Certainly we don't need something like the five
names in one sentence
we currently have for Copernicus: "*Nicolaus Copernicus* (Polish:
*Miko?aj Kopernik*; German: *Nikolaus Kopernikus*; in his youth,
*Niclas Koppernigk*;[1] Italian: *Nicol? Copernico*; 19 February 1473
? 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer ...". There's a note on
his name in the article itself, which lists a further nine variants.
In reality, of course, all these are just variants on one name, rather
than "alternative names" in the strict sense of people who've changed
their name or published under pseudonyms.
From the search perspective, of course, we could
use "silent"
redirects (ones not noted in the article text), but some
(especially
latinised names) are essential to have clearly available to the
reader. Maybe an infobox section would be appropriate here?
--
- Andrew Gray
? andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:56:54 +0100
From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Aliases and the MoS?
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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<AANLkTimQ_onEn_CyRQ5LsuPuqAf1-9iiVKbgNvdd=Am6(a)mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
Maybe an infobox section would be appropriate
here?
Oh, please no. You need to explain the name variants and languages,
otherwise you get nationalists edit-warring incessantly over it. The
Copernicus one is a good example. I wouldn't be surprised if there was
disagreement over whether the German name or Polish name comes first
in the list. One thing I do find helpful is having the Latin versions
of names, especially if you happen to be looking at the title pages of
books published in Latin (way back when). Trying to work out the names
of publishers and authors can be difficult at times.
Carcharoth
Five versions of the name is positively simplex. The
manages eleven without
overwhelming the article.
I think it is reassuring to have multiple names up front - people will
come to an article from various redirects so having multiple possible
names in the lede gives our readers reassurance that they are on the
right page.
WereSpielChequers