[Foundation-l] Why "Wikipedia" and not "the Wikipedia"?

[Samuel Klein]

Once a name or monument transcends what it originally named and is
used by reference to describe similar things elsewhere, there is a
tendency to add the definite article -- the Earth, the Sun, the
Sphinx, the Oracle, the Colosseum.  I do see people running wikis of
any sort on their own or their company site, with a comment that they
have 'set up their own wikipedia'.  This would be consistent with
calling the original Project 'the' Wikipedia.

Yes, it's somewhat archaic if not self-important.  WP has become the
largest human collaboration of all time, so it's not for lack of
transcendence... but it doesn't sound right to me.  [On the other
hand, I'm having a hard time thinking of a social or practical
movement whose name doesn't have a 'the' in it.]

SJ


On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Delirium<delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Samuel Klein wrote:
>> Wikipedia does not take an article, nor does Wikimedia.
>>
>> When combined with an adjective modifying the project name, or a
>> common noun modified by the name, the compound noun does take an
>> article.
>>
>> "Wikimedia is a non-profit charitable corporation." is correct; so are
>>  "The English Wikipedia",  "the Wikipedia cabal", "the print Wikipedia
>> 'Wikipedia:' namespace pages", and "the Wikimedia Foundation".
>>
> A bit late on this, but I notice that [[en:Encyclopædia Britannica]]
> consistently refers to that encyclopedia as "the Britannica". Given
> that, I can hardly fault the average non-Wikipedian for being confused
> as to why it's not, in a parallel way, "the Wikipedia"; I imagine
> Britannica's dominance has conditioned a good many people to think that
> "the _Encyclopedianame_" is the proper way to refer to encyclopedias.
>
> I suspect this is some sort of archaic grammar being held over in
> Britannica's case?
>
> -Mark
>
>
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