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Talk:William Gillies (Australian politician)

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Requested move 11 December 2017

[edit]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: William Gillies (Australian politician) is not moved; Robert Butler (Australian politician) is moved as proposed. (closed by page mover) Bradv 05:00, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]


– Per the recently closed discussion for William Drayton Armstrong, I believe there is a case that the articles about other Australian politicians Gillies and Butler should use their full names per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:NATURALDIS.

About Butler, my search of the Australia newspaper archive shows the most results - 800+ in Queensland media - for "Cuthbert Butler". I found articles from 1915 using "R. J. Cuthbert Butler", another from 1916, 1917, and 1918 using "Mr. Cuthbert Butler". This 1920 article refers to him as "Mr. Cuthbert Butler, M.L.A." (Member of the Legislative Assembly). So I am convinced that he is commonly known as "Cuthbert".

Note that Cuthbert Butler primary article is about an English Benedictine monk, hence my disambiguation. Arbor to SJ (talk) 03:06, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Firstly, I do not know why these two are being done jointly - they are completely separate as far as I can see. Clear support for Butler - that's the kind of thing that doesn't really need to worry about an RM. On the other hand, I am inclined to oppose Gillies. As has previously been explained, usage was different back then (and the Qld Parliament website is another official one - every single person gets their full name there). We need to look at present usage, and given that a Google Books search shows a pretty wide range of texts using simply "William Gillies" (compare 1190 in that search for '"William Gillies" Queensland' to 226 for "William Neal Gillies"), I am inclined to think "William Gillies" is probably more usual. Frickeg (talk) 07:26, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Reply: Are you sure most of those just plain "William Gillies" results are about the Premier and not other people? Also, Google Books search results aren't exactly accurate, as I am encountering books that do not mention him at all (from what I can gather from searching within some of the books). Arbor to SJ (talk) 18:13, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Even if only a third of them are about the premier, that's still enough. Even comparing the first page of each search is instructive - for "William Gillies" we seven general histories or histories of premiers, one biography of TJ Ryan, one statistical document, and one gazette about someone else. For "William Neal Gillies" we have three general histories, six appearances in formal lists/gazettes (where full names are a matter of course) and one biography of Fred Paterson. Not to mention that the sources provided above really don't make much of a case for the full name either. Frickeg (talk) 21:13, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Similarly on Google Scholar, I get far more results for "William Gillies" + Queensland premier than including his middle name. Arbor to SJ (talk) 17:13, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.