Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Burmese)

honorific standardization proposal

As per Wikipedia's manual of style about not having King, Dr. and so on in article titles, I would propose an addendum. As Burmese names are often short, if it is "U" followed by a single name, I propose we leave the U on the title. U Nu, U Razak, U Thant are more recognizable anyway as they are. And shortening it to Nu would take it to a disambig page. Your thoughts? Chris 19:59, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree Okkar 20:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree SimonBillenness 21:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Support Comment This depends case to case. Some names, like U Thant and U Nu are most well-recognized with "U" attached, while others, like "U Than Shwe", which is unrecognized for the most part in English. --Hintha 23:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

That's what I mean-I am only saying when there is only _one_ name, then the U should be left on. U Nu, for instance, instead of Nu. Chris 23:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree. Many library catalogues make a similar exception for Burmese names because they are more recognizable with honorific attached. Andrew Dalby 14:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree. This convention has been well established on Wikipedia. Kaldari (talk) 23:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I see that you have uncontested support on one aspect of this guideline, but not the other and no specific agreement to adopt this proposal as a guideline. I suggest contacting the people involved above and asking them to support acceptance of this. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:07, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposing as an official addendum to the Wikipedia Manual of Style

I would like to propose that we make this page an official style guideline. Kaldari (talk) 22:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Given that silence=consensus on Wikipedia, I'm marking this as a guideline. Kaldari (talk) 22:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Please consider that silence is consensus if you have tried to attract broad participation. --Kevin Murray (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I realized that all the guidelines we have on here so far are simply naming convnetions, so I'm changing it from a guideline proposal to a naming convention. Kaldari (talk) 20:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the tag as it is not a naming convention yet, but a draft that has to be proposed/discussed: "New naming conventions should be proposed at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions, and explained at Requests for comment, the Village Pump, and any related pages. Once a strong consensus has formed, the proposal can be adopted and listed" (WP:NC). Iunaw 00:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Proposing as a Naming Convention

Support. These conventions are already used throughout Burmese-related articles. It's good to have them codified for future editors. Kaldari (talk) 15:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Support The use of An Introduction to the Toponymy of Burma being suggested from the guideline is an excellent idea. It seems that this has been well thoght out and adequately advertised to the community. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose, I think the consensus above does not adequately reflect the opinion beyond the editors who focus on Burmese articles. Consistency should be maintained throughout the encyclopedia, with no special treatment for Burmese individuals. Move the article to Thakin Nu and redirect U Nu there. Move the article to Thant and redirect U Thant there. --Selket ^Talk 17:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

This was advertised last week at the Burma project without response. Can you think of other places where it should be advertised? Are there specific objections to the guidance page? --Kevin Murray (talk) 17:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

"Thakin" is also an honorific, roughly translated as "master". The man's name is simply Nu, though he is almost universally known as "U Nu", and almost never as simply "Nu". Do you really want his article moved to Nu? Note also that many library catalogues make a similar exception for Burmese names because they are more recognizable with the honorific attached. Kaldari (talk) 18:02, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I think listing it at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and WP:PUMP is a good start. I hope you get a lot of input (of which I may just be the first). I did not realize that Thakin was also an honorific, which just goes to show the importance of getting broad-based input on new policies like this. Is Nu a special case? If so it may be necessary to name the article Nu (Burmese politician) or something like that, just as Nu (letter), Nu (kana), and Nu (mythology) are. If those topics can deal with the parenthetical name, I think U Nu can also. Are most Burmese names like this? How big of a problem is it. My preliminary search suggests that it might not be. For example Razak would not require a disambiguation page, nor would Thant. When in doubt I prefer consistency. --Selket ^Talk 18:19, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It may be useful to think of names like U Nu, U Thant, and U Soe, like Mr. T, i.e. you would never call Mr. T simply "T". Most books and encyclopedias refer to U Nu as "U Nu" even if they don't normally use honorifics/prefixes. Up until the previous century, it was common for Burmese people to have only one given name and then to assume a title/prefix later in life. The title basically became a part of their name, so it's a bit different than how we think of honorifics in the western world (but not entirely different). Now almost all Burmese people have multi-word names so it isn't an issue. I agree, however, that it would be nice to have consistency. It's a tricky issue I suppose. Kaldari (talk) 19:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that this is not a unique situation. In Europe honorifics become attached to names which in turn become a fixture to the historic name e.g., Otto von Bismarck where the von in an honorific. Over time the just become appended to the name in everyday use. Since our guidelines are not meant to be prescriptive, but to document the actual practices which evolve through the consensus of action, we should look at what our editors are doing rather than what we think they should do. Intuitively I like Kaldari's approach so far. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I saw the note at the Burma Project, but I don't know what I'm expected to do here. My view is already stated above: where a Burmese name consists of a single word preceded by the honorific, the honorific should be retained in the article title. Andrew Dalby 21:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

If you could also state whether or not you believe this page should be an official naming convention, that would help greatly. Kaldari (talk) 21:03, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it would be safe to make absolute rules when it comes to Burmese names, because often, Burmese people will include honorifics as part of their name. For example, someone could have a given name "Maung Maung" (Maung also being a so-called honorific) and be called "U Maung Maung". I don't really agree with "U"/"Daw" being honorifics, because they literally translate to "Uncle"/"Aunt". Also, many people assume "U" as part of their names, so it should be mostly a case-by-case issue, to differentiate those who use "U" as their given name, or whether this is added due to that person's age. Honorifics would more likely be names like "Tekkatho" ("University", indicating college graduate), "Theippan" ("Science", indicating the university degree one graduates with), "Thakin" ("Master"), "Bogyoke"/"Bo" ("General"). We also need conventions for romanizing Burmese, because when it comes to articles with phonetic transcriptions, there is no single methodology. --Hintha (talk) 21:34, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

With people's names there always has to be room for exceptions. Whatever term we use for the initial "U" "Daw" "Maung" etc., it is better to permit ourselves to take these elements as part of the name (especially a very short name) than to compel ourselves to rule them out. Andrew Dalby 12:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to edit the text if you want to change it. I'm just trying to give us a starting point from which to work, and I left the text of that section almost exactly as it had been agreed on back in 2007. Right now, someone could go and move U Nu to "Nu" or U Thant to "Thant" and people who objected to this would have no leg to stand on. Kaldari (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

One syllable Burmese names are always used with a prefix from birth not only later on as Kaldari seems to think. U Nu and U Thant were Maung Nu and Maung Thant from day one, never Nu or Thant which if they were women might have been used by a close friend or sweetheart. Po Nu could mean young Maung Nu or Grandpa Nu. Nga Nu would be used in anger, derogatory or as a criminal. Ma Tin and Ma Mar may also be called Ah Tin and Ah Mar or Mi Tin and Mi Mar. Single syllables must have a prefix. A common mistake is to use Shwe(last name) or Than (first name) instead of Than Shwe. Likewise, Paw Oo Tun ( Min Ko Naing) is not the same person as Paw Tun. Wagaung (talk) 14:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Support. So, just to clarify my position, I do believe that this page should be an official naming convention. Andrew Dalby 12:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It would be better if this article defined all of the honorifics: U, Maung, Daw, Ko and gave an indication of their usage. -- Evertype·✆ 08:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

All these titles "U", "Daw", "Maung","Ko", "Ma" etc. can also be part of the name like in Maung Aye. Monks sometimes have the title "Ashin" instead of "U". In general, it is considered very rude in Burma to address a monk without some title. For other ethnic groups in Burma there are also similar titles: Sao, Salay, etc. The other issue is that although Burmese is monosyllabic, there are certain historical names, especially of kings, that are now written together as in Alaungphaya, Bayinnaung, Tabinshwehti etc., but we don't write Thanshwe. Finally as most people know by now, Burmese traditionally do not have surnames, which always create some confusion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tocharian (talk • contribs) 09:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)