Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)

References works @ modified letters

It reads in the section that under certain conditions further research will be necessary, however, this seems vague as a policy pronouncement so I think some kind of example of what this might entail might be useful. I suggest something along the lines of

...for example, the consultation of general or niche reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias

Any other suggestions/comments?--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 15:51, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see now that a review of a number of news/mag articles was not mentioned as a specific criterion. My suggestion thus is to substitute it for other encyclopedias in the "three criteria" pgraf and then use other encyclopedias as the possible tie breaker. I believe this correct because the likelihood is great for such reference works to favor foreign usages, and thus to be out of kilter with the other three. Whereas, reference works often err on the side of presenting as much detailed information in as short a form as possible, Wikipedia's purpose is somewhat different in that WP endeavors to utilize English usage but to put variant forms toward the top of the lede: as the title of this page says, "Use English."--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 16:45, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Seems noone want to discuss this.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 15:10, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

I think "investigation" should not be further qualified. This is to cover exceptions, where the nature of the sources will vary. Giving examples, by implication, puts unwanted limits on the investigation. For instance: for some topics, official databases might be appropriate and magazine articles might be totally inappropriate. Mentioning one but not the other might give undue weight. --Boson (talk) 22:48, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

An exception to the rule?

Please read carefully before making a comment. Hello, everyone. I've found an interesting and unusual situation related to naming conventions. There is a Portuguese monarch called "João VI" (it spells like the French "Jean") who has an article about him under the title John VI of Portugal.

I have noticed at Google books that specialized works written in English (João VI's, Pedro I's, Pedro II's biographies, books about the history of Portugal, or Brazil, etc...) prefer (if not always) to use the name "João VI". On the other hand, more generalist books (books about the history of Europe, Napoleonic wars, etc...) prefer to use the name "John VI".

According to the Manual of Style, we need to follow two rules: use the widely known name ("Queen Victoria" instead of "Victoria of the United Kingdom") and/or anglicize the name whenever it's possible ("Ferdinand Magellan" instead of "Fernão de Magalhães"). The goal of both rules is to make the life of the reader easier.

The problem is that "John" VI is the son and successor of Queen Maria II (not "Mary") and father of both Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (not "Peter") and King Miguel of Portugal (not "Michael"). He is also the paternal grandfather of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil (not "Peter II") and of Queen Maria II of Portugal (not "Mary").

As anyone can see, it is quite odd to write or read about a Portuguese monarch who has his name anglicized while everyone else in his immediate family have their names kept in Portuguese. It gets worse once you read his article where there are also other Portuguese or Brazilian historical characters like José Bonifácio de Andrada, for example.

The point is: shouldn't exist an exception for both rules mentioned above? For cases like this one, for example? My opinion is that:

1)In exceptional cases such as this one, the name should be kept in its original form. I repeat: exceptional only. A simple note explaining the pronunciation would be added ("João" is supposed to be pronunced as in the French "Jean", for example) .

2) In his article, or aticles closely related to the subject, his name would be spelled in its original form. In the case of João, for example, his article, as well as in articles related to Brazilian/Portuguese history his name would be spelled "João".

3) In articles which focus in more generalist subjects (for example: history of Europe, Napoleonic wars, list of European monarchs, list of monarchs who were murdered, etc...) the name should be anglicized and redirectioned to its proper aticle.

4) The rule for cases such as this one would be that the preferable name for an article is supposed to be the one widely used by specialized works (when I says, "specialized", I'm not talking about books for specialists only, but that are focused on the subject mentioned), not generalist works.

I believe my suggestion is fair and could be implemented. Nonetheless, the present situation can not be maintained. An article about a monarch who has his name anglcized when the previous monarch and the monarchs after him have their original names is awkward at best. Regards to all, --Lecen (talk) 21:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Comment: As more scholars abandon the anglicization of names for most modern-period monarchs (and some ancient monarchs and other personanges as well), this becomes more irritating and inconsistent. João VI is a good example, and most references I have consulted use the João/Joao form of the name. Interestingly, Encylopaedia Britannica also used João in older editions, though they eventually made the "improvement" to anglicize all instances of Portuguese monarchs named "João" to "John". Recent sources use "João", and I agree that it is confusing for both editiors and readers to jump back and forth between anglicized and non-anglicized forms, sometimes within the same dynasty or article where some names are anglicized and others are not. • Astynax ^talk 09:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

"Demonstrate a clear prevalence in English usage, and that will resolve the issue. On the other hand, where there is genuine usage, as with the present King of Spain (who is not John Charles I, although his ancestor is, as usage makes him, Charles V), there is usually no issue. Many of these, as with the section below, are artificial issues produced by nationalists. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Conflict between usage and policy wording

It is a fact that - at least, as far as Polish people or placenames are concerned - we use diacritics. There are very few exceptions to that, either people who have emigrated and changed their name, or few individuals like Casimir Pulaski whose name is changed to a degree real first name (Kazimierz) is almost universally translated into the English usage (but those cases are rare, somewhat controversial, and often discussed to proverbial horse's death on their talk pages).

However, when I read the "Modified letters" section, the above would not be obvious. First:

The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged

This is neutral, but is it really true? We don't really encourage or discourage diacritics, but in many cases (like Polish people or placenames) we use them. If a rare undiacriticized Polish bio or place pops up on our radar, we (members of WikiProject Poland) diacriticize it, and this has been an uncontroversial approach of ours for years, since this issue was discussed long, long time ago (early 2000s) and consensus for use of diacritics have emerged.

As such, the above phrase is misleading, as in places like Poland-topics we don't really encourage the use of diacritics - we treat it as given, as it is not only common, it is the unwritten rule of what to do. This raises the question of "is WikiProject Poland" the exception? As far as I know, we are not. Diacritics are used throughout other Latin-alphabet Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak), I've seen them in Nordic languages, German, French... as such I strongly believe that the above sentence needs change, either to encouraged, or at least, to mention that diacritic use is much more common then non-use. In fact I think this policy needs a rewrite to the extent is makes it clear that the use of diacritics is common and encouraged, but with a special section on "exceptions" - rare cases where we do not use diacritics. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I keep making this point - but this guideline seems to be under the control of people who have an aversion to diacritics that isn't shared by the Wikipedia community in general, hence it doesn't reflect actual practice very accurately. --Kotniski (talk) 18:11, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I've not been active here before, but if this is indeed a case, the usual solution to break a WP:OWN hold on a policy is proper and wide canvassing. An RfC, plus a note on VP:POLICY and various WikiProjects/Regional Noticeboards to attract editors who actively edit articles with diacritics should be enough to counter any bias. I've announced this discussion at WT:POLAND, since I mention this project as an example, would you care to announce it more widely? The more editors that would be aware of this discussion, the better. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The policy statement mentioned above is too vague and does not reflect the Wikipedia reality. As Kotniski mentions, the guideline is there for some reason. The question is if the guideline should reflect the reality, I think it should. - Darwinek (talk) 08:01, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

IMO, the first best solution is to just embrace diacritics. If the policy cannot be written to support that because of WP:OWN issues with this page, then a bit of federalism would be a good thing - by that I mean letting individual projects decide on best practice.Volunteer Marek (talk) 14:54, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

All the latest English-language scholarly sources (any Roman alphabet language) use diacritics. I believe therefore that diacritics should be encouraged, not discouraged. It's not the days of typesetting with hot lead where there was a limit to how many special character molds you could put on a Linotype. Earlier common English language usage was bound by technology, not just Anglo-centric laziness when it came to ornamenting characters. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 15:06, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If its true that "All the latest English-language scholarly sources use" diacritics then the the wording of this guideline will be biased in favour of diacritics as it says use reliable sources as a guide. -- PBS (talk) 15:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Wrong, unfortunately. For many biographical articles there is nothing that remotely approaches scholarly sources. I don't think it's reasonable to make a purely orthographic question dependent on whether someone has already been mentioned in a high quality source or not. We want to be a high quality source, and if we already know how the other high quality sources will spell a name, should it ever arrive there, there is no reason to wait for that. Hans Adler 06:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess that the reason why Polish editors who contribute to the English Wikipeida use diacritics is because words with which they are familiar without diacritics look odd to them and makes them want to change them to the "correct" usage in Polish. However for monoglot English readers to see words that do not usually have diacritics on them having them is equally distracting. As this is a matter of taste the simplest thing to do is to appeal to sources, because while editors may not agree on which looks better, they can agree on which on the usage in reliable English language sources. I find it baffling why editors who are usually quite happy to agree on content using reliable sources, wish to ignore that usage for the spelling of words, simply because common English language usage does not suit their tastes. I think it is long past time that Polish editors should embrace the advise in this guideline and choose the spelling of a name like "Lech Walesa" the way it is commonly spelt in reliable English language sources. -- PBS (talk) 15:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The monoglots amongst us have seen diacritics in common French and Spanish words forever. Where it is an issue of not only diacritics but a complete change of name or alternate spelling, there a preponderance of particular English language use should hold sway over scholarly. Where the only issue is the addition of diacritics, e.g., "Pēters Jānis Vecrumba" versus "Peters Janis Vecrumba", diacritics certainly are not that strange, and in my case serve as notification that my middle name is a boy's, not girl's, name.

It's not about Polish, it's about every Roman alphabet language between Western Europe and Russia and (per the Portuguese example above) beyond. Our standard is to be a scholarly encyclopedia, not a daily newspaper. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 16:21, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I merely used Polish as an example because that was what was mentioned above. Your point with French and Spanish is more complicated because an educated English person is meant to be familiar with French (in the UK) and Spanish (in the US) and possibly Portuguese, German and Italian. This is for example reflected in "Accents" in the Style Guide issued by the Economist. However as this is a POV view (an one for which we would never get agreement), but we can do the same thing by using a simpler rule, the usage in reliable sources (if it is a general assumption) will reflect it. -- PBS (talk) 12:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Anyway, as it seems that given the choice of diacritics or not, our normal procedure, in most cases is to use them, I see no reason why this shouldn't be clarified in the policy (again, there are exceptions to this rule, such as common English names for placenames covered by NCGN, and that should be clarified here as well). The primary problem is that the current policy is confusing and does not represent our regular naming policies, and this needs to be changed. PS. And of course this is hardly Polish-only issue, Lech Wałęsa is no different than François Mitterrand or all things named Blücher. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 09:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It is different with names like Lech Walesa, and the simplest formula is to copy what is used in reliable sources, if we do that then we will be in sync of what is used in reliable English language source. -- PBS (talk) 12:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Different how? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Usage in reliable English language sources. The most common usage for Blücher is the general who commanded the Prussians at Waterloo, if Blucher is more common than Blücher the biography on that man should be changed just as should the article on Lech Walesa. -- PBS (talk) 20:27, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

We use writing to help us identify and communicate. In the colonial era, we "Anglicised" words and names according to received English pronunciation. In this day and age of globalisation, democratisation and acceptance of cultural diversity, it is wrong to oversimplify. Using only the 26-lettered alphabet is like squeezing the proverbial square peg into the round hole: "Lech Wałęsa" cannot be correctly rendered; phonetically the name would need to be spelt "Lehk Vowensa", but that's not what we do. We already do that with Russian names: Dimitry Medvedev is one such approximation, which is wrong, and demonstrates the lack of care taken, even by so called reliable sources, in rendering world leaders' names (hint: correct romanisation would be more like "Medvedyev"). What we do, mangling his name by stripping out the diacritics from Polish names is worse, IMHO. It would be akin to rendering your name "Pilip Bird Shera" – that may be fine with you, but it's a serious loss of information for the reader. Spelling it as "Walesa" tells me its OK to pronounce it "wa-ley-sa", which of course isn't OK. Wałęsa might accept that as a shortcoming of English typography when dealing with westerners, but it's unrealistic to believe he is going to change his name for the English-speaking world. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

With this edit last year I added a paragraph which I would have thought correctly describes our actual practices in this area. It was pretty quickly removed by someone who clearly doesn't like those practices - but perhaps we could consider readding it (or something like it)? (The wording, added after the paragraph about non-Latin alphabets, said: Names which are originally written in a Latin alphabet, and which have no particularly well-established English name, are normally written in their native form, even if that contains diacritics or letters that do not normally appear in English, as in Strübbel, Łopuchówko and Reyðarfjörður. However, when there is a well-established English form, such as Aragon (for Aragón) or Napoleon (for Napoléon), that is used instead.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:51, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

• What does "well-established English name" mean?
• "even if that contains diacritics or letters that do not normally appear in English" We already do that by the usage in reliable English language sources.

I don't see what the advantage of that wording is over the current wording which says something similar, in simpler language. Can you explain the nuisances of how it differs, from the current wording. An example or two would help, and how would it support the spelling of "Lech Wałęsa" instead of "Lech Walesa"? -- PBS (talk) 12:47, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Well established needs clarification indeed. And I am not sure if most common spelling is useful, seeing how often for ease of print diacritics are omitted from (particularly older) publications. I'd support use of diacritics if they are used by minority of English publications, but would have doubts if they are used by none (assuming they object in question is mentioned at least in some other English sources, of course). Wałęsa, for example, seems to have his diacritics used in less than half of English sources, nonetheless, his name is spelled correctly often, even in book titles ([1], [2], [3] and so on). Second, there is clearly no support for moving Lech Wałęsa to Lech Walesa, per various arguments used during the RM request, and as such, this policy should reflect this (and we should recognize this is a common situation, not an exception to a rule). PS. I note, PBS, that in this discussion, you were in the minority. Just like it appears you are here, in arguing against diacritics. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

"You were in a minority" 11/10! The page did not move because there was not a consensus to move. If the page had been at Lech Walesa it would not have been moved to "Lech Wałęsa". Not quite the small minority your comment "you were in the minority" implied. -- PBS (talk) 20:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Well then, splitting the hair, you were not in majority big enough to justify the move. Which only proves my point that established procedure on Wikipedia is to use diacritics. This is what we do through titles and text, unless there are specific exceptions (Warsaw, Casimir Pulawski, etc). Those are exceptions and this naming convention should make it clear. As it is, it implies some sort of, cough, "equivalency", cough, between using and not using diacritics, which is quite FALSE, as in practice, we almost always use diacritics. Policies should reflect common application. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:06, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

What does "correct" mean? Surly "correct" is usage in reliable English Language sources and the vast majority of reliable English language sources use "Lech Walesa" which makes it correct as far a the verification is concerned. -- PBS (talk) 20:27, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I think we should deliberately use an ambiguous term like "well-established", since there clearly isn't any consensus (or even possibility of precise definition) as to exactly where the line is to be drawn. The standard is not, however, what the majority of English sources do (and what counts as a "reliable" source in this context is similarly undefined), so we shouldn't keep implying we do that - instead we should explain our practices accurately - namely that in typical (i.e. relatively obscure) cases we use the diacritics and modified letters; in cases like Napoleon we follow established English; somewhere in the middle runs an imperfectly defined boundary between the two treatments. (It should perhaps also be pointed out that we are more likely to diverge from the native spelling where it impairs recognizability, as we have done with the better-known Djokovics.) --Kotniski (talk) 16:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski in the last move debate in Talk:Lech Wałęsa you ignored the advise you are giving here and wrote "Oppose, serves no purpose except to 'dumb down' ", yet one could equally argue "to use modified letters when most English language sources do not, is laziness for not bothering to verify usage in reliable sources, and a form of 'dumbing down' ", they are two sides of the same coin. It is much better to go with the usages in reliable English language sources because apart from anything else it reduces the differences between content and article name -- unless one is going to ignore WP:V not only for the article title but also content. -- PBS (talk) 20:27, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Not really - our practice is to use diacritics both in content and in article names, except in clear cases like Napoleon. That's another thing I keep saying about this guideline - it's titled and phrased as if it's about article titles, but there's no reason for it to be so restricted - the principles set out here (particularly the eponymous "Use English" dictum) apply to all aspects of Wikipedia content (or would do, if we wrote them to properly reflect actual accepted practice). (And we're not "ignoring WP:V" by using diacritics - that policy doesn't say anything to the effect that we have to present information in the same way that a majority of sources present it.)--Kotniski (talk) 11:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course it does say that -- we present information in the same way that a majority of sources present it, that is why names like the "Boston Massacre" are used rather than a NPOV name! You have been arguing so strongly for the abandonment of rule based article naming in the area of WP:NCROY, (For example you initiated a move for Queen Anne based on common usage.) So why not in this area as well? Personally I was very pleased when usage in reliable sources (as opposed to usage in all sources) was introduced in to the policy because it simplified the policy and removed the need for rule based guidance in lots of areas and it allowed us a clear formula that ties into the content polices in a simple and elegant way. -- PBS (talk) 12:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Where does WP:V say anything like that? But the difference between the cases of Anne and Lech is that adding the diacritics doesn't make "Wałęsa" any less recognizable to those who are used to seeing it as "Walesa" (and everyone will readily understand why the diacritics are there and what they need to do to write it without diacritics); whereas calling someone as well-known as Queen Anne by an unfamiliar and largely invented title may well cause people not to realize who the article is about, or mislead them as to how the person is normally referred to. Diacritics are a win-win feature for an encyclopedia - they add information (our overriding goal) without harming recognizability or conciseness. And this is clearly the view that Wikipedia has taken. Whether Wałęsa falls into the Napoleon category can be left as a matter for individual discussion (I would say not, partly because we don't pronounce him "wails-a"), but we should certainly try to document truthfully how we treat the vast majority of names of this type.--Kotniski (talk) 14:04, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Your argument that it is a "win-win feature for an encyclopedia" looks wrong to me because you have misspelt "encyclopaedia". The reason why we do not insist on unformed spelling is because to use British spelling in American centric articles looks odd, as does American spelling in British centric articles, to those used to seeing either usual national spellings. Just as I do not think one can argue that that theatre is right and theater is wrong, neither can one say that "Wałęsa" or "Walesa" is correct, but one can say that it looks wrong or right depending on personal preference. I do not think it is insignificant that it is often native speakers who are most vociferous in insisting that Anglicised words are "wrong" (Ie look wrong to them as they are used to seeing the words with diacritics. It is for them like "colour" is to an American).

Your argument that it "add information (our overriding goal) without harming recognizability or conciseness" is in my opinion just one point of view. For example how is Moscow pronounced (differently in London and Washington as are many words other foreign place names (How do Americans pronounce Worcestershire when asking for the source?). How is Zurich pronounced in Washington or London? Not the same ways as it is pronounced in Zürich! "Recognizability or conciseness" are not harmed by spelling color "colour", but people object to the "wrong" spelling because it hampers their enjoyment of reading of an article as it niggles (just as a piece of food stuck between teeth tends to distract from the enjoyment of a meal while not altering the taste of the meal).

It can also be argued that by following the spelling usually used in reliable English language sources, we are informing our reads as to the commonly used form of the word. After all if the word is placed under its usual English spelling if that differers from the native spelling that can always be placed next to the common English in brackets with the language spelling in italics, which give the reader a lot more information than just placing the article at the native spelling eg Zurich:

• Before the move back to Zurich: "Zürich or Zurich (see Name below) is.." [4]
• Now: "Zurich (German: Zürich, Swiss German: Züri) is..."

It seems to me that the latter is more informative than the former, rather disproving the argument about article titles using native spellings "add information (our overriding goal) without harming recognizability or conciseness" . -- PBS (talk) 13:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Discussing Zurich is a bit of a dead horse, as it is already well covered at WP:NCGN. What is more of a problem is dealing with biographies. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Zurich is hardly a pertinent example, as it would fall into the Napoleon/Aragon category. What we're talking about is the tens of thousands of article subjects that don't have any well-established English name like Rome, Moscow, Zurich or Napoleon. In these cases the established Wikipedia practice is to use a standard transliteration if the original name is not written in a Latin alphabet, but to use the original name - including modified letters - if it is written in a Latin alphabet. The first part of that practice is documented on this page; the second part should be too. (Though obviously with a clear exception for cases that are determined to fall in the Napoleon category.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Again, this is part of NCGN. If a village is never mentioned in English sources, we of course use its local name, with diactrics. A case of Łódź could be more interesting, and Kraków has been causing some controversies, but it is noteworthy that in both examples the consensus has been to use diacritics. Indeed, the point here is that with few relatively famous EXCEPTIONS, as far as nameplaces are concerned, diacritics use is a common procedure. The same seems to be true for biographies. This should be reflected in the policy here, so that when editors ask "do we use diacritics or not" we can point to the policy that reflects established usage and say "mostly, we do, but check the exception section" (which obviously needs creation, too). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• Not using Cracow has not been the result of this page, or of any page; Professional Poles (most of them less than perfectly fluent in English) have insisted on the local spelling on the grounds that it is official usage (which it is consensus to ignore, unless it has affected independent sources). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Not sure what you mean, exactly, but will you agree when I say that past discussions resulted in the name Kraków being preferred over Cracow? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:13, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I am genuinely sorry not to be able to; but I cannot agree even to that. This appears to be the first discussion, and it seems to have been Kraków then; the discussion is the usual no consensus/you can't make me business all too common in defending the "correct" forms some non-native speaker is used to in his language against English idiom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
      • No consensus to move is still important. Would you prefer to say that "Kraków is used on Wikipedia, and there has been no consensus to use Cracow instead"? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:36, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
        • I see no reason to mention the city at all, especially while it has no consensus; this page is for the principles (on which we may hope to agree) by which consensus ought to be reached. I believe we disagree on why it has not been reached, but I see no reason to mention that either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
        • I would support adding some such sentence as "Roma is correct Italian; that does not make it "correct" English." And any argument that would lead to using Roma for the capital of Italy, or Warszawa for the capital of Poland, is harmful to the primary purpose of the encyclopedia: to communicate. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:19, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
          • This is both covered by WP:NCGN and off-topic to this thread (I see no diacritics in Roma or Warszawa...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Question/proposal re translation of names of things

I had a question (and a proposal, I guess) regarding the translation of the names of things, such as the names of buildings and organizations. It impinges somewhat on this guideline, so I point to it here: Wikipedia talk:Article titles#Titles of things should be translated, yes? Herostratus (talk) 18:40, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Use of diacritics in biographical article titles

I am seeking a consensus on if the policies of WP:UCN and WP:EN continues to be working policies for naming biographical articles, or if such policies have been replaced by a new status quo.

I have been strongly warned that the above policies are no longer in force, [5] and further, have even been threatened with a block [6] for attempting to invoke the Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle for several articles that were moved without discussion to non-verifiable, non-English forms (with diacritics) as its article title.

It is my belief that wiki-policy dictates that this is the English Wikipedia, and according to the policy of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), a biographical article does not use the subject's name as it might be spelled in Czech or Slovakian (with diacritics) as its article title, nor does it use the person's legal name as it might appear on a birth certificate or passport; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. For example, in the case of Marek Židlický, all sources within the article verify the spelling as Marek Zidlicky (with not a single source to verify the spelling with diacritics), yet the ice hockey project supports the use of the non-verified, non-English spelling. See also Category:Czech ice hockey players and Category:Slovak ice hockey players for many more similar examples. There is a small group of editors within the ice hockey project who have been very forceful with their POV to use diacritics, and as a result the policies of WP:UCN and WP:EN are now wilfully violated. Dolovis (talk) 04:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

No you have been pointed that the ice hockey naming conventions page no longer is in effect. Which is very different from being told that UCN and EN are not in effect. Please don't misrepresent what was said. You were also warned for making pointy moves which you knew were controversial and for trying to trick admins into making the moves for you by trying to speedy articles and then recreate them at your desired location. And by listing them at the uncontroversial page move requests list when you knew them to be controversial moves. As for envoking the BRD cycle, if you keep having the discussion part of the BRD cycle confirm that consensus is to keep the diacritics and then you keep trying to invoke the BRD cycle over and over again that is called disrupting the wiki to make a point. Because you already know the consensus of the discussion that will happen and all you are doing is wasting editors time. The warning was less about what you were changing and more about how you were trying to change them. You've also been pointed in the past to a wikipedia guideline that neither encourages or discourages diacritics and that specifically says you shouldn't over dramatize the situation. I think the two ANI reports you have made which went against you and the community discussion at the hockey project that went against you were clear indications that you are over dramatizing and that there is different way of interpretting UCN than you have interpreted it. As as been mentioned a large portion of editors think names with and without diacritics are still the common name when it comes to UCN. I would also note EN is a guideline not a policy, as such it is only a recommendation not an absolute requirement so it can't be "wilfully violated". -DJSasso (talk) 11:51, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

It is common to use diacritics in biographies. See also discussion above. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:49, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

IMHO, diacritics should be deleted from all article titles on English languague Wikipedia, as they're 'non-english' symbols. That's all I've got to say. GoodDay (talk) 23:39, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

This may be an English language encyclopædia, but it covers foreign subjects too. (the clue is in the word "encyclopædia"). Sometimes those foreign subjects use foreign languages, or at least diacritical marks. If foreign content offends you, the best option may be to create a fork, call it anglopedia, and delete all the foreign articles.bobrayner (talk) 21:51, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

As already discussed, Wikipedia's practice is to use diacritics and other modified letters in most cases where the name is "originally" written in a Latin alphabet, and to apply a standard transliteration system from non-Latin alphabets. Exceptions are made when there is some clearly established usage in English (as with Zurich, Napoleon and Tchaikovsky), and in some other cases where some particular issue arises (as with "Djokovic" for recognizability, or e.g. where a person has become a naturalized American and started spelling their name differently). I see no reason to change any of this (though I'm not too keen on these Croatian and Icelandic letters that impair recognizability) - it seems to be the right approach for an encyclopedia to take - we don't have to follow the style used by a majority of sources, when the minority style better serves our purposes (which is this case is to convey information). Neither is right or wrong, English or un-English - there is just a choice of styles, and I think overall we've made a good choice.

About this page, I think it should be edited (as I've attempted to do in the past) to more clearly and accurately describe how we actually do things as regards modified letters; and more globablly, the page should also be renamed to simply "WP:Use English", and be refactored so as not to concentrate on article titles, since the principles it expounds are not specific to titles.--Kotniski (talk) 10:27, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia's practice is to use diacritics and other modified letters in most cases where the name is "originally" written in a Latin alphabet, and to apply a standard transliteration system from non-Latin alphabets. No, it isn't. That is the practice of certain nationalists, who are uncomfortable with the idea that English may spell Foolander names differently than English does.

But when seriously considered, our practice is much simpler: do what reliable sources on the subject in English do. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:13, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we should look at Britannica as a model for this case. It uses diacritics in the title (and first sentence) when it's useful (for example for pages about middle east and Asia). Alefbe (talk) 05:50, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Again, not really. That applies when reliable English sources clearly do do something (i.e. in the Napoleon-type cases I mentioned). But in the (numerically) vast majority of cases, English has no established practice one way or the other, and in those cases what we do ("nationalist" or otherwise) is what I described. Just as it makes sense to use one transliteration system consistently for Russian or Chinese (except for names like Tchaikovsky where a particular English usage has become established), it makes sense to be consistent in the way we represent Latin-alphabet names, and the way we do it (not for nationalist reasons, but - I assume - for encyclopedic reasons) is to preserve the modified letters. --Kotniski (talk) 06:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it is a practice of the vast majority of editors, whereas a small minority of purists argues against them. Which is proven by the fact that vast majority of articles that could use diacrticis uses them. Unless you will argue that suddenly, Wikipedia consensus fails on diacritics, or that most editors are "nationalists", it is obvious that for majority, diacritics are fine. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it is the practice of a small, but dedicated, segment of editors: those who are not native speakers of English but of two or three European languages (if Iceland is now part of Europe); whenever a wider pool of editors has been appealled to, these efforts have failed. We do not speak translationese; we adapt names as English has in fact adapted them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Can I just point out that calling us "nationalists" and demonstrating plain geographic ignorance isn't really constructive. We're supposed to be writing an encyclopedia of human knowledge, including topics outside of the English speaking world and that which lies within the interests of the average American or Brit (English is, after all, an international language spoken by one and a half billion non-native speakers as well as us natives). - filelakeshoe 20:14, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

No, you may not.

There is a Wikipedia for non-fluent readers of English; there is also a Wikipedia for each of the European languages concerned; there is no other Wikipedia for anglophones. Those who prefer to write in Foolander instead of English should go edit one of them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

A self-assured and self-referencing statement about "what English is", but until such time as serious English sources stop using diacritics (and it looks like they don't intend to, as repeatedly noted), or English gets itself a regulating body that says "don't use diacritics", the claim is, well, bogus. It only tries to legitimize a frivolous diacritics-hurt-my-eyes claim - mirroring the inflammatory insinuation above, I urge any such users who prefer uncomplicated spellings of neologisms to "go and edit" the Simple English Wikipedia (which, btw, is the other wikipedia for anglophones). Dahn (talk) 21:34, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay then, let's go and delete Polish language. That article is full of "Foolander", and seems to be impossible to rewrite without it. That kind of foreign gibberish has no place on the English Wikipedia. - filelakeshoe 21:38, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

"That is the practice of certain nationalists" – an interesting theory. I was unaware that Timothy Snyder, who writes "Radziwiłł", is a Polish nationalist. That Michael Beckermann, who writes "Dvořák", is a Czech nationalist. That Peter Siani-Davies, who writes "Mănescu", is a Romanian nationalist. That Marcel Cornis-Pope and John Neubauer, who write "Tuđman", are Croatian nationalists. That Kevin O'Connor, who writes "Kārlis Ulmanis", is a Latvian nationalist. That Alan Axelrod, who writes "Mátyás Rákosi", is a Hungarian nationalist. Very enlightening indeed. - Biruitorul ^Talk 23:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

You realize Dolovis that you are now violating WP:CANVASS by only inviting people who edited this page and might agree with you right? Would be fine if you were inviting both sides of the discussion but it appears you are skipping people who are not likely to agree with yourself. -DJSasso (talk) 17:11, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Not if he invites everybody. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Which is why I said if he invited both sides of the discussion it wouldn't be an issue. But when I wrote this he had skipped over a few recent editors who clearly looked like they had no problem with them. When I last looked he still hadn't notified them. However, its not worth arguing about I was just letting him know. -DJSasso (talk) 11:41, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Djsasso is simply wrong on his point. I skipped over no one. Every editor who had contributed to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)‎ was given the appropriate notification of this discussion. Dolovis (talk) 00:57, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Did you miss the point where I said "when I wrote this". You since went on to invite the ones you had skipped. -DJSasso (talk) 01:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

---

I was asked to add my opinion to this discussion by Dolovis, but I'm not sure I agree with their interpretation.

What I understand from reading the project page is that our procedure is this:

• If the title has been "imported" into English as evidenced by reliable English-language sources using a modified spelling (e.g. dropping diacritics), follow the spelling in those sources (which will usually be diacritic-free).
• If the title has not been "imported" into English because it is not discussed in reliable English-language sources, use the spelling of the original language (or the closest transliteration in Latin script, including diacritics)
• Make a redirect from the spelling without diacritics to the one with diacritics, if necessary.

We never strip diacritics on our own initiative with the rationale that English doesn't have them. I agree with that idea, that we are simply using correctly-spelled words from other languages when there is no English word, proper noun or otherwise. That follows common usage, while still allowing people who don't input diacritics to find the article they are looking for through a redirect. We don't use non-Latin scripts because that's just too bonkers for English speakers to mentally pronounce, and we have a good alternative in transliteration. -- Beland (talk) 17:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Bravo. Precisely so. I would only add that the second case, where there is no English usage at all, is less often true of actually notable subjects; we should not have auto-generated articles on every obscure hamlet in Fooland in the first place. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

---

• This was brought up years ago, and for the love of me I don't understand what the point is, and why it itches so much to overturn consensus on something that touches millions of pages by now. Seriously: while one may argue that the diactricized names of people from the Anglosphere are irrelevant, on a case by case basis (though I don't ever see the same point being made about Frenchmen naturalized in England, with their acute accents, and Poles in America with their Ł), it is utterly irrelevant to the wider world. And, no, it doesn't follow that the consistent failure to add diacritics in print in many imperfect and inconsistent American media sources is the established "English usage". It merely speaks volumes about the fact that mediocrity in information will produce mediocrity in culture - something that wikipedia should preferably stay away from. Just what is the concern here? That readers will actually learn something, even though they might not want to? Pass. Dahn (talk) 17:31, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Well said. Particularly in the old sources, diacritics were omitted because they were hard to insert into regular typewriters and printing presses. Wikipedia is a 21st century publication, and there is no reason for us not to give the most correct information (correct names with diacritics, accents, and so on). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
    • I don't know about your keyboard, but mine has exactly 26 letters on it. I wouldn't know how to type some random foreign squiggle, or even what it was called so I could look it up. Gigs (talk) 17:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Which would be why at the top of the edit box of a page there is a link called special characters if you are someone who can't add them or doesn't know how to add them you still can. As for people searching for the information, that is why we redirect from the opposite version. -DJSasso (talk) 18:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
      • I come from a culture which makes heavy use of diacritics, and I edit heavily in fields related to that culture. Yet I never did install me the necessary keyboard: I have the same "26 letters on it", and, on wikipedia, I always use the special characters set from the edit window. Give it a try, it won't kill you. Dahn (talk) 18:08, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
      • You don't have to use the diacritics. Redirects will take you where you want to be, and others will add them to your texts if you don't care for copy/paste, characters or alt software keyboards settings. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:17, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

---

First, I am simply appalled that DJSasso used up so much space attacking an editor instead of responding to the question. That said, I must side with those who feel that diacritical marks have no place in an English encyclopedia. I have seen common American family names like Hernandez spelled with an accent, even though accents are not used in the United States. I imagine the same convention exists in Commonwealth countries. These accents cluttering up WP articles are simply added by people who read a foreign language and who think that a word looks odd or peculiar without the diacritics. Well, to an English-reader, the word looks weird and absolutely wrong when it DOES have diacritics. I don't blame the Slovaks for thinking a name looks really funny without the marks, but, honestly, it looks even odder WITH them to the vast majority of readers of this encyclopedia. That's why we have a rule, or anyway a policy, that requires article titles to be in English — a policy that is sadly often not being followed. Sincerely, your friend, GeorgeLouis (talk) 17:44, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually I was responding to an attack on me. His post was indicating he was told things he was not told and was phrased in a way as to attack me. In order to present both sides of the discussion he is referencing I provided the other side of the situation. In no way was what I wrote an attack. -DJSasso (talk) 17:50, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• My own opinion is that this is the English Wikipedia, and that our articles should be titled with the most common spelling that is used in English sources. Especially when it comes to German or Icelandic characters that are unrecognizable to most English speakers, it's very important to stick with recognizable English characters. This is in accordance with what sources use, and makes searching and linking more convenient for everyone. --Elonka 17:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Presumably, Encyclopedia Britannica is also an English language (well, British, I guess) encyclopedia and it has no problem with diacritics, uses them frequently, and I suspect is not written by "nationalists" (so let's drop that red herring/ad hominem right away).Volunteer Marek (talk) 17:52, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Britannica, for the record, can be confusing. The entry on Lech Wałęsa uses diacritics in title and in the article, but not in the page heading. Same with Józef Piłsudski. Note that this affects google results - if you google for britannica + wałesa / piłsudski Google will suggest Britannica DOES NOT use diacritics, which is INCORRECT (vide - those pages). For Hugo Kołłątaj, it is the same, note that 1911 version not only did not use diacritics, it used a grammatically incorrect way to spell his second name... (wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vol 15:14). For Słowacki, diacritic is used in modern edition, 1911 mispells his first name (and ignores the diacritic: wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Poland). Some poor page building aside, it is obvious that Britannica supports diacritics. There is an advantage, occasionally, to being written by academics - people who get use to seeing diacritics, and don't treat them as "OMG I don't see them on my TV!" problem... (sigh - in the end not using diacritics always comes back to the dumbing down problem... Wikipedia should not be dumbed down, if you don't like diacritics, go to Simple Wikipedia). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it is somewhat misleading to call Julius a "misspelling" of Juliusz. I would rather call this an anglicisation. JoergenB (talk) 19:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• I was solicited to comment here, but I don't particularly remember what my previous involvement was with this. This guideline is still in force, and Dolovis is essentially right. It's not mediocrity to transliterate characters that don't mean anything to English speakers into Latin characters, it's a normal and expected practice. This is the English Wikipedia, if you want to use non-English characters, go somewhere else. Gigs (talk) 17:57, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• I like to listen to Motörhead as well as Frédéric Chopin. Marie Curie (née Maria Skłodowska) was a great scientist. I'd like to visit Ü eventually. And I think the claim that English or this encyclopædia does not use funky characters is at least naïve. Yes, many, even usually reliable sources drop diacritics. But very often the best and most scholarly sources keep them. Unless there is an strongly established usage in a particular case, I'd stick with the original spelling. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

---

I was asked for my opinion by Dolovis, so here's what I think should be the policy:

• About diacritics on foreign names, I agree with Kotniski. If the title was originally written in a Latin alphabet, then keep the diacritics. English borrowed lots of words keeping their diacritics, like naïve, résumé, führer, etc.
• Every article should be written in the Latin alphabet, which means that .срб, .рф should be moved to the transliterations; there are also plenty other like (ε, δ)-definition of limit
• There should *always* be a redirect from a title that can be written by a normal English keyboard. If I see somewhere printed (−2,3,7) pretzel knot and I try (−2,3,7)_pretzel_knot, I won't get to the article)

bogdan (talk) 17:59, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

---

Here is the article I referred to above. The politician normally spells his name without he accent. Mike Hernández. Yours, GeorgeLouis (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Case by case basis, George. I can see how an American politician who did not use diacritics in his own name shouldn't have them in his name. But consider that non-English people use them. Why should the name of Józef Piłsudski be "dumbed down" to Jozef Pilsudski? It's not like we don't have technical means to display the diacritics, or create redirects. And there are plenty of English language publications who use diacritics (in the context of this person), up to and including Britannica. Nobody is saying "we should always use diacritics". What I am saying, is that we should use them, unless there are good reasons for them not too (like, in the case you mention, subject not using them). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:21, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, WP:EN and WP:UCN are still in force, but neither of them ever says "don't use diacritics". That would be stupid. The rule is to use common English names when they exist – and this rule works great for the names of countries, cities, books, and movies that may have a common English name that's distinct from their local/native name. But with people it's different. People don't have different names in English than in their native language (with the exception of the Pope and some historical monarchs like the various Kings John of Portugal or Philip of Spain - note that the modern monarch of Spain is called Juan Carlos in English, not John Charles). So, since there is no such thing as an English "translation" of a name, we use the spelling that the person uses him/herself (or a romanization of it, since articles are always written in the Latin alphabet). Some people may drop their diacritics when they move to an English-speaking country (like all the Americans named Gonzalez, not González) and that's fine, but people who do use their diacritics should not be deprived of them in their Wikipedia article. (The same also applies to Latin-alphabet letters not found in English, like ß, ð, þ, and ə.) There is absolutely no reason Wikipedia article names should be constrained by the decades-old limitations of the ASCII character set or old typewriters, or by the narrow-mindedness of xenophobes who freak out whenever they see a "funny foreign squiggle" at English Wikipedia. —Angr (talk) 18:13, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
• What Angr said. — kwami (talk) 18:24, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

(ec) The thing I find most disdainful about this discussion is that you anti-diacriticists actually seem to think removing diacritics from someone's name makes it English. It doesn't! There is no English form of Marek Židlický, the English form of Marek Židlický, if there must be one, is "Mark Fork". Language doesn't work like that, English imports words and names from other languages all the time and if it becomes common enough use, then the form changes, e.g. with delicatessen. It even happens with people too, like for instance Nicholas Sarkozy or Andy Warhol. When writing about people who are exclusively notable for actions in Slovakia, the chances are there isn't an English form of their name.. there might have been in the 18th century if word of them somehow made it across the channel, but as the world becomes more globalised names are far less commonly translated.

With regards to the "use what English sources use" argument, the problem is that these hockey players whose names Dolovis keeps trying to "anglicise" aren't being written about in encyclopedias. They're being written about in news sites, which would never check something so trivial as this, and hockey fan sites, which are great reliable sources for statistics, but not for how to spell someone's name properly. If we're going to go so far as to suggest that what the media say is always correct, then why the hell stop at renaming Tomáš Ujfaluši to get rid of those offensive diacritics, we can also add that his name is actually pronounced /ʊdʒ.fə.lu:si:/ since that's how John Motson says it, therefore that's "English". According to Dolovis' argument.

I also love how "readers of foreign languages" are getting sniped at. Obviously, people with knowledge irrelevant to the average American aren't welcome to push their fringe POV here. I would love to know, aside from making people who've never learned another language in their life twitch and go "zomg wut is this foreign squiggle?!!!!", what purpose on Earth does leaving diacritics out of someone's name achieve? - filelakeshoe 18:27, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• • See Henry Fuseli, George Frideric Handel, Martin Van Buren or (more recently) Stanislaw Ulam [sic]. It would be nice if the diacritics enthusiasts would occasionally bother to look at what happens in English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:36, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Most of those titles show what once happened in English, as in most European languages, back in the days of dominant cultures, little alphabetization, typographical restrictions, institutionalized xenophobia and charming quirks. As for Ulam: the article could just as well be moved to the "with diacritic" variant, since the current title is arguably erroneous; in any case, it is not a global pattern, nor a global decision. Dahn (talk) 21:58, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Fuseli and Handel used anglicized forms of their name in their lifetime. None of the two simply dropped the diacritics. I don't know what Van Buren is doing there - isn't this a Dutch name that was always spelled this way? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:06, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

The spelling in the Netherlands would be Martin(us) van Buren. What both extremes in this discussion fail to recognize is that this guideline is opposed to both global patterns; saying that reality fits no global pattern is true, and supports our present practice: see what the sources do in each case. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

If your answer is specifically directed at me: I have begun by saying that there is no global pattern, in my first post on this thread; but I also feel that to claim "English doesn't use diacritics" based on sources which discard them because they just don't use diacritics at all (for practicalities that needn't concern us), when the most professional sources do, is a point that discredits itself. I also don't think that invoking willing, crude, and ancient, Anglicizations of names that relate to practices from another era (the same era when, for instance, French Francized all neologisms, some of which have stuck as such), counts as a practical solution. Forget ancient names and folkloric spellings, let's talk modern. In modern spellings, the vast majority of them, there is absolutely no reason to discard the diacritics, even if most sources may; we care about the sources that are either most professional or closest to the subject. In the case of hockey players, we may have neither, but, at the very least, if one or the other is shown to exist, or if the names with diacritics are shown to exist in at least one independent source, the natural assumption is that the sources not using diacritics simply don't use them out of ignorance or indifference. Either way, using diacritics on wikipedia, wherever diacritics are the natural or presumed grammatical choice, should be the absolute rule, not the absolute exception. Dahn (talk) 22:47, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

---

My opinion, for what it is worth:

• The discussion supra is slightly confusing two subjects. The initial discussion was about ice hockey player names. For these, there has existed a policy/guideline/proposal page, which was degraded to "historical". The main arguments (from both sides) are about general usage of diacritics, and of "commonly used" spellings versus "correct" ones. Here, there are very clearly marked policies, WP:AT and WP:EN, which by no means are history marked. The writers concerned with the article titles in general should relate to these policies, e.g., by suggesting changes, if they think that they are not in accordance with actual standard usage.
• I think it is artificial to distinguish between common usage of letters and common usage of diacritics. Besides, the "diacritical" signs actually often distinguishes separate letters in other languages. As far as I understood the argument, some users think that lots of appearences without diacritics could motivate that we write the article name with "the same letters, but including the diacritics". However, e.g., Zurich is not "the same spelling as Zürich, but without the diacritics".
• Another argument I don't like is the pedagogical one. We should not use diacritics, just in order to teach our readers the proper way to do things. Actually, I think that this idea partly has to do with a misunderstanding. There are numerous people who believe that "you never, never 'translate' proper names", and therefore think that they encounter mistakes whenever they become aware of exonyms.
• I think that the "least surprise" principle is a good general policy, and that it should be retained also as concerns diacritics. There are sometimes good reasons to deviate from this policy; in particular, for consistency. Thus, when an authoritive body has decided on a certain naming convention for a natural category of objects, and in most cases this convention coincide with the most common usage, then one could well decide to follow the convention consistently. C.f. the Aluminum versus Aluminium discussions. We could very well decide on (or respect an erlier decision on) using the native spelling for all hockey players, if the convention in itself is less surprising than sometimes using diacritics, and sometimes not.
• However, my principal opinion is that the applications of the "least surprise" principle is more easy for native English speakers, and others with a long permanent recidence in the English speaking world. JoergenB (talk) 19:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• We should follow the common usage of English-language sources. Editors who wish to work in Polish, Czech, &c. should please do so in the Wikipedias for those languages. The sidebar links for those other languages will then provide the usage of those languages for those that want them. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:12, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• Can I just point out that if you're seriously suggesting journalists are reliable sources for how someone's name is spelt, there's quite a strong case to move a certain article to Obama Bin Laden right now. - filelakeshoe 19:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• Common usage in English may or may not include the diacritic. If anyone wants to ban diacritics altogether, I say No way José. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

• Dahn and Angr said it all. Timbouctou (talk) 20:14, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

English has a strong, established tradition of using diacritics in handwriting and competent typesetting, and of dropping them as an expedient, whether out of economy, technical deficiency, or ignorance. Certainly denying that they are a part of the language is either ignorant or obstinate (viz. rose/rosé, lame/lamé, resume/resumé, pate/pâté, and especially maté, a loanword made English by adding a diacritic). Saying that an e is no longer an e when an accent is drawn over it is playing word games.

And drop all the diacritics if you like, but you still won't convince me that Antonín Dvořák is an English name. Like it or not, when you write about the world you must use words and names from the world. —Michael Z. 2011-05-19 20:45 z

Is Prague an English word? Is Antonin Dvorak lived in Prague an English sentence? It's the same question.

Now in that case, Antonín Dvořák lived in Prague has become relatively more common, sufficiently so that we have moved the article; as we have moved to Johann von Goethe, with a lower-case v. But nobody who wrote to be understood, instead of showing off, would write Antonín Dvořák lived in Praha - and we write to be understood. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Prague is an English name. Dvorak (pron. “dvore-zhack”) is a Czech name, regardless of the orthography (although [August] Dvorak is arguably English). In English, we use a mixture English and foreign diacritics, letters, words, and names. Fie on misguided aspirations to cleanse the language. —Michael Z. 2011-05-19 21:36 z

So all this depends on a metaphysical distinction between the director of the National Conservatory in New York, and the educational psychologist in Wisconsin.

But it is not those of us who wish to follow English who want to cleanse her; that we leave to those who wish to ignore her, either to impose diacritics where she does not use them, or to omit them where she does. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:43, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

No metaphysics; usage. The difference depends on how the names entered and have been used in English. And the English, she gonna be jus' fine, with or without us. It's editors muddying the discussion with untruths that bugs me. —Michael Z. 2011-05-19 21:52 z

That is what the guideline says. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:18, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I have the impression that modern English book sources are more likely to use a diacritical spelling such as "Józef Piłsudski" than older ones. What is "most common" in English sources may thus be subject to drift. Regardless of what our current policy states, my preference for biographical articles is for them to have the same spelling as how the subjects themselves wrote their names at the end of the period for which they are known, provided that spelling uses a Latin alphabet. That would mean Józef Rotblat, but vanilla-Latin Stanislaw Ulam. For some languages the undiacritical version of a name, is turned into an annoying vulgarism, like for Turkish that of poor Mr. Ahmet Şık.  --Lambiam 23:04, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I believe that we should have a policy that diacritics are simply omitted from article titles. It would cut out so much wasted time on WP:RM and similar forums, and I can see no downside. Andrewa (talk) 00:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• But what about Häagen-Dazs or Touché? Touché! Aymatth2 (talk) 01:30, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I see little benefit in having the diacritics on even these article titles. There is no possibility of confusion or ambiguity if they are omitted, it is perfectly valid and clear English. On the other hand, if we have them, we continue the endless unproductive discussions on where to draw the line. Been there, done that. Let's cut our losses and simply abandon diacritics in article titles. They ain't worth it. Andrewa (talk) 03:13, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

    So you'd rename Öre, Øre, Pâté and Rosé to what? —Michael Z. 2011-05-20 05:50 z

    With the Ore articles either a merge, disambiguation or an exception would be necessary, any of them acceptable. With the others, just drop the diacritics in the fullness of time. No great urgency. Andrewa (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

    You do realise rose has a different meaning to rosé, right? - filelakeshoe 13:28, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

    Yes, see below. Andrewa (talk) 15:49, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• You can see no downside to eliminating diacritics? Really? What about accuracy? Why should we write about Lodz and Poznan and Elblag when their correct spelling is, in fact, Łódź and Poznań and Elbląg? Sure, there may be discussions from time to time over precisely what articles get accents, but overwhelming consensus favors their retention. Any respected newspaper uses diacritics for French or German nowadays, so dropping them would dumb us down to a striking degree. As for more "exotic" languages like Albanian or Lithuanian, diacritics for words in those languages are also becoming more common in scholarly publications as well. If we're slightly ahead of the curve now, we'd be totally behind after implementing this idea.
  • Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. At present, the undiacriticised versions are quite normal in English. Disagree that it would dumb us down even slightly. And our policies are actually to be behind the curve, rather than in front of it. Andrewa (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
    • What does this have to do with WP:CRYSTAL? Diacritics have been used in foreign alphabets since their standardization (often at least 150 years ago), and have become increasingly standard practice in rendering foreign names in English in the last 20 years or so. We're not predicting Prešov will have a diacritic; we're reflecting the fact.
    • It depends on what you mean by "quite normal". Take for instance the French Prime Minister. You'll note that the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Economist and Irish Times all use the cedilla in his name.
    • For more "exotic" languages like Czech or Polish, diacritics are becoming quite standard in professional publications. So yes, it would dumb us down to deliberately eliminate a correct orthographical feature and one in widespread English usage. If this were 1960, when the only diacritics you'd see in English publications were é, è, á, â, î, ç, ñ, ö and ü, you might have a point. But usage in general has shifted to a more diacritics-inclusive stance. - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• What about diacritics' use as a pronunciation guide? If you know the basics of a foreign language's phonetics (not a requirement for reading en.wiki, but many of our readers will know them), diacritics can be vital. Take Hungarian, where á and a sound quite different. If you see Salgotarjan or Hajdunanas or Bacsalmas, you may have no clue what kind of as are involved. But Salgótarján, Hajdúnánás and Bácsalmás make it all clear. Or what about Godollo? Without diacritics, there could be about nine ways of pronouncing that; knowing it's Gödöllő gives vital information.
  • Thanks for raising this. Pronunciation belongs in the article text, not the title. Andrewa (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Let's not split hairs here. Of course IPA pronunciation belongs in the text. But diacritics are part of a subject's name, and have the additional function of aiding in pronunciation. There's no plausible reason for deliberately misspelling a name in the title (and yes, omitting diacritics is a form of misspelling) but going on to give the correct spelling in the lead. (Well, there may be occasional exceptions like Zbigniew Brzezinski, a naturalized US citizen who doesn't use the diacritic in his public life, but they're few and far between.) - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
      • I'm not intending to split any hairs. Omitting the diacritic is not a mispelling, and that's a very important point IMO. It is a valid orthography, and correct within itself. The question is, would Wikipedia be improved by adopting it? And I think we need to consider very carefully the possibility that it would be. Agree that particularly with regard to living people we need to consider their wishes, but I think that if the article lead gives their preferred version of the name that should be sufficient. We don't automatically follow the capitalisation of band names and trademarks, so why not adopt a similar policy with regard to diacritics on personal names? Andrewa (talk) 18:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
        • Omitting the diacritic is not a mispelling, and that's a very important point IMO. It is a valid orthography, and correct within itself. When one learns French, or Czech, or probably Polish, or any of the other languages employing Latin-based scripts, you are taught that there are more than 26 letters in the alphabet. These cannot be uninvented just because "English doesn't have these so it must be substitution". We don't automatically follow the capitalisation of band names and trademarks We do, actually. Check out iPad and Motörhead. ;-) --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:35, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
• And even as a native speaker of Romanian, I wouldn't know how to pronounce the names of certain places not known to me. I'd know Niculesti is really Niculeşti because I know of the -eşti suffix (not that anglophone monoglots would have a clue), but what about Cosesti? Is it Coşeşti or Coseşti? Both are plausible; the former happens to be correct. Then again, what about the other Cosesti? Is it Coşeşti too or is it Coseşti? It's Coseşti this time around. Or Posesti: it could be Poşeşti or Poseşti; it's the latter, but I wouldn't have known that without diacritics. Then there's Darabani: the natural tendency is to say Dărăbani, and one might well do that in the total absence of diacritics, but knowing they'd be there if correct ensures no such mistake is made. "No possibility of confusion or ambiguity"? Think again. - Biruitorul ^Talk 06:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • See above. Andrewa (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
• That's a bit destructive. The point of this discussion is to resolve the issue which is cluttering up RM. - filelakeshoe 09:43, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • Disagree it's destructive. Rather, it's taking a view that this policy would save a lot of work in the long run. It would effect a great many articles, and create a great many redirects which should be there anyway. In fact I think the work would be done very quickly, but I don't think it matters whether it is or not. Andrewa (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Let's look into the issue a bit: as a hypothetical user, you don't (don't know how to) create an article under a name with diacritics, so in the worst case scenario you create it under a title of your liking, and someone moves it, slowly and patiently - as things tend to happen already. You are left with the following choices: a) ignore that this happened, since it cannot really be conceived as a move for the worse; b) actually learn how to do it yourself, and no real time will get wasted; c) resist the change for some obscure and contrived reason, and actually make everyone lose time over trumped up notions about how "English doesn't use diacritics". To accept diacritics as a rule cannot harm anyone; to propose mass moves of articles on a fancy, and arbitrarily turn the proper titles into redirects (reverting the practice that we used for years), does. The claim, that "it saves a lot of work in the long run" is a misleading hypothesis: the only work it saves is minor, and is performed by those who actually care about diacritics usage, i.e. the very people whose work you want to see questioned and overturned. You don't want them yourself? Fine, don't use them. But should you ever start an article on a topic with diacritics and for some reason can't copy-paste letters not on your default keyboard, someone will still move it to its proper title. It is what happens all the time. Someone resisting the changes in the name of "less work" is not an everyday occurrence, thank God: we'd all be wasting our editing lives on discussing that "less work". Dahn (talk) 13:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• By the way, Andrewa, what would you do about (for example) American politicians who use diacritics in their names? I'm thinking of Raúl Labrador, John Pérez, Raúl Grijalva, Ben R. Luján, Nydia Velázquez, all of whom use diacritics at their official sites. Let's not forget John C. Frémont, either. - Biruitorul ^Talk 16:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
  • I'd drop the diacritics in the article title (but not the lead). I thought that was clear. There would of course be redirect(s) from the official name(s). Clear now? Andrewa (talk) 15:47, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

It's all really simple: if the most common spelling in English uses diacritics, then the wikipedia article should too. if the most common spelling in English doesn't use diacritics, then Wikipedia shouldn't either. really, quite simple. Masterhatch (talk) 03:36, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not really simple, because there's essentially a dispute about what constitutes a reliable source and how we measure the most "common spelling". If a hundred fan sites and newspapers spell a name without diacritics, for the likely reason that they don't have them on their keyboards or a special characters box like we do, but the person's official website and his hockey club's website spell it with diacritics, what's the common spelling? - filelakeshoe 09:43, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it is really simple. The most common spelling is a case by case thing. And most common spelling can be found in published texts, both on and off the Internet. It is not laziness or lack of keyboards that publishers don't use diacritics, it is because that is the way it is done and has been done in Engilsh for a long, long time. Using diacritics looks just as foreign to most native speakers as not using them does to most non-native speakers. As for "his personal page", he could write anything he wants. he could write that the world is going to end in 2012! but that doesn't make it fact. I don't consider blogs or other "personal pages" to be reliable sources. Masterhatch (talk) 11:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

That's wrong on several points. English tends to drop diacritics in loanwords where possible, but many of them have stood the test of time. Cafe (“keyf?”), for example, just looks wrong, and resumé without diacritics is another word, with only two syllables. Poor-quality publishers who don't care to bother with correctness, hurried journalists, and commercial advertisers appealing to the indifferently-literate, are most likely to let proper orthography slip routinely. —Michael Z. 2011-05-20 16:54 z

Actually self identification is what we are supposed to follow on wikipedia for religion and nationality and the like. I don't see why it would be different when it comes to how they spell their name. Which to me is just as big a deal to a person as the other two. But yes for the most part it is laziness or lack of keyboards that cause publishers to not use diacritics if the publishers I have asked in the past are any indication. Most of them say it just takes too long to figure out the ALT codes to the different characters and english speakers don't seem to care if the names aren't quite correct. So to me that seems to sum up that it is a combination of lack of easy keys to push and a laziness of them to learn the codes to use them since there are no easy keys to push. Now of course this is an unscientific sample and was only a few I have talked to in the past but I think it sums up the issue pretty well. As for English doing it for a long time, well that is certainly a technological issue as it cost too much to have that many keys in printing presses for the various diacritics. -DJSasso (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

This misunderstanding of RS really bugs me. It's not as black and white as "X is or is not a reliable source" or "X is or is not a reliable source for article Z", it's rather "X is or is not a reliable source for statement Y in article Z". Yes, someone's personal page is not a reliable source for the date of the apocalypse, but it's a pretty reliable for what their name is and, similarly, how to pronounce it. Take Chuck Palahniuk and Bob Moog, whose names are more often than not pronounced differently to how they should be. That doesn't make the mispronunciation "common English usage" that we should document in an encyclopedia. In both these articles we source the pronunciation from self-published sources, because in this case, they are reliable. If you're really suggesting what the majority of newspapers write is always correct, then we really could have moved Osama bin Laden to Obama Bin Laden a few weeks ago. - filelakeshoe 13:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm with what Stephan Schuld said above: I'd go with the most correct spelling if the only or major difference lies in leaving diacritics off the names. Only if even scholarly sources drop the diacritics, then Wikipedia should also use that name. (Disclaimer: I've never been too fond of WP:CN; I think "correct names" are more important than "common names".) —Nightstallion 07:07, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, I agree with what Angr and Dahn said. —Nightstallion 07:10, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Angr, Dahn, Kotniski and others said it perfectly. If the English Wikipedia has to be a modern encyclopedia of the 21st century, it has to use diacritics. Each day dozens of unrelated editors create hundreds of articles with diacritics. In that situation, screaming angrily about "pure" English Wikipedia without "foreign interference" is just a dying man's wish. - Darwinek (talk) 08:21, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

There seem to be three principal possibilities:

1. We never use diacritics in names of persons.
2. We always use diacritics in names of persons.
3. We employ the presently existing policy of naming the articles in such a manner that as causing as small surprise as possible, also for biographical articles.

(With each principle, there is of course room for singular exceptions, due to other overriding concerns in a few cases.)

Some of you argue as if only the two first possibilities exist. Since I support the third principle, I really don't want you to forget the existing general policy.

As for arguments: The long term trend in English seems to yse less and less of exonyms and translations of names, and more and more of the exact original name forms. Wikipedia should observe the trend and adjust to actual changes "out there", but not lead or initiate the changes.

Another thing: I repeatedly see reflects of the idea that you don't translate names. Traditionally, proper names were almost always translated. This is still the cases in some instances.

For example, As to the Dvorac in Praha example supra, Pmanderson argues in a wikipedia manner, reasoning about most common usage and least astonishment. On the other hand, Mzajac is convinced that Check and English personal names are completely different objects. From the older point of view, Mzajak's opinion is completely wrong. The old ways still apply for popes, and to a lesser extent for royality; but in older texts, they were ubiquitous.

Mzajak, is your opinion that "Jan Pavel" is a Check name that cannot be translated; "John Paul" an English name without any translation to other languages, "Giovanni Paolo" an Italian proper name, and thus untranslatable? Or are you of the opinion that the articles cz:Jan Pavel II, Pope John Paul II, it:Papa Giovanni Paolo II all should be renamed Ioannes Paulus II, since this is the only official Latin name of the late pope, and 'proper names never are translated'?

If this is your beliefe, then you are not alone in your misunderstanding. To-day, quite a lot of people seem to agree that Karel is (inter alia) a Check name, Charles a different Englisn name, Karl a different Swedish name, and Carlos a different Spanish name; and they don't understand why a Swedish king, who signed his name Carl in Swedish documents, and Carolus in Latin ones, is called Karl XII in Swedish, Charles XII in English, Karel XII. in Checkish, and Carlos XII in Spanish. I notice that your articles cz:Karel XII. and cz:Karel II. Stuart do not even mention that the names kings in question was written in another manner in their original languages. However, at that time, it was as natural to translate proper names, as to translate concepts like "chair" or "king".

We are maneuvering in a situation, where there are older and newer conventions floating around. Most of us no longer believe that there is some kind of affiliation between people who happen to have the same first names; therefore, many people do not consider Marek and Marcus or Maria, Mary, and Miriam as translations of the same name. We look at the name as a more or less arbitrary label, and think that if the labels appear different, then they are different. Others have a more historical view. This is a matter of taste, not of right or wrong; whence dominating actual usage should be our principal guide in naming biographical articles. JoergenB (talk) 10:51, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

(That's “Mzajac.”) I don't think they called the composer “Tony Dvoh-rack,” even in the old days, so perhaps the way names are used is not so simplistic. —Michael Z. 2011-05-20 16:54 z

---

I've found a note on my talk page asking my opinion on this subject, so here it is:

• Whenever one (possibly non-native) orthography is dominant throughout the English-speaking world, use that. For instance: Dublin, not Baile Átha Cliath; Moscow, not Moskva and not Москва; Prague, not Praha; Warsaw, not Warszawa; Lisbon, not Lisbõa; Copenhague, not København; Munich, not München; Geneva, not Genève and not Genf; Brussels, not Bruxelles, Brussel or Brüssel.
• Whatever orthography is used for the title of the main article, all other known spellings (most especially including, if different, the native spelling) should redirect to it.
• In some cases there are different spellings; then use your best judgment: Dvorak or Dvořak? Or the former for computer keyboards and the latter for music? — Peking or Beijing? — Burma or Myanmar? — Białystok or Bialystok? — Milosevic or Milošević?
  In any case, be aware that the convention may be different in English-speaking countries other than yours (or, if English is not your native language, than the one closer to you).
• If there is no overwhelmingly majoritarian spelling used throughout the English-speaking world, then no flame wars please: leave the article where its creator put it unless the spelling (s)he chose is really outlandish, not only in your opinion, but also according to the customs of English-spelling nations other than yours.
• If there is no received English name and the native spelling doesn't use the Latin alphabet, then a Latin transliteration should be used. Which transliteration? Here again, use your best judgment.
• The lead paragraph of the article should mention the English name (if any), the local name, other names (if any) in different languages (if any) of the same country, probably even, for former colonies, the name(s) (if any) in the former colonial language(s). All these with diacritics if any.

Tonymec (talk) 10:10, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm tired of English Wikipedia being treated as World Wikipedia. The use of diacritical marks is to provide clarity, but we cannot expect speakers of English to be familiar with the use of diacritical marks in all languages. To say that a certain spelling (Łódź and Poznań and Elbląg) is "correct" is only to say that it is correct in its native language. This is not different from using Japanese characters to spell Japanese names because it is "correct". These spellings are impenetrable to the vast majority of English speakers and therefore entirely unhelpful, which is the opposite of their purpose. English publishers traditionally allow only a handful of European diacriticals, particularly those found in Häagen-Dazs and Touché. That's all English Wikipedia should allow in article titles or bodies. But I'm all for showing the source language spelling in parentheses at the beginning. --Tysto (talk) 14:15, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Tough. English Wikipedia is very much the international Wikipedia, written and read by many who are not English native speakers. While we of course should strive for best English prose, it is high time to realize that this is no longer the 19th or 20th century, where diacritics were too difficult to use because of typetting. Wikipedia is 21st century, we have redirects, and we can use the correct spellings of words from languages other than English, be it café, Düsseldorf or Wałęsa. This is what others encyclopedia do (ex. Düsseldorf in Columbia, Encarta or Britannica). I'd really love it if somebody would tell me why they are "incorrect"... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Those who want a World Wikipedia should go ask Wikimedia for an encyclopedia in pidgin English; in the mean time, this encyclopedia is supposed to be in actual literate English. This entire thread is as destructive of that end as it would be if anglophones were to insist that the Czech and Polish and German wikipedias use Prague and Warsaw and California "because the world does". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Bydgoszcz, Brno, Grzesik and Cvrk are all probably "impenetrable" to the vast majority of English speakers too. What are the English forms of those? - filelakeshoe 14:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Szczebrzeszyn... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Now if that were a Czech city it would probably be named Štěbřešín, and according to some in this discussion massively offensive! I'd be interested to see which out of that and the Polish is easier for an English monoglot to read. - filelakeshoe 21:05, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

They're not more opaque than trough, tough, though, thought, through, thorough, bough, and hiccough. Although English has a tendency to drop unnecessary diacritics (as in hôtel, coöperation), it also has a counter, etymological tendency to retain orthography, whether it “makes sense” or not. So it's easy to read douche and touché, rose and rosé, waif and naïf, chafe and café.

Those calling for eliminating English diacritics are being selective in their desire for orthographic reform. —Michael Z. 2011-05-20 18:21 z

And what about “foreign” English names, like Emily Brontë, Seán Cullen, Sinéad O'Connor, Zoë Wanamaker, and Renée Zellweger? —Michael Z. 2011-05-20 19:19 z

Easily changed to Emily Bronte, Sean Cullen, Sinead O'Connor, Zoe Wanamaker and Renee Zellweger. GoodDay (talk) 20:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

GoodDay, I don't think you got the point. We are sitting here debating how using diacritics is supposedly not backed by English sources - an idea which has now been refuted a number of times around; the reductio ad absurdum shows that even established English names, originating in English usage, are known to have used diacritics. There is no question of changing these articles titles, particularly since this how the people in question chose to spell their names, without asking wikipedia users if they were right to do so, or if it was good English to do so. It is irrelevant whether changing these titles is "easy" (it isn't even that, btw), since it is also pointless, whimsical, carried by circular argumentation, and anomalous.

Now, what the Luddites were doing was also remarkably easy, but I don't think that was ever a good reason to become a Luddite. Dahn (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, GoodDay, the discussion is about changing non-English names. Why are you suggesting changing English names? —Michael Z. 2011-05-21 02:49 z

I don't think the contribution in question misses the point at all.

But more to the point, there is a serious proposal here to drop all diacritics from article titles. It may or may not get sufficient support. It's up for discussion. Andrewa (talk) 16:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't take this proposal seriously until someone clearly articulates it, and sets forth some reasonable justification for it. There seem to be more editors blindly, and incorrectly, arguing that all diacritics are “non-English,” and all should be removed, but I think that the original proposal seemed to be restricted to diacritics in “non-English forms,” which is a different thing. The proposal seems to be lost in a lot of noise generated by people who think they're in favour of it. —Michael Z. 2011-05-22 21:53 z

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:46, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

An uncomfortable gap

• For article content, en.wikipedia makes no distinction between sources written in English and those written in other languages. (And a good thing too; otherwise our systemic bias would be far worse).
• For notability, en.wikipedia uses sources in a slightly different way, but again there is no distinction between sources written in English and those written in other languages. Again, this is a Good Thing.
• For article names, however, we currently have an intermittently-observed rule that the spelling in English sources is all that counts; even if there are other spellings elsewhere. This is an aberration; it is difficult to reconcile with the two policies above, and it can be difficult to reconcile with our quest to write an accurate encyclopædia, rather than one which repeats common misspellings of foreign subjects. The English-sources-only policy as it stands also leaves an awkward gap - it simply doesn't work when we write about subjects which have no english language sources (and there are plenty notable subjects out there which have been widely documented but not yet in the anglosphere).

There are many anglophone sources which do not exactly replicate the spelling of non-english subjects, especially the diacritics - that's exactly why we have controversies like these. We should not automatically adopt a poor spelling from English sources if we know that there is a more accurate spelling in other sources. Right now, if you wrote an article on some (say) eastern-European subject, and had a hundred reliable sources which used č in the name but the only anglophone source uses c, then our existing policy requires us to use the c regardless of that source's quality. Such institutionalised distortion is absurd. This is an encyclopædia; surely accuracy is important. bobrayner (talk) 21:36, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Your assumptions are false; see Wikipedia:V#Non-English_sources.

Your conclusion is harmful to the encyclopedia. By the same logic, we would write like the report in A Tramp Abroad.

About 7 o'clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at the maison on the Furka in a little under quatre hours. The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka wearisome; but let none be discouraged: no one can fail to be completely recompensee for his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment before all was dulness, but a pas further has placed us on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in front of us, at a hopow of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snowwreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. The inferior mountains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no other prominent feature in the Oberland is visible from this bong-abong; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of the central peak. (The whole passage should be read; about five pages.)

We are written in English; we do what English does with foreign words. If not, why not use bahnhof for "railway station" and hopow for "distance"? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:35, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

There's no need for such bizarre strawmen; I'm not asking for any such thing. I do not know whether you deliberately distorted my point, or whether you actually believe that I want such absurdity, but either way, your point can safely be ignored. This was a discussion on diacritics, not on throwing random foreign words into English text in the body of an article. bobrayner (talk) 08:43, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny you should mention "bahnhof", we do have an article on Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which I find to be perfectly reasonable considering that's what you'd find on any map or travel guide... - filelakeshoe 09:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

As WP:NCGN says, maps and travel guides are not particularly good guides to English usage. Unlike our articles, their principal purpose is to show you what's on the local street signs. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Dropping the diacritics can be seen as a change of article title, but it can alternatively be seen as a mere change of the orthography used to represent the existing titles. True, this does introduce a few ambiguities, such as rose and rosé, and ore, öre and øre. These can be dealt with in several acceptable ways, and IMO this is a small price to pay for the elimination of one of Wikipedia's biggest time-wasters and a frequent cause of friction and ill will, some of which can be seen above. Andrewa (talk) 02:52, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not find the 'gap' (that is, the apparent difference in policy) uncomfortable. For article content and notability it would be a serious mistake to treat reliable sources in different languages as having different degrees of weight. What matters about the sources for those purposes is simply whether they are reliable. However, when it comes to naming, it is necessary to differentiate between how our own language uses a name and how others do. If we did not do so, then we should need to have our articles on Germany and Albania at Deutschland and Shqipëria: most reliable sources to do with those topics are sure to be in their own languages.

On the specific matter of diacritics, they are mostly left out of the orthography of encyclopedias, apart from French names and a few others, but I do not think that has anything to do with the practicality of typefaces. Old-fashioned hot-metal type is not used at all in modern mass printing. The reason for the omission is surely that for the vast majority of English-speaking readers the diacritics in most foreign languages, including all Slavonic languages, simply add nothing useful to the spelling. Most educated people understand, more or less, the accents used in French and Spanish, while well under half of us understand the German-language umlaut, but I do not suppose more than one in a hundred English speakers has any real grasp of the diacritics used in the Slavonic languages, Turkish, or Hungarian. That may be a painful reality to those who do understand them and who find names spelt without them ugly, but it was always thus, nothing has changed. For the vast majority of our readers, these unknown diacritics are at best a puzzle and at worst an irritation. Moonraker2 (talk) 15:04, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

That raises some wider issues, but the specific issue here is orthography, not typeface, and use in article titles, not text. Andrewa (talk) 15:38, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The issue you're raising is in article titles, but the original issue was to remove diacritics from peoples' names altogether because they're "not English". For the record, I don't think banning them from titles would cut out any drama. The drama would simply shift to whether an article should start Antonin Dvorak (Czech: Antonín Dvořák)... or Antonín Dvořák... if you look at the articles OP Dolovis has been protecting from diacritics you'll see he's been protecting the main article text from them too (Mitja Sivic, Ziga Pance, Matej Hocevar...) - filelakeshoe 20:06, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the issue I am attempting to discuss here at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#Use of diacritics in biographical article titles is the use of diacritics in article titles. Yes, it's possible that The drama would simply shift to whether an article should start.... But I don't think it would. People just aren't that logical! And where there are variations, these can and should all be given in the lead, so the text is not as contentious as the title. Andrewa (talk) 03:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure what the actual issue we're debating is. We're not all discussing the same thing. We have various "problems" being put forward by different editors all of which result in the same thing, removing diacritics from article titles.

• Dolovis, the OP, wishes to write foreign names without diacritics when the majority of sources (I'm not going to say reliable sources, see below) do so. By the looks of his edits, he would not even put the diacritics in article text under this rationale.
• GoodYear moves to ban diacritics from all article titles because he believes they're "not English".
• Andrewa moves to ban diacritics from all article titles to "save drama at WP:RM".

Sorry if this seems like an assumption of bad faith, but to me this just looks like a group of people with sensory issues with diacritics fishing for some rationale or other to ban them. Dolovis' argument is the more sensible imho, but we need a clear cut definition of what constitutes a reliable source for how to spell someone's name. News sources, fan sites, official site of person/club he belongs to, encyclopedias, ?? And the native name with diacritics should always be in the article text, even if the person's name is written in another alphabet. If we banned diacritics simply because they cause drama, this "English usage" issue would still stand. It seems defeatist to me and we're ignoring the reason there is drama in the first place. - filelakeshoe 12:38, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, since you refer to me specifically, I think I should respond that I do find this an uncalled-for departure from WP:AGF, and an excellent example of the main reason that I suggested simply dropping diacritics from article titles. I don't think that you bear me any malice, it's just where the argument naturally led, and often leads. Andrewa (talk) 19:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I must respond because I have also been mentioned in the above comment and my position has been misstated. To be clear, it is my opinion is that the current policy of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) stipulates that a biographical article does not use the subject's name as it might be spelled in Czech or Slovenian (with diacritics) as its article title, nor does it use the person's legal name as it might appear on a birth certificate or passport; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. An article title should only use diacritics if that form of spelling is the most commonly used form of the name as verified by sources used within the article. Unfortunately, there is a group of editors who are moving articles to their non-English forms even when the article contains no sources to verify that form. For example, in Jakub Kovář, all of the sources within the article (NHL.com, Hockeydb.com, and Eliteprospects.com) read “Jakub Kovar” yet the article has been moved to the non-verified form of spelling with diacritics. The same is true for the vast majority of the hockey-bio articles which use diacritics. I believe that using a form of spelling that is not supported by verifiable sources should not be condoned. Dolovis (talk) 02:13, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Not more than one of in a hundred English speakers has any real grasp of familiar letters used in Slavonic languages either. I think the average English speaker is more likely to guess that Š = shirt and Č = chocolate than that J = Yes or C = Bits. If you want to make Slavonic names "penetrable" for English speakers we need to invent a transliteration system, whereby Marek Židlický would be Marek Zhidlitsky (as if he were Russian). And doing that is not at all in the spirit of Wikipedia. We can have soundbites and pronunciations in the article text to show how unfamiliar spellings are pronounced. I really think this "English speakers don't know how to read diacritics" argument is bogus. We're not talking about, for example, ß here.. letters with diacritics still have a familiar latin letter in them. - filelakeshoe 19:52, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

There are some fallacious arguments being put forward.

• Diacritics are “non-English.”

This is just false. Diacritics are often dropped or considered optional, but continue to be used in English. Diacritics appear in naturalized English words and names of English origin, and this usage is documented in many current descriptive dictionaries and style guides. Just because someone can't type them with their crappy Windows keyboard driver, doesn't mean that they aren't used and expected by literate anglophones around the world.

• Diacritics should be dropped because these discussions waste too much time.

This is contrary to our principles, and holds no water here. Wikipedia favours the interests of readers over those of editors. It doesn't matter if we have to hash this over another hundred times, we should use the right English orthography for an article title, whether it includes a diacritic or not. —Michael Z. 2011-05-22 22:03 z

• This is all very confusing. I just started Malmö Konsthall, with the diacritic because the parent article Malmö has it and it seemed best to be consistent. De-orphaning it, I found 15 articles that used the form with the diacritic and one that did not. Of the inbound link article names, diacritics were contained in Malmö (a town in Sweden) Kutluğ Ataman (a Turkish artist) and Clémentine Deliss. The last article was the one that did not use the diacritic but referred to Malmo Konsthall. Possibly this is because Clémentine Deliss is British-born. I have a feeling none of this is very helpful. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:56, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
  • My mistake. List of exhibitions by Ólafur Elíasson also has diacritics. So 25% of the articles referring to Malmö Konsthall also had diacritics in their name. This would be because the article is about an un-English subject, and apart from Clémentine the referencing articles are too. Perhaps that is the root cause of the problem. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:23, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree that diacritics are part of English, and the argument that they are not is therefore invalid.

Agree Wikipedia favours the interests of readers over those of editors (your emphasis). Disagree however that This is contrary to our principles, and holds no water here and It doesn't matter if we have to hash this over another hundred times. It does matter. It discourages editors and wastes their time, and neither of these is in the interests of readers.

Agree that we should use the right English orthography for an article title, except for one very important logical point... saying the right orthography is a bit like saying the present King of France or the road to Rome. There is no single right orthography, many different orthographies exist. The question is, which is best for us? And I'm seriously suggesting that despite a lot of well-intentioned work on diacritics in article titles, the time has come to cut our losses. It has had unforseen effects that outweigh its benefits.

I think the question of whether there is a single correct orthography is very important here. Nearly all, perhaps all, of the arguments in favour of using diacritics presuppose that there is. Evidence? Andrewa (talk) 19:23, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

A basic principle in Wikipedia is to favor "generally accepted" over "correct". In the articles we try to present what is commonly thought about the subject, backed up by citations to reliable independent sources, whether or not this is the truth. The same applies to diacritics. There is no morally right or wrong usage. We should follow the most common usage in English-language sources, indicating alternate usages where relevant. Ise Ekiti is more common than Ìṣẹ̀-Èkìtì in English-language sources, so the form without diacritics should be used as the article title. Malmö is more common than Malmo in English-language sources, so that is the form to be used as a title. There will always be borderline cases open to argument, but the more heated the argument the less likely it matters much: the "correct" usage is not clear. Redirects can always solve the problem.

"Use no diacritics" will never be accepted. "For a non-English word, use diacritics as used in the native language" will not be accepted either. "Use the form most commonly found in English sources" leaves some room for interpretation, but is surely the simplest and most in line with general WP principles. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

• I note that Touché, which I used as an example in a comment here on 20 May 2011, was redirected to Fencing#Terminology on 21 May 2011, apparently without discussion. Some relevant content was dropped in the process. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

You may well be right that "Use no diacritics" (in article titles) will never be accepted, but to me it's such an obvious solution to such a needless and recurring problem that, asked for an opinion, I gave it. Nothing said since has changed it.

I have no particular axe to grind on this, despite the allegation to the contrary above. No national loyalty to Polish, Russian, Swedish or Norsk, no membership of the Alliance française although I do love to speak French, nor of any asteroid's fan club although I am considering forming FOPP the Friends of the Planet Pluto (Save the Planet Pluto), I'm just a medium to (sometimes) hard working admin who sees a lot of heat over issues that seem to benefit Wikipedia's mission by exactly 0%. But the suggestion just generated more heat. Perhaps that is in hindsight predictable. Andrewa (talk) 03:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to restate everything but I agree with just about every argument in favor of diacritics used above. I'd also like to say that it would have been nice of Dolovis to notify me since I'm the one who told him five times in the past two weeks to start a centralized discussion on the topic. Pichpich (talk) 15:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The question to be answered

My question for this discussion, which can be answered with a simple “In force” or “Not in force”, is as follows: Are the wiki-policies of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) in force or not? Dolovis (talk) 02:19, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

• In Force: The policies of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) are current and remain as the proper policy to follow when naming biographical articles. That is, biographical articles should use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. Dolovis (talk) 02:23, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

  I think the problem you are having is that you are seeking an answer to a question that isn't really what the problem is about. No one is suggesting the policies are not in force. What they are suggesting is that they can be interpreted differently than the narrow view you have put forward. As you can see above the wiki is quite divided on the interpretation of the policy which is why some projects including but not limited to the hockey project have come to a standardized way of dealing with the situation so we don't have different articles using different methods and to avoid having the heated time wasting debates alluded to by others above.. -DJSasso (talk) 02:26, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

With respect, I think that this entire issue has arisen because some editors have taken the position that the policy of WP:ENGLISH has changed and that diacritics are the preferred form of spelling for non-North American hockey players. I have been told (falsely) several times that the consensus is that Wikipedia uses diacritics for Czech, Slovakian, and Slovenian, and other non-North American hockey players; but no editor can show me that consensus. There is no discussion or written policy which supports the use of diacritics when no sources verify that form of spelling, yet several editors have been pushing their point of view that diacritics are required even in situations where no sources are shown to verify that diacritics are used. Some editors have stated that diacritics should be used, even against reliable English-language sources. Their logic is that those sources are wrong, and so therefore, they are not reliable. Well, the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, (unless the policy of WP:ENGLISH has been changed or is no longer in force). So yes, I am seeking to answer the question: Are we going to enforce the current policy and require that names be verified by reliable English Sources, or not? Dolovis (talk) 02:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and verifiability means you need sources to be reliable. Newspapers spell peoples' names wrong all the time. Like Obama Bin Laden. - filelakeshoe 09:45, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I think Filelakeshoe has hit the nail on the head. Many people believe most Newspapers etc to not be reliable for the spelling of a name when they incorrectly do so many times. The wiki is mostly divided on how to deal with the situation as you can see above. The whole reason the guideline specifically says it does not prefer either version and that you shouldn't make it a bigger deal than it needs to be is because the wiki has never been able as a whole to come to consensus on the situation in either direction. So smaller parts of the wiki have have come to a consensus for the articles under their scope to at least provide some sort of consistency. I would also note that WP:ENGLISH is a guideline not a policy. -DJSasso (talk) 10:37, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

The sources that are used in the articles under question include NHL.com, Hockeydb.com, Eurohockey.net, Eliteprospects.com, ESPN.com, TSN.com, Hockeyfutures.com, Legendsofhockey.com, and other sources who have made it there business to accurately record names and statistics of hockey players. I would be not raise an issue for any specific player if Filelakeshoe would cite even a single example of his preferred form of spelling from any English-language source. If Filelakeshoe and Djsasso thinks that the "newspaper" has misspelled the name, then produce a source that spells it right before you move the articles away from its commonly used English form. Dolovis (talk) 14:12, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Right those sources might be accurate for statistics or whatever and not be accurate for names. Sources can be reliable for one set of information and then not reliable for others. As has been shown to you by others above, sources often leave off diacritics in their pages for a number of reasons even though it is wrong and the correct way would be to leave them. The minute they do that, the source becomes unreliable because they have not taken the time to properly list the name. One of the key components to be considered a reliable source is careful fact checking. Such careful fact checking would lead a reliable source to properly writing their name, so without doing such careful fact checking the source is no longer reliable in this particular subject matter. As you can see above the majority of the people responding to your question have said using the diacritics are not an issue in most cases. -DJSasso (talk) 15:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I have asked you to provide a reliable source that supports the use diacritics where they used as an articles title. Will you do that? Dolovis (talk) 16:03, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

And can you provide a reliable source that doesn't use them? If you can't the policy you have quoted indicates we should use official spelling. -DJSasso (talk) 16:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

You are proving my point that sources do not exist to verify that diacritics are required. I have provided reliable sources. All of the articles of concern do have reliable sources showing the non-use of diacritics (see again NHL.com, Hockeydb.com, Eurohockey.net, Eliteprospects.com, ESPN.com, TSN.com, Hockeyfutures.com, Legendsofhockey.com, ect.), but you have failed time and time again to show any sources of any kind to verify your position that diacritics are required, but you continue to claim that they should be used. Dolovis (talk) 04:22, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point, yes I can find sources for various players as has been done in numerous past discussions on the topic. Can I find them for all no probably not. As for reliable sources no you don't have any. As mentioned all of those sources you mention are spelling the name incorrectly (for whatever reason) thus they are not reliable sources in terms of spelling of names. Atleast one player has spoken out about the topic in the past as well in regards to nhl.com atleast. Welcome to the issue of diacritics and why a compromise was worked out in various locations. Please read the discussion above where most people support the use of them as still complying with the policies/guidelines you quote. Instead of just repeating the same thing over and over. -DJSasso (talk) 19:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

If there is no source to verify the spelling, then it should not be used in the article. To suggest otherwise goes against the basic policies of Wikipedia. (i.e. No Original Research and Verifiability). Dolovis (talk) 20:11, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

In agreement. GoodDay (talk) 03:54, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Strawman warning! The policies are of course in force, but the use of diacritics are supported by them. Dolovis, would you please drop the stick and move away from that dead horse's carcass? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:19, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The use of diacritics must be supported by reliable sources. If you can point to where the policy says otherwise, then show it to us. Dolovis (talk) 20:29, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but they are. In most cases, I am sure there are exceptions that need to be discussed on a case by case basis. But that's all there is to this story. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:48, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

• In force. Absolutely. Biographical articles should use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. No question at all about that. "Generally accepted" is fundamental to Wikipedia as a way to avoid endless arguments about "right" and "wrong". For example, Ademar José Gevaerd always has the diacritic in English-language reliable sources while George Bush never has it. Aymatth2 (talk) 01:49, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
• Wrong question. The policy and the guideline are not supposed to be "in force", but represent editors' ongoing best attempt to describe accepted Wikipedia practice. Like any policy or guideline, they do so imperfectly. Generally speaking these two do a pretty good job, but on the question of diacritics, they could do better, since they don't make it clear just how consistently we do in fact use them. (My main criticism of this guideline is unrelated to that point - it ought to be called simply "WP:Use English" and not restrict its scope unencessarily to just article titles.)--Kotniski (talk) 06:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
• What a silly way to try and win an argument... Are we going to start hiring lawyers next? Guidelines should be descriptive, not prescriptive and in any case, the current wishy-washy phrasing of the guideline is not entirely reflective of the current (longstanding) situation. Pichpich (talk) 21:45, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
• This is the English language Wikipedia, not the Multiple language Wikipedia. The pushing of usage of non-english symbols by editors is frustrating, particularly when you don't see them on the english alphabet. GoodDay (talk) 03:58, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Symbols which are not part of the "English alphabet" (26 letters) are still frequently used in good English writing, so I don't really see what this argument is based on.--Kotniski (talk) 10:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand where this argument is placed in reality either. If English dictionaries contain these words, then there's no reason why it shouldn't leave non-English names in the latin alphabet as they are. - filelakeshoe 12:04, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Those non-english symbols have little to no meaning for an english reader. There place is on the French Wikipedia, Slovak Wikipedia, Czech Wikipedia, Swedish Wikipedia etc etc. GoodDay (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, those stupid foreigners can have their own damn wiki. Speaking of the French Wikipedia (and the German, Spanish and Italian ones to name those I'm familiar with): fr.wiki also use diacritics for, say, Czech names despite the fact that the Czech diacritics are not used in French (or German, Spanish or, Italian). Pichpich (talk) 14:37, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Again, "non-English symbols have little meaning for an English reader" is just false. Many English readers (particularly those who will be reading the articles in question) will understand the significance of those symbols; and those who don't will not have their understanding impaired by seeing them. This really does seem to me to be a campaign of "dumbing down" - making things harder for the knowledgeable just in order to soothe the feelings of the ignorant.--Kotniski (talk) 16:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

This argument reminds me of far-right politics. Nuff said. - filelakeshoe 17:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

No one has disagreed that the wiki-policies of WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) remain in force, but those editors who support the use of diacritics within article title's suggest that I am asking the wrong question. So, now that we have a consensus that WP:COMMONNAME and WP:EN remain as valid policy for all of Wikipedia, then let's conclude this discussion with a follow-up question. Dolovis (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

What?? Several people have said that these things are not "in force" - Wikipedia does not have laws or rules that are "in force" (at least, not in this area), so it really doesn't make sense to argue in this way.--Kotniski (talk) 16:17, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Dolovis I still think you're missing the point of these "policies" (Naming conventions, by the way, is not a policy, but part of the guidelines that make up the manual of style). If you read the little boxes at the top of them you'll notice they advise use of common sense, and that there will be exceptions. I wouldn't want to describe these guidelines and policies as "in force", they're simply generally accepted conventions which are supposed to help people write articles. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. - filelakeshoe 17:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up question to be answered

When a person's name is the article's title, must that form of name be supported within the article by verifiable sources, or may any editor correct the form of name by moving/changing the article's title without providing sources? Acceptable answers are: Sources that support article's title must be present; or Sources are not required when correcting names. Dolovis (talk) 12:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

There ought to be sources, certainly. Though the questions that arise are (1) whether those sources should be in English, and (2) whether we necessarily have to follow the majority of English sources. To those questions I would answer (1) not necessarily, if there are too few English sources for us to conclude anything about English usage; and (2) no.--Kotniski (talk) 16:22, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

And I would add for (2) that "majority of English sources" is an ill-defined concept anyways. Putting scholarly work and Ghits on an equal footing is a sure recipe for the dumbing down of the project. Pichpich (talk) 19:13, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

The english alphabet, is the core of the english language. Last time I checked, there were no diacritics in the english alphabet. GoodDay (talk) 20:23, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

That would rather be English orthography, which is a very complex and deep set of rules governing how English words are spelled (and since English is a living breathing language, are often broken anyway). The reason your argument is fallacious is because it's not just rare cases of diacritics which break the rules of English orthography. Neither Szczebrzeszyn nor Brno nor Holešovice is an "English" name, and all three break the rules of English orthography, since as well as not allowing for /š/, it wouldn't allow for /szcz/ or initial /brn/ either. None of these names are English and all of them break the rules, but since there are no English names, we use them.

Regardless, diacritics are used in English. Check the section "diacritics" in the article English orthography and the article linked. - filelakeshoe 20:41, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not as if anyone is advocating writing Robert Johnson as Ròbéřt Jøhnšöñ just for added kicks. We're talking about foreign names which are written in Latin-based alphabets that any English speaker will be able to read with or without diacritics. Proper pronunciation is of course a different matter and at least readers familiar with diacritics get that info (yes, many English speakers also speak these weird diacritic-filled foreign languages). When we get the chance to be precise, we're precise. Pichpich (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

It might help a little if the guideline explicitly distinguished between

• using English words or names (e.g. Munich, the Luther Bible) where they exist and are the most commonly used names
• (not) using an "English" (i.e. diacritic-free) spelling of foreign names (e.g. Munchen, Dusseldorf, Hitler und die Endlosung).

The current wording may conflate the two, very different, concepts. --Boson (talk) 00:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

There would hardly be an 'English' spelling of München, as we use the exonym Munich. When it comes to the 'English' spelling of most words which in German have an umlaut, the diacritic-free approach is to use an -e- after the vowel instead: Duesseldorf, Fuehrer, Bluecher. These are also alternative spellings in writing German. Moonraker (talk) 04:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I deliberately used the example of Munchen (Muenchen would also serve) to highlight the difference between the correct use of established exonyms and the use of purported English spellings of non-English words. I am aware of a German convention of replacing "ü" by "ue", etc. when the correct characters are not available (see, for instance Duden Rechtschreibung, Hinweise für das Maschinenschreiben, Fehlende Zeichen) , but I am not sure how familiar most non-German-speakers are with this convention. I suspect more are familiar with the convention of just dropping the diacritics (possibly out of ignorance). Some American publishers might also adopt the German convention of using ue for ü, etc. where it causes typesetting problems, for instance, but off-hand, I can't think of a reliable source that describes this as a convention of English spelling.--Boson (talk) 20:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

So we are agreed that an article must include a verifiable source to show the form of spelling (with or without diacritics) as used in the article's title. If no source is shown to support the article's title, then the title will be changed to conform to the sources used within the article. Dolovis (talk) 04:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

For the purpose of determining the name to be used in the title, English language reliable sources are needed, as English may have a different form of the name from one or more other languages. Also, on "the title will be changed to conform to the sources used within the article", the title may not need to be changed, and (once again) in such an exercise English language reliable sources should have priority over others. Moonraker (talk) 09:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

No, we are not agreed. Reliable sources for a particular spelling are required only when deviating from the language in which the topic is most often talked about (often the local language). See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)#No established usage. When deviating from this, we need reliable sources to show that the deviant English spelling is established (as encyclopaedic usage). --Boson (talk) 10:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Quite so. Accents should be used if appropriate, unless common English non-accented usage is established. The Guardian style guide says on accents "Use on French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Irish Gaelic words (but not anglicised French words such as cafe, apart from exposé, lamé, résumé, roué). People's names, in whatever language, should also be given appropriate accents where known. Thus: "Arsène Wenger was on holiday in Bogotá with Rafa Benítez"" There is no reason not to adopt a similar stance here. Daicaregos (talk) 11:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

English language reliable sources use diacritics when appropriate. I do not agree with "unless common English non-accented usage is established". It is very common for English to have a "non-accented usage", but if reliable sources (such as other encyclopedias and specialist academic studies) don't use that, it should be avoided here. Moonraker (talk) 13:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Is Boson and Daicaregos saying that they can use a non-English form of a person's name as the article's title even when there are no sources to support that use? That is unacceptable. There must be a source. Dolovis (talk) 13:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that aligning ourselves with other encyclopedias or scholarly work makes more sense than aligning ourselves with an Internet database. However, we're unlikely to ever find an entry for František Kaberle in Britannica. This doesn't change the fact that scholarly studies and encyclopedias use diacritic marks and that we should too. Pichpich (talk) 13:32, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I am saying that no English sources are required. It is not only acceptable but current consensus:

"It can happen that an otherwise notable topic has not yet received much attention in the English-speaking world, so that there are too few English sources to constitute an established usage. . . . 'If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians, Turkish for Turkish rivers, Portuguese for Brazilian towns etc.)."

This rule is appropriate because not all notable subjects are sufficiently notable in the English-speaking world to have an established English name. --Boson (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

@ Dolovis: No, I am not saying that a non-English form of a person's name can be used as the article's title even when there are no sources to support that use. How could we know that non-English form without sources? I don't propose they should simply be made up. Of course reliable sources are needed for a person's name. They need not be English language sources though. The point here is that the default position should be the person's correct name in their own language, even when that name uses accents; as suggested by the Guardian style guide above, unless common English non-accented usage is established. Daicaregos (talk) 20:47, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The catalyst of this discussion are the mass article moves currently being performed by User:Darwinek and others, without any sources at all to verify the non-English form of spelling (with only the edit summary saying "correct name"). The practice of moving articles to names that may very well "simply be made up" is rampant and on-going, and that is why I started this discussion. Dolovis (talk) 05:48, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Are you really saying that your concern is that these names are fake or made up for lolz? We don't usually source information which is unlikely to be challenged but if all you care about is a source for the diacritics, let me know of any that you find suspect and I'll fix it for you. Pichpich (talk) 12:51, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

The "mass article moves" is your paranoia, Dolovis. Members of various WikiProjects, like WPP Poland are constantly watching new articles and if diacritics are missing in the article title, they move them. This is a standard practice for many years, there is no sudden "mass moving" going on. If you need confirmation of usage of those names, just use Google or ask members of given WikiProjects for help. - Darwinek (talk) 22:39, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Seconded, on behalf of the WP:POLAND. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:38, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I generally prefer to stay away from "dead horses" but my two cents: yes, the burden of proof should be on an editor who proposes changing a name either way. Spend time adding information to articles instead of moving back and forth with no improvement to the articles. Reach a consensus before making wholesale changes is better than "bold, revert" in my (perhaps minority?) opinion. The argument I keep refuting is that removing diacritics somehow converts a name from another language into English: it does not! The case I dealt with is the Hawaiian language. In that case (similar to other non-European languages, especially of indigenous people with mainly oral cultures), the orthography was entirely constructed by English speakers, with the diacritics specifically to help English speakers pronounce the words. So the "English" spelling is the one with diacritics; locals usually do not bother since they already know how to pronounce the words. That is why I prefer to use diacritics, except for words like "Hawaiian" where it is so English that it gets English word endings. Let me add we found out the US 2010 census will use diacritics in the official place names for the first time, and that Geographic Names Information System has mostly adopted them already. Modern scientific journals now use them. So the trend is clear, do not be stuck in the past. And do not underestimate readers: it seems obvious that dropping the diacritics in Latin alphabets at least, is a simplification, and thus reduces information. That is why I hate wording like "Waikīkī, also known as Waikiki"... since it is so obvious to be patronizing. W Nowicki (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Some very good points here. What a contrast to the general tone of discussion above. But despite the possibility that English is increasingly using diacritics, and therefore older sources are less relevant, I remain of the view that at this time the best solution (possibly the only solution) is to drop diacritics from article names and to retain them in text where appropriate.

But no consensus seems likely on anything here at present. Andrewa (talk) 20:45, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

For what its worth, that comes close to the compromise I proposed for the Hawaiian articles. We kept the non-diacritic article names for places, while the person names with diacritics are generally kept where they are, some in titles, some not, but generally tried to keep the diacritics in the body. The minor downside of this policy is all the piped links, but that is only a minor inconvenience to the editor, not the reader. To clarify, I never said "English" is using diacritics, what I tied to say is that English language encyclopedic quality sources tend to have typesetting support now to handle diacritics, so use them on words in other languages to help English speakers know how to pronounce them. And readers are not surprised by them. Article titles are less critical to readers than editors think. W Nowicki (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Amen to that last point.

In a way I don't care at all whether the article title has the diacritics or not. In either case there should IMO be a redirect from the other version. To suggest that Wikipedia is in any way dumbed down by what should be a pragmatic choice as to whether to use or not to use diacritics in what is merely a database handle is ludicrous. And yet it is repeatedly and passionately argued, as is the equally ludicrous opposite view.

So I simply say, this discussion isn't part of Wikipedia's mission at all. Both viewpoints are WP:SOAP. And there's only one way I can see to get rid of it, but that solution is simple, obvious and without any relevant downside. Andrewa (talk) 01:41, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Andrewa, concerning those names that use diacritics in their originating countries (such as Slovenia, Slovakia, and Czech Republic), do you have any comments on the repeatedly made claims that WP:COMMONNAME and WP:VERIFY do not apply for such names? Dolovis (talk) 02:07, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

No one said they didn't apply. You keep going back to that. What has been said is that common name is being interpreted differently than you interpret it. Secondly no one said verify doesn't apply, what has been said is that verification doesn't require an english source, which is stated right on the wp:verify itself. -DJSasso (talk) 02:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

My view is that these questions are off-topic on this particular talk page. Happy to discuss on my own talk page, and resigned to watching them discussed at length on other talk pages. Andrewa (talk) 03:15, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

DJSasso, you just moved 16 articles from English to to non-English form with diacritics.[7] None of those articles have any sources to verify the name is used with diacritics, and none meet the policy of WP:COMMONNAME. So obviously you are saying, with your actions if not your words, that those policies do not apply. Dolovis (talk) 03:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

DJSasso is right. Several other users were correcting your disrupting revert moves or intentional creations without diacritics. Dozens users here disagree with you, and still you are the one pursuing your POV despite general consensus and practice. Dolovis, you are simply not right, and you should deal with the pure fact that diacritics ARE used throughout Wikipedia and nothing's gonna change that. - Darwinek (talk) 09:40, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

You keep on track, Dolovis. Those non-english symbols are annoying, almost as annoying as the push to keep them. It has to be respected that this is the English language Wikipedia, not the Multiple language Wikipedia. For those who prefer dios usage? we've got the French Wikipedia & all those Eastern European Wikipedia's for you (plural) to build. GoodDay (talk) 11:15, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

No what I told you about those moves was that I was fixing copy paste moves that someone else moved, that I was putting them back where they were moving them to. I also told you that you are free to object to their moves. Secondly as it says in verify, you don't need to put a source in for everything, and we generally don't source the spelling of names on any article, but with that being said it still needs to be verifiable and those wishing to do so can easy verify them with a search in the subjects native language google. I would also mention that you keep calling the diacritic version non-English when you have been shown by nearly everyone above in this discussion that calling it non-English is incorrect because diacritics are used in English. -DJSasso (talk) 12:30, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

DJSasso, you are supporting and performing out-of-process moves. Process is important, and it should be unacceptable for an Administrator to encourage out-of-process edits. Dolovis (talk) 12:50, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

No I am not encouraging out of process actions. The process is Bold-Revert-Discuss. He boldly moved them. If you disagree you revert the moves. Then you discuss them via a request for move if the original mover decides to pursue the matter. Where am I encouraging out of process moves. And even if I were, I would point you to Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy which is an actual policy versus the essay about process you linked to which is one (or more) persons opinion. -DJSasso (talk) 12:59, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I thought from an outsider

Two questions

Why do we use diacritics but not non-Latin alphabets?

What purpose do diacritics serve in an English encyclopedia? Martin Hogbin (talk) 11:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a significant difference between recognizable Latin symbols with a diacritic mark and non-recognizable symbols. Transliterating names in, say, Cyrillic alphabets is pretty essential since most readers won't be able to visually match the name to something they've seen elsewhere. On the other hand, readers unfamiliar with diacritics have no problems identifying Jönsson and Par-Gunnar Jonsson, Václav Havel and Vaclav Havel or Agnès Jaoui and Agnes Jaoui. Scholarly publications usually do the same: for instance, every math journal I know transliterates author names over non-Latin alphabets but keeps diacritics over Latin alphabets. As has been pointed out above, this is also the rule of thumb used by Britannica. It's about being precise when we can be. Pichpich (talk) 13:48, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

It seems just a bit parochial. We can cope with a slight variation in the Latin alphabet but not with this foreign stuff. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Dropping diacritics as if English speakers shouldn't be bothered with foreign stuff sounds pretty parochial to me. Pichpich (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

BUt why draw a line at Latin plus diacritics? There is no logic to this. Just the symbols used in English is one obvious option, the other, if we want to be truly international, is to use the correct national symbols. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

If we use Cyrillic as an example, one immediate reason is that virtually all scholarly sources in English use transliterations. This practice certainly has roots in typographical limitations but there's also the more fundamental problem that Вале́рия Ильи́нична Новодво́рская is not only hard to pronounce, it's also practically impossible to remember if you're unfamiliar with Cyrillic. Note by the way that the English language does contain words with diacritics and that diacritics use for Latin-alphabet foreign names of people and places is common place in reference works. Pichpich (talk) 18:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I was just trying to get you to think about this subject from a more fundamental perspective. I do agree that WP should not set trends but should reflect current good practice but every now and then we should ask whether we could do things better. I will leave you to it now. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

How very generous of you. All that conversation above and it never once occurred to me to give the issue any thought. :-) Pichpich (talk) 23:20, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I was going to leave but comments like that make me want to stay and argue the case more. Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I think Pichpich explained it quite well, it is simply "common sense". Few people will not understand the function of ł, ó or ę , but Д or ๘ are much less clear. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:48, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

You are joking of course, ' Few people will not understand the function of ł, ó or ę'. I do not even know in which language they might be used? Martin Hogbin (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I think he meant few people would fail to recognise ł as an l with a diacritic, ó as o etc., whereas far fewer would recognise Д as D. Anyway, as for what purpose diacritics serve, they serve the purpose of us being accurate and spelling things right. I'm a native English speaker. I can't speak Polish, but I live next door and I know what an Ł is. If I went to look up information on the town of Kłodzko and found it spelled "Klodzko" throughout the article, I would be none the wiser about how to spell it properly. Just because you don't know doesn't mean nobody does. - filelakeshoe 22:37, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection whatever to giving the national spelling in an appropriate alphabet of any foreign word in a WP article, along with the IPA pronunciation. What has still not been made clear is why we should have Kłodzko as an English word but not Αθήνα. Martin Hogbin (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The reason is that one is in a Latin script and the other is not. Whether you accept that reason is a different matter. You may wish to draw the line elsewhere.

But I notice that you use the term "English word". Proper names of foreign entities, however spelled, cannot simply be classified as English words in the normal sense, unless an exonym (like Munich), a translation (like the Luther Bible), or an equivalent English name (like Henry IV) has become established. In other words, neither Kłodzko or Klodzko are normal English words. When there is no established English name, the foreign name is normally used, unless it is normally written in a non-Latin character set. When a foreign name contains occasional letters from an extended Latin character set, some publishers have a convention of replacing them with "standard" Latin characters without diacritics, thus using an "English" spelling of foreign words.--Boson (talk) 09:35, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes! And to answer your second question, one good reason I gave above. The diacritics are useful to English speakers to let them know how to pronounce the word, and a clue to its meaning. Locals already know how to pronounce it, so in reality the diacritics are more "English" than the dumbed-down writings. But I do agree than moving articles back and forth is a waste and should be discouraged. Content matters. W Nowicki (talk) 16:54, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

They only give a guide to pronunciation with some effort. First you have to identify the language then determine what the diacritics mean. For example, I have no idea how to pronounce Pär-Gunnar or Václav. We already give the IPA pronunciation. Martin Hogbin (talk) 17:03, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not really that hard and it's certainly easier to remember than IPA which uses plenty of non-Latin symbols. There's plenty of information on Wikipedia that's directly meaningful to a minority but accessible to all who put in some effort (IPA for instance). There's nothing wrong with that. Pichpich (talk) 17:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

No, diacritics have completely different effects in different languages. You first have to determine the language then find out what the mark means in that language. We already have IPA pronunciation. Martin Hogbin (talk) 18:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

You are right, and still, you are not. They have different meaning in different languages (but non-accnted letters have other meanings too, even more) but it is still quite pretty easy to learn the pronounciation. As for now I can easily see the aproximate pronounciation for some 90% european languages, while I do not speak those languages, merelly can read it. I am not some kind of linguist, just biologist. (Am I clever or something else too much? I do not think so, just try to learn it, you will learn the pronounciation in few minuts or hours). IPA gives absolutelly exact pronounciation and it is difficult to decypher, not needed if you are not going to learn the language as native speaker. --Reo ⁺ 10:56, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

"Diacritics" aren't, and are necessary for disambiguation purposes

I'll drop in to say the things I've said several times over the years when this topic comes up:

• Once again, diacritics and letters containing diacritics are being confused. The two are different; the ´ in José is a diacritic, while the "dot" over Ståhlberg isn't.

• The notion that, say, Jaromir Jagr is "Jaromír Jágr in English" is ridiculous, as anyone with any experience in translation knows. I wish this canard would stop being bandied about in these discussions, as well as the ludicrous idea that English doesn't have diacritics.

• Having said that, it is necessary to distinguish between the "diacritical-containing" and "non-diacritical-containing" letters, for instance a and ä, for disambiguation purposes. To take an example that springs to mind, the Finnish painter Johan Backman and academic Johan Bäckman are two different people with different names.

For what it's worth, in my opinion this crusade against "diacriticals" is driven by rather poor motives. User GoodDay said above: "Those non-english symbols are annoying", and to this date this seems to me to be the only motivation for trying to exclude them from Wikipedia. I firmly oppose deliberately misspelling names and inventing bogus "English spellings" of foreign names just because some editors find them "annoying". Elrith (talk) 23:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: Because, of course, WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGVAR don't count as "real" motivations? That being said, when the non-English Wikis start using standard English proper names with standard English spellings instead of their own national variations, I'll think better of European language warriors coming over to demand that the English Wikipedia conform to theirs.  Ravenswing  03:54, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• Not sure what you mean there, I don't see any article on pl.wikipedia about Wince Cable or on cs.wikipedia about Kvincy Jones just because Polish and Czech don't use the letters V and Q respectively. We have Warsaw and Prague and they have Londýn, obviously... - filelakeshoe 09:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
• To be fair most other language wikis do use the proper English names when no translated/transliterated name exists. Which is exactly what people are stating in the above discussion that we also do. People mistake removing diacritics as translating when it is not. Removing them is neither proper English or proper native language. This is where the issue is. Its just wrong whatever way you look at it. -DJSasso (talk) 11:24, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Where does this bizarre idea come from that non-English Wikipedias somehow mistreat English-language names, and that the English-language Wikipedia must reciprocally mistreat non-English ones? It's madness. Elrith (talk) 22:22, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, both "zealots" are not improving the content: mass moving either direction should be discouraged. And to save the time of constantly repeating this, can we please add some text to this policy to clearly state one of the major issues: "Removing accents or diacritics does not convert a word into English." Maybe a linguist can phrase it more precisely. W Nowicki (talk) 16:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Second, and support further clarification: English words use diacritics, so neither WP:COMMONNAME and WP:ENGVAR can be invoked in a crusade against diacritics. Here's a written, reliable source that supports this assertion: "For foreign words that have become common in English, no simple rules can be given for when to retain an accent, or diacritic, and when to drop it. The language is in flux. ... Accents and diacritics should be retained in foreign place names (such as São Paulo, Göttingen, and Córdoba) and personal names (such as Salvador Dalí, Molière, and Karel Čapek).". QED.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:21, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not English you are talking about, but proper names. We don't invent verbs or adjectives with foreign characters. The conventions used to produce a suitable English version of a foreign name mostly translate to removal of foreign characters and foreign accents. There is no benefit to using foreign characters 'because we can' on Wikipedia, when readers don't see them, don't speak them and are not trained in them. So, we translate to the combination of characters that sound as much as possible as the original. There is no -need- for special dispensation for languages similar to English, as opposed to cyrillic or asian languages. If we find in the media of a whole continent or english media milieu that ö (for example) is not used, then we have a de facto translation method. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 18:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

That is sort of the point. The removal of the diacritics isn't changing them to the letter that sounds the closest. Diacritics on a character completely change the sound of a letter so that it often doesn't sound anything like the letter without the diacritic. Which is why above it was described by someone above in the discussion that the addition of the diacritics is actually more to help English speakers than for the sake of the native speakers who probably already know how it is pronounced. This is why removing them isn't a translation at all. A translation would involve switching the characters from the diacritic version to the closest sounding alternative which would be completely different characters alot of the time which is done in some words but not usually in names. Its actually the case that proper names rarely have the diacritics removed, in academic sources at least. -DJSasso (talk) 18:16, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

An academic work Wikipedia is not. If we are trained with them, then I could see your analogy. But, the normal convention in the media is to simply remove them. Whether or not that constitutes an accurate translation is somewhat moot. That would be for the non-anglos to decide. Often an athlete provides a better translation. But should we simply adopt the spelling used in Europe? I don't think we are anyway near going that way in North America. Correct or not to a European, it is simply not friendly or usable for North American readers. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 18:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

No but we are an encyclopedia who strives to have correct information, and we strive to be like the Encyclopedia Britannica which uses them . We are doing a disservice to the reader if we do not include someones actual name. In most cases with diacritics someone who doesn't have any training in them can still read them just as easy as if they weren't there. I believe you once said you just ignore them. Well then there is no issue if they can be ignored? Now in the cases of the really strange diacritics like Д there is usually an actual translation of the name and I 100% agree that we should use that as its a translation and the original form would be unreadable to someone not in the know. But in the case of a é â ö or the like. I think we are doing a disservice to the read to remove them incorrectly. -DJSasso (talk) 18:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I find it hard to argue in favour of something if it is to be ignored. :-) Like I said, the argument to me is not about the correctness either way. Staying in context is most appropriate. I doubt that all US or Canadian professors mark down a paper over an umlaut. We have a lovely mechanism of directing someone to the birth spelling of a name in the article. The foreign spelling shows in the popup. That's enough. I think of it as a spectrum. You've got extremes, such as Ozolinsh, where the birth spelling is just completely foreign, or Selanne, where it's a minor difference. I don't believe it is an egregious offence to omit them, like some do. I don't advocate being lazy, but I don't advocate going beyond the common usage much. Count me out (in). I think that I will always argue in support of not mandating them in common usage. Sometimes you've just to admit that something is foreign. You can work on specific rules, and I see that it's necessary; but a common start is to omit them. And that should be okay in context. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 19:09, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

This project is suppose to be for the laymen. An english-only reading laymen, sees these non-english wiggly sqigglies as at best, a distraction. GoodDay (talk) 00:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I thought that's why we developed the Simple Wikipedia... no diacritics there. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 04:07, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

An "English-only reading laymen" (sic) should go and read Simple Wikipedia. No diacritics, IPA, complex mathematical code, or anything else that might make your head hurt. I use Simple Wikipedia for maths articles because the code here along with the pretext that the reader understands it does my head in, but you don't see me arguing to ban that. I'll repeat. Just because you don't know doesn't mean nobody does. - filelakeshoe 07:12, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Those who want dios, should read French Wikipedia & the Eastern European Wikipedias, instead of forcing their preffered non-english accents & symbols on English Wikipedia. Editors like me are not simple minded, we just happen recognize bs, when we see it. GoodDay (talk) 13:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure, sure. <sarcasm> Curse all those academics who use those weird "dios". They should take all of their weird "science" mumbojumbo and go somewhere else, preferably to France and East Europe. We need no science here... Glory to Wikipedia, the first encyclopedia to fight against "dios", where the dinosaurs of Britannica and Columbia still use them. By popular vote (or, vocal demand of a tiny minority...) we will defend the "pure English language" (and woe to those academics who argue for diacritics - those eggheads in the ivory towers surely don't know what language they speak, even.). </sarcasm> Seriously, please, don't stop others from using proper English, and contribute to the encyclopedia using proper names and nameplaces; and pretty please, don't accuse us of "bs". I'll finish by pointing out that neither "dios" nor "bs" are really a part of an English language, but usage of such slang simplifications is certainly indicative. Of what, I will not say, per WP:NPA. So please, keep it cool, focus on arguments, and don't accuse others of various attitudes. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:24, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Once again, per endless earlier discussions, certainly all recently published scholarly sources I've run across regarding Eastern Europe observe the "squigglies." We are, first and foremost, an encyclopedia, after all. Once we've observed common English language "non-squiggly" usage where there is a preponderance thereof, there's no impediment to using the "squigglies." On the related, I don't think the average (mono-lingual English with smatterings of some other European language in school) reader cares whether the additional decorations modify a letter or create a completely different letter. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 02:24, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree about the last point. The discussion is complicated enough as it is. Not even Unicode differentiates between ö in German (an umlaut, i.e. a letter different from o, historically derived from oe via an e written over the o, and therefore traditionally transliterated as oe where no ö is available), ö in Finnish, Hungarian or Turkish (also a letter different from o, but not an umlaut although borrowed from German; cannot be transliterated as oe) and ö in coördination. Some comments about the core of the matter:

• To the limited extent that the average name of a person or entity can be said to be part of the English language at all, it is part of the English language both with and without the diacritics. Some sources such as international sports associations use ASCII characters exclusively and broadcast their versions widely. Other sources, such as virtually all academic sources, use the accented versions almost exclusively. E.g., if you search for "Gödel's theorem" on Google Books, you will find more than twice as many (English) publications than when you search for "Goedel's theorem". Closer inspection shows that those using the ö spelling are generally of a higher overall quality and more on-topic. They are generally written by people who have English-sounding names, and appeared with English-language academic publishers such as A K Peters, Routledge, Springer (a huge publisher that started in Germany but has had an international scope and been focused on English for a long time), Blackwell, Wiley etc. There are even more hits with the misspelling "Godel's theorem", but almost all of these are due to OCR errors where the original actually used the umlaut.
• In our globalised age, people don't just read and write about foreign places and people, they also visit them and get exposed to the original versions of their names in the original linguistic context. As a result, the English language is moving away even from the most established English versions of such names and is gradually replacing them with the original versions. Examples include Lyon which used to be spelled Lyons in English but is now more commonly found without the s, Beijing and Kolkata, which used to be referred to by their traditional English names Peking and Calcutta. Presumably by the same mechanism, it is moving towards the original spellings including diacritics. You can see this at work with Google Books searches for Heinrich Brüning: For books until 1950 the ratio "chancellor Brüning":"chancellor Bruening" is 280:1110. For books since 1971 it is 641:278. The ratio "chancellor Schröder":"chancellor Schroeder" is 4090:1730. (The same tendencies can be observed in German, where people increasingly say and write Nijmegen not Nimwegen, Ústí nad Labem not Aussig, Tallinn not Reval, Győr not Raab, 's-Hertogenbosch not Herzogenbusch etc. No doubt other languages are going through the same evolution.)
• WP:COMMONNAME does not speak about spellings. It speaks about fundamentally different names such as Nazi Party vs. de:Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. Spelling with or without diacritics is not the kind of question that should routinely be answered by inspecting usage in English sources for each individual topic. For relatively obscure topics we might as well read tea leaves. This is the kind of thing that is addressed by style guides, and our relevant style guide for article titles is WP:DIACRITICS a section of WP:ENGLISH. It says that by default (no consensus of sources), spelling with or without diacritics is both acceptable. But our policies and guidelines are supposed to be descriptive not prescriptive, and actual usage in Wikipedia is that where English sources use the original name with or without diacritics, we almost always use it with diacritics. This is firmly within the normal range of style guides for English publications, and we are following the trend. [8] [9]
• It makes sense to standardise use or non-use of diacritics, because otherwise we are facing categories in which spellings with diacritics are mixed randomly with spellings without them. We will never be able to get rid of them completely, as there are examples in which diacritics are the most natural way of disambiguation, and since academic works and serious encyclopedias such as Britannica use them in titles (they didn't used to use them – another example that the language is in flux). So the most natural solution is to always use them, as we are already doing.
• Names in Cyrillic or Chinese letters or any other non-Latin writing system are of course a different matter. Most readers of English texts cannot parse them at all, cannot even form conjectures as to the corresponding pronunciations, and would need a lot of effort to compare two such words just to see if it's the same word. That's why we are not using them but use transliterations or transcriptions into the Latin alphabet instead (where there is no English alternative). And guess what, some of the commonly used transliteration/transcription systems use diacritics and other modified Latin letters. This way English even acquired some words with diacritics such as the one for the (Tibetan) Bön religion. There are some fine distinctions to be made here. E.g. Pinyin, the standard system for transcription of Chinese, uses diacritics. But we don't, following a common practice in China and among academics publishing in English.

While it would be nice if this little exposé on háčeks and similar phenomena that I am throwing into the mêlée would give the coup de grâce to this attempted coup d'état, I am aware that, not being an Übermensch, nor a Führer who cannot be ignored, I may be evoking TLDR reactions in some. In that case, take it as a smörgåsbord from which you can pick a few canapés while drinking a Gewürztraminer. (I suggest that you help yourself to an apéritif first, and then start with the crudités. And do try the crêpes and the crème brûlée.) Sorry if there are too many cases of déjà vu on the menu. I hope you won't mistake my arguments for papier-mâché tigers.

So much for my 5 øre. Hans Adler né Scheuermann. 06:23, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

All those words are commonly spelled without the diacritics. We don't all write for the OED. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

As Google Books searches with these words show, usage is actually mixed. It is of course wron to write exposé without the accent because that can only lead to confusion. (A Google books search for "write an expose" has a lot of hits, but they are overwhelmingly OCR errors with exposé in the original. Incidentally, preventing confusion between words that are otherwise spelled equally is one of the reasons for accents in French.) I wouldn't know how to verify this, but I am pretty sure that the English word né cannot be spelled ne. In contrast to the (also somewhat odd) spelling nee for née, nobody would know what is meant. And I refuse to use nee with reference to myself because I don't want anyone to believe I was born female. At the other extreme there is smörgåsbord, which is almost always spelled without the accents. But in any case the spellings with accents are correct variant spellings of the respective English words in the same way that colour and color are both correct variant spellings. Hans Adler 15:53, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

• Please, tell me someone, how could using the diacritic in foreign proper names damage or threaten the purity of the English language? What have the Czech, Slovak or Swedish proper names to do with the English language? A name is just a name. If a person has a name that contains the "wiggly sqigglies" and the person is verifiably known under that name, a really good encyclopedic project should respect that, because it is the correct version, no more and no less. Wikipedia should strive for accuracy. That's my only conclusion. Of course, transliteration is a different matter, but I'm talking about the proper names written in languages which use the Latin alphabet. Do you want to save the English language by deforming the names? --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 09:55, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
  • No one is arguing for or against the English language purity. What we are talking about is not enforcing the foreign spellings when we have lots of English usage without the character modifiers. I disagree that those diacritics are part of the same alphabet. The letters are rendered using a separate code. Correctness also is not the issue. Correctness is subjective in this instance. For example, the Latvian hockey player who is commonly known as Sandis Ozolinsh has a birth name of Sandis Ozoliņš. Those two diacritics are -unknown- in common usage. The question is really, where do you draw the line? To a regular reader, unknown modifiers give no information to the reader as to the pronunciation. As per WP:COMMONNAME, Sandis is better known as Ozolinsh, as he played the majority of his career in North America. He might have never been notable otherwise. To enforce the use of modifiers would be appropriate if Wikipedia were an academic publication, but it is certainly not. Frankly, I am okay with either spelling for article titles, (leaning slightly to common spelling without) but if a person's common spelling is without diacritics, then it is not appropriate to enforce them in articles where the person is mentioned. As I've said elsewhere, I see no point in arguing for something that will be ignored. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 14:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your observations, alaney. The anlicized version of the name of Sandis Ozolinsh follows, at least a bit, the sound and the pronunciation of his name. But what about Jan Srdinko, Roman Kadera, Matus Vizvary, Ivo Kotaska, Vladimir Buril and other players known solely for their careers in European hockey leagues? (This RfC was started mainly as a reaction to the situation at Talk:Vladimir Buril) The names are cut off like a tree stumps. I'm well aware that the diacritic can hardly help an average English reader to better understand the pronunciation, however, I believe it is more encyclopedic than the nonsensical current state. The current state is a result of missing code on major ice hockey websites. Wikipedia should do better, as this project has the technical tool and the international editorship capable of far more accurate work. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 16:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Thanks for pointing those out. I was unaware of the origin. If this discussion was to eliminate the use of diacritics completely, I don't support that. Those persons have no 'common' English spellings, as far as I can tell. No 'English' name, if you will. I think those articles will be moved to the native spellings. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 17:04, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Sandis Ozolinsh is a transliteration. This does happen sometimes with names in the Latin alphabet, viz Franz Josef Strauss and Bronislava Nijinska. But it doesn't happen all the time, and one doesn't transliterate by removing diacritics. - filelakeshoe 16:36, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Ozolinsh has no diacritics. I think you mean it is not simply the removal of diacritics that makes it English. There must be a variation of opinion on the acceptability of transliteration. Because the article on Ozolinsh is under his birth spelling. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 17:04, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Ozolinsh is most likely where it is because of how frustrated most people got with these discussions a few years back and everything was pushed as far as possible in both directions. We should probably move him back. Its the absolute wiping out of diacritics that is currently the issue. Currently the originator of this thread has been trying to wipe them off every article that uses them, consensus on the issue be dammed. -DJSasso (talk) 17:08, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
• On a side note, Czech Wikipedia attempted to resolve a similar problem, using the feminin surname suffix -ová (a standard component/suffix of female surnames in the Czech language) in foreign female names. The debate was creative, editors defended all possible stances.[10] The Institute of the Czech Language of the Academy of Sciences CR even issued a special statement, defending the Czech language as a naturally inflective language. However, the statement included the following recommendation: "In an encyclopedia, it is appropriate for users to get information about the original form of a proper name".[11] But it is Czech language, a different venue, a different problem. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 09:55, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

We cannot present material that would expose the ignorant, for that would fail to provide balance between knowledge and ignorance. As an encyclopedia we need to strive for balance. The goal must therefore be the LCD. — kwami (talk) 11:38, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

@Vejvančický, Agreed, the feminine surname suffix should be observed, that English does not decline its nouns does not mean we force the masculine form of a surname.

Vejvančický was making an analogy to a similar issue on Czech Wikipedia, not an issue whether we should spell Martina Navratilová as Martina Navratil, but whether on cs.wiki they should spell J.K. Rowling as J.K. Rowlingová. It's quite a similar issue to this diacritics thing. I guess in the same way Czech is a naturally inflective language, English is a naturally xenophobic language. - filelakeshoe 15:28, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification, Filelakeshoe. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 16:03, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami, I am sorry, I cannot agree with "lowest common denominator." "Balance" means we write in accessible language, not that we dumb down proper names. You should have more faith in the intellectual capacity of the average reader. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 12:58, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I am relatively sure that Kwamikagami was making a joke. Of course in the context of this insane debate the usual assumption that anything that is too outrageously stupid to be possibly a serious statement must be a joke doesn't make much sense, so I am not totally sure. Hans Adler 15:23, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd hope so, but in case it was semi-serious, I'll once again point to Simple English Wikipedia, where editors scared of diacritics, too long words, technical jargon, and such, can find safe refuge. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As an admin there I would point out we tend to use them there ironically. -DJSasso (talk) 17:41, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, but editors who wish dios to go away, are not dummies. Therefore, please stop characterizing them directly or indirectly as such. GoodDay (talk) 17:46, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As opposed to you who has been over and over assuming bad faith of anyone from a country whose primary language isn't English? -DJSasso (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Calling editors like me 'dummies', is just another example of the pro-diacritics crowd's arrogance about their precious wiggly sqigglies. GoodDay (talk) 17:49, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

No one called you a dummy. This is just another example of your assuming bad faith of everyone who disagrees with you. -DJSasso (talk) 17:51, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

"I'll once again point to Simple English Wikipedia, where editors scared of diacritics, too long words, technical jargon, and such, can find safe refuge" by Piotrus. That's a poor choice of wording. GoodDay (talk) 17:54, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

And how is that different than you pointing people to the Czech wiki for example? Most of the people who have argued against diacritics have done so stating they are too complex. So it is perfectly valid to point to a the simple english version of wikipedia where things aren't too complex. Although he was incorrect because they actually use diacritics. -DJSasso (talk) 17:58, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

As an administrator, you should be advising both sides to use moderation, not just the side you're against. GoodDay (talk) 18:03, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I am not acting as an administrator since I am actively involved in this topic. I am acting as any regular editor. If you want an uninvolved admin to decide if you or both of you are out of order I can certainly go ask for one. I am just pointing out that you are making this discussion far too personal. Step back and be objective. -DJSasso (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm merely stating, if the otherside knocks off the 'intellectual put downs', I'll stay away from the 'linguistic pride' accusations. GoodDay (talk) 18:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

What pride? I am not "proud" that Polish has diacritics. This is just a fact of life, just like English has letters we don't use (q, x and v) - but we will use them on Polish Wikipedia in relevant topics (pl:Quebec, pl:Vincent van Gogh, pl:Xanadu (oprogramowanie)). And of course we accept diacritics that don't exist in Polish (pl:Würzburg). It is just surprising to me that a few people who are supposed to write an encyclopedia, a work of reference, by default discussing many subjects unknown to most, would argue that we should dumb down articles on foreign subjects. IF this was a common rule in English publications and encyclopedias, it is one thing. But as have been shown, English works are split on the use, and other encyclopedias simply use them without any arguments. This makes it clear that the argument "diacritics are not used in English" is false, leaving only the "diacritics are unknown to most and confusing." Well, though, this is an encyclopedia, and it covers many subject that are unknown to one. The solution is hardly to remove the topics - or dumb down the articles by removing things like diacritics. I am sure we could find people who are confused by graphs, headings, edit buttons, hyperlinks, footnotes, templates... but we don't pander to them. I see no reason why our treatment of diacritics should be any different. So if there is any "pride", I think it is some misguided pride of the part of English language purists, who don't want to see signs they consider non-English; pride that is obviously misguided, as many modern English-language books and encyclopedias illustrate quite clearly. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I really think this round in circles stuff needs to stop, GoodDay has already expressed on his talk page that nothing is going to make him "change his opinions". We might as well be trying to convince a brick wall that diacritics are used in English. - filelakeshoe 19:27, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

True, this (including some comments of mine, perhaps) was getting a bit repetitive, and thus, annoyingly unhelpful. In that case, I'd suggest we move on to discussing how the wording could be changed, see if a change would be acceptable (stable), and if there is still a dissenting group (individual...) who would revert such a change, hold a straw poll to determine consensus (majority's opinion). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:30, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Basically I think the problem here lies not solely with diacritics, it lies with the "common name" policy being followed absolutely to the letter based on slack research such as "number of google hits" or "a quick look at google news results". As I just said today on Talk:Slavia Prague, following "use the most common name used by English speakers" is insane (read my comments in the discussion), there has to be some kind of balance between common names and correct names, so sure, Caffeine and not 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione, but Fellatio rather than Blowjob, Manchester United F.C. rather than Man United and Cattle rather than Cow. By this token it follows that we should use Vladimír Búřil, because it's verifiable and clear that his name is Vladimír Búřil. This "xxx google hits say this name is more common" argument should be used with more caution. - filelakeshoe 19:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Especially when WP:DIACRITICS specifically mentions that google hits are an unreliable method for judgment because optical character recognition errors often miss diacritics thus deflating the numbers. Clearly consensus here is to rewrite to make clear that diacritics are valid but the question is how to do that in an efficient way. -DJSasso (talk) 19:47, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be better to get an uninvolved admin or two in to judge consensus, as I know I've been getting a bit worked up with all the linguistic misconceptions and such... - filelakeshoe 19:50, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The entire "uninvolved admin" concepts is scary; how can we be sure that the admin has no - subcontious, even - take on that? I'd rather see proposals (one or more) for modification, one for keeping the policy as it is, and see some votes. This will much more clearly show where the consensus lies. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:20, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

That would work - a "users who endorse this view" style RfC. I don't know enough about the relevant processes to know how to properly go about this.. - filelakeshoe 20:27, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if an administrator ruling can be applied? Perhaps, the best course is to merely take things one RM at a time. GoodDay (talk) 20:24, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh of course. I just meant that out of about 30 editors in the discussion only 4 were outright against using them and one said he had no problem with them in titles but not in the rest of the article. So it seemed pretty clear cut. Of course an outsider would have to make the final call. I just meant we should come up with some options for how to word it since we seem to be headed that way. -DJSasso (talk) 20:26, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Replying to both of you, RM is the reason we are discussing this here. It is my understanding that RMs commonly succeed in moving articles from diacritic-less titles to ones with diacritic, and this RfC was started by a user who was unhappy with this, seeing the RMs as going against our policy. We can just close this discussion and do nothing, but I think it would be better if we just faced the facts (and the consensus of majority), and clarified the rules that diacritics are accepted, to prevent some users being confused and claiming that "diacritics have no place on Wikipedia". It is clear, from common use on Wikipedia, that they do have such a place. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:26, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

We should go by the RM route. GoodDay (talk) 21:57, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

The RM route is ongoing all the time. We need to go beyond it, and improve it by updating policy to prevent false arguments from being used in RMs. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Everyone has a different view on what's 'false arguments', though. GoodDay (talk) 22:43, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Well that is the point of this discussion, we are coming to a consensus of what that is. -DJSasso (talk) 23:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

That's quite likely an impossibility. GoodDay (talk) 23:51, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Consensus is not unanimity. There is no liberum veto on Wikipedia - so I think we will reach an agreement... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:41, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. GoodDay (talk) 01:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Hans argumentation above, DJSasso make that 31 v 4. --Stefan ^talk 01:38, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

This entire argument is tl;dr. I weighed in a couple weeks ago, I think, but just don't have time to follow all the bickering. To reiterate my own position: Article titles should reflect common English usage, as indicated in the majority of English-language sources. Speaking as someone who does a lot of work with disambiguation pages, I would also say that diacritics are often a pain in the you-know-what. I can type about 130 wpm, but when I run into a diacritic, it slows me down to a snail's pace as I have to squint at the hundreds of possible choices and track down the correct one, or switch to copy/pasting rather than typing. Given a choice, I prefer non-diacritic titles. However, if a name is routinely spelled with diacritics in English-language sources, I can, and do, adapt. I do not, however, support the idea of spelling names in a native language just because "that's the way it's supposed to be spelled". What's next, changing all the names of the Chinese biography articles to native Chinese? That would make searching, linking, categorizing, and navigation a nightmare. In any case, moving forward on this discussion, perhaps a straw poll would be a good idea, to make sure we're getting opinions from lots of editors, and not just those that have the time to engage in these endless discussions? --Elonka 15:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

"Straw poll" on what exactly? I mean, what would editors have to decide between? - filelakeshoe 15:54, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's best to go the RM route. An overall ruling across English Wikipedia, would likely be un-accepted, no matter what the result. GoodDay (talk) 16:01, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Elonka I realized you did. You were one of the ones I counted as not liking them. Diacritics and Chinese characters are two very different situations. One uses a different alphabet/character set whereas in the case being discussed they are using the same alphabet. Is still readable to everyone, doesn't lose any information, makes the wiki more accurate. I fail to see where causing an editor to slow from 130 wpm to a snails pace is an actual problem. Our standard is to be the best possible wiki for the readers, not the editors. So slowing down an editor in my view isn't a problem at all if it helps the reader which I think adding relevant information does. -DJSasso (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no diacritics in the english alphabet. GoodDay (talk) 16:17, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There are no diacritics in any alphabet. As has been mentioned to you time and again diacritics are part of the orthography of a language. Most of the languages we are talking about all use the same Latin Alphabet. A few of them add a few letters or remove a few letters. But the diacritics come from the orthography, so every time you say there is no diacritics in the english alphabet you make yourself look like a fool. -DJSasso (talk) 16:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Let the other alphabets worry about diacritics, I'm concerned with the english alphabet. Meanwhile, the RM route is our best choice. Either that or English Wikipedia should be split in two -- English Wikipedia (New World) -i.e no dios & English Wikipedia (Old World) - ie. dios. GoodDay (talk) 16:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There is no such thing as the English alphabet as its own entity, it is just the Latin Alphabet. It would help that if you are going to be so anti-diacritics that you atleast learn about the topic you are so vigorously fighting. -DJSasso (talk) 16:27, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

There's no & never will be a consensus on this topic across the entire English Wikipedia. The RM route, though time consuming, is the best route. Arbitrary page moves by either side is disruptive by its arrogant nature & should be discouraged. GoodDay (talk) 16:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Repeating your opinion dozens of times without actually providing any arguments, as soon as you realise that you may be on the losing side, is a bad and disruptive habit. Please drop it. What you are proposing is a huge waste of time, simply for the purpose of pushing through your desired change to some extent locally when there is clearly no general consensus for it. Hans Adler 18:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Please follow Elonka's advise. GoodDay (talk) 18:52, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Please follow the many (I am sure its got to be closing in on 100 now) editors that have told you not to repeat one liners like this over and over and over again. We heard you the first time. If you don't have any new arguments to provide just stop writing. Or heck any arguments period other than I don't like them. -DJSasso (talk) 18:59, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Ease off the harrassing. GoodDay (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Can we please try to keep comments focused on the topic, and not on other editors. Saying "you look like a fool" is not helpful to this discussion. As for the comment about "best possible wiki", we are not talking about removing diacritics from the wiki as a whole, we are just talking about article titles. If someone has a name with diacritics (or Chinese, or Arabic), we can and should put that information in the lead paragraph of the article. It's just the title that should stick with "common English" spelling, as defined by majority usage in English-language sources. --Elonka 16:42, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't mind dios in the lead paragraph, if the article title is devoid of dios. That's assuming having it english in the lead with the dios version next to it in brackets is rejected. GoodDay (talk) 16:49, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not the majority of English sources that matters for us. Quality matters more than quantity. The lower segment of newspapers such as the Daily Mail seems to drop accents and replace any 'un-English' or 'un-American' letters consistently. Quality newspapers such as the New York Times or the Guardian do it sometimes but not consistently. As I have shown, the Chicago Manual of Style does not recommend doing it. (I don't have access to the book itself; maybe someone can look up whether it says something helpful about the matter.) And serious encyclopedias such as Britannica consistently use proper names from Latin-based languages in their original form and use romanizations involving diacritics, where appropriate, as in Brāhmī. (With some exceptions. Britannica replaces ß by ss, for example, as is done routinely even by German speakers in Switzerland, and it replaces þ by th. But it dinstinguishes correctly between the first names of Thorbjørn Egner and Thorbjörn Fälldin, for example.) Given that English dictionaries list words such as exposé with an accent, I simply won't buy that Britannica is in error when it uses diacritics in titles. Hans Adler 18:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Hans, can you point me to where you've shown that CMoS supports diacritics? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It was in two links to "Chicago Style Q&A" in my longest post. To quote from them: "In any case, it is not true that English is without accents. I would guess that accents were often dropped in published material many years ago because of the extra difficulty of typesetting them—especially in the case of a word like façade (Webster’s prefers facade but allows façade; American Heritage prefers façade but allows facade). On that basis, I would guess that in the future, accents will become more rather than less common in English." [12] "Assuming that the readers are to be primarily English-speaking, I’ll follow Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, which lists Iguaçú first (though Iguazú is listed also, as an equal variant; Chicago usually picks the first-listed term and sticks with it)." [13] Hans Adler 19:11, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile I actually found a way to access the Chicago Manual of Style from home.

• Some example sentences speak for themselves: "He is a member of the Société d'entraide des membres de l'ordre national de la Légion d'honneur."
• But it gets more explicit elsewhere: "Any foreign words, phrases or titles that occur in an English-language work should be checked for special characters -- that is, letters with accents [...], diphthongs, ligatures, and other alphabetical forms that do not normally occur in English. Most accented letters used in European languages [...] can easily be reproduced in print from an author's software and need no coding. [...] If type is to be set from an author's hard copy, marginal clarifications may be needed for handwritten accents or special characters (e.g., 'oh with grave accent' or 'Polish crossed el'). If a file is being prepared for an automated typesetting system or for presentation in electronic form (or both), special characters must exist or be 'enabled' in the typesetting and conversion programs, and output must be carefully checked to ensure that the characters appear correctly."
• The following on typesetting French is particularly interesting: "Although French publishers often omit accents on capital letters [...] they should appear where needed in English works, especially in works whose readers may not be familiar with French typographic usage." (My italics.)
• And on romanization: "Nearly all systems of transliteration require diacritics [...]. Except in linguistic studies or other highly specialized works, a system using as few diacritics as are needed to aid pronunciation is easier to readers, publisher, and author. [e.g. Shiva not Śiva, Vishnu not Viṣṇu] Transliterated forms without diacritics that are listed in any of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries are acceptable in most contexts."

Unfortunately I am afraid we will still continue to read that using diacritics in English text is just plain wrong... Hans Adler 22:26, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

The question is: are there non-diacritics versions of these diacritized names, being used in english. The answer is yes, so use the non-diacritized version. This is how non-english names should be adopted to English Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 18:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

And can you prove to me that this simplified English is the correct English? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:59, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Can you proove to me that diacritics usage is best? GoodDay (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's the status quo and it's what the other encyclopedias do. You will have to prove that not using them is best, if you want to change the practice. Hans Adler 19:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

"...it's what the other wikipedias do", is not a good argument. I tried that argument with Infobox headings & it was rejected. GoodDay (talk) 19:35, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

He didn't say what other wikipedias do. He said what other encyclopedias do. The two are very different things. -DJSasso (talk) 19:43, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) To you? No you have already said you refuse to accept any evidence shown to you no matter what. There is a tonne of evidence given down below and above in the discussion. Rational open minded people would look at that and probably draw the conclusion that it is a good thing or at least be open to the fact that it might be. You however, have declared numerous times that no matter how much proof you are given that your mind won't change. -DJSasso (talk) 19:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

If an RM ends in favour of dios, I would respect the result (even though I wouldn't like it). I haven't been reverting any pro-dios page movements which were done arbitrarily. I'm not known as a page-move warrior. Anyways, If ya'll try and force something across the entire English Wikipedia, it'll be a recipe for disaster. GoodDay (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

No one is forcing anything. This is a discussion. This is how things work on the wiki. This is how change happens. And as you can see from the large discussion above this is already common practice on the wiki, so really I would doubt there would be much disaster since its already what happens the majority of the time. -DJSasso (talk) 19:23, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I hope you're right. GoodDay (talk) 19:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It is clear that there is no consensus to change the current policy.

Specific proposals to change the wording of the policy

I agree that this discussion is tl;dr, and likely going in circles. Some have asked "what can we do?"; well, if you scroll up, up and up to my mid-April post (#Conflict between usage and policy wording), you see my proposed wording change. I'd like to suggest that we move to discussing the specific wording change(s), in proposal's like my new one below. Let's not vote yet, let's see if we can hash out one (or more) wordings that have some support, then we can put them up for a straw poll. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 1 (Piotrus)

Current wording reads:

The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged

I am proposing a change to:

The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is common, and thus encouraged.

Note that this by no means overrules WP:NCGN (I thought I should state the obvious).

Brief summary of the rationale for that change:

• arguments that diacritics are "confusing" are personal, and there is no proof that diacritics are confusing any more than footnotes, hyperlinks, categories, images, and other elements seen on Wikipedia;
• usage of diacritics is inconsistent in the outside-Wikipedia English publications. Linguistic publications on the English language and diacritics show no consensus, neither. To repeat a quote from a reliable, lingustic source: "For foreign words that have become common in English, no simple rules can be given for when to retain an accent, or diacritic, and when to drop it. The language is in flux. ... Accents and diacritics should be retained in foreign place names (such as São Paulo, Göttingen, and Córdoba) and personal names (such as Salvador Dalí, Molière, and Karel Čapek).". At the very least, this proves that there is no consensus in English language practitioners on the use of diacritics. Hence, argument that "English doesn't have diacritics" is false (just as, to be fair, "English has diacritics" would be);
• usage of diacritics is, however, the rule in other English-language encyclopedias (Britannica, Columbia, Encarta);
• usage of diacritics is easily found in English-language newspapers (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Economist and Irish Times), academic works (Changing the Perception of the Post-Socialist City: Place Promotion and Imagery in Łódź, Poland) and books (Ghettostadt: Łódź and the making of a Nazi city)
• usage of diacritics is also increasingly common in those works;
• finally, usage of diacritics is established practice on Wikipedia;

Therefore, I believe it is time to recognize the trends in - so we may as well make it officially sanctioned by the policy (just look at Category:Polish people stubs or Category:Villages in Lower Saxony or many others).

Perhaps, the above rationale could be included in the article, too, although it would be nice to see some more proof for some of those claims.

This clarification is needed to stop time waste (WP:DEADHORSE...) that occurs when some editors try to move a an article or a small group from a title with diacritics to one without, or object to a move in the opposite direction. Such objection happens to a few new articles, as all established articles have been moved to a diacritic-using name long ago.

Please note that this is a thread to refine the proposed wording change and arguments behind it, so let's keep "I don't like dios" "arguments" out of it. Thoughts? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:58, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Oppose We should stick with the RM route, even though it's time consuming. I wish to point out that as far as diacritics go, I haven't been moving pages & am quite capable of accepting an RM ruling, even when it favour dios. GoodDay (talk) 19:04, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Support I support this proposal. It describes current practice through most of the wiki and I agree with most of the reasoning you list in your various links. Guidelines/Policy are supposed to describe practice not prescribe practice so the guideline clearly needs to be fixed to reflex what actually happens on the wiki. It would definitely help stop a very large time sink. -DJSasso (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment The following clause in the sentence in question currently reads "when deciding between versions of a name which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in English reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works)." To encourage the use of a specific spelling and immediately afterwards refer to general usage is somewhat contradictory in the case where general usage does not follow that spelling (and if general usage does use the spelling with modified letters, then the proposed changes are redundant). Regarding the broader point, I think it is important to keep in mind that if there is evidence that the subject has adopted a different spelling of its name, then it is appropriate to adopt this spelling, regardless of how the name is spelled in its original language. The proposed change does not take this into account. isaacl (talk) 20:31, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

This seems like something that is too detailed for this policy and should be added to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (biographies). I do agree that if we can show that the subject has dropped diacritics from their name, we should use the version preferred by the subject. Although this may be better discussed elsewhere; subject's preferences are not always taken into account (consider Casimir Pulaski). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:09, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It goes beyond people names; for example, I don't know if NASA gave official translations of the term "space shuttle", but if it did, then they should be given precedence. I don't believe this policy should provide a blanket encouragement of a specific form of spelling, as each case has its own set of circumstances. It would be better to provide guidance on how to weigh if sources are reliably reporting the spelling of a subject in English. (Unfortunately, this is a pretty difficult task to do in general.) isaacl (talk) 21:34, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Right, but this discussion is about people. A name for a person is very much a different thing than a term used for an object or company. And object/company won't for example be insulted by an incorrect spelling of their name. Which is one of the issues people have with the removal of diacritics when it comes to BLPs. There will be exceptions as mentioned where a person goes by a different name, and that can be dealt with on a case by case basis. However, we should be encouraging the name in its proper form for atleast the title in the case of people unless there is a common form. (different from just removing the diacritics) I would note we aren't actually talking about the translations of names, pretty much everyone agrees if there is a translated name then we use that. This change is meant to make it clear that removing diacritics isn't a translation. -DJSasso (talk) 21:49, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

"removing diacritics isn't a translation". You hit the nail on its head. This should be added to the policy, too. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I was replying to Piotrus who was indicating that the proposed changes went beyond just people's names. You and I know the intent is not to cover cases where someone has translated their name (whether or not the translation involves a dropping of diacritics or something more elaborate), but the proposed change does not make this clear. Wikipedia editors shouldn't be translating names on their own without reference to reliable sources, period, so I suggest that be made clear. isaacl (talk) 22:05, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I certainly have no problem rewording the proposal if you can think of a better way to word it. But I do think this general change needs to be made. -DJSasso (talk) 22:08, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Addressing the original question for this section, I suggest making it clear that the policy on common names does not prohibit the use of modified letters:

Wikipedia policy is neutral on using modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles; when deciding between versions of a name which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, in accordance with Wikipedia's policy on using common names, follow the general usage in English reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). The policy on using common names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name.

isaacl (talk) 23:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't really solve the issue however, because people will still say that because lots of English sites don't have the diacritics then we shouldn't have them. We need it to clearly say that if the persons actual name contains them, they should be used except in cases of people known better by pseudonyms or if there is a translation. What we are trying to make clear is that "Joè" is still the common name even if lots of english sites show "Joe". (assuming the persons name does actually have the diacritic) -DJSasso (talk) 23:04, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

... and that's why I suggested that better guidelines on evaluating reliable sources be drawn up. However, I don't have a good proposal in mind because, as I said, it's a difficult task to do. isaacl (talk) 23:17, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I think of it not as a change but as a codification of what we have been doing for years. And of course it applies to all proper names, not just people's names. All style guides that I have seen treat personal names, geographic names, titles of books etc. in the same way. Except that for personal names the Economist style guide says one should use the version preferred by the person, if the person gives any guidance. Hans Adler 22:31, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not support the proposed codification, to use your term, that appears in its current form to unconditionally favour the use of diacritics, since errors can happen both ways. For example, I believe there are articles on Major League Baseball players who have had diacritics added in error to their names. I can imagine there could be cases where Spanish language newspapers would have spelled these names incorrectly, so there would be (otherwise) reliable sources with the wrong spelling. Editors should be seeking clarification in all cases, not assuming that the spelling with diacritics is always correct. isaacl (talk) 22:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

We already have policy for that its WP:V. No one is saying anything has to be assumed. You still have to have sources that show you their name is spelled with them. Nowhere in the change are we suggesting otherwise. All that is changing is the reliance only on English sources which are often wrong. There are always errors in some sources, but it isn't up to this policy to solve that issue, that is what WP:RS is for. This is purely a naming convention page. -DJSasso (talk) 22:51, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

The specific proposal doesn't address the reliance on English sources. It unconditionally says that the use of modified letters is encouraged. isaacl (talk) 23:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Right, and they are as long as the name includes them. Questions on the reliability of sources and all that jazz fall into the WP:V and WP:RS pages. This page is just about how we choose the name. We don't have to spell out the other policies again here. That would be redundant. It is not unconditional, its conditional on all the other verification policies we already have etc. -DJSasso (talk) 23:07, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Would tagging on "... thus encouraged when supported by sources that the name includes them." and perhaps change English language sources just to say reliable sources period. -DJSasso (talk) 23:15, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

It's also redundant to say that using modified letters is encouraged in article titles. Wikipedia's policies on using common names, verifiability, and identifying reliable sources cover this. Wikipedia policy is agnostic on the use of modified letters. isaacl (talk) 23:17, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Well that is what the discussion above was about, getting consensus that it actually isn't agnostic about that. And now we are looking at proposals to make that clear. -DJSasso (talk) 23:20, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

In my view, the discussion was about how to identify when there isn't an established usage in English, and what established usage/convention should be followed in this case. Whether or not any of the candidates include modified letters is not important (and is why I believe Wikipedia policy should remain agnostic on spelling). isaacl (talk) 23:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose Proposed language simply swings the pendulum one way. Too simple. I don't believe that writing something that is expected to be ignored, is completely having merit. In general, article names, proper name spellings, translations are in flux until it's clear what is the most appropriate. I am certain there is a wide spectrum of cases. We should endeavour to use our best efforts in naming and usage for the sake of all users of Wikipedia. We can use the examples of other encyclopedias wisely. If this means more time must be taken to debate this, then so be it. I predict that diacritics will go on the rise simply out of the mix of international communications. I'd rather append a paragraph on the line of 'Use the wording and spelling that is most appropriate given the locality, the regional or international notability of the subject. Use valid translations and transliterations as is compatible with the subject and its notability. Do not simply remove valid diacritics on the basis of little evidence, but recognize that the over-use of them may add little to a large segment of readers' comprehension of the topic's name and may be unfamiliar to the reader. A birth name may not be any more credible than the common name if the subject willingly discarded the spelling and usage of the birth name.' Chew on that. Reminds me of my OECD days ... ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 04:08, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose: Proposal 1 (Piotrus) contradicts the policy of WP:COMMONNAME which specifies that articles are to be titled to match the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. For biographical articles, this means that the article title does not use the subject's name as it is legally spelled, or as might appear on a birth certificate or passport. It instead uses the most commonly used form of name (not necessarily the “correct” one) as verified by reliable sources. The standard of Wikipedia is "verifiability, not truth", and this fundamental policy must not be ignored to encourage the used of modified letters. Dolovis (talk) 04:36, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

  WP:COMMONNAME is about titles, not about the spelling of titles. Otherwise almost all article titles that are currently at a British English spelling could be moved to the American English spelling. Try enforcing that, and you will see how wrong you are. The simple fact of the matter is that some sources are not reliable for the spelling of foreign names because they routinely drop all accents or otherwise butcher names. While an acceptable practice in some contexts, it is not acceptable in an encyclopedia of international stature. These sources must therefore be discarded, as they do not give information about this fine point of spelling. Hans Adler 08:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

• Questions. (There isn't a discussion section of this proposal, so I apologise if this is the wrong place.) If this proposal is successful, do you still believe this guideline would default to the common name policy, i.e. using the most common name in English sources? If so, how would you reconcile the difference between this guideline and the article titles policy recommending different outcomes?

  You give examples of The New York Times etc. using diacritics. If this is the case that respected newspapers such as the NYT and others are willing and able to use diacritics, what do suggest should happen in a move discussion where it's demonstrated that the NYT and other high quality newspapers have chosen not to use diacritics (and the subject isn't covered in books or encyclopedias)?

  Please note that I have recently been involved in several recent move discussions where I have been informed that newspapers like the NYT are not considered a reliable enough source for determining whether or not to use diacritics, so I find it odd that a proposal supporting the use of diacritics is now claiming that they are a reliable source for the use of diacritics. Jenks24 (talk) 07:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

  There was not supposed to be a vote at this stage in the first place. The usage of the New York Times is inconsistent. The same person is sometimes spelled with diacritics and sometimes without. (The same holds for the Guardian.) The New York Times Manual of Style has an Amazon preview that goes as far as "accent marks" (page 6), where it says they "are used for French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German words and names. [...] Do not use accents in words or names from other languages (Slavic and Scandinavian ones, for example), which are less familiar to most American writers, editors and readers; such marks would be prone to error, and type fonts often lack characters necessary for consistency. Some foreign words that enter the English language keep their accent marks (protégé, résumé), others lose them (cafe, facade). The dictionary governs spellings, except for those shown in this manual. In the name of a United States resident, use or omit accents as the bearer does; when in doubt, omit them. (Exception: Use accents in Spanish names of Puerto Rico residents.) [...] Some news wires replace the umlaut with an e after the affected vowel. Normally undo that spelling, but check before altering a personal name; some individual Germans use the e form."

  So they sometimes drop accents (1) because of technical restrictions, (2) when they cannot guarantee to get them right (dropping them completely is more acceptable than getting them wrong), or (3) when the bearer drops them. We could think of adopting (3), but otherwise this is the same as our current practice, except we don't have the technical restrictions and we are usually able to distinguish between Julia Görges, who is consistently spelled Goerges by sports associations because they always butcher umlauts, and Angelika Roesch, who is occasionally spelled Rösch when a newspaper writer or editor tries to undo that butchering in a case where it didn't occur. Hans Adler 08:14, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

  You left out (4) "less familiar to most American writers, editors and readers." The NYT MOS also applies this policy to geographic names on page 143–144 (1999 edition). To quote "Retain accent marks in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German names only" (on page 144) ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 14:11, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that adopting the MoS of the NYTimes or the Guardian would be a narrow and imperfect solution, unapplicable for Wikipedia. The capacity and possibilities of the mentioned newspapers are limited, both technically and by the availability of human resources. Wikipedia is an open source project with international editorship that can reach far better and more accurate outcome than the imperfect MoS of large newspapers written in English. As you have said, we don't have the technical restrictions, and the multilingual human resources can guarantee the correctness with very good precision (of course, it is always necessary to cite reliable sources). The NYT says: [the "accent marks"] "are used for French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German words and names. [...] Do not use accents in words or names from other languages (Slavic and Scandinavian ones, for example), which are less familiar to most American writers, editors and readers; such marks would be prone to error, and type fonts often lack characters necessary for consistency." It is not a problem for us Wikipedia editors, as we have human resources familiar with Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and we have all the type fonts needed (the biggest advantage is that we can use the fonts in various combinations for any name and thus eliminate the problem with typing unusual characters). With all due respect, I consider the claim a bit discriminatory: Why should we privilege the major world languages over the minor ones? ¶ This proposal offers a bizzare step back: we should adopt the imperfection and limitations, even though we have the human resources and technical mechanisms allowing correct description of facts. It is not a defense of the English language, as the names aren't English. The names are correct and complete with diacritical marks, no matter what the artificial and unnatural G-News search comparison says (you can search for a specific result by placing + before a name/word containing or lacking the accent marks [14]). Google search can't change someone's name. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 07:53, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I do not endorse the NYT, Economist and Guardian MOS in all aspects. After all, they are the manuals of style of newspapers that are written almost exclusively by native English speakers. Newspapers are under severe time constraints that can make it impractical to check details of spelling in languages that are generally not well known among this demographic. (Actually, it's easier nowadays, but presumably all those MOSes date from the pre-internet era.) These languages are 'privileged' not because they are major world languages but because of practical concerns. When confronted with your name filtered through an ASCII-only medium (e.g. exchange of emails with someone who does not know how to enter accents on a US keyboard, or does not bother, or typical sports result tables) they would have a choice between guessing that "Vejvancicky" should really be spelled, e.g., "Vejvancićky" or playing it safe and omitting all accents.

We should follow the spirit behind these rules, update them to the internet age and adapt them to the international demographic of our editors, our lack of time constraints, and the higher precision requirements of an encyclopedia when compared to a newspaper. The inevitable result is something very much like the practice of Britannica and other English encyclopedias, or indeed our de facto practice. Hans Adler 08:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

So, how far would you go to including the diacritics? All of the languages of the European union? ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 14:11, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the style manual of the National Geographic could be a good inspiration for us. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 14:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

That is an interesting suggestion. Their first rule: Follow Webster's. Pertinent: "Retain the original diacritical marks (accents, apostrophes, dots, cedillas, glottals, etc.) in unanglicized words in the following languages: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. Some anglicized terms from these languages also retain their accents (follow Webster’s)." Would that be acceptable to the editors here? There is an interesting quote: "The diaeresis is being dropped, though classical names and a few others still retain it: Laocoön, Brontë, the opera Aïda." I wonder what Finnish editors think of that, as the language uses that in names. E.g. Teemu Selänne. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 15:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Diaeresis is a function of a trema. There is no diaeresis in "Selänne". In that case ä is a different letter, so the two dots are not dropped. It would be absurd to retain å and ø but drop the dots on ä and ö, and this is clearly not what is meant here. Hans Adler 16:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The National Geographic guidelines are not in conflict with the current naming convention guideline. The crux of the disagreement between most of the editors in this thread is the clause from the second paragraph on the National Geographic page: "that have not become anglicized". Any suggestions on how to provide better guidance on determining when a term has become anglicized? isaacl (talk) 16:24, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I think it is impossible to avoid ambiguity and find a perfect way how to word a new proposal. The current policy says: The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). Imagine a hypothetical situation: We would follow the guideline verbatim, we would compare the results of G-search or another search engine and then divide the names into two groups based solely on the search results. It would be in my opinion unencyclopedic, inconsistent and totally confusing to the majority of our international readership. It would create a crazy and unnatural situation that would have little to do with correct encyclopedic description. A really good encyclopedic project cannot distort the reality and made up proper names based on language selection. The current guideline is ambiguous and imperfect, however, it works because common sense and rationality wins over the drastic simplification offered by the proponents/supporters of this RfC. I think we should emphasize that in case of a proper name or a toponym in the areas covered by the languages mentioned above, we should prefer the form retaining the original diacritical marks, and we should emphasize that exceptions are allowed: i. e. subject has decided to drop the diacritics from their name etc.) Unfortunately, our situation is a bit different from the National Geographic or the NYTimes, as we don't have any directive mechanisms to enforce anything. Wikipedia's crowd administration is a benefit but also a handicap ... and it is a cause of the chaotic and disorganized discussion on this page. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 08:45, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Note the guideline cautions against the use of search engine results to determine common English usage, and instead says that "verifiable reliable sources" should be given a higher weighting. Can anyone suggest how to evaluate the reliability of a source's reporting of a name, with the understanding that inaccuracies can occur in both directions (a source might mistakenly assume, for example, that a person of Latino descent has accents in his/her name), so an asymmetric guideline favouring one form of spelling is undesirable? isaacl (talk) 15:07, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Our readers have a choice, they can type a version omitting all accents and they are subsequently redirected to an article containing full name. It is beneficial to anyone and it cannot damage neither the encyclopedia nor the English language. This project should be a modern reference point providing undistorted facts, especially in case of proper names. I completely agree with the summary in the last part of your comment. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 10:44, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

We all want verifiability, though. How will you be able to propose a Slavic spelling of someone who has moved to North America and subsequently became notable. Will you be willing to accept that the person willingly dropped the diacritics, or will you insist on the birth spelling? If we find no diacritical spellings in English sources, but we do in a Czech sports article reporting a youth game, or even reporting on the person's activities in North America? Regardless of the rules of translation, we have a verifiable spelling that should not be discarded lightly. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 16:10, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

The concept of "notability" here on Wikipedia or any number of news articles can't change someone's name and I would insist on the birth spelling. Of course, if a bearer chooses to drop the accents, we should respect that, but I'm afraid in most cases it would be hardly verifiable. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 16:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Tell us, what is the "birth name" of August Dvorak (the engineer, not the composer]]? How do you propose we find out? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:05, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

It looks that August Dvorak was born in Glencoe, Minnesota and was American [15], so I think in this case it is correct to write his name without the accent marks. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 08:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support - as another data point, I just picked up from my real life mailbox copies of the latest journals from the American Economic Association and just happened to notice that the journal (AEJ: Macroeconomics) uses diacritics as well. Quite frankly this "anti-diacriticism" appears to be some kind of a Wikipedia-particular obsession, where you get a bunch of people who have convinced themselves that they know "what English really is" based on some kind of "I didn't see it in my high school readings or in People magazine so it must not be English" experience, but haven't actually bothered to look around how actual (academic) English language sources approach diacritics (they use them). If it's good enough for top journals in Economics, it should be good enough for Wikipedia. Unless we want our standards to be lower or something, which is sometimes the impression I get.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:32, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I saw the same article and thought the same thing! Demokratickid (talk) 00:06, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

The Principal-Agent/Experts paper or a different one? (And that was actually Micro). Edit: there's one in AEJ:Macro too, on the recessions and expansions article.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:30, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

That is no big thing. The printer has installed the software to print the fonts. You don't have to install anything. Not all symbols are supported on computers. There is a standard of Unicode, but in North America, it often requires installing optional components. Not all standard fonts have all of the possible characters. Why, because, they are rarely used. Besides that, Wikipedia is clearly -not- an academic journal. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

No, it is not. It is an encyclopedia, and as we have shown, all English language encyclopedias like Britannica, Columbia or Encarta, use diacritics. Funny how you keep ignoring this little point... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support it would be absurd not to encourage the use of correct versions. As an editor has said, the ignorance on the part of the public is not an excuse. It would make no sense not to use diacritics in German (Dusseldorf?), Czech (Ceska Trebova?), Polish (Lodz?) or in just any more or less known language. Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 09:43, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support. The use of modified letters in article titles IS common, as can be seen every day on the Wikipedia's main page, which features many articles with diacritics in their titles. - Darwinek (talk) 20:27, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
• Very strongly oppose This effort by the editors of a certain national affiliation to change the English language is appalling; those who are not content to write in English have a wide variety of other Wikipedias to adorn. The arguments for this, where they are not patently false (Dusseldorf remains quite common in actual English, as do analogous forms), or ignorant (what is used in English is correct, in English), amount to claims that diacritics are used in certain contexts; this is true, and where it is true, Wikipedia should use them. We should not change policy on the grounds that it is no change in policy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
  • This encyclopedia is intended to serve those whose first language is English, experially the majority of them who are not fluent in any other language; they have no other Wikipedia. Others are welcome, but not at the expense of our primary mission; those who are fluent in other languages do have other Wikipedias, where they may spell as they please. Those who really want an "international" Wikipedia, in broken English, would do well to ask MediaWiki to authorize one; I expect any such request would be readily granted, and I should be fascinated by the result. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
    • I'm afraid I'm repeating myself. This encyclopedia is intended to provide correct and undistorted information. The proper names discussed here have nothing to do with the English language, a foreign proper name cannot be called "broken English". How can I break the rules of the English language by signing my full and correct name? --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 08:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
      • The proposal here, however, is to use diacritics where they are, in English, incorrect, even though they are incorrect. Where diacritics are the correct spelling, this policy supports their use. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Please, no straw men. The proposal suggests we use diacritics where they are used in English by Britannica, Encarta, or other sources (which is in most cases, unless there is an established alternative name for a locale, or the subject is naturalized and prefers dediacritiized names). What you and some others seem to argue, however, is to remove all diacritics from the project, with the very few possible exceptions (the oppose votes differ from "few exceptions allowed" to "death before a single diacritic allowed" camp). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
          • No, what you paraphrase is more or less what the guideline says now: follow the general usage in English reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works) (it does not appeal to Encarta, which has gone out of business). You wish to change that to unconditional encouragement, whatever English reliable sources do. I support the present language; I have also supported it against the minority who would kill all diacritics. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
            • The present wording is pretty good, and perhaps my proposed wording can be adjusted. The problem was, and is, that in most cases, sources support the use of diacritics, and so does our common usage. So perhaps we should not encourage or discourage the use, but add a sentence stating the fact that in most cases, when diacritics can be used, they are (think: most names or less known (and thus more common) places). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 06:09, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support Unlike the above editor claims, diacritics are used in English and are a part of the English language. I am not of a national affiliation and I support this measure, and take offense that it is presumed that all people in favor of diacritic use are pushing anti-English elements. Demokratickid (talk) 00:06, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
  • This editor has a userbox declaring his membership of WikiProject Slovakia. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:30, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Your point being? Or has this discussion turned into a McCarthyist witch hunt? Demokratickid (talk) 16:39, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
      • Not at all. If cettain western Slavic editors wish to have a Wikipedia which conforms to usages they are more comfortable with, rather than with English, they should really go build one. I believe Wikimedia would produce a fork which can be acapted to anybody who prefers not to write or read English, but if not, see WP:Mirrors and forks. In the mean time. let the majority write in English, to be read by anglophones. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Don't be obnoxious. We ("cettain western Slavic editors") are building one (an English language encyclopedia that is). Or is this some kind of a megalomaniac WP:OWN on a project wide scale? Other encyclopedias use diacritics, academic journals use'em, books use'em. YOU go fork a dumb down version of English Wikipedia if you want to. I'm going to stick around this one and try to make it better. And this is definitely a step in that direction.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:29, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
        • Excuse me, Pmanderson!? How dare you assume my bad faith. As I have stated numerous times, I am an American. I was born in the USA and have lived here my entire life and I am also an Anglophile. How dare you insult me by off-handedly categorizing me as someone who wishes to trash up 'your' language by using proper diacritics. I demand an apology, not just to me, but to everyone who happens to be of West Slavic descent who edits on English Wikipedia. If you did not intend your remarks as pointedly hurtful or minimally assumptive of bad faith, then I also kindly suggest you rephrase or retract your words. Please, this is Wikipedia, we are supposed to have some standards to live up to. Demokratickid (talk) 02:18, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
          • • I don't assume bad faith; you two have carefully provided the evidence I observe. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support Per Vejvančický's arguments. Also this proposal will lead to a less time consuming method of dealing with the (let's be honest relatively small issue) of moving articles for the reason of diacritics alone. If I find a diacritic unknown to me I just imagine the letter without it, it's not really a tiring mental exercise, I believe all of our readers are capable of doing the same. There is no loss of functionality here, or being harder to read or understand, just more information being provided, which is what Wikipedia is about. Hobartimus (talk) 19:57, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Hear hear! Demokratickid (talk)

• Support Diacritics are being used in most of the articles already and it seems that there isnt any confusion. Articles of people should use the spelling that is applied in their documents. Every article with diacritics in their title should also have a redirect page without them. Ratipok (talk) 02:34, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

  An inhabitant of Slovenia, according to his user page.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

  Which doesn't matter in the slightest. We don't segregate people here. -DJSasso (talk) 19:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

  I have to say, Septentrionalis, I am rather disappointed by this argument. Discuss the edit, not the editor. Labelling editors as "connected with a diacritic-using country thus a special case and likely biased", which is what you are obviously implying, is not very helpful. But please explain to me why is it that this "diacritic cabal" has nonetheless taken over all English language encyclopedias, academic journals and many, many books? Will you claim that Britannica is using "broken English" too? :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:16, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

  I don't have to explain what is not the case: Had some diacritics cabal taken over "all English language encyclopedias, academic journals and many, many books", you wouldn't need to amend the policy; its present language would provide the guidance you desire. When, as with Besançon, a diacritic is the standard English spelling, this guideline says unequivocally to use it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I found the UN's Style Manual from 2002 (quick view here), see page 23: "Respect use of accents and special characters in proper names. EXAMPLE: Zéphirin Diabré." I think that in contrast to the English language newspapers, the United Nations is an institution that must follow specific international language standards with far more caution. Their style manual is in my opinion closer to the principles of this international encyclopedic project, and it is worded clearly. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 12:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment That's the UN Development Programme style manual that you've linked, not the 'UN Editorial Manual.' Their first rule, in that section : "Follow The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Ninth Edition)." I would not want to follow the UN and its long debates about wordings and spellings. They have to maintain spellings and exact meanings across languages. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 15:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support - per Vejvančický's arguments, accuracy and in accordance with numerous style guides. Daicaregos (talk) 13:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Very strong oppose - our use of diacritics is already very bad and very out of control. There are many reasons why the English Wikipedia should be written in English, and this is one of the strongest.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Would you explain to us then why should we not use them, where Britannica or Columbia do? Are they not encyclopedias written in English? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: English Wikipedia does not follow the UN style manual. It follows Wikipedia policy that has been created by a consensus of editors through discussion. The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Comment: I would prefer The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is discouraged, but Redirects using these modified letters is actively encouraged. I primarily use the English language Wikipedia, and I use an English language keyboard. When I search for a name, I don't use diacritics because that would require extra effort with my keyboard. I expect most users of the English language Wikipedia do the same, so the most common name for any article is therefore one without diacritics. Of course the full name in the lede, and whatever Redirects are considered appropriate, are proper and sensible. Do a Google search for various names, and you'll see a mix of results. Flatterworld (talk) 15:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. The English spelling of proper nouns often omits the diacritics, and in that case, we "use English" and drop them. It is when there is no accepted English version that we revert back to the native spelling. There are cases where diacritics are absolutely essential (e.g. the Norwegian letters "Æ","Ø", and "Å" cannot be omitted without changing the name completely, and most English sources keep those letters in tact). There are other cases where they are inappropriate since the English version is well established (see the arguments against diacritics Talk:Peter Leko for an example where the diacritic-free version is used by the subject himself even.) From a practical perspective, diacritics make the article harder to read and edit, so I see no need to encourage them unless their omission is blatantly incorrect. Sjakkalle (Check!) 16:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. I see this refrain that "diacritics are used in English" all the time, but the problem is that it's just not true. The only use of diacritics in English are through loan words, and they are always dropped (very) quickly. The "numerous style guides" that a couple of people above have cited are simply wrong, and they don't actually have consensus (not allowing people to change the guideline does not create consensus). The English Wikipedia should be written in English, just as the French Wikipedia should be in French, the German in that language, ect...
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:17, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Except that it is true. You obviously haven't bothered to read the numerous examples given above. From the Chicago manual of style, to other encyclopedias, to academic journals - these all use diacritics. Including diacritics IS writing in English, proper, widely used English.Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:05, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
    • Bullshit. Perhaps you should take some time to re-read the examples that you're pointing to, after having you allow the scales to from your eyes.
      — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:27, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose We are the English Wikipedia. We should be using the most common names in English. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:20, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support, good idea. As an encyclopedia, we educate, we do not censor diacritics to provide an easier-looking (but dumbed down and less accurate) "English". It is great that we have Unicode, no need to go back to ASCII for the sake of stupidity. —Kusma (t·c) 20:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support as a good start in reflecting community practice and opinion, but we should clarify when diacritical marks are common (Dominik Hašek, Düsseldorf, À nous la liberté and Médecins Sans Frontières) and when they're not (George Frideric Handel, Montreal and debut). In addition to the style manuals already mentioned, I found these:

• British Council: "Accent marks: Retain when using foreign names, whether personal, geographical, or company titles [...] Personal names: When you cite a person's name, it is important that you spell the name correctly, so check, even if the name appears to be a simple one."[16]
• Council of Science Editors: "Retain diacritics in personal names and place names if the names have not been anglicized. Word-processing programs now offer a wide variety of characters combining letters and the applicable diacritics, but such characters must be checked after typesetting to ensure that the desired characters appear." (Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers - p. 65)
• European Commission: "Personal names should retain their original accents, e.g. Grybauskaitė, Potočnik, Wallström."[17]
• The Times: "Give French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Irish and Ancient Greek words their proper accents and diacritical marks; omit in other languages unless you are sure of them. Accents should be used in headlines and on capital letters. With Anglicised words, no need for accents in foreign words that have taken English nationality (hotel, depot, debacle, elite, regime etc), but keep the accent when it makes a crucial difference to pronunciation or understanding - café, communiqué, détente, émigré, façade, fête, fiancée, mêlée, métier, pâté, protégé, raison d'être; also note vis-à-vis."[18]

• The higher quality the source, the heavier the use of appropriate diacritics seems to be. Prolog (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose: We should be following the common practice of using WP:COMMONNAME from English language sources. If the common name from English sources is the one with diacritics, then we should be using that. However, in any case where we have the title in diacritics after following COMMONNAME, we should also make sure to also have the name in regular spelling as an alternative within the first line of the article. That solves both problems right there. It is exactly because of the following of COMMONNAME that the use of diacritics is neither encouraged or discouraged, because we use both where appropriate when it is the most common name in english sources. Thus, we have no preference one way or the other, but follow the proper processes to determine which name is proper from the english sources. That is what it means to be neutral. Silverseren^C 20:59, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support The use diacritics is normal in scholarly sources. See no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't follow.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 08:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support Piotrus arguments are convincing, and I also like Hans Adler's comment about spelling. After all, the policy is titled WP:COMMONNAME, not WP:COMMONSPELLING… Eisfbnore ^talk 11:32, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support; I could probably go on a rant about imperialism, but I'll simply copy the relevant bit of my argument from Jimbo's talk page: My given name is Marc-André. It's not "Marc-Andre", nor is it "Marc" and if I magically became notable, an article titled "Marc-Andre Pelletier" would be, simply, erroneous. I do not have a name in English, though I conventionally accept being called Marc for simplicity's sake, and I would be very much insulted at the suggestion that I should pretend that some random sequence of letters that resemble my name are my name to assuage some naming convention. "Marc-Andre" is no closer to my name than "Xarc-André" would be, and just as incorrect: in both cases you'd be randomly substituting some incorrect letter.

  We are an encyclopedia. We should strive to not make clear errors when we can avoid it, and I can't think of an argument that would classify "substitute a letter of the title of an article with another that looks a little bit like it" as anything but a clear error. — Coren ^(talk) 14:55, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

  • Indeed. For the same reason I am Piotr, not Peter, even through I tell my American friends to call me Peter. We don't translate names in English, and my second name is Bronisław, not Bronislaw, just like Coren is Marc-André. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:50, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I am in general agreement with Jimbo and others here. This isn’t a simple problem and the proposed guideline is overly simplistic. After having read through the arguments and researched the issue, it is clear that much more discussion by those specializing in the art of English-language technical writing directed to a general-interest readership need to run off somewhere and further discuss this. The current guideline (chaos rules and however some 14-year-old starts out an article goes a long way) is unsatisfactory and the proposed change is half-baked and worse than the existing one. To properly address this issue, IMO, requires a more nuanced guideline.

  My first observation about diacriticals is that respected English-language newspapers like The New York Times (example here) and The Guardian (example here) don’t use diacriticals in titles or body text for “Ho Chi Minh City” but our article has Hồ Chí Minh City throughout.

  I see arguments about the practices of “scholarly sources.” The trouble is that Wikipedia is directed to a general interest readership and is not a scholarly resource for specialists working on their doctoral thesis; if Wikipedia were, our articles would be incomprehensibly abstruse. Some of our articles have obscure diacriticals that a general-interest readership never sees being used in English-language publications that are directed to a general-interest readership; our use of them for a general-interest readership makes Wikipedia look either pretentious, or like it has been hijacked by foreign-language purists who have little knowledge about English-language technical writing and journalistic practices, or both. Greg L (talk) 15:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Greg, you miss the point, and are mistaken in the description of the situation.
• First of all, the article you cite is using the de-diacriticized title (it is at Ho Chi Minh City, not Hồ Chí Minh City (which is a redirect). There are no diacritics in the bolded lead opening, nor in the English name in the infobox. Next, within the article proper, the use of diacritic is inconsistent, which is something that should be fixed. As such, this article does not represent either side of the argument here, it is simply a mess, which does, however, represent the current policy (where the diacritics are neither discouraged or encouraged). This suggests it is a case ripe for a discussion on the talk on whether English sources use or don't use diacritics when referring to it. After this is made clear on talk, the article should be updated to reflect the consensus. And while I come from the "diacritics should be encouraged" camp, I am open to being shown that in this particular case the sources do not use diacritics, and that this may be one of the exceptions, where the common name in English sources is without diacritics. But let me repeat that this article is NOT using diacritics (it uses them inconsistently) to use this article as an example of improper diacritic use, without further investigation, is not that helpful (again, I am saying this and being open to the possibility that this article should not be using as many diacritics as it is).
• Lastly, your argument about the academic use ignores the fact that diacritics are widely used outside academia, primarily by other encyclopedias, and in many other cases by the very newspaper you cite (check for links in the preceding discussion). The fact that they are not used in the two articles you cited may simply mean that the article (name) you cite is one of the exceptions where it has been adopted into English without diacritics. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:13, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• You are right, I didn’t fully appreciate the particulars of precisely what is being discussed: article titles only; my post spoke to the whole broad issue of diacriticals in Wikipedia’s articles. I also agree with you that the Ho Chi Minh City article is “a mess.” One thing is quite clear to me: Wikipedia’s classic approach to achieving consensus on bitterly divisive issues (do whatcha like ta) isn’t working with diacriticals. The whole broad issue needs to be sorted out so that a comprehensive, consistent, and clear guideline properly addresses the broad issue of diacriticals in all parts of our articles. The current guideline for titles is beyond-worthless. I find your proposal (encourage use in the titles too) is far too simplistic and seems the wrong direction to go for titles.

  The solution, IMHO, now that Jimbo has spoken, is keep him out of it and for a group of specialists (people who make a living at English-language technical writing and bless Wikipedia with their insight) go run off and come up with a guideline that relies less on chaos theory.

  Jimbo’s input if highly valuable as he serves in a leadership position and his voice is respected and second to none. However, his presence creates the “vortex” phenomenon whereby wiki‑theater and wiki‑drama causes far too many editors with no expertise in a particular matter to do an ill‑considered drive‑by shooting so as to assert that they too exist and matter in Wikipedia affairs. Well, I suppose that beats running about and tagging store fronts with graffiti, but the result after Jimbo has landed somewhere is not an exhibition of Wikipedia deliberations on complex issues at their finest.

  I’ll conclude by observing that I believe that in many cases, I suspect the better way to use diacriticals in articles is to show just once how the word is properly spelled with all its diacritical glory—like how a word is pronounced. But I type on a Mac, where many of the common accents are keyboard-accessible. That’s why I type with curly quotes (“like this”); they’re keyboard accessible. I can also easily type “naïve” from the keyboard. But people using Windows computers have so much difficulty with special characters, curly quotes (an example of fine, exemplary typography) are discouraged. With diacriticals like “Hồ Chí Minh City”, we’re now talking about the use of diacriticals that even I don’t know how to type and it’s safe to say that most others aren’t going to bother when they need to type “Ho Chi Minh City”. I find that our use of them; particularly the really odd stuff that newspapers and magazines like The New York Times and Newsweek invariably skip, looks elitist and pretentious in many cases.

  I don’t know what the final, comprehensive guideline ought to be. But adding über-exotic diacriticals to the titles of articles seems the wrong way to go, which is in agreement with (*sound of audience gasp*) Jimbo’s opinion. Greg L (talk) 18:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• If we had an expert group... but we don't, and most of our policies have been created by those who care enough, often codifying existing practice. My point is that the practice, on Wikipedia, has evolved to support the use of diacritics, check categories on German or Polish villages or people, and you'll see that in 99% of cases, if a diactritic is to be used, it is. Second, on the expert argument, we have shown above that experts - be it other encyclopedia authors or academics - prefer to use diacritics (note that this does not mean they use it 100%, they are exceptions, and the Ho Chi Minh City may be one of them). This discussion was started, IIRC, by an RfC by a user who tried and failed to move a bunch of (Hungarian?) bios to de-diacriticized titles, and who objected, in futility, to a bunch of RMs moving other bios to titles with diacritics. The bios in question where, IIRC, low key sportspeople who are rarely mentioned in English sources; those mentions are inconclusive with regards to diacritics - but they are common in other languages. As those RMs have shown, and the usage of diacritics in names of peoples and places elsewhere on Wikipedia, we have a rough consensus to use diacritics in such situations. My proposed change was an attempt to reflect it, to stop people arguing in RM that "our policy/English language does not support the use of diacritics". You may be right that the wording was not good for that, and I'd appreciate it if you could come up with an idea of how to improve it. But I am pretty sure it us up to us to do it, we will not find any "experts" to do it for us. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:47, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• You are misinterpreting what I am referring to when I write of “experts.” I am talking about those wikipedians who have been trained in English journalism and make a living in English-language technical writing. They actually know what they are doing and plenty of them inhabit Wikipedia. I am advocating that we seek their guidance rather than pretend that good and wise manuals of style come about just because some 14-year-old with A) a pulse, and B) a computer, and C) an Internet connection, can come along and magically become wise and knowing on all Wikipedia matters. Whereas I might not entirely agree with him, User:Prolog, above, would be a good editor to include in a focus group as he actually seems adept at looking some of this stuff up and seems to have an appreciation for details.

  Wikipedia has had its share of those who advocate that Wikipedia become way-cool and embrace new-age terminology like The Dell Inspiron came with 256 mebibytes of RAM when the rest of the computing world universally uses “megabyte”. The reasoning was that the new proposed standard was the future and Wikipedia is so way-cool that we ought to lead the way to a New, Unfamiliar, and Baffling Future.™®© In this case, we’re talking about writing in a manner that few English-speaking readers can replicate and seldom see (like “Hồ Chí Minh City”). I didn’t see it that way on those computer prefixes. I’m not seeing it now with using every diacritical known on this pale blue dot as I find it awkward and pretentious in many cases. One always avoids a writing style that unnecessarily calls attention to itself to its target readership (a general-interest one in our case).

  As I wrote above, it’s time for a comprehensive guideline covering the whole issue; not this one aspect, which “encourages” their use in titles of all things. Arguments about “Unicode” (below) and what technology supports (256-bit character sets capable of supporting Klingon?) are beside the point. We’ll just have to agree to disagree here. I do hope that is OK with you. Happy editing. Greg L (talk) 20:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support, per Hans Adler and Vejvančický. We're an encyclopaedia. Our job is to represent the fact of a person or place's actual name - if English-language speakers don't know how to type or to pronounce those unfamiliar characters, that's why we have redirects and a pronunciation guide. (It's not as if normal English spelling can be relied upon for pronunciation - we wouldn't change the title of an article like Kirkcudbright to "Kerrcoobree" because that's how it's pronounced, but we might set up a redirect for the benefit of someone who's heard the name but not seen it written down). We insult our readers my assuming that they can't cope with mentally removing some unfamiliar markings from the basic English character set. The issue of the difficulty of typing diacritics has lttle relevance, as editors who work on those articles will know how to do it, and everyone can copy and paste, either from elsewhere within the article or from the Unicode Latin character set that Wikipedia conveniently provides immediately below the edit box. Diacritics are no barrier to searching - the search box copes admirably with them. If you search using only non-diacritic'd characters, the search facility will find and suggest any variations that have diacritics, whether or not a redirect exists. In short, using diacritics is the right thing to do and presents only trifling inconvenience to those who prefer to ignore them. Colonies Chris (talk) 19:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - This is the English Wikipedia. Article titles should be in English, using English letters. Use of other symbols should be prohibited unless there is a really good reason to do so in a particular case, though I could live with them simply being "discouraged," depending on what that actually means in practice. But certainly not "encouraged," and none of this "neither encouraged nor discouraged" stuff, either. Neutron (talk) 20:16, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
• Support - This is the English Wikipedia. The English language contains diacritics.

[copy of my post to Jimmy Wales' talk page]

During the British Library Editathon on January 15, Wikipedians were privileged to be given a guided tour of the the Evolving English: One language, Many voices exhibition. The curator explained that the English language had evolved though absorbing thousands of loanwords. Sometimes these words retained their original diacritics in common usage, e.g. née, fiancée,façade, déjà vu. This practice goes back to Anglo Saxon times, so Modern English does indeed contain diacritics through these loanwords.

I personally believe that a great deal of useful information will be lost, or at least not be as accurate as it should, if we exclude diacritics from Wikipedia. -- Marek.69 ^talk 20:47, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

“ Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.^* That’s what we’re doing. ” —  Jimmy Wales

^*exceptions include: diacritics, accents and any other unidentified squiggles

Support (it's probably obvious that I favour this if you've read the rest of the discussion). Jimbo apparently did not since the idea that using diacritics means writing the project in another language has been pretty thoroughly and eloquently dismantled. I'd like to note that as far as I know, the use of diacritics (with exceptions when an alternative name is well-established) is the de facto standard on the German, French, Spanish, Portugues, Romanian, Italian, Scots, Dutch, Danish, Esperanto, Latin, Hungarian, Finnish, Swedish, Basque, Polish and even Simple English Wikipedias. Of course these versions of Wikipedia are written in German, French, Spanish, Portugues, Romanian, Italian, Scots, Dutch, Danish, Esperanto, Latin, Hungarian, Finnish, Swedish, Basque, Polish and English respectively. I suppose one can discount this on the grounds that they're all foreign languages anyways so why should we care. A better explanation though is that they're right in doing what most scholarly sources would do. Pichpich (talk) 22:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This discussion is still going around in circles

I'm taking this page off my watchlist and will happily join in again once this discussion stops going around in circles. I continue to be disgruntled by some of the arguments being repeatedly put forward as if we didn't hear them the first time, in particular, User:Dolovis' copypasting of the mantra "the inclusion threshold for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". Not only does this show he really does believe we're making the names with diacritics up, this is a grave misunderstanding of verifiability which has really compromised Wikipedia in the past.

Talking from memory (I couldn't find the specific issue on a Google search) in late 2007 there was a biography controversy where someone edited some Wikipedia biography saying that the article's subject had died (and he hadn't), and this was reported afterwards in a few news sources. On the article's talk page, an editor wrote, and I remember this quote word to word because it was so stupid, "it's clearly not true, but now that it's been reported in several reliable sources, under Wikipedia rules it doesn't make any difference whether it's true or not". This is where editors who believe that Wikipedia is a bureaucracy made up solely of policies and guidelines get us, people. Sources often make mistakes and lots of sources often make the same mistakes. Whether a source is reliable is entirely subjective depending on what piece of information, not what article or topic, you're trying to source. Diacritics in article titles are hardly as big a deal as some of the other situations this kind of grave misinterpretation of what WP:RS and WP:V are supposed to stand for could get us into, but this wikilawyering battology is really sickening. - filelakeshoe 12:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, it will always go in circles. Neither side is ever going to convince each other of their respective arguments. GoodDay (talk) 18:59, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Which is why Dolovis' attempt to circumvent the already existing agreement is so irritating. Filelakeshoe hit it dead on the head, Dolovis' (and other users) gross misunderstanding of existing policy has created a colossal waste of time. This discussion has been on-going for how long now, and at the end of the day, we're going to end up right where we started. If you ask me, much more productive things could have been going on at Wikipedia over the last few weeks than this nonsense. – Nurmsook! ^talk... 21:28, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I tried to end it with the poll above, but since few people care to vote... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:11, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You asked for discussion, not votes, and I provided my proposed changes which directly addresses the original question regarding any conflict with Wikipedia's policy on common names (WP:COMMONNAME). However, if the goal is to try to avoid citations to sources that are reliable in other aspects but not reliable regarding reporting of a person's name in English (as Djsasso refers to above), then your proposal does not address this. (My proposal addresses it a little bit, by referring to WP:COMMONNAME's guidance on the issue.) As I suggested, crafting some guidelines to judge the reliability of sources regarding a person's name would help, if a good set of criteria can be determined. isaacl (talk) 20:42, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You are right, it was not supposed to be a vote, but it turned into such. And nobody proposed anything alternative to discuss/vote on... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 20:47, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Just in case you missed it, here is the edit where I proposed a different wording. (Note this is just an aside to the idea of refining the guidelines to evaluate reliable sources for a person's English name.) isaacl (talk) 20:51, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

You may want to repost it in a separate section for higher visibility. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 21:20, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I have included the last sentence of that proposal. Frankly, I think it redundant; but it is certainly true, and if people don't find it in what we have said, there's nothing wrong with adding it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:58, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

It is redundant, but since some of those arguing against the use of any modified letters have referred to Wikipedia's guidelines on using common names, I thought it might be useful to explicitly point out that there is no conflict. isaacl (talk) 02:53, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Which variant of English?

IMO the use of diacriticals, foreign names for titles and the like is dependant on the variant of English. For example, I went to school in South Africa. My secondary school, Estcourt High School catered for tuition in both English and Afrikaans. The Afrikaans name for the school was definitely Estcourt Hoër Skool, not Estcourt Hoer Skool - the word "hoër"means "higher" and "hoer" means "whore". The South African variant of English would certainly demand that the diacritical be used as Afrikaans is widely understood by English-speaking South Africans - moreover almost all Afrikaans-speaking South Africans also speak English. Carrying on from there, I have a sneaky, though unsubstantiated feeling that the British have much less resistance to the use of foreign names and therefore diacriticals than the Americans - one slang word that is used in the UK a certain amount these days is the German word "über" ("very", "total" or "higher" - for example "he was driving über fast"). I have no idea how much such expressions are used in the US - maybe an American could advise? Back to my original observation - the use of diacriticals and foreign names should be on a national variant basis - an article that is written in UK English will observe British conventions and one is written US English will observe American conventions (and likewise for Australian, South African, Indian and other variants of English). 21:42, 14 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinvl (talk • contribs)

I think you have found a valid point, but are simplifying things too much. The Brits are probably more open to French and German accents, the Americans to Spanish accents, and, as you say, the South African English speakers to Afrikaans accents. This is all very normal. But there are other phenomena that are orthogonal to this. A linguistic research paper uses diacritics more precisely than a literary criticism paper or an encyclopedia, which again uses them more precisely and more often than a high-quality newspaper, which in turn uses them more precisely and more often than a tabloid or a sports association. On this scale we should use the variant of English that other encyclopedias use, which means extensive use of diacritics, with a small number of (relatively rare) simplifications such as rewriting Middle English words: þorn -> thorn, yoȝ -> yogh. And I doubt that encyclopedic British English and encyclopedic American English differ in how they treat diacritics. Hans Adler 22:38, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The decision on whether to use diacritics in an article title (or not) should be made by looking at as many different English Language sources (that mention the topic) as possible, and applying WP:COMMONNAME (while also taking into account WP:ENGVAR). In other words, if a significant majority of English language sources use the diacritic when discussing the topic, then so should we... and if a significant majority do not, then neither should we. If there is no significant majority either way, then we are free to choose which ever we like, based on other criteria. I see no need to make this more complicated than that. Blueboar (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I could not agree more, there cannot be a sweeping charge made against the use or non-use of diacritics in articles. This is a case-by-case issue and must be treated as such. The ability to use diacritics must be protected, but beyond that there isn't much else to say. Demokratickid (talk) 23:46, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

By the same argument all articles must be titled in American English. WP:COMMONNAME is WP:COMMONNAME, not WP:COMMONSPELLING. Trying to make it say something about diacritics is an exercise in tea leaf reading. There is a tiny number of primarily non-English topics that do have independent English names, e.g. Lyons for Lyon or Munich for München. That's where inspecting usage in English-language sources makes sense. But if were to rely on the same method to decide between the spellings Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf and Duesseldorf, we might as well throw dice. (The problem is that every single source either uses these forms randomly, or follows its own manual of style. Therefore which spelling is more common depends on which sources use the word, rather than saying anything about the most standard spelling.) This is not what the other encyclopedias do. They all use diacritics in such cases. Hans Adler 00:00, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

AS much as I agree with the above statement, I have to even agree with this one more. I am biased towards using diacritics as should everyone else because they are, essentially, correct. Isn't the purpose of an encyclopedia to be correct? Demokratickid (talk) 00:07, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to inform. It should not be the purpose of an encyclopedia to decide what is correct. As Hans pointed out, we have different spellings of the same thing. We have to accept that that is normal. I've edited several articles on hockey players. This is not a diacritic issue. Some had adopted the misspellings of their names, as evidenced by their tomb stones. Another had not bothered to correct the misspelling of his name during his player career. It came out later in his life. We are all trying to cope with representing something or someone. It's not always clear what is the 'correct' name. It can change, too. Wikipedia tries to go with what is most common, as long as it is verifiable as a valid spelling. We must remember 'a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.' ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 00:37, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not the purpose of an encyclopedia to inform readers about the majority manual of style of the sources covering a topic. An encyclopedia has its own manual of style and follows it. I have given several examples of manuals of style above. They all agree that for a foreign name with accents they prescribe either writing it with or without accents based on criteria that have nothing to do with inspecting other sources. When people move from one culture to another they sometimes change the spellings of their names. That's a relatively rare case that needs special treatment. The vast majority of the cases we are discussing here is politicians, sportspeople etc. who still reside at their country of birth and have not changed their names in any way. They, and the huge number of places with diacritics, should not get random spellings just to make it marginally easier to spell a person who immigrated into the US without the diacritics. Hans Adler 00:50, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not still the same person? ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 01:04, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't get your point. First, you seem to be arguing only about that very rare case of people with diacritics moving to an English-speaking country. Second, a woman who marries and adopts her husband's surname also remains the same person. That doesn't mean we get to randomly use either of her two names, depending on accidents such as whether most of the sources predate the marriage or not. Instead, we try to find out how she wants to be known in public after the marriage. For people in non-English countries who have diacritics the presumption by all manuals of style that I have seen is that they want to be known under their name with diacritics and therefore, absent technical obstacles against doing so, they are spelled with them. Hans Adler 01:17, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

My father and my mother's parents moved here to Canada. My father changed his name to drop the use of Unicode character 0141 (the L with a slash) (I cannot render it on my computer). I don't believe it is rare enough that the issue should not be considered. And his first name was spelled in various ways. So birth records would not be accurate, once he became known in North America. No-one would be able to find him in the phone book. There are many emigrants here in Canada. We change our names to conform, to fit. This is the standard. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't immediately find the number of first-generation immigrants living in the US, but surely it's dwarfed by the number of people from non-English countries who didn't emigrate to the US. And since this encyclopedia functions as an international encyclopedia, not just one for the English-speaking world, the first-generation immigrants to the US are a tiny minority among all people born with diacritics. Your personal family history can't change this fact. I am not really interested in this small percentage and wouldn't mind different rules for them. But they are not a reason to strip the large majority of Czechs living in the Czech Republic, French living in France, Polish living in Poland, Estonians living in Estonia, Germans living in Germany, Irish Gaelic speakers living in Ireland, etc., of their accents. Hans Adler 18:42, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not in favour of doing that. Don't lump me with user Dolovis or GoodDay. I'm basically okay with existing policy. Diacritics neither encouraged or discouraged. I would be okay with spelling it out in more detail, but I'm not okay with pushing diacritics beyond what can be demonstrated to be valid usage. That of course, is somewhat subjective, but I think editors who are 100% or 100% against are the problem, not people like me who want something in-between. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 20:02, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I have now reread most if not all your posts on this topic here, and I see now that I must apologise for completely misunderstanding you and responding to what I read into your mind rather than what you said. Not sure how this happened; maybe I mixed you up with someone else. (It was recently reported that humans can only keep social relations with up to 150 different people. The number of people I should be able to distinguish on Wikipedia is well above that, and I think we haven't met before. This should have been a reason to do my homework before my aggressive response to you below.) Hans Adler 20:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

@alaney2k it is of course to inform but it must also be correct in the act of informing, and not informing a non-truth. Demokratickid (talk) 00:54, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

There are 34 diacritics for the letter 'a'. See the bottom of the Ä page. The usage of the diacritic may not inform at all. That's what I am talking about. It's hard to build enthusiasm for that. Unicode is HUGE. It's one thing to say, yes, let's use them. But, you'd have to be an expert to know them all. So there has to be a point that is reasonable that will be understood. By the majority? By all? ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 01:04, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

So we are back to the tiresome nonsensical "diacritics make me blind and since I don't understand them nobody should have them" argument. Hans Adler 01:17, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Why is it so black and white to you? Do you not see other colours? :-) It's tiresome. On my system, several of the variants did not even display. Those are 'technical obstacles', I would say. Not all alphabets and characters are installed on my system. I doubt that I am alone in that respect. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

It is not black and white to me at all. Technical obstacles are a very valid concern where they exist. But you have just changed your argument from "you'd have to be an expert to know them all" to "several of the variants did not even display". It's unfair to blame me for not anticipating that.

One of the letters at the bottom of the Ä article doesn't even display on my system, even though I have a lot of special fonts installed for mathematics, Chinese etc. (It's Unicode 1d8f, "a with a retroflex hook".) It's not on the Windows Glyph List 4, and I doubt that it would be used in many of our articles. We obviously need to adapt our approach for languages that use such extremely rare characters. But for the large majority of Latin-script languages, those where all letters are on this standard glyph list, there is simply no technical problem on any half modern computer that isn't severely broken (in which case it should be fixed). Hans Adler 18:59, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Unicode's adoption has improved things immensely in the display of characters. We're basically in an age where the technical standards are in place, but it's well ahead of practice and understanding here in North America. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 20:02, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The article Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof is a good example. If we use the word "Hauptbahnhof" in the title, then I see no problem with writing "Nürnberg" as well. The article in question translates the title into English in the lede, but thereafter uses the German spelling. This is normal British practice. Is this typical US practice? Martinvl (talk) 07:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

It does use both Nürnberg and Nuremberg in the text. It uses both "Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof" and "Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof" as well. I'm not sure what is to be learned from that article. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 16:30, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

That some editors have difficulty writing English; the article itself says that Central Station is usual. This used to be pretentious anglophones; Mark Twain has a lengthy section on the sort of writing which shows off by using Bahnhof for "Railway Station". Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:52, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:41, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Hans and Democratkid. I would preface my comment saying that I refer to proper names of people and places which originate in languages with a Latin script having diacritics. It excludes loan words and names from non-Latin script-based languages. I'll try and be as concise as I can, but the complexity of the subject the risk of being too long-winded, here goes anyway...

English is the über-colonial language: Variants abound; Czech characters, Polish characters, Russian Greek; even Arabic Japanese and Chinese characters are capable of being rendered into forms recognisable by people who know only the 26 characters they learned in school. The English language is capable of almost infinite assimilation; hundreds of new loanwords are added to the official English vocabulary every year. To some, "proper Anglicisation" implies the dropping of diacritics; resistance to that is futile.

But in the globalised 21st century world, with the trend for information to flow outside of borders, the English alphabet is showing its limitations. The English alphabet, like all other alphabets, is only capable of capturing the pronunciations that are characteristic of that given language. What is more, English is known for its grammatical and pronunciation idiosyncrasies; It is woefully inadequate when trying to capture pronunciations of even many other languages with Romanised characters and standardised pronunciations, such as French and Czech, both of which I speak. As an encyclopaedia, I feel we should strive for a quality higher than the TV newscasters or the journals that still use typesetting (I jest) – both of these often get it terribly wrong, thereby doing a disservice to their target audience. WP is technologically capable of displaying a very wide range of diacritics; we also have armies of editors from various linguistic backgrounds happy to ensure all this is carried out properly. Both these are advantages that can and do give great service to our readers.

I am all in favour of keeping diacritics. The fact is that the letters 'ç' and 'é' are already loan-letters in our alphabet (viz their fairly pervasive use: café, façade, rôle). Use of other letters, such as the 'á' (long a), 'ř' ('r' with a haček), for which there are no equivalents, gives clues to a different pronunciation. The reader may not know exactly how such words are pronounced, but they may be at least made aware that it isn't to be pronounced as they might expect an English word to be; those curious will initiate their own enquiries. Expanding their use is to be encouraged and not fought. People may be a little bit puzzled the instant they reach the Václav Havel article, which they accessed by typing 'Vaclav Havel' (without the "long 'a'"); Thankfully for a famous namesake, 'Dvorak' is now universally pronounced using a zh-sound even when the haček is absent. However, for poor Jiří Novák, English people seeing the bare 'Jiri Novak' would undoubtedly call him "Jerry Novak" instead of pronouncing his name as it should be – "Yirzhi Novaak".

I would apply the same logic to the correct use of punctuation (the endash, mdash, comma, minus sign) that materiel limitations are not, and should not be, an issue. We don't need to take many steps to ensure the reader has the 'best' information. On the other hand, removing diacritics from names that natively have them amounts to misrepresentation and loss of crucial linguistic information. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I modified a part of your comment, Ohconfucius: Wikipedia should respect the original form of proper names of people and places which originate in languages with a Latin script having diacritics. It excludes loan words and names from non-Latin script-based languages. I think this should definitely be a part of the Wikipedia manual of style. It is more descriptive and less commanding than the "discourage/encourage" proposal above. Any thoughts? --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 06:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Question

In the current wording of the guideline it says: In general, the sources in the article, a Google book search of books published since 1980, ....

I'm just wondering, who picked 1980 and why? Why not 1988 or another year?Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. In general, restricting to more recent years is sensible because in English (and in German and probably many other languages) there is a strong recent trend towards internationalisation of proper names, which typically consists in using the original forms including the spelling. This trend has already made some English versions of non-English names obsolete, while others are in the process of becoming so. E.g. Lyons for Lyon is largely obsolete nowadays, and Francfort-on-the-Main / Frankfurt on the Main has largely been replaced by Frankfurt am Main. In part this is due to political correctness (especially with the use of Polish names in German for formerly German places, e.g. de:Olsztyn not Allenstein, or the gradual move from Calcutta to Kolkata), but in part this is just the normal language regularisation process, triggered in this case by the increasing relevance of numerous small foreign places that do not have an English (or German, etc.) name and are therefore written in the original form. A special English form of a name was once the standard for most foreign names that appear in English. Due to globalisation it has become an exception, and exceptions are always under pressure to disappear. Hans Adler 07:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Let's update it to 2000 or somesuch recent epoch. 1980 publications are not hugely different to what appeared in 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, so has lost relevance in this day and age. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:25, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Ha ha. Based on your comments I think that maybe we ought to have a "Young person's Wikipedia" - the world began in 2000 ... and a "Crotchety old people's Wikipedia"? LOL and ROTFL. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Who: [19]. Why? Good question. But is the 2000 any better of a cut off? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:12, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

1980 would be better as it encompasses a larger body of work and it goes before current trends, which a cut-off of 2000 might be susceptible to. If you were to pinpoint an epoch change, it would probably be not long after world war II and the rise of the baby boomers, computers, satellites and television. 1990 saw the demise of the USSR and the rise of the internet and globalization, so you could make a case for that year. You could just change it to 'go back 20 years' as a basic reference that never gets dated. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Well a date that makes most sense to me would be 1989 or 1990. Fall of communism, lots of political transformation, reunification of Germany, and all that.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:04, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd support the 1990 per VM convincing argument. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:15, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

As the year in which the Internet started gaining international acceptance, it's also a good cutoff year. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:14, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Transliteration is proper action

Tony1 made the best point, I think, on Jimbo's talk page. That transliteration to a proper corresponding name in the language of Wikipedia is the proper action, that you shouldn't be using the name the way it is originally, but the way that is proper for the language of Wikipedia you're on. For example, on English Wikipedia, we use Barack Obama. This happens to correspond to his original name as it is, but it's still just an English version of his name. Now, when you go to other Wikipedias, you see his name in the proper method of those language, namely:

am:ባራክ ኦባማ

ab:Барақ Обама ar:باراك أوباما az:Barak Obama bn:বারাক ওবামা ba:Барак Обама be:Барак Абама be-x-old:Барак Абама bh:बराक ओबामा bi:Barak Obama bo:བ་རག་ཨོ་པྰ་མ། bg:Барак Обама ca:Barack Hussein Obama cv:Барак Обама dv:ބަރަކް އޮބާމާ nv:Hastiin alą́ąjįʼ dahsidáhígíí Barack Obama el:Μπαράκ Ομπάμα myv:Обамань Барак fa:باراک اوباما gan:奧巴馬 ko:버락 오바마 hy:Բարաք Օբամա hi:बराक ओबामा os:Обама, Барак he:ברק אובמה kn:ಬರಾಕ್ ಒಬಾಮ ka:ბარაკ ობამა kk:Барак Обама ky:Барак Хусеин Обама lo:ບາຣັກ ໂອບາມາ la:Baracus Obama lv:Baraks Obama jbo:byRAK.obamas mk:Барак Обама ml:ബറാക്ക് ഒബാമ mr:बराक ओबामा arz:باراك اوباما mzn:باراک اوباما mn:Барак Обама my:ဘာရတ်အိုဘားမား ne:बाराक ओबामा ja:バラク・オバマ mhr:Обама, Барак pnb:بارک اوبامہ ps:باراک حسين اوباما km:បារ៉ាក់ អូបាម៉ា crh:Barak Obama ru:Обама, Барак sah:Барак Обама si:බැරැක් ඔබාමා ckb:باراک ئۆباما sr:Барак Обама ta:பராக் ஒபாமா tt:Baraq Husseyın Obama II te:బరాక్ ఒబామా th:บารัก โอบามา tg:Барак Ҳусейн Обама tk:Barak Obama uk:Барак Обама ur:بارک اوبامہ ug:باراك ئوباما wuu:巴拉克·奥巴马 yi:באראק אבאמא zh-yue:奧巴馬] zh:贝拉克·奥巴马

These are all proper examples of titles in each language Wikipedia. They all properly mean Barack Obama. Even though his name is spelled in English letters (English diacritics, you could say), you don't just use the same name on every language Wikipedia. No, you translate it into the proper form for the language Wikipedia you are on. We should be doing the same here. We should be translating the names into the proper forms for the English language. How do we tell what the proper forms are in English? Look at the most common spelling of it in English language sources, that is the proper form for the English language. Sometimes, this will happen to have diacritics in it and that's fine, it just means that for that one word, it is common practice in English to use a diacritic. However, this is not true for every or even most words. We should be using English translations of names and places (among other things), based on English language sources. That is how it has always been done, that is how every language does it, that is the common sense method of doing it. Silverseren^C 06:14, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Requested Comment

I was requested to comment on this, and so I shall. In my humble opinion this seems to be a simple, but important, issue that oftentimes can be and is thrown off track by discussing items not related or not quite what is up for discussion. The use of diacritics in articles should be continued where they are appropriate (that is, not where there is an established English equivalent). If there are questions about what the word 'established' implies, then it can be discussed on an article-by-article basis. Just because when English is written it typically does not include diacritics (with notable exceptions like resumé or attaché or the above higher/whore difference), does not mean they are not important in understanding a foreign subject covered by an article in an English language encyclopedia. Remember, this is an English Language encyclopedia not an English Content encyclopedia. For example, even when writing the name of the Slovak city "Košice" I always use the diacritic above the 's.' Even when typing with my standard American laptop keyboard I always use the 'š' letter. If not, what I've written or typed would be pronounced if read aloud as "Ko-see-tsa" which is not correct. With the diacritic, one knows right away it would be "Ko-she-tsa." Ignorance of diacritical meaning by a general readership is EMPHATICALLY NOT an excuse to dumb down an ENCYCLOPEDIA either. Wikipedia already deals with public relations issues about its veracity and correctness, which I have in my own life heartily defended, and if one is to overhaul hundreds of thousands of articles to remove diacritics and thus dumb down the articles (unlike 'established' encyclopedias like Brittanica which DO have diacritics) it will only create more problems rather than solve them. Thus, my two cents has been issued. And, as a disclaimed, I am a third generation American (12th generation on my mother's side) and have no special interest in promoting the use or "permeation" of foreign elements in English. I simply want to do what's right. Demokratickid (talk)

Spelling it as "Kosice", is good enough for me. Particulary, when those letters are already there. GoodDay (talk) 22:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

It may be good enough for you, but encyclopedias and Wikipedia do not set their standards by one personal opinion. There are no dictatorial fiats, only policy achieved by consensus on here which is why this conversation even exists. As well, the letter 'š' exists right along side with 's' so I would have to say that both letters are already there, sorry. Demokratickid (talk)

I never claimed it did, set standards by one personal opinon. I haven't claimed the existance of a dictatorial fiat. GoodDay (talk) 23:24, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

And that's why I don't accuse you of it! I have good faith in all participants here, I promise :) I was only responding to your comment, which provided no basis for an argument on the merits or demerits of diacritics beyond the fact that it's "[...] good enough for [you]" to leave titles without diacritcs. Tell me, what reason would you have them not included beyond your first assertion? Demokratickid (talk) 23:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd leave dios out, 'cuz they're annoying & a distraction. GoodDay (talk) 23:35, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't not more emphatically or radically disagree. They take nothing away from an article and if a reader is so put-off by looking at diacritics then they should perhaps not be looking up such a subject. I'm sorry if I seem condescending, I really don't intend it, but your arguments seem to be lacking in any sort of substance beyond purely personal conjecture. Thusly, I cannot take your points seriously if you are not even going to try and make a legitimate one beyond, "[...] 'cuz they're annoying & a distraction". Demokratickid (talk) 23:40, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

If we're all lucky, I'll event a diacritics filter on my monitor, which will prevent me from seeing them. GoodDay (talk) 23:45, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

This conversation is over. If you refuse to respond to my thoughts in a remotely cogent or applicable way, then I do not need to deal with your spam. Good day. Demokratickid (talk) 23:47, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The RM route per article, is the best way. GoodDay (talk) 23:49, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Comment by Reo On @RfC: Very well written byAngr on the very top of the page:

The rule is to use common English names when they exist – and this rule works great for the names of countries, cities, books, and movies that may have a common English name that's distinct from their local/native name. But with people it's different. People don't have different names in English than in their native language.

The big problem of this discusion is, that it is big example of Wp:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT. Partly no wonder, the discussion is in disorder, it is hard to follow. Organisation of arguments is missing. There is no place to replies, except very personal threaded discussions. It was even hard to find place for this my comment and I still not know, whether it will be of any use, whether anyone will notice it just in Requested Comment section.

I agree that wp:COMMONNAME is one of the foremost guidelines to keep with. But you can not easily aply it to the peoples names in respect of diacritics. Or well you can, by not by sticking to the count of different spelling variant in google hits. It is an subject to commonname if people get well know nickname, but it is already adressed by the rule. --Reo ⁺ 11:54, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

This is simply not true. People do have different names than their birth names. When a person emigrates to an English country, they often drop their birth spelling and use something feasible. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 00:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:41, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I saw this mentioned on Jimbo Wales' talk page. Looking at it, I don't agree completely with either side. My feeling looking at the page is that it says the right thing, but it's too long, and because it's so long, it makes a simple issue look more complicated, thus encouraging wrong interpretations.

"The use of modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles is neither encouraged nor discouraged; when deciding between versions of a word which differ in the use or non-use of modified letters, follow the general usage in English reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works). The policy on using common names and on foreign names does not prohibit the use of modified letters, if they are used in the common name as verified by reliable sources. In general, the sources in the article, a Google book search of books published since 1980, and a selection of other encyclopaedias should all be examples of reliable sources; if all three of them use a term, then that is fairly conclusive. If one of those three diverges from agreement then more investigation will be needed. If there is no consensus in the sources, either form will normally be acceptable as a title. Place redirects at alternative titles, such as those with or without diacritics. Add {{R from title without diacritics}} after the redirect to properly categorize it, e.g. for print editions."

I would say, change this to:

There is nothing wrong with using modified letters (such as accents or other diacritics) in article titles; they should simply be treated as part of the spelling of the word. The decision to use or not to use modified letters is made in the same way as when deciding between any other type of spelling variant. (See also Wikipedia:NCGN#Widely accepted name, WP:COMMONNAME, WP:UE)

The suggestion about categorizing redirects is intentionally neglected. ;) I've made many redirects in my time, and I've never categorized one of them, and I don't have any plans to start now. The other paragraphs about the specifics of Google searches and so forth would be left intact, at least for this discussion. Wnt (talk) 01:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

We propbably don't need the language about that cat; we may not need the methodology, althogh it is better than the WP:ILIKEIT seen on both extremes here. However, the proposal suggests that there is something inherently right about using diacritics; there isn't, any more than there is anything inherently wrong with it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:17, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Could we be best served by adopting an arbitrary rule? E.g. a policy of using anglicizations in the titles always. We can always find them. An arbitrary rule, but then it would not be open to interpretation and endless debate. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 00:22, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Goethe

Is the present revert war over Goethe two editors talking past one another?

It seems to me important to discuss two cases where English uses oe in German names, both of which demonstrably exist. With Emmy Noether, the German spelling is always oe also. With Goethe, the German spelling has varied: we have a brief discussion of that here, and I own German editions with Göthe myself. There may be a better example; if the spelling reform of 1996 settled this (for Germany), it would be desirable to have one.

But we've had a German editor since then "correct" Goethe to use the umlaut; one major disadvantage of the proposal above is that it would encourage such people. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:46, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

"Göthe" is a historical spelling that nobody would ever think of using in modern German except to make a point. In an eccentric way. Spelling Goethe as "Göthe" is like spelling Shakespeare as "Shakspere" in English. The guideline is clearly trying to make the point that English may pick out one of several correct foreign spellings as the only correct English spelling, but Goethe is simply not a reasonable example for that because "Göthe" has not been an acceptable spelling for the historical person for more than a century. I don't doubt that there are reasonable examples, but until one has been located, no example is better than a misleading one. To get out of the edit war, I have at least clarified now that "Göthe" is not an acceptable spelling in modern German. Hans Adler 06:27, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

It does indeed seem that this is a poor example (if an example at all) of the principle it's supposed to illustrate. A better example would be Goering - but it turns out we in fact spell it Göring, so maybe the principle being illustrated doesn't even apply.--Kotniski (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Mathsci has since reverted my clarification [20], and I have replaced it by an other one that is hopefully more acceptable, [21] including a footnote to the online Duden article which proves that there is no alternative spelling for the historical Goethe in German. [22] I have since found out that there was indeed a short period of uncertainty after the German spelling reform of 1901, when people were not sure whether surnames were also subject to the reform. They were not. While "Göthe" was probably a more common spelling of Goethe's surname during his liefetime and still appears in modern telephone books (although now rare, probably because people moved to the poet's spelling), he himself preferred the oe spelling, and it gradually became standard.

Saying that there are standard English spellings of German words where historically other spellings in German were possible is pretty pointless since the same applies to genuinely English names such as Shakespeare. I do not doubt that there are examples where English has picked one of several correct spellings in another language as the only correct English spelling, but this is not one, and presenting it as if it was only dilutes the real point. Hans Adler 09:10, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

(a) There are problems with Goethe, since the spelling changed from his paternal grandfather to his father; and he himself occasionally used an umlaut. (b) the comparison with Shakespeare is not helpful, since the problems of orthography were quite different between the eighteenth/nineteenth century and the sixteenth century. Even amongst German mathematicians, things are ambiguous: with Emmy Noether and her father Max Noether, the umlaut appears in encyclopedias as an alternative for the latter, but not the former. Here is a 19th century book of Goethe's letters which uses both conventions.[23] Since this applies in the cases of both Noether and Goethe, a footnote is a reasonable way to clarify matters without making reference to non-German names, which only confuses matters. Mathsci (talk) 09:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Proper names

The above discussion seems to apply almost exclusively to proper names. Is there any valid reason to have different rules for the spelling of proper names (such as place names and personal names) when they occur in article titles, as opposed to normal references in the body of an article? --Boson (talk) 01:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

There are some minor reasons: It is arguable that titles should be easier to type than text, because readers don't have to type text to find an article. Again, one of our major considerations in WP:TITLE is that readers should be able to recognise the title of the article as being about the subject, without having special knowledge, such as a language other than English.

But it may be worth saying that our title policy has, for some time now, discouraged treating article titles as names of their subjects, rather than convenient labels. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely understand your last sentence. I imagine you might mean article titles like Bill Clinton or Rhode Island, but these are also names (probably the names used by the subjects themselves—or the people who live there—). Can you give me a few examples of articles that use a convenient label for a person or place that is not a name.? --Boson (talk) 13:25, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I can give a few examples off the top of my head... authors. In most (not all) cases, we use an author's pen-name as our article title instead of their proper name. The most prominent example being our use of "Mark Twain" instead of "Samuel Clemens". Both "Mark Twain" and "Samuel Clemens" are appropriate labels that clearly identify the subject of the article. We could entitle the article "Samuel Clemens", but we choose to entitle it "Mark Twain", because "Mark Twain" is more recognizable. Blueboar (talk) 14:30, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but that is still just a matter of choosing which name (official name or pen-name). Both are names; in fact, both are proper names used to refer to the subject (not just the article). I thought Pmanderson/Septentrionalis was saying that policy now discourages treating article titles as names of their subjects. That is what I didn't (and still don't) understand. In any case, it seems irrelevant to the matter of how to spell whatever name one chooses to use. --Boson (talk) 21:06, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

PS: It occurs to me that you may be using proper name in a different sense from me. I meant the grammatical term, i.e. those nouns or noun phrases that designate particular persons, places, etc. and are conventionally capitalized. --Boson (talk) 21:14, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

It may help you to understand what PMA is saying if I explain why we are gun shy about the word "name"... the WP:AT policy used to talk about "article names"... and it lead to endless conflicts.

The problem with "names" is that they come with all sorts of emotional baggage... "names" can get wrapped up in national, political, cultural, and religious aspirations and conflict. However, people are less emotional when they think of article titles in terms of being "descriptions". For example... Is Kurdistan a name... or is it a description? Well, in reality it is both... but if, here in Wiki-world, we down play the "name" aspect of that title... and think of it in terms of its "description" aspect, the result is fewer edit wars and "naming disputes" between Iraqis, Kurds and Turks... all arguing endlessly about what is "correct". Everyone can agree that there is a region of the world that is commonly described (in english) as "Kurdistan"... and they don't object to using that term as an article title if they can tell themselves that it is merely a description... but... the second someone implies that this might, in someway, be the region's "name"... look out. People will argue and edit war for years over it. Blueboar (talk) 00:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Now it makes sense. --Boson (talk) 16:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The policy as spelled out at Wikipedia:Article titles requires that the article title is to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. This applies to the title of the article – but within the text of the article, pursuant to WP:MOSBIO, the person's legal name should usually appear first in the article. I trust that explains the current Wikipedia policy as it relates to this issue. Dolovis (talk) 14:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Via majority rule, the pro-dios side are likely going to continue to force diacritics on article titles at English Wikipedia. GoodDay (talk) 19:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

It's nice that you recognize that majority of editors (=consensus) support the use of diacritics. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

No, an active minority (most editors have no ties to western Slavonic languages), which sometimes is, and sometimes violates Wikipedia policy to make itself, a local majority. But we are not governed by majority; we are governed by consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:33, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) is just a guideline. If somehow there is concensus for this change (there isn't currently), you'll also need to change WP:COMMONNAME and WP:V. Since policies override guidelines, even if this change were enacted here, it wouldn't mean anything. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Neither of those policies talk about diacritics. And WP:V goes out of its way to say non-english sources are good when there aren't sources of equal quality in english. So frankly policy already leans this way. -DJSasso (talk) 01:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Neither talks about left-handed smoke shifters either, but it applies to them. So here. The cry "policy doesn't apply to this; it doesn't specify in so many words the subject about which I want to violate it" can be used in defense of any POV - and is valid for none of them.

So can citing English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones as though it permitted one to ignore English sources altogether. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I clicked on Special:Random 50 times. I got 4 articles with titles that are names whose original version is in a Latin-based script and involves diacritics. All of them were spelled with the diacritics in the title. So either Pmanderson's interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME is wrong, or WP:COMMONNAME itself is wrong as it does not reflect our practice (remember that policy is descriptive, not prescriptive?) and is contradicted by a bit less than 10% of all our articles. In my opinion it's Pmanderson's extremist and context-insensitive interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME that is wrong.

Our policies and guidelines are notoriously imprecise and only get fixed to cover corner cases correctly as we become aware of the problems. Interpreting guidelines that were written in response to questions such as "'Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom' or 'Queen Liz'?" as if they were the last word on orthography is simply not reasonable. It's also worth noting that under the extremist interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME it contradicts WP:ENGVAR. Our articles equaliser (mathematics) and coequalizer coexist happily and have done for years (to my chagrin, as I value inter-article consistency), even though the spelling 'equalizer' is of course much more common. Hans Adler 17:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

You're making statistical conclusions on a sample size of four?!? But you neglect to include the most likely possibility; that there is a disruptive and tendentious minority on this Eastern European issue, which has, on those four articles, never been considered by any larger consensus than the one editor who put them in. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Using the potential that we may hurt the feelings of people by somehow mangling their "true" name in order to inform our policies on our content seems a bit ridiculous. It's not our fault, as editors, that the NHL, NBA, New York Times, Washington Post, The Hockey News, etc.. have editorial standards which dictate that names should be anglicized. More importantly, seeing as how this is the English Wikipedia, we should use English as much as possible. No one should be converting/transliterating/anglicizing (take your pick of descriptive term) specifically for Wikipedia regardless. If the "transliterated" personal name doesn't exist in outside sources, then... well, I'd question the reason that we're trying to have an article on that person in the first place. Aside from that though, if the only thing that exists is the persons "native" name, then that's what we should use. If the vast majority of sources use "Peter Stastny", for example, then we should use that as the article title instead of "Peter Šťastný" (which should be mentioned in the first sentence, of course). The hundreds, or even thousands, of English newspaper and book sources for such people use the name without diacritics, which means that is what we should use as well. People should not be surprised at finding articles in places that they didn't expect. The advocacy for using diacritics wherever possible appears to me to be a crusade to "right a great wrong" rather than a genuine attempt to improve the encyclopedia.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

RfC

Template:Rfcid I am seeking a consensus on if the policies of WP:UCN and WP:EN continues to be working policies for naming biographical articles, or if such policies have been replaced by a new status quo. This discussion is on-going at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). Dolovis (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

This was above the table of contents, so I have moved it here. Discussion has been going on above for a while. The real question is of course not whether these policies apply but how to interpret them. Do they cover fine points of spelling? Do we follow the manuals of style of our sources, resulting in automatic inconsistency, or do we follow our own, which is similar to that of English-language encyclopedias like Britannica? Hans Adler 17:13, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

At the very least we should make it clear that diacritics are commonly used on Wikipedia (this is a statement of fact, not preference). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:14, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Some editors who do not want to write or read English have consistently disrupted Wikipedia to add diacritics where English does not use them; others have removed them where English does use them would be perfectly acceptable. It is, of course, unnecessary for any reader who knows that we are infested with POV warriors of every school. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, don't use diacritics in the article titles, when there's an english version available - which there usually is. GoodDay (talk) 00:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• Jimbo Wales is right-on with his comments at his talk page.[24] Always use the English name for the title, and use the legal name in the lead sentence of the article as recommended by MOSBIO. Everybody wins, and it is in keeping with current Wiki-wide policies. Dolovis (talk) 03:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Fact: it is a common practice to use diacritics on Wikipedia

It seems to me that stating in the policy that "it is a common practice to use diacritics on Wikipedia" is a common and uncontroversial statement of fact. Nonetheless, it seems that there are some who are challenging this clear statement of fact (not preference). Fine. To prove my point, I checked:

• Category:Polish people, where I found that 20 out of 20 articles that can use a diacritic, did so
• Category:Polish people stubs, where I found that 115 out of 120 articles that can use a diacritic, did so. The remaining four were expatriats, who seem to be mostly discussed without a diacritic.
• Category:Poland geography stubs, where I found that 81 out of 82 articles that can use a diacritic, did so.

I think this shows an overwhelming support for this statement of fact (over 95% of articles that can use a diacritic in their title do so). I would like for those who disagree with this to present data supporting their side (i.e. show categories where less than 50% of articles that are eligible for the use of diacritic do so). Please note I am asking for data to support (or refute) a statement of fact, not for more ILIKE or IDONTLIKE statements of preference like we see above. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:40, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Update: an even more clear proof is Category:Redirects from titles without diacritics (309,123 articles) vs Category:Redirects from titles with diacritics (6,571), which yields us roughly a 1:50 ratio. It seems that we can say, factually, that over 90% of Wikipedia articles that can use a diacritic, do so. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Meaning...what? That it should be 100%? What we're trying to explain to you in reply here is why it doesn't matter what the percentage currently is. Myself and others feel that the percentage of current articles that exist at their article title which uses accents and diacritics is the result of advocacy rather then standard organic editing. These statistics come from a poisoned well, meaning that these numbers are decidedly not any kind of "proof" that there's a good accepted practice. Therefore, at best, this can be seen as a deceptive exercise. In actuality, if you want to know the truth, I see it as being an intentionally deceptive debate point in order to beat the opposition to your stated goal of using accents and diacritics wherever possible into submission. If there's a better way to be partisan about this, and to polarize people into competing groups, I can't imagine what it would be. Not cool man, not cool.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:59, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Piotr, the problem is that the "it is a common practice to use diacritics on Wikipedia" is being used as a sledgehammer, both here and on article talk pages (move requests, and whatnot), to advocate for pages to be moved to, or to remain at, the article title with diacritics regardless of what form outside sources use (and often in contradiction of [[our "Use common name" principle). You upset that English language newspapers, magazines, and books tend to use names without diacritics, and you're using Wikipedia in an attempt to correct that. You may deny that as your motivation, I don't know, but that is what I can perceive as your motivation here. That you're not alone doesn't make the position right.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:48, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. Didn't I say that this is a section for data, not opinions on preferences? This is not a section to discuss what rationale people may have for use or not of diacritics, only for confirming or challenging the claim that they are commonly used. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

And if you showed all you want to show, so what?

There are a good many Polish editors who know no better; unfortunately, as ArbCom has recognized, there are also a good many Poles who will do anything for the National Cause - not that in this they differ from the Germans, Lithuanians, Greeks, Turks, Iranians, or Americans.

That they have done so does not mean they have general approval to do so; this poll shows that they do not. It is also true that much of Wikipedia is nationalist lies; that does not mean we should alter verifiability or neutrality to note that that guidance is often ignored. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Really, can your "arguments" get any more underhanded? Allusions to irrelevant ArbCom cases, what's next - discussion of editors morality? But thank you that you agreed that I have indeed proven that most articles that can use diacritics do so. Oh, and the poll above, if I am not mistaken in my count, has 11 opposes and 17 supports (inc. my proposal vote); at the very least you could stop claiming general support for your position. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 02:17, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• On a point of information, and FWIW, all articles on French subjects I have come across have 'correct' use of diacritics – I use 'correct' advisedly because we often capitalise the e-acute (viz Édith Cresson) when the French convention ignores the accent in such cases. A scan of the relevant categories (such as this) also confirms that use of diacritics is largely correctly and consistently applied. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

It's true that it's common practice to use American English in (English) Wikipedia, but Wikipedia's guidance on using variants of English (nor this one, for that matter) doesn't need to point this out. In a sense it is a non sequitur if placed next to "...English Wikipedia does not prefer any major national variety of the language." Similarly, saying that modified letters are commonly used is unnecessary next to "The use of modified letters ... is neither encouraged nor discouraged". isaacl (talk) 03:39, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

• Jimbo Wales is right-on with his comments at his talk page.[25] Always use the English name for the title, and use the legal name in the lead sentence of the article as recommended by MOSBIO. Everybody wins, and it is in keeping with current Wiki-wide policies. Dolovis (talk) 03:43, 22 June 2011 (UTC)