[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Saints

Thu Oct 23 20:31:30 UTC 2003

Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> 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