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Diatrics on her name
Ok, so I didn't mean to be rash by correcting what appeared to me to be a spelling 'error.' But in the official tennis organizations like the WTA, ITF, and the Grand Slams, her surname is spelled as 'Goerges.' And the tennis media in general also follows that convention. I also figured that most of those who are looking her up on Wikipedia are going to search for her using 'Goerges' (although that is not really a problem since it automatically redirects to her page). Also, her official website and Twitter both use 'Goerges.' So, what do you all think about moving the page to align with this conventional spelling?
Aandalib90 (talk) 09:46, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Her official website uses the correct spelling "Julia Görges" on every page. Even her personal profile shows "Name: Julia Görges". Jared Preston (talk) 15:02, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oh, I meant the web address. But you are right about the site itself. Aandalib90 (talk) 20:09, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Ö isn't used there for technical reasons. Her name is Görges. Creet (talk) 12:13, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Move?
- The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Julia Görges → Julia Goerges —
- This is the correct standard English spelling of her name. The current spelling is the particularized German version of her name. Relisting, see below. Andrewa (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2011 (UTC) Aandalib90 (talk) 08:29, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose: German version of her name? She is German, she has a German name. You shouldn't go around changing all appearances of her name to Goerges from Görges, including all instances of interwiki links just because of WP:Diacritics, which are "neither encouraged nor discouraged". Jared Preston (talk) 08:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Sadly it is often common to refer to people with umlauts in their name this way, but it's usually a product of laziness and not being able to be bothered to find an umlaut on your keyboard. It was more justified in the days of typewriters, but there's really no justification for it now. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Support, as the diacritic means little to an english reading layman such as me. GoodDay (talk) 14:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- A bit of a generalisation I think. I too am "an English reading layman" and I know exactly what an umlaut means! -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:45, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. It's how the name is spelled. There is no standard English spelling of German names. --Matthiasb (talk) 15:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Support. For the reasons stated above. All the official tennis organizations (WTA, ITF, Grand Slams) and the tennis media at large use the English spelling. I shouldn't say it is more correct than the German spelling, because it's not. Also, her personal Twitter page uses the English spelling. Aandalib90 (talk) 20:22, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: If the WTA et al. don't get it (don't know, can't do it, don't want, are just lazy) there's no reason to incorporate those ignorance/error/laziness as well in an encyclopedy. --Matthiasb (talk) 22:07, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: Do a simple Google search. Wikipedia is the only page to use the German spelling. All others use 'Goerges.' Aandalib90 (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
- Really? --Matthiasb (talk) 14:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
- Yes, really. Every page except her website and this Wiki page. Aandalib90 (talk) 00:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
- Really? --Matthiasb (talk) 14:29, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose Its her proper name and characters like ö are readily available from the Latin toolbar down the bottom, suggesting to me that they are "legal" to use on the English Wikipedia. Calistemon (talk) 04:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose; there is no problem with having the Germanic umlaut in names. It is approved in the guidelines last time I looked. Snowman (talk) 00:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
Interesting... WP:BLP should also be relevant. Is her own website not a particularly reliable source, for example? But what when that website seems to go against common English usage, as here? No vote for now, but very interested in any consensus that can be reached, so relisting. Andrewa (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose per wp:diacritic. Her correctly spelled name is "Görges" and the trans-literation (and anyway, "ö" is an English character, even if only snobs like The New Yorker use it) ""Goerges is not predominantly used walk victor falk talk 19:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
- Comment The name of this article should be changed to "Julia Goerges" because that is the name used on the English-language websites of the official governing bodies of tennis, the Women's Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation . That also is the name used on the English-language website of the Federation Cup. Finally, that is the name used on the English-language websites of the following Grand Slam tournaments: French Open (Roland Garros), Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open. Aandalib90 (talk) 00:05, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- A note to the closing admin: The above support vote is the third if you include the initial move request from the user Aandalib90 (talk · contribs) who unfortunately does not understand what a diacritic is. In Görges' instance, the trema (or umlaut; ö) is part of her name. This poses a number of problems in English sources, as a lot of the mainstream English press refuse to write Ö, instead preferring OE. Anyone who has learned a foreign language will probably have some practise in learning these different, yet still Latin-based letters. We simply cannot go around changing all examples of diacritics, like the ñ in Piñata, just because we don't have the key on a typical English keyboard. There have been a number of attempted requested moves where readers assume that a person's name must have the English spelling, even when for example in Görges' case, there is a simple explanation for not having used the diacritic in these tennis sources (which never replicate them anyway – Ančić is invariably spelt Ancic). Matthiasb (talk · contribs) has even gone to the trouble above to show just how many google hits aside from Wikipedia actually do and can use the umlaut. If Görges' name is changed to Goerges (or even Gorges my god, even worse...), then where will this nonsense stop? Jared Preston (talk) 16:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: Why are you condescendingly saying I do not know what a diacritic is? Just because I support the English spelling does not mean I do not know what it is. As Andrewa said, Goerges agrees more with the 'common English usage' on Wikipedia. And when you refer to Matthiasb's so-called google hits, see how 'official' those sources are as opposed to the google hits I presented. The evidence is overwhelming. Every major governing body and tennis organization uses and favors English spelling, so why should Wikipedia be any different? Aandalib90 (talk) 23:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure if you know how this process works, Aandalib90, but you can only vote once, not three times. Its the good old one person-one vote system. It would be good if you removed those other two supports of yours. Calistemon (talk) 23:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry, I did not realize. Is it alright now? Aandalib90 (talk) 02:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- Looks better now. I'm just not sure whether the fact that you are the one that proposed the move already counts as a vote or not. The closing admin will know. Calistemon (talk) 02:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- Sorry, I did not realize. Is it alright now? Aandalib90 (talk) 02:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
- I'm not sure if you know how this process works, Aandalib90, but you can only vote once, not three times. Its the good old one person-one vote system. It would be good if you removed those other two supports of yours. Calistemon (talk) 23:58, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- Comment: Why are you condescendingly saying I do not know what a diacritic is? Just because I support the English spelling does not mean I do not know what it is. As Andrewa said, Goerges agrees more with the 'common English usage' on Wikipedia. And when you refer to Matthiasb's so-called google hits, see how 'official' those sources are as opposed to the google hits I presented. The evidence is overwhelming. Every major governing body and tennis organization uses and favors English spelling, so why should Wikipedia be any different? Aandalib90 (talk) 23:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Suggestions for improvement
I have done a lot of editing of Görges' page in the past couple of days, but feel free to spot any errors or make any suggestions for improvement. I am new to Wikipedia editing, so there may very well be several other ways to present material better that I have yet to know about. I feel like the Career section of the page is quite cluttered at the moment, but don't know how to improve it without a massive overhaul of the entire section. Aandalib90 (talk) 02:24, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
Naming Issue
I noticed that the above discussion made little-to-no referrence to WP:COMMONNAME. According to the policy:
- "Wikipedia does not necessarily use the subject's 'official' name as an article title; it instead uses the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources."
Sports Illustrated, ESPN, The Los Angeles Times, NBC Sports, Yahoo Sports, and The WTA, are all reliable English-language sources, and all use the spelling "Goerges" (as do several others, I'd imagine). Even her own website, which reserves the German spelling for pages within, still uses the address julia-goerges.com.
I think that another move should be considered based on these matters. The "Görges" spelling can still be noted in the first sentence of the article. -- James26 (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
- I've gotten some good advice from Vegaswikian. I think a decision to re-nominate should be based on whatever consensus is reached here regarding the common name, or other points. -- James26 (talk) 05:32, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
- I already suggested moving the page to reflect the usage of the English spelling by virtually all non-German sources, but more people opposed this move than supported, as can be seen above. I'll just again point out the fact that all the official governing bodies of tennis use 'Goerges', including the Women's Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation . That also is the name used on the English-language website of the Federation Cup and the Grand Slam tournaments: French Open (Roland Garros), Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open. --Aandalib90 (talk) 05:03, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Requested move
It has been proposed in this section that Julia Görges be renamed and moved to Julia Goerges. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}} . Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. |
Julia Görges → Julia Goerges – Though largely unmentioned in the initial discussion, there is evidence that "Julia Goerges" is the name most commonly used by English-language reliable sources, including The WTA, The ITF, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, The Los Angeles Times, NBC Sports, Yahoo Sports, and the addresses of her website and Twitter account. -- James26 (talk) 09:01, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
- As has already been pointed out in the recent discussion that concluded with «Non censensus to move», her personal webpage consistently uses the spelling «Görges». It is just common practice not to have ä ö ü in URLs of German-language sites, but this does not affect the proper spelling with ä ö ü. I personally think these repeated attempts of removing German umlauts are an utter waste of time. They shed a strange light on the inner mechanisms of Wikipedia, because logically, they will all succeed in the end. If not one out of three attempts will end up with a majority for your POV, one out of ten will, or one out of twenty, or one out of hundred, etc. Like this, a biased POV can be forced into Wikipedia. -- machᵗᵃˡᵏ👍 12:37, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
- Strong oppose: I can only agree with the above. This re-naming issue is absolutely ridiculous. Jared Preston (talk) 14:21, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
- Support; WP:USEENGLISH; the subject uses the "oe" spelling, as do English-language sources. Powers T 14:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
- Strong Support I agree this is absolutely ridiculous, This is the English language Wikipedia, we should use English, not European non-English non-Latin alphabet derived from Latin. 65.95.13.213 (talk) 04:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Support per WP:COMMONNAME. Jenks24 (talk) 05:35, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Due to the some of the opposes below, I decided to have a check over my !vote to see if I had cast it rashly (Hans Adler's comment, "on Google News (in English), a narrow majority appears to use the umlaut", was particularly concerning). However, after my own google news archive search, I will reaffirm my support. I'm not sure how Hans Adler was searching, but own results came in as 4,400 for "Julia Goerges", compared to 1,700 for "Julia Görges", which would seem to confirm that "Goerges" is indeed the most common spelling in English-language reliable sources. Jenks24 (talk) 17:15, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- I would also like to note that with >6,100 sources given by google news, I hardly think that "too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage" (WP:UE) can apply. Jenks24 (talk) 17:19, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- Only a remark to the Google Search: Have you verified that these are 6100 independent sources? I think there may be multiple hits for one single source (multiple news entries from one editor / one webpage) and therefor the number of sources will drop significantly. I even think that it would be much better to include non-online sources into this comparison. -- ReneRomann (talk) 13:49, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose as against standard practice. When English sources write "Goerges" instead of "Görges", they are just using the centuries-old standard transliteration convention for German umlauts. They are doing it either because of technical restrictions, or because due to technical restrictions they are not aware of the correct name. The transliteration loses information, since the transliteration is actually built into some people's surnames. I.e., the woman's surname might well be Goerges, but it isn't, it is Görges. To get an idea of the precedent against which you are arguing, look at Müller (surname), which lists about 60 people with the surname Müller (spelled that way in the respective article titles) with half a dozen sub-disambiguation pages that have a further 30 or so cases. On the other hand, the relatively few people disambiguated at Mueller either moved to an English-speaking country and consequently changed the spelling, or spell their name with ue even in German, such as Armin Mueller-Stahl. (You can tell from the German interwiki links, which also spell the name Mueller in those cases, or from the lack of such an interwiki link.) Transliterating an umlaut in this way is very much the same thing as removing a diacritic from a French word. English-speaking newspapers also tend to do this, but it is general practice to include accents in foreign names with Latin scripts and even to include unusual letters from Latin-based alphabets (as in Łódź), even if these are often not rendered in English-speaking sources.
More precisely, the applicable rule is WP:DIACRITICS. Of the three tests proposed there, two are not applicable as this woman is covered by no books or encyclopedias other than Wikipedia. (The one hit for "Julia Görges" on Google Books is one of those rip-off books from Wikipedia. The one for "Julia Goerges" is actually "Meier, Julia/Goerges, Stefanie" from a German book, i.e. it refers to one Stefanie Goerges – with that spelling in German.) The sources in the article don't convince me, as most of them look like the kind of profiles I have seen on TV, which seem to invariably involve American computer systems that can't deal with umlauts. Of the articles on Google News (in English), a narrow majority appears to use the umlaut.
Altogether, WP:COMMONNAME on balance speaks against this move, as inter-article consistency is also an important consideration. In fact, we are in the situation of WP:UE, a section of WP:COMMONNAME, which says: "If there are too few English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians, Portuguese for Brazilian towns, and so on)." Hans Adler 09:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC) - Oppose The real name is written with ö, therefor it should be on WP with ö and NOT oe even if it's easier for the users with US-Keyboards to write oe instead of ö. A redirect from oe to ö should be much better than trying to find any kind of sources (like the above given) are to lazy to use the ö or maybe because their systems doesn't support the use of ö. I've seen much computer systems (mostly "older" ones before Unicode came out) that didn't support the wide use of non-Latin caracters. In case I had a problem with the é having it on my drivers licence and on my ID-card because the computer systems didn't allow the use of the é. De facto that é like the ö is part of the real name - and in so far shouldn't be changed to any other typewriting. I understand if there are such problems with cyrillic/Chinese/Japanese spelling and/or names, but there shouldn't be any problems right now with latin (or latin derived) spelling nowadays where Unicode is widely available. -- ReneRomann (talk) 09:40, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The use of "oe" as opposed to "ö" was originally to overcome situations where the letter "ö" was not available e.g. on typewriters! In any case, the nom has been rather selective; English sites that call her "Julia Görges" include: The Guardian newspaper, vtennis.co.uk, Eurosport, sportsnewsunlimited.com and Facebook. There are many more... And, contrary to the nom's statement, her official website also uses "Görges". --Bermicourt (talk) 11:35, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The proposed name is not an established English spelling of the name. --Boson (talk) 12:28, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- That's just blatantly false. Look at all the English-language sources linked in the nomination. Powers T 12:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- These appear to be exclusively sources that transliterate all foreign letters – which is not general practice in English-language publications. High-quality publications such as books (she is not mentioned in any books) and the best newspapers don't do this. A Google News search turns up plenty of newspapers in English that are able to spell her name correctly. I doubt very strongly, in the unlikely event that Gerhard Schröder were suddenly to become a top tennis player, that those sources would spell his name correctly. Hans Adler 16:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- That list is misleading. For instance: her official English Web site uses the correct spelling, Görges. If we were to use the URL as a guide for spelling, we would have article names like "salisburycitycouncil" (with no spaces). Use of alternative spellings of foreign names due to typographical restrictions does not establish a valid spelling (comparable, say, to the established spelling Hanover) . --Boson (talk) 16:36, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well ignore the URL, then. The point stands that many of the English-language sources we have use "oe", which means the claim that the spelling is not "established" is false. What metric do you use to determine that a particular spelling is done strictly because of typographical restrictions (and thus, according to you, failing to establish a "valid spelling")? Powers T 21:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- We don't have to use a "metric" to decide that. Some English-language sources use one spelling, some use the other. There is no clear majority either way. Many of those who use the oe spelling appear to misspell other names similarly, but even if we ignore this, the guidance of WP:COMMONNAME in such cases is to use the spelling in the original language, in this case German. Hans Adler 22:42, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Names/spellings like Munich or Hanover or the Luther Bible are established. You will find them in Google Books or Google Scholar (which is one indication). Use of an alternative spelling (that is specifically provided for situations where the correct characters are not available) by certain media is not sufficient to establish an English spelling of German words.
- I don't understand why you assume the English-language sources that use the 'oe' spelling are doing so because the "correct characters are not available". There's no evidence that that's the case; it's far more charitable to assume that they do so because of a legitimate stylistic choice. For heaven's sake, even her official Twitter account uses that spelling! Powers T 12:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- And on Twitter she writes "won my singles today against a great playing lucie.came back from 26 24 and kept fighting+believing.now against bartoli on friday(3rd round)". I suppose you are not recommending that Wikipedia adopt her typographic conventions, which are no doubt chosen because the messages are entered from a mobile phone, where it is more convenient to omit diacritics, uppercase letters, spaces, etc. Twitter is not an encyclopaedia, and use on Twitter, mobile phones, etc. does not constitute established usage suitable for an encyclopaedia; otherwise we might also write TheBritishMonarchy lol.--Boson (talk) 20:54, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Totally ridiculous argument. User accounts (other than those on Wikipedia), passwords, email addresses, Twitter accounts etc. almost never contain non-ASCII symbols. Most of these don't allow you to enter them anyway. Some allow you to do it but then they cause an awful lot of trouble later on. People with umlauts in their name are conditioned not to use them in such contexts.
In the hope that this will shut you up, I just tried to create a Twitter account with an umlaut. It's impossible! When I entered "JuliaGörges" as user name, I got the following message: "Invalid username! Alphanumerics only." Great. So according to Twitter, "ö" is not "alphanumeric". People from non-English-speaking countries are exposed to this English-centric nonsense all the time, and you are currently doing your best to contribute to the problem. Hans Adler 21:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)- I beg your pardon? You're trying to shut me up? We're all colleagues here, aren't we? Powers T 01:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- Sometimes it's necessary to shut someone up to raise the level of a debate, colleague or not. Hans Adler 20:41, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- I beg your pardon? You're trying to shut me up? We're all colleagues here, aren't we? Powers T 01:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- I don't understand why you assume the English-language sources that use the 'oe' spelling are doing so because the "correct characters are not available". There's no evidence that that's the case; it's far more charitable to assume that they do so because of a legitimate stylistic choice. For heaven's sake, even her official Twitter account uses that spelling! Powers T 12:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Well ignore the URL, then. The point stands that many of the English-language sources we have use "oe", which means the claim that the spelling is not "established" is false. What metric do you use to determine that a particular spelling is done strictly because of typographical restrictions (and thus, according to you, failing to establish a "valid spelling")? Powers T 21:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- That's just blatantly false. Look at all the English-language sources linked in the nomination. Powers T 12:41, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. Goerges is wrong (that might also be spoken GOOHR-GES, since an E after another vowel makes the vowel long). The use in the URI of her homepage (and possibly for consistence in her twitter account) is a result of restrictions on URI (using Umlaut-URIs is discouraged in Germany). Names should be writtten as they are and not as WTA, the press or other write them to fit those names in their longly insufficient databases. (The German WP instead does not move James to Dschähms (compare jihad vs. de:Dschihad, but there is the issue of transliteration and transcription). The umlauts however are latin letters like æ or ð which had been used until several decades ago (and sometimes still are used, see Encyclopædia Britannica). --Matthiasb (talk) 15:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose per Hans Adler. (P.S. for the James Argument - ever watched Goodness Gracious Me Going for an English?) Agathoclea (talk) 09:35, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
- Support - The latin alphabet is considered standard in this 'English' wiki encyclopedia. We have a Novak Djokovic article that shows off the most prominent example of this. Most sources on the internet use Goerges just like we use Japan not "Nippon" or Germany not "Deutchland." Pick up a newspaper or magazine and the Goerges spelling is what you'll almost always see because it IS the establish and correct English spelling. I say we move this to a mediated cabal and let the administration choose based on what they think are the best parameters brought forth here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
- Almost Đoković is the best example WHY NOT to use the "English" spelling. The version Djokovic is inaccurate in the type of reading it out. In case the "ć" at the end normally should be spelled / transliterated to "ch" instead of a simple "c" which changes the read-out name (compare Wikipedia:IPA for Serbo-Croatian). This is a kind of a wrong transliteration and shouldn't be mixed up with the usage of "alternate" names. I don't know whether anyone would be lucky if his/her name would be changed in this way that the read-out version totally differs from the "right" one. -- ReneRomann (talk) 11:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- It's not our place to decide what's an accurate transliteration and what isn't. Reliable English-language sources -- like the BBC -- use that spelling, and so should we. Powers T 13:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- Really nice argument... NOT! If there are limitations in external sources (like already mentioned Twitter limitation not to allow "Umlaute") we should simply accept them and take them to WP as god-given? Sorry to tell, but how dumb are you? Do you really know that the systems of external sources ALLOW the usage of Umlauts and/or other non-"english"-latin characters? If the systems don't allow the use of non-"english"-latin characters and/or the users of the systems aren't aware how to enter non-"english" characters, then we should simply accept it? Sorry, I don't think so. From my point of view it's no problem to use any kind of REDIRECT on the "non"-english version to the "right" version as far as MediaWiki (and in so far Wikipedia as Wiki running on MediaWiki) allow the use of Unicode characters. I agree that it's hard for Users with Keyboards not supporting the direct input of "special" characters like Umlauts/Chinese/Japanese/Cyrillic to enter the sites written with Unicode characters. But exactly for this are redirect pages!
- Just compare this to a math table you'd like to create. Will you create a table with an entry "2+2=3" just because external sources with limitations in their software publish this?
- I think we shouldn't think of any kind like "common english-language spelling" if the original spelling is available and it's no problem to use the original/right spelling. For redirect pages you may use ALL different spellings (compare to "Tschernobyl"/"Tschornobyl"/"Chernobyl"/"Chornobyl" - all are valid transliterations). In de.wp it's more common to add redirect pages instead of just moving an article around... -- ReneRomann (talk) 14:06, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- I will respond to your points when you can make them without being insulting. Powers T 16:11, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- The English-language sources that write "Julia Goerges" generally also write "Gerhard Schroeder" instead of "Gerhard Schröder" and "Hermann Goering" instead of "Hermann Göring". But in these cases we have numerous books in English, the majority of which use the ö spelling, and we also have encyclopedia entries (e.g. in Britannica), all of which use the ö spelling. As you can see from my examples I checked only the non-sports sources (LA Times, BBC). This is your chance to prove me wrong by finding tennis players who are predominantly spelled with umlauts in the sports-centric sources provided for the "Goerges" spelling. As I am not interested in sports I find it too cumbersome to check this myself. Hans Adler 20:54, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- That's operating off a false premise. Apparently, if I can't find sports-centric sources that use umlauts, then we should always use umlauts? Powers T 12:26, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
- Sources that indiscriminately transliterate all special Latin letters simply can't be used to establish the spelling of an individual name. I don't know what's so hard to understand about this. If you want to transliterate everything indiscriminately because for whatever reason some sources do so (e.g. resulting in "Valery Giscard d'Estaing" instead of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Francois Mitterrand instead of François Mitterrand), then you can't start at individual articles but should start a discussion for changing the relevant guideline. Hans Adler 17:36, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
- Isn't it in general better to keep the "original" spelling (as far as it is possible to use it with Unicode) instead of using any kind of pseudo-common spelling? I agree that there may be users that is going to use EN:WP with any kind of "pseudo-common" spelling (like the Schroeder/Goerges), but there also will be users that are entering the "original" spelling. In this case I'd definitely prefer using the "original" spelling and using #REDIRECT-Pages for the "pseudo-common" spelling (like already done in Gerhard Schröder article).
- That's operating off a false premise. Apparently, if I can't find sports-centric sources that use umlauts, then we should always use umlauts? Powers T 12:26, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
- It's not our place to decide what's an accurate transliteration and what isn't. Reliable English-language sources -- like the BBC -- use that spelling, and so should we. Powers T 13:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- Almost Đoković is the best example WHY NOT to use the "English" spelling. The version Djokovic is inaccurate in the type of reading it out. In case the "ć" at the end normally should be spelled / transliterated to "ch" instead of a simple "c" which changes the read-out name (compare Wikipedia:IPA for Serbo-Croatian). This is a kind of a wrong transliteration and shouldn't be mixed up with the usage of "alternate" names. I don't know whether anyone would be lucky if his/her name would be changed in this way that the read-out version totally differs from the "right" one. -- ReneRomann (talk) 11:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
- This really would be scientific and encyclopedic style!
- Using any kind of "pseudo"-names is not widely spread in other encyclopedias; they mostly use the "original" spelling (if available/possible; Cyrillic/Chinese/Japanese alphabets excluded) and then use cross linking from "pseudo-common" names. Also the original name is used in the articles instead of any kind of "common" spelling, even if not directly used (e.g. Đoković would be directly listed as "Đoković" in printed encyclopedias (at least the ones I know/I have already used). This doesn't mean that a transcription/transliteration of the name isn't given (or in case of Cyrillic/Japanese/Chinese the original writing), but it's not used due to the fact that the only "real" name is the way to use the original name without any changes.
- I'm not 100% sure whether there are official english transliteration tables for non-latin alphabets available (I know that there are such tables in German language), but before using any kind of "press"-related versions, I'd definitely stick to those official transliteration tables IF NEEDED! -- ReneRomann (talk) 17:13, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose. The original spelling should remain. Kierzek (talk) 00:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
- A Comment:
- So, this looks like it's yet another interminable wrangle over spelling “It should be English, it’s the English WP”/“it should be German, the correct spelling is German”. Bloody Hell!
- And I find the opening statement, "Like this, a biased POV can be forced into Wikipedia" a bit rich. As is "People from non-English-speaking countries are exposed to this English-centric nonsense all the time"; no-one here is demanding German speakers change the way they speak or write German; and no-one here is huffing and puffing on the German WP demanding that they follow English conventions there. The words pot, and kettle, spring to mind.
- And there is no cause to be snooty about sources that “always transliterate”, or follow an “outmoded” convention; if that’s what the sources do, then that is the standard English usage, no matter how much you don’t like it, or look down your nose at it.
- As far as the spirit, and the letter of the guidelines we have, on the English WP we follow English usage, full stop. If that usage misrepresents, or doesn’t do justice, to the original, the remedy is to "Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article"; and if the article here is "too English-centric" we have the interwiki link to the German (or any other) WP for comparison.
- Having said that, in this case English usage is ambivalent. It seems both "oe" and "ö" spellings are acceptable in English, in which case WP:ENGVAR would apply (which exists specifically to stop rows over the "correct" way to spell stuff), and we should defer to the spelling that was used originally (which was...) Of course, that is only relevant if we are following English usage, rather than trying to score some point about how "incorrect" English is.
- And maybe we wouldn't have so many of these rows if we didn't have so many articles that seem to deliberately thumb their nose at the guidelines and conventions we are supposed to be following.
- My two-penny worth... Swanny18 (talk)
- You seem to have missed the fact that in this case there is no established usage in English. It is not general usage that all umlauts are transliterated, as can be seen from many German names that are routinely written with umlauts in careful sources such as Britannica. There are two conceivable reasons why a specific name should be transliterated: (1) because we have a general rule to transliterate that character, or (2) because there is an established (transliterated) spelling for that particular name. (1) definitely does not apply, as witnessed by thousands of articles on Germans that uncontroversially use umlauts. (2) does not apply because practically all sources using the transliterated spelling routinely transliterate all names.
- And there is nothing special about this. The most important region-specific MOS sections (those on French and Irish Gaelic) say explicitly that all special letters are always used, not even allowing for dropping them in the (hypothetical?) case that a consensus of English sources does not use them. Hans Adler 21:09, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- Actually, you might have missed that I already pointed out that English usage ia ambivalent in this a case. Swanny18 (talk) 18:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
- It's OK to remember that this is the English Wikipedia, but shouldn't anyhow all Wikipedias try to reach as most encyclopaedic content as possible? I do understand that the English name should be used in favour to the original name, but in my opinion only if there is such. And in my point of view, a transliteration can't be a "common name". Stick to the Schröder/Schroeder example above. And another example I found is Denali / Mt. McKinley. Even if the official name has been changed to Denali some years ago, Wiki entries use "Mt. McKinley" instead of Denali.
- The problem at least is that there is no common rule in en::WP whether to use or not to use any kind of non-standard-english characters. At least this is the main problem, so before arguing around at every single article, maybe there should be a general rule to use or not to use this non-standard-english characters in article names.
- By the way @Swanny18: Your sentence "Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article" is complete nonsense. But I guess you mean: "Name your page in (transliterated) English and place the native original on the first line of the article". There is no native transliteration, because there can't be a transliterated original.
- In my view, there won't be any general consensus about using or not using the umlaut here as long as there is no general rule to use or not to use non-standard-english characters (including the 'æ' in 'Encyclopædica Britannica') in en.wp. -- ReneRomann (talk) 13:49, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
- The "complete nonsense" you're referring to was a quote from the guidelines, (though as it turns out, a pretty old version of them); it was changed to "Title your pages using the English name, if one exists, and give the native spelling on the first line of the article" (before being completely rewritten) so your version gets the gist of it. But you are wrong about there being no common rule on the en:WP; the rule is, we follow english usage. Swanny18 (talk) 18:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
- The common rule you refer is that it's following the English use. And this is the problem. There is no rule about using or not using diacritics, but only this more or less bad rule about using the English name. The question is: What is a common name? Is this the name given by the media (because they're unable or unwilling to do anything else than transliterate)? Or is this the "original" name? As I said, the "common english name"-rule is a problem, especially if there are are some media using the "ö" and others "oe". By simply counting the ones using the "ö" and the ones that use the "oe" you won't get a "common" name. Anyhow as already pointed out, the problem is that there is no common style if using the "ö" or "oe" by all media. I think there should be a convention and/or rule to use or not to use transliterations GENERALLY (so Gerhard Schröder would be Gerhard Schroeder, Lübeck to Luebeck and so on). -- ReneRomann (talk) 20:21, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
- The "complete nonsense" you're referring to was a quote from the guidelines, (though as it turns out, a pretty old version of them); it was changed to "Title your pages using the English name, if one exists, and give the native spelling on the first line of the article" (before being completely rewritten) so your version gets the gist of it. But you are wrong about there being no common rule on the en:WP; the rule is, we follow english usage. Swanny18 (talk) 18:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose per much of what has been said above. -DJSasso (talk) 22:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
- Oppose Using diacritics to follow native speaker spelling is a common practice on Wiki, despite what the guidelines might say. There's Lübeck, Bronisław Komorowski (Polish president), Václav Klaus (Czech PM), Józef Piłsudski, and José Sócrates (Portuguese PM). Britannica and specialist sources do the same. I don't see that this does any harm. You don't have know German to figure it out. These people spell their names in a particular way, and we try to follow that. Kauffner (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
- Support The simple fact is that throughout the mostly English-speaking tennis world, she is known by the 'Goerges' spelling. Her popularity has grown substantially in 2011 as she has had more success, and my personal observation is that her name is always spelled 'Goerges' in the English-language media. I am talking about the official governing bodies of tennis, like the WTA, the ITF, and the vast majority of English-language tennis media sources. I was thinking that Wikipedia should reflect this. Aandalib90 (talk) 06:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)