[Wikipedia-l] Naming Conventions (names and titles)

[Fred Bauder]

At 09:34 AM 9/25/02 +0100, you wrote:
>At 04:44 23/09/02 -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:
>
>>In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
>>[[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
>>not put family names as part of the title."
>
>...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
>in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
>National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
>name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
>and 8th Duke of Devonshire.
>
>There is an alternative proposal which may be more to Tesla
>Coil's liking at [[Wikipedia:History standards]], which is
>to use the full name, ordinal and title. I don't think this
>should take precedence over to "common names" rule in cases
>like [[Duke of Wellington]] or [[Bertrand Russell]], and it
>does tend to make entry titles rather long, but it is the
>best way to clearly identify a specific titled individual.
>Thus we would have [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of
>Devonshire]] for the chap named above, no matter what it
>says in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]].
>This seems the best way forward to me (for UK peerages, at
>least), but while I'm willing to be bold in updating pages,
>I don't want to be too bold in updating conventions. I've
>only been in this thing for four days, after all.
>
>
>Rob

This seems correct, but as it is unlikely the odd person wandering into
this area is going to automatically conform to this reasonable, but obscure
convention, I suggest simply retitling pages and entries correctly would be
better than trying to point the convention out. Although a footnote, so to
speak, might be entered in [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and
titles)]]. I doubt that very many of the people in question deserve much of
an entry or mention and those that do are generally known by their common
names, although, for example, Elizabeth Windsor, is almost unrecognizable
by her common name.

Fred