Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

Common name, birth name and post-nominal initials

I noticed an editor making a excellent job of cleaning up bios to conform with the MOS. In one case Mark Evaloarjuk, I notice that the style guide does not give any information as to the correct format. Is the current oepning correct, with the exception that "nee" should be "ne", or should it be '''Mark Evaloarjuk''' (né '''Evaluarjuk'''), [[Order of Canada|CM]] (died [[July 3]], [[2002]] By the way would it be possible to rewrite Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Maiden names so that it applied to both women and men?

There was once a rule...

... about not inserting birthplace in the lead parenthesis, like this: "John Johnson (born 1 January 2000 in Johnsville)" <--my emphasis. Is this rule no more? I can't find it. Geschichte (talk) 16:00, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's not so much said than implied. WP:MOSBIO#Opening paragraph, for example, does not list birth place as a piece of information to be included for biographical articles. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 17:49, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. I still think it used to be explicitly stated though. Geschichte (talk) 19:19, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

It used to say explicitly, as one of the bullet points at WP:MOSNUM#Dates of birth and death, that "Locations of birth and death are given subsequently rather than being entangled with the dates". This was removed quite recently following this discussion. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 16:53, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that. So it seems the position is now that editors can either insert birth and death places in the lead parenthesis or choose not to; neither style is more "correct" than the other, and editors should not change one format to another without a good reason. I wish PMAnderson's advice in the debate had been followed: "Leave this, as often, to the judgment of the writers of the article; and state our reasons in text so we don't have to go through this again. That's what guidelines are for." Perhaps some suitable wording should be added to WP:MOSBIO#Opening paragraph noting the consensus on the matter? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be pretty confusing to say it can be done either this way or that, potentially leading to a lot of needless edit wars. I think a clear, across-the-board rule (or guideline) is better. Since most articles now lean towards excluding the birthplace from header, that's the side I'd come down on. All Hallow's (talk) 19:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I disagree. I think that is not consistent with the discussion. (To clarify, I'm reacting (hopefully without ruffling any feathers) to AHW's good-faith edit today removing the birthplace from a lead on the basis that "(rmv birthplace ... from header per WP:MOSBIO....)". That language was deleted because it no longer reflected consensus. When you say that most articles lean a certain way now -- well sure, that is because there used to be rule that required as much. That's not I would suggest indicia of the way to lean at all, given that that rule has been changed as no longer reflecting consensus (if anything, that militates in favor of the opposite approach). That would be like locking people up post-Prohibition for selling alcohol because the prior week during Prohibition it was illegal. Make sense?--Epeefleche (talk) 01:16, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistency in Honorific prefixes

As I write this, item 3 from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Honorific prefixes begins:

3. Styles and honorifics related to clergy and royalty, including but not limited to His Holiness and Her Majesty, should not be included in the text inline but may be legitimately discussed in the article proper. Clergy should be named as described in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (clergy).

This is followed by the inconsistent part:

In the cases of certain historic persons, an honorific is so commonly attached to their names that it should be included. For example, the honorific should be included for "Father Coughlin" (Charles Coughlin), the 1930s priest and broadcaster; Father Damien, the missionary in Hawaii; Father Divine, an American religious leader; Father Joseph, in 17th-century France; and Mother Teresa, a 20th-century humanitarian.

The parts stricken out are examples that do not correspond/comport with current practice: the "Father Couglin" article is named Charles Coughlin and the "Father Joseph article is named François Leclerc du Tremblay.

What about these examples?

• Should it be Mother Abagail or Abagail Freemantle?
• Should it be Mother Basilea or Basilea Schlink?
• Should it be Mother Antonia or Mary Clarke?
• Should it be Mother Cabrini or Frances Xavier Cabrini?
• Should it be Mother Delille or Henriette DeLille?
• Should it be Mother Eugenia Elisabetta Ravasio or ...
• Should it be Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball or ...
• Should it be Mother Irini or ...

• Should it be Father Albert or George Albert Hammes?
• Should it be Father Fidel Maíz or ...
• Should it be Father Hendricks or ...
• Should it be Father James Devlin or ...
• Should it be Father Joe Maier or ...
• Should it be Father John B. DeValles or ...
• Should it be Father Kenneth A. Bray or Kenneth A. Bray?

For those listed above with two links, you'll find the answer isn't always the same. All of these examples suggest either that the MOS need to be updated or these articles need to be renamed. Thanks. 72.244.207.68 (talk) 07:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC).

Cardinals

Should cardinals be referred to in Wikipedia in the form "Cardinal John Doe" or the form "John Cardinal Doe"? It has been authoritatively suggested that, in relation to the body of Wikipedia articles, this question should be discussed here, not under Wikipedia: Naming conventions (clergy), which lays down that "John Doe" is the form to use in the title of Wikipedia articles.

• Reuters Handbook of Journalism has: "At first reference Cardinal John Doe. At subsequent references the cardinal or Doe";
• The Associated Press stylebook, quoted by Douglas LeBlanc on Anglicanism out of AP style at the Times?, agrees: "The preferred form for first reference is to use Cardinal, Archbishop or Bishop before the individual's name: Cardinal Timothy Manning, archbishop of Los Angeles. On second reference, Manning or the cardinal.
• The religious Publications Style Book of the Franciscan Holy Name Province likewise lays down: "Use the form 'Cardinal John Smith' instead of the older 'John Cardinal Smith'."

At least one book written by an individual Catholic clergyman says that "John Cardinal Doe" is the correct form. There seems to be no corporate manual of style that agrees. On the contrary, an old corporate manual of the Catholic Church, The Catholic Directory (London 1906), quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia (which says it "may be safely taken as representing the best custom of the United States, the British Isles, Canada, Australia, and the British colonies in general"), states that the correct form is "His Eminence Cardinal ..." - not "His Eminence ... Cardinal ...". And "Cardinal John Doe" is the form normally used on the Holy See website to refer to cardinals. (It reproduces the signatures of cardinals in the "John Cardinal Doe" style, which is traditional for such signatures, just as in the signatures of popes the word "Papa", abbreviated Pp. or PP., is put after the name, as "Benedictus PP. XVI", but the popes are always referred to in the form "Pope Benedict XVI", never as "Benedict Pope XVI".)

The academic source that I have cited rules only that "Cardinal John Doe" must be used, not "John Cardinal Doe". In the interests of brevity, the two press agencies also require that further mentions of a cardinal, after the first, should be in the forms "the cardinal" or "Doe". It might be well to apply this rule also of the press agencies, but for now I am only proposing that, as required by all the cited manuals of style of secular and academic corporate entities, we adopt the rule that "Cardinal John Doe", not "John Cardinal Doe", is the style to use in Wikipedia articles.

The following wording, which others will doubtless be able to improve, may serve:

In Wikipedia articles, a cardinal is referred to as "Cardinal John Doe", not as "John Cardinal Doe". Lima (talk) 11:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

• Support - I agree that the policy/guideline be adopted when refering to cardinals in Wikipedia articles. -- Scrivener-uki (talk) 21:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose - The Cardinal <name> <surname> is according to the Holy See an informal format generally adopted in non-formal contexts post Vatican II. The technically correct matter remains the pre-Vatican II <name> Cardinal <surname>. The problem with using the modern variant is that it involves constructing a new form for a thousand years of cardinal who were never at the time known by that format. As late as the 1960s formal protests were made to broadcasters in Ireland when reference was made to "Cardinal William Conway". Conway himself, a notoriously tempermental man behind a calm exterior, would blow a fuse if the media didn't refer to him as "William Cardinal Conway". His successor, Cardinal Tómas Ó Fiaich, was the first Cardinal in Ireland ever to be know widely by the modern form of Cardinal <name> <surname>.

The stylebooks referred to are referring, as style books tend to, to current usage in current contexts. Media sources are not likely to be concerned about a 16th century Spanish cardinal or an 18th century Italian cardinal, or the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin in the 1870s. But Wikipedia, unlike those stylebooks, has to cover not merely modern cardinals, for which the modern version is more common, but a millennium of earlier cardinals for which not merely was it not used but it was highly offensive. The proposed policy would involve reconstructing the form of name of a millennium of cardinals to conform to informal post-Vatican II usage, when the modern form only began to be used widely circa 1963.

In addition while it is not common now, many mediaeval cardinals adopted an entirely different cardinalate name to their personal name. So if one tries to use modern informal and stylebook usage to those names one would have to entirely create names that not merely were never used but which no historian or history follower would recognise. Cardinal Giulio Raimondo Mazarino would not be recognised by anyone. But he is recognised as Jules Cardinal Mazarin or Cardinal Mazarin, never Cardinal Jules Mazarin, for their actually was no name "Jules Mazarin".

Trying to rename a millennium of cardinals to match post-Vatican II naming styles and modern media and cultural usage would be a nonsense. Wikipedia, unlike the sources those style books are used for, is concerned not just with the present but with the past, and it would be absurd to have to make up a form of address that did not exist for a millennium of people that were never known that way. Logic suggests you show the same flexibility that history has produced, and either apply one standard (in which case as the vast majority of cardinals were known by <name> Cardinal <surname or title> it should be in that format) or allow for flexibility to enable people to be entered in the form they are known by, even if means complications where one format was in practice replaced by another, eg, the move from William Cardinal Conway to Cardinal Tómas Ó Fiaich. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 03:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Fear Éireann makes many affirmations that are unsupported and, as far as I can see, incorrect. His opening claim about a supposed declaration by the Holy See is an example. In contrast with what he says, the formal use of the "Cardinal X Y" form long predates the Second Vatican Council. I have quoted above the 1906 Catholic Directory, which says this is the correct form in English. Other much earlier books could be quoted, as can be seen in relation to Fear Éireann's claims about Cardinal Mazarin. This cardinal called himself "Giulio Mazzarino" when speaking Italian and growing up in Rome as the son of Sicilian parents, but "Jules Mazarin" when speaking French and active in the French court. Since he is best known for his activity in France (and in French), he is known as "Cardinal Mazarin" or, as in this 1908 book and hundreds of others, as "Cardinal Jules Mazarin". He is referred to in Latin as "Cardinalis Jul. Mazarini" (genitive case of "Cardinalis Julius Mazarinus" ) on the title page of this 1708 book - decidedly earlier than what Fear Éireann supposes to have been the first formal usage of the "Cardinal X Y" form. It is by no means the only source that show how baseless is Fear Éireann's affirmation that using "Cardinal X Y" would mean referring to pre-Vatican-II cardinals in a way in which they were never referred to in their own times.

We are in the 21st century, and should follow 21st-century usage, as defined in the authoritative sources quoted above. Lima (talk) 10:04, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: Not because of I have any preference on how to write about Cardinals, but because I don't think we need a rule to cover every situation or every office. I trust our writers and editors to write well formed prose, and creating all these rules to force them to write in one way or another just becomes constraining. I suppose I'm voting for inconsistency, because I think forced consistency is overrated and boring. Gentgeen (talk) 23:44, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support The form Cardinal Christian-name Surname is the most common in usage now. I don't see any reason to support a form which, while it enjoys some support among editors, has not been shown to be consistent with anything else in the Wikipedia or current general audience media. patsw (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - I came here by accident but a comment above, nothing more than an Appeal_to_novelty - "We are in the 21st century, and should follow 21st-century usage" did it for me. Further, in M.F. McCarthy's "Heraldica Collegii Cardinalium" (2000), the forward is signed as Edward Bede Cardinal CLANCY. 79.70.116.29 (talk) 00:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment on this anonymous editor's remark about the signature attached to a foreword: As mentioned above, cardinals sign as "<Christian Name> Cardinal <Surname>", but are normally referred to as "Cardinal <Christian Name> <Surname>". The question here is how we in Wikipedia should refer to cardinals, not how any cardinal who wants to join our discussion should sign his contributions! Lima (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
• Support. The normal usage today is Cardinal <Christian name> <surname>. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Background on Christian-name Cardinal Surname

A separate section to discuss how the convention of Christian-name Cardinal Surname originated.

• One claim is in the origin of the word, cardo meaning hinge. The two parts connected are the local community for which he is archbishop and the Holy See. You can see this presented in The Catholic Answer Book, Volume 3 and many other sources of Catholic miscellany.
• Another claim is based upon the structure of titles of nobility, where the form Christian-name title surame was used. At some point in the past "James Lord Baskerville" was used as well as "John Cardinal Fisher." The former usage was dropped and the latter usage retained at least until the time of Vatican II. I will try to find a source for this. patsw (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, we still sometimes refer to "Alfred, Lord Tennyson", but I can't think of any other cases like that. Why Tennyson alone gets this treatment is beyond me. -- JackofOz (talk) 00:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• While I permit myself to observe that the usage may go back to before the adoption of hereditary family names (surnames), when people only had a given name to which might be added, in the case of the nobility, a non-hereditary indication of the territory they ruled over (So-and-so Earl of Such-and-such, So-and-so Cardinal of Such-and-such), I think this question, if pursued, should be moved to another page, keeping this for discussing the style to use in writing Wikipedia articles today`. Lima (talk) 06:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
• The style "James Lord Baskerville" hasn't been dropped. It's still correct usage, although with a comma. "Lord James Baskerville" would mean he was the younger son of a duke or marquess; "James, Lord Baskerville" is a baron in his own right or is the eldest son of an earl or above and holds one of his father's baronies as a courtesy title. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Including the names of minor children in a living person biography

What is the policy/MOS on this? I am reviewing an article on Dan Povenmire for Featured Article status. The editor has listed two very young children of the subject, including birthdays and names, and it seems to me that this is potentially problematic. They themselves are not notable, although the subject may have named a character after one of his daughters. Would someone, such as a project coordinator, weigh in on this at the review? Soon, please? Auntieruth55 (talk) 23:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

At lot of discussion about this over in WP:BLPNAME. Rather than repeat that content here, please refer to that policy. patsw (talk) 03:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that is exactly what I needed.  :) Auntieruth55 (talk) 20:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Nationality

I'd be grateful if someone can clarify this. The guideline, "In the normal case this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable.", seems straightforward enough. However, I recently became involved in a brief edit war on the Craig Ferguson article over his nationality. That he was born in Scotland to Scottish parents, grew up and began his career in the UK is not in dispute. The fact that he now has American citizenship is also accepted. But is it right to call him "Scottish-American"? Most of the rationale seemed to come from his declared love of the country and the title of his autobiography. The same debate has been going on within the Anthony Hopkins article, but some editors seem unwilling to accept that Hopkins (born in Wales) was very well established as a leading actor in the UK for over 20 years before be became widely known outside of it. Does the description of one's nationality reflect parentage, citizenship, country of birth or all three if they happen to be different? Are there formal Wiki guidelines for describing the nationality of people who:

• Were born in one country to overseas parentage but then raised in their parents' country
• Were born and raised in one country but their parents are from another
• Were born in one country, established a career there, emigrated to another but have not taken formal citizenship of the latter
• Were born in the same country as one of their parents

I'm sure there are more permutations, so is this such a minefield that it's solely a question of individual cases? It all seems to be about *when* a person became notable. I've noticed that this debate can get quite heated (witness the Cary Grant article) and I thought it might be helpful for editors to try and achieve consensus for perhaps some more detailed guidelines. Chris 42 (talk) 15:31, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

The primary criterion has to be citizenship at the time of the article (obviating questions of just when the person became notable). Following that, it is reasonable to have exposition as to ancestry and natal nationality. In short, try to include all pertinent information rather than have a big argument as to nationality at some point in their life (which can be shown to be variable - a Yugoslav citizen at birth might well now be a Slovene -- easiest to say "Slovene" and then append that they were born in Yugoslavia.) Collect (talk) 15:44, 19 December 2009 (UTC)