Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)

Dynasties

I don't think we should rename Five Dynasties, and that's the proper name of the period. Usage seems to be divided for Northern and Southern Dynasties (hmm, our article has that name the other way round, following the Chinese order). Kanguole 15:50, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I think it depends on use. In some cases it is part of a proper noun, in other cases it is not. For example, "Foo happened during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period" it could be considered part of a proper noun as could the short hand, "Foo happened during the Five Dynasties". However in the opening line of Later Liang (Five Dynasties), "The Later Liang ... was one of the five dynasties during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in China." (emphasis added) the fist instance should be "five dynasties" with both 'f' and 'd' in small letters because it is not a proper noun. The simple test is that if you append the word "period" to the first instance, the sentence no longer makes sense. Therefore the first instance in that sentence is not the name of a period but simple a numeration of dynasties. Several related articles do not make this distinction and capitalise the words everywhere. Likewise for northern and southern. Rincewind42 (talk) 23:13, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. So shall we move Later Jin (Five dynasties) back? Kanguole 01:10, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Articles specifically about certain characters should be titled more concisely

I find the article title Li (surname 李) to be awkward, and would find 李 to be a much more straightforward title when we want to convey something that is not transcribable. The moment that we introduce the pre-transcribed 李 character in the article title, the effort to transcribe the character in the article title is lost. WP:PRECISE states "Usually, titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article, but no more precise than that. " Thus, the moment that we decide that we need to show the Chinese character in the article title, the romanized version becomes unnecessary. (Generally speaking, ? (surname) would be the proposed pattern if there were conflicts with a ? article that required it.)

As another example of an article specifically about a character rather than the pronunciation, the article Li (unit) would make more sense under the title 里 (unit), because it is not about a unit pronounced as "li", but about a unit written as "里", as demonstrated by the fact that Ri (unit) redirects to it. --Makkachin (talk) 09:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

The current naming system is the result of an RFC from last year and many other previous discussions. See Talk:Li (surname)#RFC regarding multiple Chinese surnames transliterated to the same surname in English for details. See also WP:UE. It is a decent compromise between the requirement to have article titles in English, and the need to distinguish different Chinese names that share the same English romanization. -Zanhe (talk) 09:47, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem with 李 (surname) is accessibility. There are still many people with e.g. older operating systems like Windows XP that don't come with Chinese characters, so they'd see a box in the title. Using 'Li' is therefore much better. It still includes the character for the majority with an OS that supports it (though that does not mean they can read it). The same applies to your other example.

The easiest solution is to create redirects for such title variations, and such are valuable for e.g. Chinese character spellings of Chinese/Chinese language topics such as the examples you give. Then anyone searching using Chinese will find them while anyone finding the page who doesn't know/have and OS that supports Chinese won't experience problems.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:49, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Not everyone who reads the English Wikipedia will be able to distinguish between the general appearances of Chinese characters, let alone be able to read them, so having article titles such as "里" instead of "Li (unit)" would be counter-productive for many readers. Articles should be made so that they can be accessible by a general audience, and we shouldn't expect that our readers are already specialists on the topics we cover. Since this is the English Wikipedia, article titles are catered towards people who are capable of reading English alphabet letters, and Chinese characters fall outside of this. --benlisquare_T•C•E 09:54, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Lu vs. Lü in titles

I cannot find any particular guideline on this important topic, and the following is my opinion only.

Personally, I prefer using "Lü" in titles. The problem is, at least before 2012, PRC passports always (?) use "Lu" for 呂, and I believe the situation is similar in Taiwan, Singapore etc. Therefore modern people, especially athletes who are mostly identified internationally by official documents, should be disambiguated. e.g. Lü Bin (swimmer) (or Lu Bin (swimmer) ?) vs. Lu Bin (sprinter).

However, for historical people or fictional people like Lü Fang, I think the umlaut is sufficient to disambiguate in a title, e.g. Lü Guang doesn't need to be further disambiguated from Lu Guang (photographer) or Lu Guang (painter). I think any serious historian or translator who writes in English will be able to distinguish the 2 sounds. Although hatnotes and/or mentions in dab pages are still required.

Again, my opinion only. Pinging User:65.94.169.222, User:In ictu oculi, User:White whirlwind, User:Underbar dk, User:Benlisquare, User:George Ho, User:Zanhe, User:BD2412, User:Bejnar. Timmyshin (talk) 09:27, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• Comment - personally I think Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Romanization_of_names should state something like this In ictu oculi (talk) 09:43, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Lü (surname) (呂) should be represented as Lü, not Lu. However in titles the pinyin diaeresis alone is not usually enough to pass Wikipedia:Article_titles#Using_minor_details_to_naturally_disambiguate_articles and therefore e.g. Lu Bin vs Lü Bin require further disambiguation.

• Don't do it. from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/China-related articles:

'Tone diacritics are not used to transcribe names or terms that appear in the normal flow of an article (e.g. "...early Ming dynasty scholar Gù Yánwǔ..." or "...a bronze dǐng excavated from a Zhou dynasty tomb..."). They should only be used in templates and parentheticals (e.g. Chinese: 顧炎武; pinyin: Gù Yánwǔ) or in infoboxes.

There's no reason we should think of article names any differently. It's not proper disambiguation, because those marks aren't used in English. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 11:33, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We were just talking about how the umlaut is not a tone mark over at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/China-related_articles#Added_bracketed_note_on_.22umlaut-u.22. We really need to stress that u and ü are different vowels, ie. they are not just tone differences. _dk (talk) 11:39, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

I know how pinyin works. I would like to suggest that the above is intended to include the diaresis above the u, since it fits the same category but is much less common. It's a diacritical we don't use in English and it's a distinction that isn't represented in English pronunciation, so it's the same. They are different vowels in Chinese, not English. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 14:11, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It is not in Wikipedia's goals to further misconceptions and conflate different things into one just because it's not English. _dk (talk) 14:49, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

This is not a misconception, just as we don't use Chinese characters in English we also don't use the mark above the u, because it doesn't have any meaning in English. English isn't Chinese. And it is firmly established that whatever logic you think supports the spelling you prefer is irrelevant. WP standards are to stick to common English practices and the usage present in the sources. - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 04:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment – To cut through all personal preferences and points of view, I propose we simply follow the usual Wikipedia convention of doing as reliable sources do. Reliable sources on China basically never use tone marks, but they consistently use "ü" when needed, presumably both because this is correct pinyin and because there is an important sound difference between "ü" and "u". (Note that the umlaut is sometimes omitted when it makes no difference, as in the syllable "lue/lüe".) This means I would support using "ü" as Timmyshin proposes. Madalibi (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

The sources that I have looked at for the articles about people named Lü don't use the mark above the u, though perhaps there are some that do. What I am proposing is that we stick both to common English usage and the reliable sources for our articles, that is, Write it as "Lu". That is, as you suggest, the way we do things on WP. I suggest you take a closer look at those RS you mention. Which ones use the mark? They certainly do not " consistently use "ü" when needed". Although, I'm not sure what you mean my "needed". - Metal lunchbox ^(talk) 04:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

• WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:UE, WP:BLP ; whatever the spelling, it must be used. If there are no references that use that particular spelling, but there are references that use another spelling, we cannot use a spelling that is not used. So, there must exist at least one reference in English for which the form "Lü" is used to show that it is used. If there are no English language references at all, then the form must still exist and be used in non-English sources. If the form does not exist in any references provided, it cannot be used. The situation is very simple. The two articles that are involved (1) have no references using the form "Lü" (2) only have references using the form "Lu" ; To use "Lü" would violate WP:V and WP:NOR, as well asn WP:BLP, to be able to use "Lü", a reference must be provided. -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 05:38, 6 September 2014 (UTC)