Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)

Russian names

I find it unacceptable that we're using different ways of romanizing Russian, depending on what's the most common name in English-language reputable sources. We should choose one romanization and stick to it on the entirety of Wikipedia. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a Russian, and in Russian you currently spell the name Пётр Ильич Чайковский. That's Cyrillic last time I checked, an alphabet that isn't used for writing English. Any romanization is a means to an end, a way of representing Пётр Ильич Чайковский, so who cares how it's spelled? On Dutch Wikipedia, he's called Pjotr Iljitsj Tsjaikovski, and I'm pretty sure that they're using the same romanization everywhere.

According to Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian, we should spell his name Pyotr Ilyich Chaykovsky (Ilyich with a y, right? It's sounded as a consonant after all), without the useless t at the beginning of the surname, and with i representing only the close front unrounded vowel (or the close central unrounded vowel, when immediately following the hard /r/), rather than both that and a postvocalic palatal approximant.

English spelling is a pile of illogical and unnecessary rules and we don't have to add to it by using fifty different romanizations just because they're the most common spelling in the English literature. In Russia certainly, people stick to one romanization in any given context (an encyclopedia is "one context", no?) and I don't think that they have any emotional reaction to their name being transliterated differently. English readers, on the other hand, might react to Chaykovsky with "oh my god, you can't spell!", which is not only not true (the surname is spelled Чайковский in Russian, in a different alphabet altogether) but not our problem anyway. We should treat our readers as adults, not as children who need to be catered to to that extent. People accusing others of not being able to spell should know that this isn't an English word and that there are multiple ways of transcribing Russian names. Plus, Chaykovsky, Perm Krai is spelled "Chaykovsky" and the discrepancy is infuriating to me. It's the same word! Not only that, the town was named after Tchaikovsky himself! Argh! This is so stupid.

I'm not advocating for using any particular romanization (though WP:RUS is more than fine in my opinion) but for consistency, also in the case of other languages that aren't written in the Latin alphabet. The current situation is ridiculous, especially given the fact how easy it is to create a redirect.

So, long story short, let's use one type of romanization of Russian on Wikipedia, create redirects for those names that are at odds with the romanization of our choice (whatever it'll end up to be) and mention those names in the lede. The English Wikipedia is, AFAICS, alone (at least among major Wikipedias) in how it deals with Russian names and it's time to stop this practice.

If a name of a certain scientific phenomenon was mostly spelled in British English (because of who's written the papers describing it), would we be forced to use the British spelling of the name despite everything? That's the level of unreasonableness we're dealing with here. Sol505000 (talk) 15:11, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

For names which have an established translation / transliteration into English, IMHO we should use that, regardless of what some systematic transliteration of Russian would give. For instance, when talking about the capital of Russia, we should name it Moscow, not Moskva. Similarly Saint-Petersburg, not Sankt-Peterburg. The same applies to people's names: Ivan the Terrible, not Ivan Groznyy; Peter the Great, not Pyotr Velikiy or Pyotr Pyervyy.

Under Tchaikovsky (disambiguation) that surname is written mostly Tchaikovsky but also Chaikovskij, Tschaikowsky and Chaykovsky; under Tchaikovsky (surname) there are more spellings, but also the following paragraphs at top explaining how they came about:

Tchaikovsky and its feminine variant Tchaikovskaya is a common transliteration (via French language) of the Russian language surname Чайковский. The surname itself is a Russian-language variant of the Polish surname Czajkowski, see this page for name origin.

Transliterated spellings in various languages include Tschaikowski (German), Ciajkovskij (Italian), Tsjaikovski (Dutch), Csajkovszkij (Hungarian), Chaikovski (Spanish), Tjajkovskij (Swedish), Tsjajkovskij (Norwegian), Čaikovskis (Latvian and Lithuanian), Tchaikovski (Portuguese), Txaikovski (Catalan) and Tšaikovski (Estonian and Finnish).

It has also been rendered as Tchaikovski, Chaikovsky, Chaykovsky, Chaikovskiy, Chaykovskiy, and Chaikovskii. Among Slavic languages which use the Latin alphabet, it frequently occurs in its Polish version, Czajkowski, or as Čajkovskij (Czech and Slovak) and Čajkovski (Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian).

The surname as transliterated into other languages may refer to the following persons. For the original, Polish spelling, see Czajkowski (surname).

The composer is probably known in English-speaking media with a certain spelling, which we should respect; the town in the Perm region probably isn't, even if it was named to honour the composer, so we can, and IMHO we should, transliterate its name directly from Cyrillic. — Tonymec (talk) 22:14, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with @Tonymec. It may be maddening to people who speak Russian, but English's spelling has always been horribly inconsistent, and it's better to follow the sources, which means following the consistent uses in the sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

I see there are many opinions about the representation of names written in the cyrillic alphabet. And it looks that many talk of Transliteration and mean Transcription (linguistics). Transliteration is an international way to converse names written in cyrillic into latin regardless of the pronouncation in a certain language (I think mainly based on the Czech alphabet). So Ч is written ch in Englisch and tsch in German, cs in Hungarian and Č in Czech (see town Chop, Ukraine. But if you use the transliteration it is Č in all languages that use the Latin alphabet. This remark is just to make clear what is talked about (or not).--Wanfried-Dublin (talk) 09:58, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

If I understand what Wanfried-Dublin wrote above, when talking about the composer whose native name was Пётр Ильич Чайковский, and limiting ourselves to his family name, Ćajkovskij (with a capital c-caron initial) would be a transliteration, Chaykovski would be a transcription, and Tchaikovsky would be — what? A translation, maybe. So let's rephrase what I said earlier: IMHO, when there is an accepted translation (e.g. Moscow and not Moskva for Москва, Khrushchev and not Khrusshoff for Хрущёв, etc.), we should use it; if there is no accepted translation, I believe that for Wikpedia a consistent transcription would be appropriate, while in some other documents (maybe a linguists' technical review) a transliteration using some agreed-in-advance lossless convention would be better. For Чайковский (the composer) there is an accepted transltion, viz. "Tchaikovsky", so let's use that; for Чайковский (the town in the Perm region) there is no accepted translation into English, so we fall back on transcription. I'm not sure exactly how Wikipedia transcribes Russian names from Cyrillic, but I suppose that "Chaykovski, Perm rayon" would not be too far of the mark. The fact that we write differently a person's name and the name of a town which was intentionally given (in Russian) the name of that particular person, is just a quirk of the English language. The Japanese customs about how to pronounce Chinese proper names (and common nouns) based on their hanzi orthography is even more quirky. — Tonymec (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

It seems there is some confusion what is meant. Moscow is neither transliteration nor transcription but an Exonym. As to Tchaikovsky: at least for the national post and railway it was once agreed, to use the French transcription (I am not sure, but I think for other names too). And Tchaikovsky would be the French version.--Wanfried-Dublin (talk) 11:18, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

I didn't say Moscow was either a transcription or a transliteration, I said it was a translation, like German Moskau and French Moscou; similarly, Chinese 中國 (usually transliterated zhōngguǒ nowadays) and Japanese 中國 (usually transcribed chōgoku) are translated as English China, French la Chine, Russian Китай, and these latter three, which are indeed exonyms, are the translations of that sinogram pair into their respective languages.

This said, if for place names we must use the French transcripton because French is the international language of the post offices, then there is an established spelling for the Perm-region town, and it is Tchaikovsky. — Tonymec (talk) 11:42, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

To add some more remarks: I write mainly for the German Wikipedia and there are some rules regarding first exonyms and second how to use the transcription. These rules are generally obeyed so there is less confusion. The main aim is that a reader who has no knowledge of any other language is able to spell the transcribed name as he reads it and that others can understand it (I agree that this is easier in German than in English). 2. as to French: using this as a rule is fine but I doubt it is workable or will ever be obeyed (who is Poutine)? As far as I remember when the Soviet Union ceased to exists all the new states (Russia, Ukraine, ...) that use the cyrillic spelling agreed to transcribe the names into the French version. This might have been well intented but was never done as English is the language that is most used and understood. From my journeys into Ukraine I know only one example where French is used (railway station in Chop (Tchop)). Whenever a name is shown in the Latin version, it is always the English transcription that is used. Regards.--Wanfried-Dublin (talk) 12:09, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

women's football clubs

There are many articles about non-english women's football clubs named xxx (women) see here. There also many that instead use the native word for women see here. Clubs also have had their names switched back and forth. Per WP:TITLECON I propose a renaming of all women's football clubs (and categories!) that have the native word for women in the article name but not the club name. Dutchy45 (talk) 16:41, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Native names

I am wondering if there is any established convention as to whether saints’ native names or anglicised versions should be used, both as the title and within the article. I understand that the name with established use in English language sources should be used, but in such areas where a saint has little English-language coverage, what is the protocol. For example, I recently created the page for the Italian Saint John of Tufara, having translated the name. However, as very few English-language sources reference him and almost every source is in Italian, is it better to use his native name of Giovanni. If so, should this be Giovanni of Tufara or Giovanni da Tufara? Clarification would be very greatly appreciated! Many thanks, Vesuvio14 (talk) 21:58, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this is quite difficult whenever we are forced to invent an English name for an article which has none in reliable sources. As a rule of thumb, I think it is better to translate when many of the following criteria apply: 1) a decent amount of meaning can be inferred from the individual words; 2) it is easy to translate the original title literally; 3) the translation sounds like a plausible thing to say in English; 4) the original name is difficult to pronounce or spell for English speakers; 5) if applicable, similar subjects are almost uniformly translated. And it is better to keep the original name when the reverse is true. For Pseudo-Chinese, I have decided to translate the title, because the translation gives the reader some sense of what the title is about and is easier to say. Another factor in this case was having to choose one Romanization system over the other if going with the original title, since original Chinese-character names are not allowed in English Wikipedia articles. Now there are more sources calling it "pseudo-Chinese" in English, but I suspect this may be citogenesis. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:49, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Clarifying definition of English name?

In quite a few move requests where the proposal is to move to a name with non-English origins, I've noticed people citing this policy (or WP:UE) as justification to oppose the move, even if the proposed name is demonstrably the most common used in English sources. As I understand it, this guideline talks simply about which name English sources use, and has no prejudice on the origins of said name - hence using Uluru over Ayers Rock, or Denali over Mount McKinley. I'm wondering whether it would be worth having something within the guideline to spell this out, as it seems the current wording has been misconstrued reasonably often? Turnagra (talk) 20:07, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

@Turnagra, fully agree seen it used as an argument to argue to use only English names, regardless if a non-English name is more common. DankJae 21:07, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

This should be retitled to better reflect its content. “Use English sources”, maybe. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 07:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 1 December 2024

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) → Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English-language sources) – "Use English" implies that the general convention is to use the English names for things, when in fact this guideline says that the name most commonly used in English-language sources (that is, not necessarily an English name) should be used. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 15:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. This naming convention, in a nutshell: "This is the English Wikipedia. Article titles should be written in English." Current title is accurate. 162 etc. (talk) 17:31, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  That nutshell doesn't follow the text itself, the first sentence of which says: "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject that is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works, scholarly journals, and major news sources)." ꧁Zanahary꧂ 17:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose. If this needs to be moved, I would rather rename it to Naming conventions (use English-language sources). That is the term commonly used on most Wikipedia policies and guidelines to disambig that from sources originally published in England. Otherwise, like 162 etc.'s comment, the status quo seems sufficient: the name most commonly used in English-language sources is essentially the English name, including any loanword assimilated from one language into English. Zzyzx11 (talk) 17:39, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  You're right. Can I change the nomination? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 17:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  You should be able to edit the original request, I'm unsure on whether it will properly sync with the main RM page though. Turnagra (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Done, thanks ꧁Zanahary꧂ 18:48, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

  Titles of works cannot be considered loan words; the title of Mein Kampf cannot be said to be in English, yet it matches English-language sources. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:54, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Support (with the change suggested by Zzyzx11). This is one of the most frequently misunderstood parts of PAG. I often see it used to oppose a clear WP:COMMONNAME because the proposed title, although the most common name in English, isn't from English (eg. preferring "Ayers Rock" over Uluru and using WP:USEENGLISH as the rationale). Amending the title to specify that it should be the name as used in English-language sources would partially help to alleviate this confusion, and would better match the wording of the guideline. Turnagra (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2024 (UTC)