On 18 October 2010 12:23, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
As far as I can see [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style
(biographies)]] doesn't
cover this ground, while dealing with numerous points in the same
general area of naming. My instinct is that multiple possible spellings,
for example surname variants, should go into a footnote or perhaps be
boxed up, as a way of keeping them from distracting the casual reader.
They are certainly of interest to specialists and scholars, and have a
role to play in making search work.
That seems sensible.
Certainly we don't need something like the five names in one sentence
we currently have for Copernicus: "*Nicolaus Copernicus* (Polish:
*Mikołaj Kopernik*; German: *Nikolaus Kopernikus*; in his youth,
*Niclas Koppernigk*;[1] Italian: *Nicolò Copernico*; 19 February 1473
– 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer ...". There's a note on
his name in the article itself, which lists a further nine variants.
In reality, of course, all these are just variants on one name, rather
than "alternative names" in the strict sense of people who've changed
their name or published under pseudonyms.
From the search perspective, of course, we could use
"silent"
redirects (ones not noted in the article text), but some
(especially
latinised names) are essential to have clearly available to the
reader. Maybe an infobox section would be appropriate here?
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk