Talk:Welsh Corgi

Tails

The article states "The tails of Pembrokes are NOT docked as some think."; however, the 3rd picture's caption states "The Pembroke Corgi's tail is often docked, and its ears are smaller." Clarification?

The tails of the dog have been docked for centuries, and today very few are born with tails. However, in the rare instances where a corgi is born with a tail (usually very short) it is almost always docked.Martin Heidegger 23:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC

That sounds like a Lamarckism argument. Docking a dog breed's tails for 10,000 years wouldn't make them magically be born without tails. If stuff like that worked, humans would be born with pierced ears. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 06:54, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

corgwn pronunciation?

Anyone? Nklatt 14:09, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Corgŵn = /ˈkɔrguːn/, but the English plural is just corgis. Strad 05:58, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Descent

I have removed the statement that corgis are "believed to be descended from the Vallhund". Firstly, an encyclopedia article should stick to demonstrable facts, not just offer what is believed. Secondly, is there any genetic evidence that the two are related, or is this just breeder's folklore derived from the obvious physical similarities? If they really are related, how do we know that the exchange was in that direction – could the Vallhund not just as easily be descended from the Corgi?---- Richard New Forest (talk) 18:47, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

From 1925 to 1939, the two breeds were considered the same and interbred. So, it is true that they're probably going to be genetically similar, yes. But the popular and widely accepted theory (as the exact history is lost), Cardigans come from crooked-leg Teckel Dogs (relating to Dachshunds and Bassets) whereas the Pembroke comes from straight-legged Spitz types like the Vallhund. Not necessarily from the Vallhund itself. Cardigans came much earlier, around 1200 B.C. (with invading Celtic tribes), and the Pembroke arrived around 1100 A.D. (with Flemish Weavers), 2000 years later. There's still very distinct physical differences that make them the two types: When Pems have a tail, it's curly, and they have lighter more pointed muzzles, where Cardigans have deeper chests, bent legs, and heavier muzzles. Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] KrypticKlaws 21:22, 10 December 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by KrypticKlaws (talk • contribs)

Interesting references, but sadly none of this stuff appears to be based on real modern research. Essentially various people have theorised freely, and their ideas have been absorbed into breed folklore – however their theories do not appear to have any scientific or historical basis. The sources are useful for providing factual information (such as descriptions of early corgis and of other possible contributing breeds), but I can't see how they are any use whatever in telling us where corgis came from or when, or whether the two types are related. Apart from anything else they are full of other errors (such as the meaning of "cur" and the claimed existence of impassible mountains between Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire). Richard New Forest (talk) 15:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation

So is it just for shits & giggles that Welsh Corgi, Cardigan Welsh Corgi, and Pembroke Welsh Corgi all have different IPA pronunciations? Come on, people. -- 76.28.238.29 (talk) 08:52, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

No, they all ought to be the same: now corrected. (Not a particularly savoury phrase, that, by the way...) Richard New Forest (talk) 15:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Reliable refs

A lot of material added recently, much of it reffed to Welsh Corgis: Small Dogs With Big Dog Hearts, a web-based owners' magazine. Unfortunately this cannot be considered a reliable ref. It is a tertiary source which gives no indication of its own sources – so we cannot judge which facts are true, which are untrue but widely believed, and which were suggested to the author by a friend and put in to bulk out the article. Just to take the first example: the alternative theory about the origin of the name. It is ascribed on the page to "others". Who are these "others"? Are they real lexicographers, or just people who once flicked through a Welsh phrasebook? Have they published their theory in a recognised journal? When? What evidence do they offer for it? What do other lexicographers say about it? If this (quite plausible) theory is properly sourced we should certainly mention it, but the ref used at present is entirely inadequate, and unless a better one can be found, it should be removed. I'm afraid the same goes for most (and perhaps all) of the material sourced to that page. Richard New Forest (talk) 21:49, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

According to the Telegraph, the Queens first corgi was called Dookie (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1564705/Hug-for-Queen-Elizabeths-first-corgi.html). Is it Dookie or Susan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.155.38.115 (talk) 18:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

That'll be Dookie. She didn't get Susan until her 18th birthday. Miyagawa (talk) 20:02, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Welsh Corgi → Welsh corgi – As the article itself spells it. Unless a proper noun, Wikipedia articles have only the first word capitalized. Tenebrae (talk) 22:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, per WP:Commonname (a policy) which must invariably trump WP:MOSCAPS (a style guideline). The predominant usage in English language RS is Welsh Corgi.

  Ngram – [5]

  In Google Books, and Scholar, the spelling is predominantly Welsh Corgi

  The Kennel Club (UK) uses Welsh Corgi in its breed descriptions [6]

  The American Kennel Club (US) uses Welsh Corgi in its breed descriptions: [7]

  The Canadian Kennel Club uses Welsh Corgi in it breed standard: [8]

--Mike Cline (talk) 10:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:Commonname. Dog breed capitalisation was resolved during the second half of last year. The consensus was that all the words of a dog breed name were to be capitalised. Miyagawa (talk) 13:07, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support—It doesn't make much sense to defer to COMMONNAME for style; we would have a different style for each title. If LEGO is the common name, great—write it in Wikipedia's style: Lego. If Welsh Corgi is the common name, write the common name in our style: Welsh corgi. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Further note Here is the relevant policy: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna). Specifically requires animal related articles to follow the Common Name wherever possible, and this includes capitalisation - for instance Peregrine Falcon isn't Peregrine falcon. Also see every single other dog article on Wikipedia. Miyagawa (talk) 19:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

  The common name doesn't need to be interpreted as including common capitalization. If it did, in any case, we'd probably be lowercasing a lot more often than we do, including peregrin falcon! But more to the point, the section dealing with capitalization below the one you quote can probably safely be seen as more relevant. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:01, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

  I knew we'd had this exact same discussion before. Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals/Draft capitalization guidelines and the associated talk page. Consensus was reached there that Dog Breeds should be listed in Upper case. Subprojects under the Mammals WikiProject are allowed to set their naming conventions, and although WikiProject Dogs doesn't have a specific document, I think it's clear that from all the other dog breed articles that this is the format followed. Miyagawa (talk) 12:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

  There was no such consensus at that draft guideline. Dog breeds were barely discussed. Also, I don't see why "subprojects" should set their own naming conventions; conventions should be consistent project-wide. Prefer that to local consensus. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:46, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

  Actually consensus was reached, except you disagreed with it. Breed names were discussed heavily in relation to both dog breeds and horse breeds and result was that uppercase was confirmed as the policy. The only failure here was that that agreed policy wasn't then copied into the MOS. Your view that subprojects shouldn't set naming conventions hasn't stopped others from doing so - see Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Article titles. Miyagawa (talk) 13:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  Beg pardon. Rather than disagreed with it, I must have simply missed it. Would you be so good as to point me to the discussion at the draft capitalization guidelines that you are referring to? thanks! ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:53, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I've posted a note at both WikiProject Equine and WikiProject Dogs asking for members to take a look at this issue in order to generate a more thorough consensus. Miyagawa (talk) 13:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Great idea. I've posted at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters also to get more input. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:38, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Also I'd like to apologise for the harshness in my previous comment. This is now the third or fourth time this same issue has come up and I was being far brasher than you deserved. Miyagawa (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

No worries! Likewise if I came off as unpleasant. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:53, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, per COMMONNAME. With respect, I must strongly disagree with ErikHaugen; naming conventions and style guidelines are written by editors and, if we're lucky, reflect sources that editors were reading at the time, usually on different topics. I would oppose letting such a system overrule what sources tell us about the capitalisation of this topic. Moving articles away from the naming used by sources, towards "consistency" with related articles, scarcely benefits readers. (As far as inter-article consistency is concerned, I take the same stance as Emerson) bobrayner (talk) 15:59, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  Pretty sure Ralph was talking about something else there. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:38, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• Comment on Ngram stats: Mike's way of using google books Ngrams tends to be biased toward capitalization, because it includes counts of uses in titles, headings, tables, captions, and such that may be conventionally capitalized even in a text that use lowercase "Welsh corgi" in running text. In this case, trying to get into sentence context comparison by prepending lower-case "the" doesn't give enough hits to be in the Ngram index; but "a Welsh corgi" works: [9], showing mostly lower-case in this case (this also tends to cut off the more specific breeds like Pembroke Welsh Corgi, which are more often capitalized as they're more likely to be in dog-fancier books). The statement "In Google Books, and Scholar, the spelling is predominantly Welsh Corgi" is probably also not correct; the snippets prefer to show you titles and headings, so you need to click through and look for uses in sentence context to conclude that you can count an item as support for the capitalized form. I think in this case, as with most common breeds, COMMONNAME supports lower case. In cases like this, where sources are not consistent, WP prefers lower case. But, like BIRDS, Dogs have been an isolated exception, so trying to solve that one breed at a time is bound to be nothing but trouble. Dicklyon (talk) 19:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• Bullshit You are just playing with ngrams until you get a result that you like. Other times you have used "the" instead of "a"[10][11][12]. Why not here? Because then you get a result that you don't like[13]. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:23, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  Don't both "the" and "a" appear lowercased in title case (ie titles) quite often? Perhaps neither ngram is useful? I'm not sure. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 22:56, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Enric, thanks for asking. When I tried "the Welsh corgi" in Ngrams I got no hits, as I already said and your link confirms, so it was clearly hitting the lower limits of what was includable as a trigram. I didn't consider trying uppercase "The" as you did, as it would obviously not help to exclude titles and headings. If you look at actual previewable book hits for "The Welsh Corgi", you find (or I find) 10 of the first 20 with lower-case corgi. It's a very long way from consistently capitalized. Most of these books with lowercase corgi also have it uppercase in a title, which is why the Ngrams are so biased. Dicklyon (talk) 06:12, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, if ngrams is unreliable, then let's not use it so much to prove points. If I look at simply "welsh corgi" in prewieable books I find that books that are reliable sources for dogs capitalize,[14][15] and that lowercase appears in many books that are not RS for dogs: fiction books,[16] surgery books that mention the breed once[17][18], divulgative books with a dozen pages[19]. Personally, I would simply defer to editors familiars with dogs sources, who have looked at lots of reliable sources in dogs and who can identify the good ones from the bad ones much more easily. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I think what you're saying is that specialist books capitalize dog breeds, and generalist books don't (there's a recent essay on that: WP:SSF). We agree on that. And we agree that book n-grams don't prove points; they are merely one form of evidence about usage, and need to be interpreted carefully. Dicklyon (talk) 07:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I am saying that reliable sources for this topic capitalize the name, and unreliable ones sometimes do and sometimes don't. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

And I'm saying that's a specialist bullshit position. Is this book not an RS "for the topic"? Or this one? this one? How about a thesaurus? And what do RSs have to say about WP caps style in the first place? Dicklyon (talk) 21:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

In other words, "reliable sources for this topic all capitalize" is only true if we define reliable source as a source that capitalizes the way Enric likes. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 00:55, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Hint: Dicklyon is cherry-picking those books that happen support his position, independently of quality, and neglecting to mention the good quality books that don't support it. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:42, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. And it's so easy to cherry-pick, since my position is that sources are mixed on capitalization. But we knew that already from the n-grams. Dicklyon (talk) 15:44, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Enric—I'm a little confused, you indented as if you were replying to me but I don't see any relevance. Was your "hint" supposed to be for me? Thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose at this time due to lack of consensus on the issue and many of the arguments being raised here being utter nonsense. Several counter-arguments I present are actually in favor of the rename, but they're outweighed by the larger one.
  1. The argument that COMMONNAME trumps CAPS is a gross misunderstanding of how WP:POLICY works here. The naming conventions ultimately derive their stylistic advice, including on capitalization, directly from MOS and its sub-guidelines; AT and NC sub-guidelines do not make up style rules on the fly. All WP:AT being labelled with {{policy}} these days rather than {{guideline}} means is simply that the "I can ignore this because it's just a guideline" idea (which is always weak to begin with) does not apply, unless one has a demonstrably legitimate reason under WP:IAR. No more. The idea that AT makes up its own style rules and tells MOS to go soak its head is absurd.
  2. See WP:Specialist style fallacy: The idea that because specialist dog publications have a strong tendency to capitalize dog breed names has jack all to do with how WP should style for an general encyclopedia audience. Looking at other general reliable sources, instead of specialist ones, the practice is divided and leans strongly toward lower, not upper, case, in non-dog-specific magazines, in newspapers, in Encyclopedias and in dictionaries.
  3. Mike's Ngram stats are indeed biased as DickLyon observes, and are useless. It's quite likely that the COMMONNAME is in fact "Welsh corgi".
  4. WP:No one cares what a draft "guideline" written in the darkest corner of some WikiProject says; it's not germane to anything.
  5. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS policy exists for a reason: WikiProjects do not get to make up their own insular rules and push them on everyone else. This policy was created specifically to stop WikiProjects from "set[ting] their own naming conventions" and style "rules", after the ArbCom shot the practice down in repeated cases. There's no issue worth arguing about when projects want to set conventions that don't conflict with the broader consensus, but where they do, they end.
  6. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) is four years out of step with MOS and does not actually represent consensus at all, as it has been carefully shepherded by certain projects in a system-gaming move to favor their position and ignore broader guidelines like MOS.
  7. Most importantly, WP:MOS and WP:AT do not have an established consensus on this issue; even the capitalization or lower casing of species names is the matter of a major ongoing controversy, so if anyone thinks the matter is settled at the taxonomic level of varieties that don't even rate as subspecies, they're smokin' some serious dope.
  8. Some of the rationales for and against capitalization of formal breeds of domestic animals and cultivars of domesticated plants are markedly different from those with regard to species, and the topic has barely been touched at MOS, which is the controlling Wikipedia guidance on capitalization and other style matters.
  9. Ergo, there is no site-wide consensus on the issue, and no animal breed or plant cultivar names should be moved, to upper or lower case, until there is one. Note that this does not apply to landraces, dog types, or any other group of species or varieties, which are lower-cased, always. And because most dog (and cat and horse, etc.) breed (not type) articles are at upper case right now, it would cause unnecessary turmoil to start moving them to lower case, even if Dicklyon is correct and good stats will show that general practice is in the majority lower case. Bring the issue up at MOS (I would strongly suggest waiting until after the upcoming RfC on species capitalization, unless you like walking into a room full of people using verbal flamethrowers) and let MOS do it's job.

     — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 21:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

  I can't really disagree with much here, but I support this move anyway because some people feel like site-wide issues like this should be decided at talk pages of articles instead of at guidelines. I too would rather see this hashed out at WT:MOS or WT:MOSCAPS, but like Miyagawa points out sometimes those guidelines don't get much respect. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 21:53, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP Commoname and the ability of wikiprojects to set their own standards. Capitalization of breed names, where a word is an integral part of the breed name, is longstanding policy at WPEQ. No need to capitalize the generic form For example, American Quarter Horse (which no one calls an "American quarter," as that is a coin) versus Arabian horse (commonly called an "Arabian"). Montanabw^(talk) 23:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

See WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and WP:POLICY. WikiProjects emphatically do not create policy. That said, the fact that all the animal breeding projects agree on capitalization (for recognized, formal breeds, not types or breed groups) and so do plant breeding projects, strongly suggests that regardless of the eventual consensus on the issue after a sitewide discussion moving this and similar articles to lower case right now will cause disruption for no clear gain. (I.e., you are right to oppose, but your argument is half reasonable and half not.) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 04:54, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Close enough for me for now!  ;-) Montanabw^(talk) 19:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose Welsh Corgi is a specific breed (or two breeds to be exact), and a proper noun, which should therefore be capitalised. Welsh corgi is simply a Corgi that happens to come from Wales, not a proper noun, and should not be capitalised. The article is about the breed, not about corgis that happened to be born in Wales. Skinsmoke (talk) 07:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

  Names of breeds aren't proper names. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean they should necessarily be lowercase—we capitalize Mammalia even though it is also not a proper name. But this is not a reason, in any sense at all, for us to capitalize this article. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:31, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Deletion/Merge

I'm tempted to propose this article for deletion or merge, since all of the content here is already contained at Pembroke welsh corgi and Cardigan welsh corgi. Perhaps this page would be better as a disambiguation page? --TKK ^{bark !} 23:55, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree since all these facts is basically rewritten from Cardigan Welsh Corgi and Pembroke Welsh Corgi Teh Flying Corgi 13:47, 1 March 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Theattackcorgi (talk • contribs)

Perhaps it would be better as a disambiguation page, similar to Springer Spaniel? Miyagawa (talk) 19:48, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree as well. I'm going to make a comment on WP:DOG and get some broader consensus before I do anything, though. --TKK ^{bark !} 20:36, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the nominator and Miyagawa. Oda Mari (talk) 09:11, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hunting bears?

Section on activities says they're used for hunting bears. Really? A: no bears in the British archipelago since dog knows when. B: herding and hunting are very different activities. C: diminutive corgi vs. great big bear would be funny right up until it became horrible.

Was this a historic use, or is someone having a laugh? 71.248.115.187 (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2013 (UTC)