[Wikipedia-l] Biography as a discipline

Sun Nov 25 14:22:46 UTC 2001

I just added a note at the end of the article about Danish author
[[Hans Christian Andersen]] about the Danish use of initials in
personal names.  In Denmark, this author is called H. C. Andersen.
Even if these initials are short for Hans Christian, the full name is
almost never used in Denmark.  This is as common in Denmark as the
U.S. use of a middle initial (e.g. George W. Bush), but all English,
French, and German sources that I have found use the full name Hans
Christian.  Since Wikipedia is in English, it is just fine that it
follows the established English convention.

This makes it just like a translation.  The Danish words "smørrebrød",
"København", and "H. C. Andersen" are translated into English
"sandwich", "Copenhagen", and "Hans Christian Andersen".  We are used
to translating nouns and city names, but this is a case where also
personal names are in fact translated.  I find that fascinating.

This sort of knowledge should be written down somewhere, but where?
Is there a science, school or discipline that teaches how to document
a person's name or life?  Shouldn't there be?  I know we discussed
this in May in [[Biography/Talk]].  I stated that biography is a
scholarly discipline, which Larry doubted, and I had no hard evidence.
I think I wish that it were a scholarly discipline, and I would like
to establish biography as a discipline, in fact a subdiscipline of
creating an encyclopedia.  (This could lead to a discussion of whether
disciplines are static or how they can be established.)

I have observed that books titled "biographic dictionary" never list
people that are still alive.  Is this a rule or just a coincidence?
Has the rule been documented?  Where?  If such a work contains entries
on people who are still alive, does it have to change its title?

Another unwritten rule is that the birth and death years should both
appear at the top of the article.  Only some older biographic
dictionaries list the death year at the end of the chronologically
organized article.

Are there any handbooks (or useful websites) that explain how to write 
biographies, biographic dictionaries, or encyclopediae?  Is there a
Wikipedia page that lists suchs references?

Any pointers appreciated.

-- 
  Lars Aronsson
  <lars at aronsson.se>
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se