gloss in the article lead, using the {{lang-vi}} template.

Support: dragfyre, Djwilms (absolutely), Septentrionalis, Colonies Chris (of course if the title has diacritics, the gloss won't be necessary) Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose:

Abstain:

6. When creating an article containing diacritics in its title, create a redirect from a title without diacritics.

Support: dragfyre, Septentrionalis, Colonies Chris (and vice versa) Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose: Djwilms (the title should not contain diacritics)

Abstain:

7. Diacritics should be used throughout articles.

Support: Colonies Chris, dragfyre, DHN, Itsmejudith, Eraserhead1, Skinsmoke, Colonies Chris

Oppose: Djwilms, AM, YellowMonkey(?), Septentrionalis (sometimes, but not always).

Abstain:

8. Diacritics should be used in category titles, following the style for article titles.

Support: Colonies Chris (weak support), AM, Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oppose: Septentrionalis (categories don't have redirects), Djwilms

Abstain: dragfyre

9. An anglicized name (without diacritics) can be considered "in common use" if it is mentioned in at least three major, reliable English-language sources (i.e. Oxford Dictionary, BBC, Encyclopedia Britannica, etc.)

Support: Septentrionalis (although weaker standards are possible); Djwilms (sounds reasonable, but I think we also need to consider classic authorities (which may be several decades old) in the case of historical articles)

Oppose: Colonies Chris (English-language media tend to routinely drop diacritics, so this means nothing.), Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2010 (UTC) (some publishers may find the use of diacritics too difficult or expensive; our practice should be closer to the Vietnamese media, or those who write for a bilingual audience, when writing in English), Kauffner (talk) 08:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC) (Mainstream dictionaries and encyclopedias are fine, but I wonder where "etc" could lead.)

Abstain:

Discussion

The last discussion on this subject seems to have petered out about two years ago without reaching any clear conclusion. The Vietnam-related articles are now in the unsatisfactory position of using or not using diacritics according to no discernible pattern. For example, some of the provinces in Category:Provinces of Vietnam are titled using diacritics, some aren't. And there are plenty of anomalies like Vĩnh Long (the town), with diacritic, but Vinh Long Province, without. Since the general practice in WP is to use diacritics unless the subject is much better known without them, I propose the following:

• All geographic article titles to use diacritics (except perhaps for Hanoi and Saigon, as these are well known in that form in the English-speaking world)
• All biographical article titles to use diacritics, except for those people in the Vietnamese diaspora to choose not to use them
• All articles that are titled using diacritics to have a redirect from a non-diacritic'd version of the title
• References in all articles to use the form that matches the article title (e.g. using the diacritic when referring to Vĩnh Long, but not using it when referring to Janet Nguyen.

Comments please. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:44, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't part of the discussion on this topic, but I'm glad to see it revived here (of course, I'm glad whenever I see a new topic here, hehe). I've been reviewing the tasks list and it really wasn't clear to me whether or not there had been a consensus. I can see that there hasn't been much discussion on the topic lately, and most of what I see is archived on Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Vietnamese) and the associated talk page. Are you basing the above points on this?

In any case, for my two cents: I agree that proper names that are well known in the English-speaking world should use the most commonly used English spelling, so like you said, Hanoi, Danang, etc. Saigon of course has its own naming issues (see Names of Ho Chi Minh City, and an archive of naming debates on the Ho Chi Minh City article). I also agree with the idea of making redirects to diacritic'd articles; similar spellings with different diacritics could be handled via dab pages or hatnotes.--dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 19:05, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think that your suggestions are reasonable and have no objections to them. DHN (talk) 21:41, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I think we shouldn't use diacritics in whole article because of two reasons:

Most English speakers don't care about diacritics and they tend to ignore them while reading. So diacritics won't help much. Using diacritics in titles of respective articles is enough.

As this is English Wikipedia and all articles are written in English, using diacritics would make the article look odds and they will be big obstructions for all English speakers who want to edit the article but don't know how to type diacritics properly.--AM ^(talk) 03:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

It's probably true that most English speakers don't care about diacritics, but there are several reasons we should use them anyway:

• We're an encyclopaedia: that means we prioritise accuracy
• the readership of Vietnam-related articles is, by definition, likely to have an interest in Vietnam, so the use of diacritics, which is a normal part of life, shouldn't put them off, any more than English-speaking readers are put off by references to Malmö or Neufchâtel or Braşov.
• respect for the actual spelling - not treating something unfamiliar as unimportant

Diacritics are used when articles refer to people and places in all the European languages. See Gerhard Schröder, Lübeck, Finistère or Lech Wałęsa, for example. Why should Vietnamese, which uses essentially the same alphabet, be any different?

Certainly not many people know how to type Vietnamese diacritics, but those with enough interest in Vietnam to contribute new content certainly will, and everyone can cut and paste existing names. (Is there a guide somewhere on these pages to methods for entering Vietnamese diacritics?) Colonies Chris (talk) 08:59, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to add two more cents, I'm one of those English speakers who would prefer to use diacritics throughout an article, mainly for the reasons stated above—improved accuracy, and the fact that Unicode is pretty much standard by now means that most people will be able to read them without problems anyway. I suppose keyboard input would be a hassle to most—I don't have VNI enabled on my PC, for example, so I often end up copying and pasting, but maybe more casual editors wouldn't. Still, that's something that can be fixed regularly with a bot.--dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:43, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

"that means we prioritise accuracy" - Agree. But how accuracy we have to prioritise? If we use diacritic Vietnamese words in a whole article, we should diacritize them all or partially. For example, in the article Trưng Sisters, many Vietnamese names have not been diacritized yet which make the whole article odd (or inconsistency). This is the problem that even AWB couldn't help much except we have more editor and more time to to this task. So I agree with you partially, we should change the title and the bolded texts to help people but I don't support using diacritics in the whole article.

Vietnamese words with no diacritics are being used widely in English-speaking world and even the current government seem to accept this trend (you could see state media always add a letter "Z" to the name of the current prime minister Nguyen Tan Dzung every time they broadcast his speech to make it different from the English word Dung rather than using diacritics). That is the reason why Vietnamese be treated a bit different than German or Polish although they use same alphabet.--AM ^(talk) 10:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

There are two articles about Vietnamese input methods: VIQR and Telex (IME). DHN (talk) 09:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The use of 'Dzung' is comparable to the way that German names are sometimes written with ue in place of the umlaut (Rainer Schuettler/Rainer Schüttler or Serbian names avoid the Đ (Novak Djokovic/Novak Đoković). It's an alternative that ought to be noted, but the name we should use ought to be the subject's actual name, I think, unless you could make a strong case that he's now better known as Dzung in the English-speaking world (as is the case with Novak Djokovic). I agree that converting the articles would be a large task, but that's a reason to start on it before the task gets even larger. It's possible to generate in a semi-automated way a list of redirects from non-diacritic'd titles to titles with diacritics, and use that as a basis for an AWB Find/Replace list, and once that's set up, the task of going through the articles is not so daunting. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:55, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't "Dzung" specifically reflect Northern pronunciation? I mention that since, having learnt Vietnamese with Southern pronunciation, I would pronounce Dung's name as "Yung", not "Zung". I guess most media use Northern pronunciation anyway, but... enh. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I've tagged this discussion with a link to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Vietnamese), since that's where most of the early discussion took place, and a lot of the same points are coming up here as were brought up there. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:06, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

For every other language that uses diacriticals, the diacriticals are used in the article titles. This is true even for languages like Polish where the diacriticals are considered too complex to be published in dead tree references. Scholarly practice is to use diacriticals as long as there are no technical barriers. We don't need to follow official usage. But for those who care about such things, official usage is established by the daily Việt Nam News. This newspaper uses diacriticals in a very consistent way, at least in the paper version. Kauffner (talk) 16:33, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

The proposal of using diacritic in article's title has no objection. The thing we should solve here is that should we put diacritics in the whole article (which is now has objections from YellowMonkey and me). Even the Việt Nam News don't use diacritics in their articles (including titles).--AM ^(talk) 17:36, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I assume you looked at the Web edition, but in the paper version of Việt Nam News it is all diacriticaled and spaced, i.e. Hanoi is "Hà Nội" and so forth. (No "z" in the prime minister's name in either version.) Kauffner (talk) 04:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm generally pro diacritics, with the exceptions already mentioned. We should encourage editors to use them wherever possible in Vietnamese names and words. I don't think it's a high priority to change all the existing articles. But if an editor adds diacritics then it should be our policy to ensure that they aren't reverted. Unless they are wrong, of course! Or if they are names better known in English without, like Hanoi etc. There should always be a redirect. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Given that they don't make the words unreadable I think diatrics should generally be used (but Hanoi etc sound like sensible exceptions). -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:21, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

We seem to have consensus to use diacritics in titles, so that's the first priority. As for using them in articles, most people seem to like the idea but there is significant disagreement from User:AM and - by report - User:YellowMonkey, who hasn't taken any direct part in this discussion, though I had previously understood that his objection was to the inconsistency of using diacritics for some references in an article and not others, rather than to the overall principle of using diacritics in articles. (However, I may be misrepresenting his views.) In any case, a decision on whether to use diacritics in the body of articles is lower priority and can wait until the titles are consistent.

There's one other area that I should have mentioned above - categories. Should, for example, Category:People from Thanh Hoa Province become Category:People from Thanh Hóa Province? I think if we're agreed on article titles, then category titles should be pretty uncontroversial too. Are there differing opinions? Colonies Chris (talk) 12:22, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree.--AM ^(talk) 12:45, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Applying this rule to categories makes sense to me too.

At the risk of digressing, I've been wondering about things like province names, etc. At first I thought it would be best to omit diacritics in combined titles, where Vietnamese and English are mixed (e.g. Thanh Hoa Province, but use them in regular titles (e.g. Thanh Hóa). After reading the discussion, though, I think we should be using them even when "Province" or "District" is added, simply for consistency's sake. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:32, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Technically we should be using diaretics and redirecting the plain english titles. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 20:16, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I am against the use of diacritics except as an initial gloss. For the record, I will repeat here what I said a year ago:

Quite honestly, I see no place for diacritics at all in any of the articles in English Wikipedia except as a gloss to illustrate the Vietnamese spelling of a place name or proper name after the first occurrence of the name in its normal, unaccented English spelling. This is not a question of political correctness (respect for how others spell names), it's a question of simple convenience for the vast majority of readers who neither know nor care about how Vietnamese names are accented and are not interested in obtaining the fancy software to be able to type in Vietnamese. I find it difficult to locate the articles I wrote recently on the 1860s Cochinchina Campaign because place names like Vinh Long and Bien Hoa (their normal spelling in English) have been given accents. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia written in English, not Vietnamese. Having said that, we should gloss all Vietnamese place and personal names with their accented versions on their first appearance in an article.

This is how I personally have been dealing with the problem, in the lead sentence of my articles:

The Capture of Bien Hoa (Vietnamese: Biên Hòa) on 16 December 1861 was an important allied victory in the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62).

Djwilms (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I see your concerns, but everyone who has supported diacritics in article titles has also argued for a redirect from the non-accented form. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:04, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

I think he meant the article body, rather than the titles. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 18:57, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

I would also support the use of diacritics, as is common for most other foreign language names on Wikipedia. Redirects should be in place from the version without diacritics, as set out in Wikipedia:Article titles. As for the body of the article, Wikipedia:Manual of Style is quite clear that "An overriding principle is that style and formatting choices should be consistent within a Wikipedia article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia as a whole. Consistency within an article promotes clarity and cohesion." In any case, the present situation, where a provincial capital has diacritics, but the corresponding province doesn't (or the other way round), should not be allowed to continue. Can we agree to the proposal put forward by Colonies Chris? Skinsmoke (talk) 05:26, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

No. Pending a demonstration that English as a whole has adopted diacritics, of which there is no trace, the solution offered by Djwilms is the pproper and appropriate one. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:15, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Outdenting for fun and profit(!!!!) I've come across some archived conversations about the use of diacritics and figured I'd post links.

• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_2#Vietnamese name
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_2#Article naming policy
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_2#Moves of all province articles away from diacritics to no diacritis
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_2#Unilateral article title changes
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_3#Undiscussed page moves (again)
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_3#Diacritics needed, and several more similar requests
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_3#Titles of Vietnamese Articles
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Vietnam/Archive_4#Unilateral article title changes, again

Apparently this has been discussed a lot in the past, making it ever more imperative for us to come to some sort of consensus on the issue. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 01:37, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Some guidance from Wikipedia:Naming conventions and WP:ENGLISH

Also! Here's something that's very relevant to the discussion on diacritics: Wikipedia:Naming conventions, and particularly Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). To quote some of the most germane principles in our case:

The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage, e.g., Besançon, Søren Kierkegaard and Göttingen, but Nuremberg, delicatessen and Florence.

This would tend to support the recommendation made above—to follow English-language usage for well-known names such as Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and so on.

If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on). For ideas on how to deal with situations where there are several competing foreign terms, see "Multiple local names" and "Use modern names" in the geographical naming guideline.

This one is what sort of makes me wonder about the rest of the names. There are a lot of sources, especially Vietnam War-era ones, that establish transliterations for different place names in Vietnam, both in the North and South. See for example this link, containing a copy of the notorious JCS 94-Target List for US bombing. But people who aren't well-read on the Vietnam War won't necessarily know about those kinds of documents, and won't even be aware of the fact that such places as, say, Thái Nguyên or Yên Bái exist. So, in the light of the quoted policy (well, ok, WP:Naming conventions is policy, but WP:ENGLISH is just a guideline so far), what should be the standard by which we determine whether an anglicized (non-diacritic'd) name should be used over a name that uses the original Vietnamese diacritics? --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 01:52, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that English usage has changed considerably since the Vietnam War (at that time, for example, we were still referring to Peking and Leningrad, and Cambodia has changed its name three times since). I would be inclined to limit the English versions to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. A case could possibly be made for Da Nang, but the Vietnamese is so similar I would even be inclined to move that to Đà Nẵng. The rest of Vietnam is largely unknown to the rest of the world, so there really are no current English versions in common use. Skinsmoke (talk) 03:07, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

On the contrary; English usage has not changed for the majority of places since 1975; a few major cities have been renamed for political purposes (whether Ho Chi Minh City or Saint Petersburg), but the vast majority of villages have not been - in sny lsnguage, Vietnamese, Russian, or English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:53, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

The names of a lot of places in the South have changed since 1975. Most of the former village names no longer exist as they have been consolidated in communes. (The name of the commune is typically the name of one of the former villages, so it isn't a new name.) Certainly the street names have all been changed, usually to honor communist heroes. The provincial boundaries and names get changed a lot too. But that's just FYI and not really relevant to this issue. Newspaper usage, wartime or otherwise, is no model because newspapers don't use diacritics in any situation, but Wiki obviously does. Kauffner (talk) 13:19, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

If newspaper usage is not a model for English usage, then what IS a model for English usage? We can't agree that encyclopedia sources are a good model. Scholarly articles? Modern (say within past 20 years) vs wartime sources? yellowtailshark (talk) 12:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Next steps

I've added diacritics to the titles of most of the articles in Category:Provinces of Vietnam, simultaneously creating a redirect from the non-diacritic version, and to the links in templates in Category:Vietnam subdivision templates. There are some provinces that I can't move to the with-diacritic version because that already exists as a redirect to the title without diacritics. I'll have to ask an admin to do those. Is everyone happy for me to make that request? In the process I've come across anomalies like Quang Tri, which is about the town, whereas Quảng Trị redirects to Quảng Trị Province. I'll ask the admin to disentangle these too, so that Quang Tri becomes a redirect to Quảng Trị. I've already fixed the small number of articles that linked to Quảng Trị when they really meant Quảng Trị Province. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:42, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Please stop now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:55, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

We already have consensus to use diacritics in article titles. Your intervention in this discussion is not helpful. Colonies Chris (talk) 18:35, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

No, you don't. You didn't before wider consensus was asked, and you don't now. You have consensus to use them if the diacritick'd form is common in English - or the place is unknown in English - and no more (and I join in that). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:46, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Well we need a consistent approach, and a number of us seem to think along roughly the same lines. It's simply an extension of policy. I have been thinking about which cities are known in English, with their non-diacritic form. It's usually without space between the syllables too. Hanoi, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. And that's about it. Places that were reported about during the Vietnam war could have been said to have an English form: Danang, Haiphong, Hue, possibly Dien Bien Phu, resorts Dalat and Vungtau, possibly Cholon, Cantho. But that was then and this is now. Ha Long Bay might be on tourism websites today with or without the diacritics - the French used to call it Baie d'Along but this would now be unrecognisable. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Actually, most of Vietnam - even of northern Vietnam - was reported on during the war, and Dien Bien Phu has been widely discussed since. It is possible that this is another case, like Plassey and Eylau, where the battle should bear another title than the village, but I doubt it. The question for our article title policy is what title will be most convenient for a lay anglophone reader. There are several considerations involved in that, but the first is that it be recognizable. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:51, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't really think there is a problem with recognisability either way. Quảng Trị is easily recognisable as Quang Tri and the other way round, just as we manage to work out that recognise and recognize mean the same thing. And I doubt that anyone is having trouble finding the article on Điên Biên Phủ, particularly as there is a redirect from Dien Bien Phu. Skinsmoke (talk) 02:01, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Please supply sources for Điên Biên Phủ as an English phrase; it would be nice if they provided some reason to believe that they approach the many thousands of English references which use Dien Bien Phu. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

What we're saying is that today neither is an English phrase. Điên Biên Phủ is a lot nearer to Dien Bien Phu than Mumbai is to Bombay. We do need to be generous with the redirects. A French text - or even a text in English translated from French - might well have Diên Biên Phu. I don't even know where Plassey and Eylau are. Itsmejudith (talk) 05:58, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

See Battle of Plassey, Battle of Eylau; in all three cases, less than world-class towns near a battle-field. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:07, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, the English-language website of the government of Vietnam uses the version with diacritics for Vietnamese names. DHN (talk) 23:42, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

So? English is not controlled by any government in the world, even the governments of English-speaking countries. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

But Mumbai is now English usage, as the coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks made plain; to say the same of "Điên Biên Phủ" would require evidence of a massive shift. (As a counter-example, Bangalore, despite its recent ethnic politics and official change of name, is still so called in English - and our article is unmoved.) I see no such evidence. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:07, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Sheer volume of usage in English-language publications isn't particularly relevant here. There's a key distinction that needs to be made between exonyms such as Firenze/Florence or München/Munich (whose existence can be confirmed or refuted by looking at English-language media), and alternate spellings - almost always the native name without the diacritics. Where a place has an established exonym, we use that, and mention the native name in the lead. But Dien Bien Phu isn't an exonym, it's just the native name with the diacritics dropped, just like Lubeck or Sao Paulo. Any place in the world that's mentioned in the English-language media will almost invariably have had its diacritics dropped. That doesn't establish it as an exonym. Whether dropping the diacritics is for technical reasons, or from a feeling that English-speaking readers might be confused by them, doesn't matter to us. Those are reasonable considerations for a newspaper, but not for an encyclopaedia. We should use the correctly spelled native name and trust our readers to be able to handle any unfamiliarity. Colonies Chris (talk) 20:35, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

You are violently mistaken; you are mistaken on Wikipedia policy (see WP:COMMONNAME); more important, you are mistaken on the nature of English. We have no Academy; the only test of sound English is the sheer volume of anglophones. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:57, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME has nothing to do with it - that's just about making sure we use the best known name, for example, Bill Clinton rather than being pedantically correct with "William Jefferson Clinton". Colonies Chris (talk) 11:30, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you; you have found the necessary wording. On the same principle, and for the same reasons, we use the best known title (remember, we are not deciding a name): Dien Bien Phu, not the pedantic Điên Biên Phủ. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

It is clear from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) that there is no Wiki-wide standard on the issue of diacriticals, so it is perfectly legitimate to decide this issue by a vote at the project level. Kauffner (talk) 13:17, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

This is another misquotation: the decision should, and is, taken article by article. Projects are groups of editors, not groups of articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:28, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The page cites a dispute over Irish diacritics as a model; This issue was resolved at the project level. Kauffner (talk) 04:49, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm looking over the Irish MOS guidelines and they're awesome. There is a lot here for us to learn and we should definitely take advantage of this prior work to inspire us towards building our own MOS. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 13:38, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Please do a draft. They represent a consensus of those in the project and out of it, and draw a reasonable line between "pedantry and vulgarity". That's why they're a guideline. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:10, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The relevant bit of WP:UE here seems to be, and I quote, "The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage [...] If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject." The examples given at WP:UE seem (to me, at least) to indicate clearly that diacritics are considered to be part of "local spellings".

The pertinent question, then, is: For each name in question, are there enough English-language sources to constitute an established anglicized usage for that name?

What this means is, if we follow WP:UE strictly, for each article in question, the choice of whether or not to use diacritics in its title depends on whether or not that particular place name is mentioned in enough English-language sources. I think this is what PMAnderson has been trying to say (correct me if I'm wrong, but please be polite). And for the record, I think this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of this Wikipedia policy.

The issue I have with a strict and deliberate application of this interpretation boils down to this: There are hundreds, probably thousands of article titles based on Vietnamese names on Wikipedia. By applying a strict and deliberate interpretation of this policy, someone intending to establish correct usage for every Vietnamese place name used on Wikipedia would have to sift through a potentially great number of sources for every single article to determine whether or not "enough" sources mention it. How many, exactly, is "enough" sources? Should we count only mentions in the English-language media? Or should we consider mentions by the United States military in the countless documents about the Vietnam War? The potential enormity and complexity of this task is what makes me want to apply common WP:SENSE and follow Kauffner's suggestion to work this out in discussion amongst ourselves.

For the record, I don't think this discussion is a waste of our time; on the contrary, if more discussion will help us establish a strong, unambiguous consensus, I'm all for it, as long as conspicuous respect and civility are shown to all the participants during the entire process. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 22:44, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The intent, I believe, was "enough English sources to show what is English usage"; if a village is only mentioned once in an obscure source, that's not enough - but a few pieces by well-known sources (like the BBC) should show what English readers will expect and not be surprised by.

In general, we should use the form that other works of general reference use - or would use if they mentioned the subject. I would be perfectly content to be shown evidence that English has generally adopted Vietnamese diacritics for all but the best known places - in which case the presumption of diacritics would be warranted. But I would be surprised by it: the Britannica uses Quang Tri (subscription may be needed); so does the BBC; so does the Library of Congress country study for Vietnam (search within it) - I change from Dien Bien Phu, because it may be a "best known place." But unless we are shown this, we should not be more correct, more pedantic, than our readers. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Refocusing

Before the intervention of PMAnderson, we had a clear consensus, as described in the nutshell above. Can I take it we still have that consensus? (PMA, you need not reply - your objection is noted). Colonies Chris (talk) 11:48, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

But I don't object to the nutshell [then a specific proposal, quoted later in this thread]; I object to the unlimited expansion of the nutshell. In fact, as it stands, I almost entirely agree with it. (There is the case of a subject who spells his name differently when writing English, which is not explicitly covered; but in practice that should work itself out.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:24, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Then what was your objection to my plans stated under 'Next steps'? That was simply spelling out the next steps to take to complete the changes agreed in the nutshell, not going beyond it. Are you simply wasting everyone's time here? Colonies Chris (talk) 15:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

No evidence has been presented - and it is prima facie extremely unlikely - that all the provinces of Vietnam do "not have an alternate English name in common use". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:40, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to waste any more effort on this pettifoggery. Will other editors please indicate whether they're happy for me to go ahead with the actions I proposed under 'Next steps'? Colonies Chris (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

In short, having set up a standard, you are not going to comply with it; that would be pettifoggery. What standard are you going to follow? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:10, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Please do request the admins to move the rest of the articles. None of them have diacritic-less versions that are overwhelmingly used in English. DHN (talk) 22:24, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Djwilms—I'm curious; does your objection to using diacritics extend to article titles, or do you simply object to their use throughout an article? I'm trying to judge whether we can claim consensus on the use of diacritics specifically in article titles. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 21:59, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that I'm against the use of diacritics in article titles as well as in the main body of the text. It seems to me that the principle should be convenience and common usage in English. As far as convenience is concerned, spattering an article with diacriticised names does not improve its readability, and puts off non-specialist readers. As far as common usage in English is concerned, most English-language books on Vietnam spell Vietnamese place names without diacritics (e.g. Lang Son, Vung Tau). Most atlases do the same. The only advantages of giving a place name with diacritics are to indicate its correct pronunciation and to indicate how the Vietnamese spell it. This is best done by glossing the name when it first appears in the body of an article. The same principle, incidentally, should also apply to the names of persons.

Djwilms (talk) 01:20, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Convenience is a factor we need to take into account - that's why we have redirects from non-diacritic'd titles, or alternate capitalisations, and even from common misspellings - but it's just one factor to be considered. For media with a generalist readership, convenience and familiarity are very important, but for an encyclopaedia, accuracy has a higher priority. And I also think that we underestimate our readers if we treat them as struggling to understand something just because the letters have a few unfamiliar marks on them. After all, they already have an interest in Vietnam - that's why they're reading the article. Another point to consider is the loss of valuable detail - take a case like Emperor Dục Đức - the non-diacritic'd version Duc Duc completely loses the difference between the two components of the name. And how would we handle the case of, for example, an entertainer widely known in Vietnam but not known outside the Vietnamese-speaking world? It would be a nonsense to insist on spelling their name without diacritics. Colonies Chris (talk) 11:00, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Redirects are not sufficient; and to most anglophones the difference between Dục and Đức conveys absolutely nothing. When the Vietnamese alphabet in its full form comes into use in English, if it ever does, those will be as informative as François and Besançon and Göttingen - all of which we use, because English does. Again, we have encountered this elsewhere; the three es in Selene are all pronounced differently, and pedants have marks which would distinguish them, even in the Latin alphabet; but we call the article Selene and include the Greek for those it helps.

Pending the adoption of the Vietnamese spelling into English, we should call the Emperor what our reader will have seen him called in the source which led him here, and include the Vietnamese for those it helps; we should then include in text a remark that the two names are not alike, and an explanation (for the overwhelming majority the Vietnamese will not help) of the difference between them. The present stub has not quite managed either of these last two - another disadvantage of pedantry.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 12:57, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I take your points completely, and surely the most elegant solution is glossing. 'The emperor Duc Duc (Vietnamese: Dục Đức) died in late August 1883, imprisoned in the royal palace and starved to death by a hostile faction in the Annamese court.'

Djwilms (talk) 01:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the "In a nutshell" section. Please indicate your support or opposition to each consensus point to allow us to determine which points have the most support. I've also added a note to the effect that these points do not constitute a formal proposal, but just indicate where we're at in our discussion. Many thanks to all those who have made it this far and have made the effort to remain WP:CIVIL and constructive. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:24, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

To sum up my rational, adopting diacritics would represent a logical extension of several Wiki trends: toward scholarly usage, toward official usage, and toward native speaker usage. I realize that the diacritics mean nothing to the vast majority of readers, but they do give a sense of what the language looks like and makes them become aware of the fact that newspaper usage leaves something out. To remove the diacritics, as some have proposed, would make Vietnamese a red-headed stepchild language, and not just compared to French and German, but even Czech (President Václav Klaus) and Polish (Józef Piłsudski). Of course Vietnamese has more diacritics than any other language, so there is a danger of diacritical clutter, especially with respect to war-related articles with a lot of Vietnamese names. But certainly articles titles are large enough so that there is no issue of readability. Kauffner (talk) 12:15, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

There are no such trends; and use of "official names" and "native speaker usage" are contrary to policy.v Nationalists of all languages will prefer such forms; but they are routinely dismissed. Strangely, one sees no "native speaker usage" at de:Kalifornien or vi:Luân Đôn; I see no particular reason to support having this English wikipedia not use English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:25, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not nationalists prefer something is by the way, unless one wants to besmirch the preference by associating it with nationalism. Nobody has suggested that en:WP should not be written in English. -- Hoary (talk) 03:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Septentrionalis really should be more careful about the examples he selects to demonstrate his case. If he cares to look a little more closely at de:Kalifornien, and particularly at de:Diskussion:Kalifornien, he will find a similar discussion over whether the article title should be Kalifornien or California, and how it is inconsistent with naming the article on another state North Dakota, rather than Nord-Dakota. The comment is also made that Neuyork, Pennsylvanien and Westvirginien have been replaced in German by New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. At vi:Luân Đôn I can see quite a fair bit of "native speaker usage", including Transport for London and, rather strangely, a reference to Normandy, despite the fact that in Vietnamese they refer to the French region as Normandie. Skinsmoke (talk) 04:18, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

"Common use"

It's been over a week since anyone left any further comments on the "nutshell" above, and, at the risk of being called premature, I think we can tentatively say that a few points of consensus have been reached: points 1, 2, 3 and 5 seem to have common support, at least among the relatively small number of users commenting. The problem that remains is that the implementation of points 1 and 2 depend entirely on the definition of "in common use", which is addressed (but on which no consensus has been reached) in point 9. I suggest we try and reach consensus on what constitutes common use, and, if possible, develop a clear, realistic procedure to determine whether or not diacritics should be used in articles, setting aside (for the purpose of this particular sub-discussion) questions of where proposed diacritics should go, and focusing on how to decide whether their use is justified.

Here are some suggestions that have been given so far regarding what should be used as a source in determining the "common use" of a name in diacritics. Please add your own 'pros' and 'cons' or add more suggestions in the space provided, but please keep actual discussion in the "Sub-discussion" section below). --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 15:01, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Check English-language media

• Pros: Easy;
• Cons: May be biased against diacritics for cost/complexity reasons;

Check English versions of Vietnamese-language media

• Pros: Relatively easy;
• Cons: There are many English writing styles which are invented by Vietnamese-language media. It's not so good to be followed.--AM ^(talk)

Check Oxford Dictionary (or similar)

• Pros: Easy; very reliable
• Cons:

Check Encyclopedia Britannica (or similar)

• Pros: Relatively easy; very reliable
• Cons:

Determine relevant classic authorities and check those (which?)

• Pros: May be difficult to find or consult;
• Cons:

Sub-discussion

This space is reserved for discussion of the definition of "common use" for diacritics in a Vietnamese name, and for discussion of Nutshell Point 9 above. Please remember that reaching a strong and meaningful consensus is made easier by showing forth civility and by assuming good faith.

The news media doesn't use diacriticals for any language, so the fact that they leave them out for Vietnamese means nothing. If you check Google news archive and find two or three examples over 60 years, that's hardly common use. IMO, Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and Britannica are the best sources for establishing common use. Kauffner (talk) 09:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Largely agree with Kauffner, however I don't think any English-language media, including dictionaries and encyclopaedias, are a good guide to 'common' use - partly because they appear to have a policy of just not bothering with Vietnamese diacritics, and partly because virtually nothing about Vietnam other than Hanoi and Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City could be said to be widely known in the English-speaking world. A mention in a large encyclopaedia doesn't make for common use. Colonies Chris (talk) 14:56, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

My Lai Massacre, Danang or Da Nang (which is it?), President Ngo Dinh Diem, and Dien Bien Phu. I'd say those are fairly widely known (at least among the history books I suppose). I would never see any mention of province names, villages, or individuals that have no significance in history. yellowtailshark (talk) 13:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Naming convention

It says at WP:NCGN that a naming convention for Vietnamese places is under discussion here. However I can't find any recent discussion either here, or at the putative WP:Naming conventions (Vietnamese). Has anything been decided? Is the deciding still going on anywhere?--Kotniski (talk) 08:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It might relate to the discussions on use of diacritics. There is now consensus (I'm fairly sure) that could support a paragraph in the placenames article. We use Hanoi, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, common names English style. All other place names should have diacritics and each syllable should be a capitalised word. For example Huế (diacritics essential for disambiguation), Đà Nẵng (ought to be changed from present Da Nang), Điện Biên Phủ (ought to be changed from present Dien Bien Phu), Vũng Tàu, Cần Thơ, Lạng Sơn (ought to be changed from present Lang Son). There should always be a redirect from the place name without diacritics.Itsmejudith (talk) 09:30, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

There's not so much a consensus as an opinion held by the majority of participants in the discussion. There are still a few notable holdouts on using diacritics in article titles (Djwilms for one), so I don't think we can say we have an actual "consensus", which happens when everyone is agreed on what to do. As noted in the discussion above, certain points seem to have gained common support (1, 2, 3, 5), but some of those (1, 2) depend on the definition of "common use", which was discussed for a bit and then sort of died out. I was trying to drive discussion there for a bit and then had to drop off wiki for a while due to RL issues (sorry about that). Anyway, all that to say, for most points relating to a Vietnamese naming convention, we have no consensus, and further discussion is needed before we can actually claim to have produced a hard and fast guideline. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 14:52, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Page on naming conventions updated

I have revised WP:Naming conventions (Vietnamese) to reflect the vote that was taken in July. Kauffner (talk) 09:01, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Since no one has objected, I have promoted the page to official status. I hope everyone finds the guidelines useful. Kauffner (talk) 15:36, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your hard work! Since the discussion is pretty much done for now, I've moved the discussion from this talk page to a separate archive (see the archive box at the top of this page) so that we can find it easily. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 16:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Removing Vietnamese diacritics

There is a large-scale ongoing action to remove Vietnamese diacritics from articles' titles. The given reason is that these are rare in published English and reference is made to this, by my understanding quite far from the consensus move request. I would kindly ask what is the WP:VIETNAM's position regarding these moves and if there are any relevant guidelines about using Vietnamese diacritics in Wikipedia. Beagel (talk) 06:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Your best bet is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Vietnamese), which I believe grew out of a fairly lengthy debate about article naming conventions that encompassed the use of diacritics in article titles. There wasn't so much a consensus position stated in that debate as there were certain points agreed on, and the written policy was developed over time based on that discussion. The main gist of the discussion revolved around the idea of defining "common use", since most people were for the idea of using anglicized names if these are in common use in anglophone literature, and using diacritics otherwise. I suspect Kauffner may have more to say about it than me, since he's been more active both in developing the policy and in policing page moves since that time. --dragfyre_ʞןɐʇc 02:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

RfC on the spelling of Vietnamese names

RfC: Should the spelling of Vietnamese names follow the general usage of English-language reliable sources? Examples: Ngo Dinh Diem, Ho Chi Minh, and Saigon, or Ngô Đình Diệm, Hồ Chí Minh, and Sài Gòn. The RfC is here. Kauffner (talk) 07:05, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Note - this RfC was initiated following questioning of bulk undiscussed moves by User:Kauffner

1. The number of moves is around 1000 under own name, + 600 using G6 "uncontroversial moves" requests
2. messages to Kauffner to stop making these moves go back to the Talk:Cần Thơ/Archive 1 RM result. The messages (from admin Prolog, User Gimmetoo, and others?) were removed from Kauffner's talk page and ignored.
3. despite (i) the misrepresentation (scare tactic?) in the RfC wording "Sài Gòn", and (ii) selective canvassing of WP:CONSERVATISM and users known to be against use of accents in foreign names, the results from the RfC were 26 expressing support for use of full Vietnamese names in titles and text body, and only 16 in support of Kauffner's proposal.
4. Kauffner's moves additionally involved (i) IP activity archiving failed RMs, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Kauffner/Archive and (ii) deletion of notices of failed Talk:Cần Thơ/Archive 1 RM talk page notices prior to requesting G6 uncontroversial moves from admins.
5. At this point it seems appropriate to reverse Kauffner's 1,800 undiscussed/G6 moves. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:14, 26 August 2012 (UTC)