At 01:08 PM 10/22/03 -0700, Delirium wrote:
In retrospect I agree partially, and would move
towards using neither
Blessed or Saint. In fact, I would prefer not using titles at all.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_S._Grant for an example of
this in practice (note that it does not start off "General Ulysses S.
Grant..." -- even though in this case "General Grant" was in fact a
common way to refer to him before, during, and after his Presidency.
There are a few exceptions, of course. "Saint Peter" should be
referred to as such, because that's the most common way to refer to
him (though I wouldn't object to "Peter the Apostle" either). Popes
should probably be referred to as "Pope John Paul II", because "John
Paul II" is not actually a personal name, but one adopted with the
office. But I don't think this should extend to all people who have
titles.
This is basically the--sensible, I think--approach recommended by
Fowler, decades
ago: start by calling people by the name they're best known by, and
optionally add
others. So Mother Theresa gets listed as that ("Saint Theresa" needs
to be a disambiguation
anyway), and the article should note her birth name as well as the
fact that she was
canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 2003 (other churches also
have saints,
but not the same list--so we need to be specific). Ringo Starr isn't a
redirect to
Richard Starkey, and Gerald Ford is listed as that, not primarily as
"President Ford" or
by his birth name.
There is a risk of confusing two issues here. Obviously we need
stricter naming rules for srticle titles than in the body of an article.
Failing to adopt conventions for article titles could make some of them
unfindable, especially since the search function became dysfunctional.
The article title [[Sir Ringo Starr]] would not be acceptable. The
controversy for now is over the first sentence of an article. Thus if
an article about him were to begin "Sir Ringo Starr was a member of the
Beattles," would that be an acceptable placing of the word "Sir".
Assuming that it is factually correct, I would say yes. My more
general contention is that this is a point where a great deal of
latitude and flexibility is essential.
Ec